Alexandra Petri for The Atlantic:
Three different types of fake snow in a single day of filming! That is what I’m here to study: how to make something so expertly fake that it feels real.
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Have you seen Found a Homeless Billionaire Husband for Christmas on ReelShort, a platform for “microdramas”? The 71 episodes are each less than two minutes long; this microdrama is not even trying to have realistic fake snow.
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Hallmark, despite the available technology, is still something made by humans for humans. The snow may be fake, but at least the fake snow is real.
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in 2006, we got The Christmas Card. This is the Hallmark Christmas blueprint...she loves this town, and her job at the family lumber mill, more than anything—a fact that is lost on her absentee city-slicker boyfriend, Paul, an international wine broker in a tiny sports car. But, fortunately, Faith has sent a Christmas card to a soldier named Cody, stationed in Afghanistan, and Cody is so charmed by the card that when he gets a break from fighting the War on Terror, he visits her town. He then saves Faith’s dad from an out-of-control speeding car and starts helping at the lumber business. He also picks her up in a sleigh—with her favorite blanket. Wine Broker Paul does not stand a chance. There’s an exquisite scene where Paul spends two hours in the woods yelling into his cellphone about wine while, behind him, Cody takes down Christmas trees with a chainsaw.