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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

What Are You Working On?

Finner said:
First off a propane explosion will give you very little effect as it happens so fast, Not to mention that it is way to dangerous and you would never get a permit for it (If you do it without a permit you will be charged get a huge fine and may even do some prison time).
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I'm from a part of the country where the outlaws outnumber the law so we doan need no stinkin' permit. We can generally do what we want at least once, after which we say we diddunt know that what we did was illegal and that we are sorry. Not necessary to go into rehab, even.

Can't the explosion be shot at a faster speed and slowed doun for effect?

Finner said:
Movies and effects are smoke and mirrors. No one actually blows up a real house. Explosions are not one big bang but a series of multiple smaller safer explosions that add drama and layers to the effect. They build a shell that looks like the set house and blow that up.
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But what if someone did a REAL explosion and people liked it? What if instead of smoke and mirrors people got real bang for their buck? (I really liked that last line in the context of this post... think I will just sit back and admire it for a bit.)
 
number6 said:
I'm from a part of the country where the outlaws outnumber the law so we doan need no stinkin' permit. We can generally do what we want at least once, after which we say we diddunt know that what we did was illegal and that we are sorry. Not necessary to go into rehab, even.
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Uh, huh... This thread and this line of discussion is almost getting out of hand.

Can't the explosion be shot at a faster speed and slowed doun for effect?
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Yes... But not with RED. Most explosions happen very fast and you would specialized camera systems to slow down an explosion. We're talking about the ability to shoot 1000fps or more. Phantom has an excellent shot of a car explosion / fire on their site that was shot at about 9000fps and it still seems kinda fast compared to a lot of movie FX type explosions.

Like Finner said, you're looking for multiple, smaller explosions and effects. Movie explosions are often composed of rolling fireballs and smoke effects. The last thing I'm going to do is give you advice or direction on how and what to use. Here's my advice... Coordinate your effort with a licensed and experienced pyrotechnics team as well as the local fire department. If you do some planning beforehand, you may even be able to find a house that's slated for demolition (or one that needs to be scraped in favor of something new and you can buy it). Then have your fireworks show, let the fire-department use it as a training exercise and put it out. A couple of our local fire departments have small buildings or structures, one even is an old farm house, that they repeatedly put mostly back together and burn time and time again for training. There are resources available... The thought of someone just blowing up their own house seems absolutely insane and totally irresponsible on several levels.

But what if someone did a REAL explosion and people liked it? What if instead of smoke and mirrors people got real bang for their buck? (I really liked that last line in the context of this post... think I will just sit back and admire it for a bit.)
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Isn't going to happen. "REAL" explosions or the type you would get from propane, natural gas, dynamite, etc.. Are very fast and very hot. They don't make a lot of visible anything in terms of fireballs or dramatic effect. But they could easily send debris shooting hundreds of meters away causing damage or injury elsewhere.

I'm a general contractor by trade and have had my share of experience with explosives and demolition. All I can say is that you're definitely heading down the wrong track with all of this...
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
Uh, huh... This thread and this line of discussion is almost getting out of hand.



Yes... But not with RED. Most explosions happen very fast and you would specialized camera systems to slow down an explosion. We're talking about the ability to shoot 1000fps or more. Phantom has an excellent shot of a car explosion / fire on their site that was shot at about 9000fps and it still seems kinda fast compared to a lot of movie FX type explosions.

Like Finner said, you're looking for multiple, smaller explosions and effects. Movie explosions are often composed of rolling fireballs and smoke effects. The last thing I'm going to do is give you advice or direction on how and what to use. Here's my advice... Coordinate your effort with a licensed and experienced pyrotechnics team as well as the local fire department. If you do some planning beforehand, you may even be able to find a house that's slated for demolition (or one that needs to be scraped in favor of something new and you can buy it). Then have your fireworks show, let the fire-department use it as a training exercise and put it out. A couple of our local fire departments have small buildings or structures, one even is an old farm house, that they repeatedly put mostly back together and burn time and time again for training. There are resources available... The thought of someone just blowing up their own house seems absolutely insane and totally irresponsible on several levels.



Isn't going to happen. "REAL" explosions or the type you would get from propane, natural gas, dynamite, etc.. Are very fast and very hot. They don't make a lot of visible anything in terms of fireballs or dramatic effect. But they could easily send debris shooting hundreds of meters away causing damage or injury elsewhere.

