Dust and Sand

A dust storm takes the world away and replaces it with one colour. The far planes go first, then the mid ground, and the subject ends up standing in a warm wall of nothing.

It is also weather that pushes. Wind is in it, so clothes, hair and posture all show the force, and a character walking into a dust storm is visibly working.

Driven dust moves horizontally and fast, which separates it from the rest of this group, where the air mostly rises, falls or hangs.

Colour comes from the ground. Desert sand goes orange and red. Volcanic ash goes close to black. The light passing through takes that colour with it, so the whole frame shifts.

Visibility closes over distance as a gradient. The near plane holds some contrast and detail, and everything past a certain point is gone.

Use it for arrival in a hostile place, for a search that is failing, and for any scene where the environment should be an opponent.

Skip it when the location has to read. A dust storm removes the location as thoroughly as fog does.

Haze is thin and still and it leaves the distance visible. A dust storm is thick and driven and it closes the distance down, so say the visibility closes.

Fog is cool and grey and it hangs. Dust is warm and coloured and it moves sideways. The colour and the direction tell them apart.

Denis Villeneuve takes Blade Runner 2049 (2017) into an orange dust haze on the approach to Las Vegas, and visibility closes until only the nearest object has any detail left. George Miller drives a storm across the frame in Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), where the wind is the thing chasing the convoy.

The result is a clean scene with particles floating in it. Say that visibility closes down, name how far you can see, and say the far planes are gone.

The second failure is dust with no wind in it. Ask for the particles to be driven sideways, and for the clothes and hair of the subject to show the force.