I'm not sure if this is the look you are going for, but on an occasion or two we have rented snow machines... we got them from the local lighting rental house. I didn't even know such a thing existed, but once when I was there picking up a couple of extra HMIs for a big shoot I saw them on their list, so we gave them a try when the need arose. Rental wasn't too bad, maybe a couple hundred bucks if I recall.
They have fans that shoot up a mixture of this foam like stuff that breaks up and drifts down in little crystalline chunks. It was surprising how well it worked, actually... out the mouth of these things shoot wads of what basically look like thick white soap suds, but when it drifts back down it really does look like snow. It melts away and disperses after a couple of minutes on the ground.
The only issue we had with it was once it was just a bit too windy for optimal use... so in order to keep all the snow from just blowing away (before it drifted down into frame) we pretty much had to use what I assume was the "blizzard" setting... haaa...which was a bit more of a snowstorm than I had in mind.
Fortunately these shoots were MOS, since the things are a bit noisy.
You might check to see if your local lighting or grip rental house has these machines in their inventory.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
