Thursday 29 October 2009

Blimey, it's been a while...

...and I'd love to say how busy I've been in the meantime, but no, a pathetic level of productivity has occurred.

Nevertheless, I have been working on a new filming project, entirely non-animation-based - miniature pyrotechnics! For various reasons, I am working on a scene in which a warehouse explodes, which will hopefully form the climax of a short film made, and currently being edited, by a friend of a friend of a friend... This is the actual building (a shoddy composite of two photos, made so I could get some idea of the building as a whole) - click on all photos for biggitude*:

And here are the front walls of the miniature, which is 1/24 scale (around 15cm high, without the peaked roof on the right):

And here are models of some of the odd stuff littering the area in front (note the 50p coin, left, to give an idea of scale):

The walls, which are to burst out from the explosion(s), were made from foamboard with the brick-work scribed on, RTV rubber moulds were made and resin castings produced. These castings were broken up into the pieces that will fly apart in the blasts, hence the cracks visible in the above photos.

Unlike my old mini-pyro effort, this will be filmed on a 16mm movie camera adapted to run at high-speed, a rather magnificent Soviet-era Russian Kiev 16-U (courtesy of Mr Ebay!).

It's proving to be very challenging, not least because the actual building is quite boring and devoid of architectural merit, and also because, being based on a real building and location, it means duplicating the original as well as I can manage!

*Or not - fecking useless blog...

3 comments:

a guy in a gorilla suit said...

and here I am, getting green with envy... ;)

The pictures you posted with the props look really great ! The cracks in the wall add 'the something' you usually miss in such shots. I'm really looking forward to see some test-shots or (for starters) some more pictures.
I didn't blog (on a regular diet) for quite a while too, but (as you see) you usually don't loose all of your readers so fast. It just takes us people some time sometimes to comment. All the best for the upcoming animations !

jriggity said...

looks great and this looks like it could be FUN!

jriggity

McTodd said...

Great to hear from you guys!

Well, progress is slow - I'm having to do a lot of experiments with the pyro, videoing tests and analysing the results, mainly because the materials I'm working with are so crude. Plus I'm still working on linking a new motor up to the 16mm camera.

But I hope to complete it all in the next week or so!