A question to any special effects artists...

[seaninja]

Does anyone know a cheap but effective way to make sparks?
I'm trying to work out some fine details for a short film, and one of those details is sparks coming from a magician's wand running along a brick wall. I'm trying to get something along the lines of this, but on bricks instead of a metal pipe.







I was thinking something along the lines of a zippo flint attached to a rod, but I'm not sure if that would work. Any help would be appreciated.

[lunar lord]

Any help would be appreciated.

Need help see a Dr.

[seaninja]

Need help see a Dr.

Ok. Any real help? lol.

[Sky Dragon]

I remember back in the day there was an attachment for skateboards where it would have a certain block that would shoot sparks off the pavement... I think it would probably work on any rough surface like the bricks you mentioned, but you'd have to modify the heck out of it in order to make it fit on a magician's wand. If you had the resources you could use Adobe After Effects or Sony Vegas or another video editing software to add the sparks yourself, but other than that, that's all I've got for ya. Hope it helps at least a little!

[Neoproks]

You could do it digitally by getting some free spark footage from here
www.detonationfilms.com
And keying it in

Or another quick idea I just had is to get a few sparklers and hold them along with the wand for the shot.

[seaninja]

Thanks for the suggestions. I want to try and stay away from digitally adding sparks. The only two reasons are that I need the background to be affected by the light from the individual sparks and the sparks need to be affected by the background.
I might see if I can try some fire steel and see if that works. That is kind of like what they used for the attachment for skateboards and scooters.