I'm a general contractor by trade and have had my share of experience with explosives and demolition. All I can say is that you're definitely heading down the wrong track with all of this...
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Thanks for the reality check Jeff. You have given me pause for thought.

And on reflection, I would just like to take this opportunity to say that I am very, very sorry. I now realize that what I was advocating was against the law, and did not show good and proper judgment. I sincerely hope that I have not encouraged anyone to act unlawfully in any way and just want to say that anyone, especially movie makers, should blow up things responsibly. And furthermore, I think that should include smoking, and I personally will not smoke nomore, forever. To all on this forum who may have been offended by my irresponsible advocacy, I apologize. Especially, I want to apoligize to Finner, whom I may have occasionally, verbally abused, when he was just trying to "do the right thing" and save me from myself. I will now go into the desert (it's a really short trip) and rethink my core beliefs. I hope to return a better team player. Again, thanks and I'm sorry.
 
Forget the house or the CGI... build a smaller scale model of the house and then buy yourself some fireworks.
 
Lowkus said:
Forget the house or the CGI... build a smaller scale model of the house and then buy yourself some fireworks.
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Ya cause that always looks realistic.
 
Lowkus said:
Forget the house or the CGI... build a smaller scale model of the house and then buy yourself some fireworks.
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Number6 you should listen to this guy, this is very healthy advice!

number6 said:
Was actually thinking about taping the cracks and windows and filling it with propane
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Blowing up anything for a film is to be left to the professionals, the result of amateur work in this sector may be loss of life!!
 
Finner said:
Ya cause that always looks realistic.
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Especially when 5 to 10 gallons of water flows over it, simulating a massive flood or a dam breaking.
 
Cardmaverick said:
I'm gearing up to shoot a pilot show for PBS.... never ever thought I'd be doing that! Were shooting the whole thing on Andromeda :)
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Congrats!

And just when I started to think this post was out of place, I realized that you actually put it back on track.
 
Finner said:
First off a propane explosion will give you very little effect as it happens so fast.
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While I agree with everything else you just said I have to take exception to this. I have seen 4 propane tanks strapped together set off. It was very filmic.

---

Am I the only one who is beginning to wonder if #6 travelled back through time from the year 2505?

---

Back on topic: As of 3PM I just started R&D on a rush job for T-Mobile and in my free time am developing a few spec Nike ads while squirreling away funds for a few shorts I want to shoot next spring.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
While I agree with everything else you just said I have to take exception to this. I have seen 4 propane tanks strapped together set off. It was very filmic.
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I've seen propane tanks blow up too... Can be filmic if conditions are right... The trick os for the liquid propane to roll out of a ruptured tank at just the right speed and not get exposed to usable oxygen too fast. I saw a 250 gallon propane tank blow up in a flash, destroying two adjacent buildings and tossing several vehicles through the air. That was not filmic at all, it happened so fast, the tank popped like a balloon with a brilliant blue flash and a firey puff of smoke and two cars were hitting the ground before the brain fully comprehended what was happening. That was right after the fire marshall had just finished evacuating people behind a perimeter line and made the judgement call to pull back firefighters who weren't able to snuff out the fire. They figured they'd just let it burn the rest of the propane out of the tank. A lucky call on their part instead of leaving firefighters close to it in a futile attempt at stopping the fire. There was no nearby equipment to dump dirt on it to snuff the flames... Water wasn't working, and with the valve right on the tank ruptured and red hot, it was a lost cause.

I've seen two real-life explosions that were very filmic, but in different ways. One was a tanker truck hauling diesel fuel... The driver lost control, it rolled and blew up in a spectacular rolling fireball and melted a bridge in the process. Tragically, three people, including the truck driver, perished in the accident.

