Hi,

Something else to try... Have candles made with a double wick. i.e. 2 wicks. This works well to increase the natural light level from a practical candle. If that's enough for the "wide shot" then you could add a bit of bounced light (with the correct color gel) for the close up.

On a recent episode of "The 4400" I had an actor in a mine shaft who's "ability" was to create fire with his hands. The FX guys rigged a butane jet to his finger to get real flame and I augmented it with my "scorpion" flashlight (with Full CTO Gel) bounced off some white paper. I just had to quickly shake the flash light to simulate the flame jittering. It worked well!

Simon Hunt
Gaffer

Another way to fake fire/candelight is to shine the light through a cookie and move it gently back and forth. You can get a similar effect by using a gold reflector.

I had to do a similar thing a few weeks ago, where some actors had to appear to be looking back at a car they've just torched.
We used a wooden pole with rags tied to the end of it with wire, soaked in parrafin. It was 3 feet away from the actors.

The still picture shows how it looked originally, and the attached WMV clip is a rough idea of what we did with it.

Seemed to work alright . . . .

Best candle/fire fake I've ever done:

I have one of those round pop-up reflectors; take it out of the case, but don't unfold it; makes a 1-foot(ish) wide circle of flexy silver. Hold it low, point a 6" fresnel at it (gel if needed) and flex/wiggle the reflector.

For campfires/fireplace, unfold the reflector & use the full size. Worked like a charm.

I like the combination of dimmers and reflectors. For big fires, you can use 2 or 3 lights with gels on them (pointed at the same direction), dimming each of them at a different speed.