Shooting Pyro Effects in 3D

[Phil Bates]

Been having serious fun shooting pyro with our 2 MX Reds lately, creating fairly large effects since those work better with our parallel rig (6" or larger IO).

Here are some BTS shots that might be of interest:

A 45' wide wall of fire:

Gas Bomb:

Firework Shells. The goal here is to composite enough of these together to get the effect of being inside a firework display at burst level. We shot all angles and distances, sometimes being only 10ft away from the shell (pointing away from the burst). After dozens of deafening takes, we dropped frames on only one shot with one camera.

On this shot, we were shooting the burst flying through frame from the side.

Here we were shooting directly at the burst, well within the blast radius. The desire to have some stars fly close enough to break the screen plane. You can see here that one lands directly in front of Larry, the pyro guy.

BTW, not that dangerous at this distance if wearing safety glasses, the stars have very little force. Several of our crew got tapped, no big deal...but fun.

To see an example of what we are looking to do, here is a low res side by side from a test on a different evening.

Our format was 3K 2:1, at 60fps. The footage will be shown on 3D monitors in our booth at NAB.

Phil

 

[Eric Lange]

Nice one!

How does the “gas bomb” look in stereo, especially if you step through frame by frame, can you see the surface detailed structure of the fire ball clearly (in stereo)?

What was the widest IOD/stereo base that you used?

Cheers,

Eric

 

[Kwan Khan]

Yes, Very Nice

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Way to Go Phil, next time hit me up, Me and Steve will bring Epic

 

[Phil Bates]

Nice one!

How does the “gas bomb” look in stereo, especially if you step through frame by frame, can you see the surface detailed structure of the fire ball clearly (in stereo)?

What was the widest IOD/stereo base that you used?

Cheers,

Eric

Yes, you can see the structure in stereo and it looks great. One thing to keep in mind is that we don't see anything in the distance, it's all black. So, we can engineer a positive parallax that is higher than what you would normally use, say 5% instead of 2%. That increases the parallax of the fire structure itself. It's like forcing a deeper depth. We don't want to take this idea too far, just enough to make it interesting. I'll try to post an example later.

The IO was 9" with a distance of 65'.

P

 

[Phil Bates]

Way to Go Phil, next time hit me up, Me and Steve will bring Epic

Definitely! Next proposed shoot date is the weekend of the 26th. Send me a PM if it's a possibility.

Phil

 

[Rich Schaefer]

Very cool, your side by side image looks awesome in 3D!!! What a fun shoot!

Prost,
Rich