Ok the title of today’s story might be a tad sexist – but we were shooting models and model’s blowing up, or rather actresses and miniatures on Day 3 as part of a program of doing high speed tests with the rigs.
The pyro was handled by Duncan Capp, from i-fx.tv. Duncan started as an apprentice many years ago with a special effects company in London before branching out on his own and doing major feature films. His film credits include Troy, The Wolfman and Batman Begins where he was Special Effects Supervisor (model unit), Model Workshop Supervisor.
On our project, he was handling the explosion of our miniature World War One bi-plane. The shot calls for our actress to walk away as she explodes the plane behind her. The plane was built 1/5th scale and the move, along with F-stop, speed and lensing was scaled to match between a Bolt filming with an 85mm Lens on the 4K Phantom Camera at 250 fps outside, – and the hero green screen girl shot in the studio on the RED Epic mounted on the giant Cyclops Motion control base. This is exactly the sort of work that Stiller excels at. In fact, you can film a plate background in say London from a car and then engage Stiller who will track the shot, and match move into it with green screen in their vast studios. Not only does the team here run live comps with Motionbuilder and Maya, but the Cyclops with the Red mounted calibrated lenses – the team can immediately output a Nuke script complete with correct lens distortion nodes and pre-build.
The charges we used were electronically fired black powder in multiple petrol bombs. With the team from Mark Roberts Motion control on hand with portable Bolt track and a second Bolt rig, we were able to shoot the explosion in one take without a single problem. The trick was timing the secondary explosions so the blast appears to happen and then cause secondary blasts inside the ‘real’ biplane. With the explosives linked to the Mark Roberts Motion Control system, the camera was triggered to pull back at lighting speed and then trigger on cue the multiple explosions split seconds apart. Duncan estimated in his head that this would appear as if the movie explosions were 12 frames apart. When we check with the final high speed photography… it was 13 frames ! This is just one of many reasons to hire experienced explosive special effects experts, not only do you want to be safe, but with one massively complex and expensive model, everything needs to work and look correct on playback, if you can get to be accurate to 1/250 th of a second with explosives – you are not doing too bad!
i-fx mainly work in Sweden and the UK, but they do some work internationally. They have a range of skills but explosions and miniatures are very much in their comfort zone. To prepare the miniature Duncan needed to do quite a lot of work as it had not been made specially to explode so the plan needed to be prescored and internally fractured so that while it looked perfect to camera, the blast would engulf the plane not just shoot section off screen. While the task looks almost random, the internal deconstruction not only makes the plane in a safer way but it is a key part of crafting the explosion so the model will look real and not light in weight or break in ways that gives away its construction materials. The front engine was actually provided as a working model engine. As this posed a real risk to both crew and the rig, the Stiller team 3D printed a new ‘fake’ engine yesterday, glued it on, and the results looked perfect on screen.
Day 3 was primarily a series of tests and shooting elements for compositing. Day 4 will be a secret project that we will happily show – but only when done… but I can say it is the most complex motion control move I have ever heard of, with multiple rigs in the giant Stiller Studio. If it works – it will break the internet. (Fingers crossed).
Below are some of the elements shot with our actresses – they have been graded but they were shot without wires or special rigs. We started shooting at magic hour and wrapped last night at 3am. It was a long day but the footage from the Phantoms and Red cameras is beautiful.
We also shot various other key test pieces including model beauty shots, wireless flying and some erie exterior bath time shots.
As part of the fun and testing of pyro we even staged a mock assault on the studios with smoke grenades and your’s truly in full military spenda. Luckily other members of the Stiller team had actual military training and could instruct me which way to point a gun
– which did not stop me from being killed on cue !