The other explosion was comical.. Charges were set to destroy two large concrete pier and headwall structures. Me and the rest of my crew were only the excavators on the job, it was out of our hands, but we didn't think highly of the guy and his crew called in to do the blasting. So we volunteered to handle traffic control and keep people away from the blasting. I was about 1000 yards from the blast site. I could see the blast crew, but the structures were in a hole and out of my view. This crew was set up just over the crest of the hill from the blast site their foreman was parked there with his practically brand new truck. They hooked up their charge wires and they were all working right there around the foreman's truck. I heard two detonations and there was some clapping. Then came two more detonations and silence. I saw a chunk of concrete go flying straight up into the air until it was just a speck, no more noticeable than a small pea. The entire blasting crew was looking straight up... Then they all started scrambling like crazy, two guys collided and knocked each other over. They didn't know where to run as the concrete chunk was obviously coming back down. The concrete hit the foreman's truck right on the passenger side of the cab. It smashed that half of the cab flat onto the frame, which it also buckled. The concrete chunk was probably about 2ft x 3ft x 1ft with a couple steel rebar protruding from it... I still LOL about this one every time someone mentions blowing something up.

Back on topic: As of 3PM I just started R&D on a rush job for T-Mobile and in my free time am developing a few spec Nike ads while squirreling away funds for a few shorts I want to shoot next spring.
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I've got so many things going right now, it's not even funny... Well, it might be to others who don't have to deal with it. I really don't have time to spend here, but I find it hard to sleep these days. I usually hang out here on reduser until I finally pass out for a couple hours before the next day starts....

I'm in the middle of two commercial real estate development projects and I'm short on help. Even had two employees no-show on tuesday and I had to demolish a small building by myself and that wasted half a day. I'm also editing one corporate video project for a demo DVD and web site and I'm doing an archviz animated walk-through of a proposed shopping mall. On top of that, I just put in a bid to do an animated Christmas short (just a couple minutes long) and I have a hunch that I'm getting that job because I screwed up and bid too low. And I don't want to turn it down if that does happen because this is a truly great client that I've been trying to woo for some time now. Oh, joy... And as if that's not enough, I have to finish out 5800 sq. ft. of mixed-use office warehouse space by mid september, but I've pushed my deadline up to September 1st so I can attend Gibby's LART. I just love running two distinctly different businesses simultaneously. So, if I can get all my stuff done by the end of this year, I'll be good and once I get my RED, 2008 is playtime. :)

Oh, I also help raise a 4 year old and a 2 year old... It's amazing my wife puts up with all the other stuff.
 
Well, I can't even imagine the workload Jeff has just unloaded in his post, but I am in the process of planning and raising capital for our new post facility here in South Africa. It will be the first real-time 4K facility in S.A., probably on the continent, and will feature two THX and Dolby Premier certified theatres, also a first for Africa.

I have also just launched a new 4K technical resource, www.4khub.com and am sourcing and writing new content, and thanks to some guy who registered recently as "thatoneguy" pointing out some mistakes, I've had to rewrite a few things... by the way, are you willing to proof read articles before I publish them ;-)

Apart from that, we are working on a corporate video for a big mining company down here, 'PMC', one of the biggest copper producers in the world, plus getting a few other productions finished up.

I'm also getting sucked in here and so I think Reduser.net could be a very bad thing for all of the above.
 
Jeff Kilgroe said:
I've seen propane tanks blow up too... Can be filmic if conditions are right... The trick os for the liquid propane to roll out of a ruptured tank at just the right speed and not get exposed to usable oxygen too fast. I saw a 250 gallon propane tank blow up in a flash, destroying two adjacent buildings and tossing several vehicles through the air. That was not filmic at all, it happened so fast, the tank popped like a balloon with a brilliant blue flash and a firey puff of smoke and two cars were hitting the ground before the brain fully comprehended what was happening. That was right after the fire marshall had just finished evacuating people behind a perimeter line and made the judgement call to pull back firefighters who weren't able to snuff out the fire. They figured they'd just let it burn the rest of the propane out of the tank. A lucky call on their part instead of leaving firefighters close to it in a futile attempt at stopping the fire. There was no nearby equipment to dump dirt on it to snuff the flames... Water wasn't working, and with the valve right on the tank ruptured and red hot, it was a lost cause.

I've seen two real-life explosions that were very filmic, but in different ways. One was a tanker truck hauling diesel fuel... The driver lost control, it rolled and blew up in a spectacular rolling fireball and melted a bridge in the process. Tragically, three people, including the truck driver, perished in the accident.

