A common convention in film noir is to have characters smoking. We also planned, in the storyboard, to have a shot of the character lighting and smoking a cigarette. None of our actors smoke, however, and none of them understandably want to. We had an idea to use nicotine free shisha pens, but these do not look like typical 50's cigarettes, so I instead searched for a realistic looking movie cigarette and found this tutorial.
The tutorial essentially makes a real cigarette, but filling it with harmless parsley, whose smoke dissipates immediately and is harmless, instead of tobacco. It supposedly smells and tastes very bad though.
The cost of the filter tubes was about £5 for 200. I could not find any available in smaller quantities, but since the tutorial says these burn up very fast and we would require one per take, it is probably best to have enough for backups. I was able to buy 250g of parsley for £4. It's hard to say how many cigarettes this will make.
At first I added in way too much parsley, which resulted in the cigarette filter tube tearing open when I tried to fill it. I then didn't add enough, which meant it didn't look full and therefore not realistic. After some adjusting, I managed to get one that was full enough, and I folded the end.
It looks perfectly realistic, and lights up very well. I had my brother smoke one to get the photo.
This technique works extremely well, overall, the result is realistic and safe. On the other hand, it's very messy and smells very bad. The tutorial video did not exaggerate. Also, these cigarettes can only be used once per take and burn up very fast, meaning several would have to be made.
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