Need an angelic effect

[may2700]

shooting a film for class and need to make someone look angelic, so far all i have is maybe lit from behind with some diffusion papaer, a little smoke and a star filter, but i have a feeling its going to be cheesy, anyone have any better ideas? the scene will be like a flashback ( the husband has images of his angelic wife flash into his head ) i am using final cut to edit the movie if that helps at all. thanks for the advice

[google550]

You pretty much got it. Backlight and a little smoke. The more subtle the backlight, the less cheesy it'll look... And the smoke I suppose can be optional. The idea of smoke is GENERALLY to catch the light and make beams (kind of cheesy) and also to diffuse the light, but if you're putting diffusion on your backlights then I suppose it's kind of redundant, isn't it?

I'm not sure what a star filter would do for you, though.

On top of those things, I know the Lord of the Rings production team used blue Christmas tree lights to make Cate Blanchett seem more otherworldly...

And if you're shooting the rest of your project at 24 frames per second, you can record your actress as 30 frames per second and slow it down to 24... People won't recognize it as slo-mo but it will have a different quality to it... If you're not shooting 24 frames to begin with, for the LOVE OF CRUMBCAKE DO NOT shoot 24 fps just for that purpose. It's not worth it.

[Jonathan Gum]

that or godrays always works.
https://www.usefilm.com/image/864666.html

[chainedflesh]

Backlighting works great to give it the glamorous effect but also shine light, and I mean a LOT of light on a white background. Don't use the star filter. Put on a uv filter and smear vaseline at the filter's outer edge to give it sort of a blurry halo. Then get some distance between you and your actor and calibrate your lens to his/her face.

This way when you add fog, the fog will be slightly out of focus, your actor will be in focus but look out of focus at the lower portion of the body, and fog that gets closer to the camera will look out of focus at the edge of scene.

(I say use a uv filter for this because it is easier to clean that your camera lens)

[chainedflesh]

Ahhh... I see you didn't want an angel type vision... just an agelic look on a "real" person. That's what I get for reading over it quickly.

Then simply backlight/soft filter.