The other explosion was comical.. Charges were set to destroy two large concrete pier and headwall structures. Me and the rest of my crew were only the excavators on the job, it was out of our hands, but we didn't think highly of the guy and his crew called in to do the blasting. So we volunteered to handle traffic control and keep people away from the blasting. I was about 1000 yards from the blast site. I could see the blast crew, but the structures were in a hole and out of my view. This crew was set up just over the crest of the hill from the blast site their foreman was parked there with his practically brand new truck. They hooked up their charge wires and they were all working right there around the foreman's truck. I heard two detonations and there was some clapping. Then came two more detonations and silence. I saw a chunk of concrete go flying straight up into the air until it was just a speck, no more noticeable than a small pea. The entire blasting crew was looking straight up... Then they all started scrambling like crazy, two guys collided and knocked each other over. They didn't know where to run as the concrete chunk was obviously coming back down. The concrete hit the foreman's truck right on the passenger side of the cab. It smashed that half of the cab flat onto the frame, which it also buckled. The concrete chunk was probably about 2ft x 3ft x 1ft with a couple steel rebar protruding from it... I still LOL about this one every time someone mentions blowing something up.
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Jeff, a cautionary tale, indeed. And if intended for my benefit, well deserved on my part because I have admittedly, been a little provocative in my posts.

In reality, the shot I have in mind will be as the two protagonists are driving up to the house. The explosion takes place when they are about a half mile away, and is shot with them mostly in the same scene and from their perspective. I plan no closeup shots of the blast (yet will rush to set up closer as the house continues to burn) because its not about pyrotechnics, it's about the event as it pertains to the story. The house I would like to use sits well off a dirt county road and has a terminated pouer line running up to it. It will be an easy trick to trip the lag fuse at a pole at the road where the line runs up to the house, just in case the line becomes damaged. The house sits far enough off the county road that the main pouer line should be o.k., but will ask a crew be present to splice it back together should a stray piece of wood or stucco defy the odds and break it. There are no neighbors within a mile-and-a-half, as the crow flies, and while I will alert the Sherrif's office about what I'm planning to do, I do not want a volunteer fire engine in the shot. Still, if the boys will agree to stay out of the way and not put the fire out (more to clean up afterwards) I will allow them to watch (as long as they agree to not call family and friends to also come watch, getting in the way of shooting the scene). Also, will try to provide a tractor to use for pulling the fire engine to get it started, in case the battery can't turn it over. Usually, once it gets started it will keep running, but with fuel getting so expensive, they usually forget and kill the engine when parked. (I made all that last part up). Also, I'm thinking the fact that the explosion will be from a distance should make it o.k. if it happens quickly. Somehow having it in real-life perspective from a half-mile away, I'm thinking should negate any brain-lag from otherwise having to take in a full screen explosion, n'cest pas?

n'cest pa?... that is a question a hillbilly mountain girl asks when she wants a favor from her dad. (You can cut that out if you want)

Oh, and sorry if I got off topic about what are we working on.
 
#6, tell ya what, for less than the cost of the pyrotechnics you are proposing, crew, medics, insurance, permits etc, etc, not to mention the house itself, we'll model, rig, light, render and composite the sequence at 4K for you, and you can have it as slow as you like, as close as you like, from as many angles as you like (even from within the house), have some debris fly within a few inches of the camera lens. Plus, we can re-render it as many times as you want, change debris trajectories, whatever it takes, and you won't actually have to blow anything up.

I know, takes some of the fun out of it, but hey, the offer's there to be taken.
 
4K Hub said:
#6, tell ya what, for less than the cost of the pyrotechnics you are proposing, crew, medics, insurance, permits etc, etc, not to mention the house itself, we'll model, rig, light, render and composite the sequence at 4K for you, and you can have it as slow as you like, as close as you like, from as many angles as you like (even from within the house), have some debris fly within a few inches of the camera lens. Plus, we can re-render it as many times as you want, change debris trajectories, whatever it takes, and you won't actually have to blow anything up.

I know, takes some of the fun out of it, but hey, the offer's there to be taken.
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4K Hub,

While getting to that scene is probably a year (or more) away, I will keep your offer in mind. Not really interested in the close-up effect though. But that should make it even simpler since the distance will be one-half mile. I suppose one would just do a scenic shot and superimpose the CGI over the original house.

Strange, with all the reality shows now-a-days, it seems everyone wants to do fake. But then I guess if we actually saw them shoot a reality show, we would realize that they too, are shot fake.
 
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