Fireballs

lone.smuggler

lone.smuggler

Active member
Hi there.

Being the retired pirate that I am. I'm planning a film shoot for a film festival, one of the shots would involve the talent running out of a construct as a fireball goes off. The flames flying out the windows as they smashed.

I wan't to create a rather dirty look of explosion. Instead of a clean fireball. Dust. Dark gray / black smoke. I've looked into the amateur ways of making 'Smoke Bombs' and Fireballs, but I'd really like to go safe and legal with this.

Hopefully I'm going to ring up the Fire Department in a couple of weeks and get there advice on it, let them know what I'm planning, and the police department.

My question is:

Has anyone here tried to create a fireball before, on a low budget. Safely?

If anyone has any feedback or knowledge, and they have the time I'd love to hear about it. Thank's.
 
Thank's for the link.

Though I guess I'm looking for something a little more practical and on set. One of those people who try to go against CGI as much as possible. I know with a low budget and so on.. Still It would be nice to do something quick and practical on set instead of weeks or a realistic explosion.

Someone I know is oddly looking into Particle Generations though for something she's doing, so I actually passed the link on - she says thanks. :)
 
how about compositing a real but small explosion (i.e. much simpler and safer and cheaper) behind your real actors? Possibly in conjunction with a model building? Yes, you won't get your exploding window glass details etc, but I don't think you're going to get that anyway without serious money and time.

If you're really low budget like me, something like Particle Illusion is great - not as good as a hundred thousand dollar Hollywood stunt, sure, but you've got total control and can endlessly add more layers and details, with no risk of burning down the house or hospitalising your actors.
 
I think you need to look into a real pyro... you could do it reasonable... if you were close to Tennessee I could hook you up with someone who has done this stuff for rock bands and is now doing more movies....
 
Hi,

Im a pyrotechnician (I got a licence and everything :-D ) and there are several ways of doing this.

The best, cheapest and quickest way is flour, or coffee creamer. When a fine powder is atomized and ignited, it burns very nicely. You can either build an igloo out of bags of flour bags and put a traditional explosive charge in the middle. Get on to LeMaitre and order the biggest marroons they will let you buy. Bear in mind this will produce a HUGE fire ball, id stay a long way away from this. Your talking a fireball atleast 50ft across, as demonstrated by Braniac:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-gBnXHdnxI

Its odd that they chose napthelene as the explosive. Napthelene wont explode on its own, its a powder that burns very well in air, and its often used to create big fire balls.

Napthelene is a great way to do this kind of thing, but its only really easily obtainable by taking old fasion mothballs and powdering them up. Not very practical, better to stick to coffee mate or some other kind of coffee creamer.


Last thing that you could do is a coffee pot. We use these to simulate gun hits (thats big gun hits).

What we do is take one of those big catering sized coffee tins (or a paint tin) and put about an inch of granulated black powder at the bottom with an ingitor. Then we pour coffee creamer in to the rest of the can. You need to bury it int he ground as the can will buckle when it fires and the last thing you want is bits of shrapnel.

When this goes off, it makes a soft plop noise and fires a big fireball into the air.

This stuff is dangerous, unless your a pyrotechnician or know someone that is, I wouldnt attempt it.


pete.
 
clang
That's a good idea. When reading It I was thinking why not simply shoot a smaller fireball against a greenscreen and digitally add it in in post somehow. I think If all else fails, I'll use the Particle Illusion road. As one door closes another opens, so they say.

GaryinCalifornia
Aye a pyro-technician would be the best bet. Safest and so on. I'm starting to consider that line of work at the moment. Visual Effects and such. That's all new to me at the moment anyway.

Sadly I'm in the historic british isles, where all us legendary pirates retreat. :)
Thank's for the offer anyway. Means a lot, nice to have some friendly people out there.

hoarp101
What If I have a bit of a coffee fetish? I may drink the explosives if It's a morning shoot and we're all still waking up. I joke don't worry. Need milk for my coffee.

Thank's for your detailed advice, I'm interested in learning all of these items and i guess household objects which can be come scary explosives in a matter of seconds. I love Richard Hammond, he's an amazing and talented presenter. They made the right choice when choosing him, glad we have him. You may have our Anthony Hopkins.. but you'll never take our hamster.

The great thing about living out here in the country is that there's an Industrial Estate near by. I can hopefully go there a few times this week and try out various thing's I've learnt. I'll be filming, might well post a video up on here of the happenings.

The Coffee creamer and such I've looked into, looks quite effective, and the flower works well to I think. If there was a way I could dye the flower, more grayer, would it be possible to make it more of a dark dirty kind of explosion look? I'm guessing It would be a bad idea to mix any other kind of substances with it In the first places because It would cause the final explosion to be more dangerous.

I find it very interesting, the paint can or coffee pot in the ground. I'm glad I understand that now. I love that effect.
E.g when a mini gun in a helicopter is firing down?​
If I made much smaller versions of these.
E.g - Coke can.​
That isn't full, but burried deep into the ground, It would work as smaller bullet hits or grenades going off? I'm wondering If there would be a way to time several of them going off. Sounds complicated and that's probably where the money and real danger comes into it.

Thank's for your advice, you can be assured that when It actually happens I'll take every precaution I can when the time comes. :)
 
Take extra coffee.

I was lucky enough to work with Richard Hammond on a new tv show, very much like Braniac. He has started his own production company now and has been producing another show very like braniac. I had a great day blowing up vans and dropping tonnes of water on cars. Ive stuck some photos at the bottom of this post.

Flour and coffee creamer burn whatever colour they burn, theres no real way to change it but you can add afew extra bits and peices to help the flame. Deisel burns black for example. Small water balloons of disel and petrol mixed half/half burried with the creamer will help with the black-ness.

We use the coffee tin charges to simulate big feild gun hits. You can scale it down to make smaller poufs of fire. Infact a one inch pyro tube will make a 15ft high mushroom cloud if it is loaded correctly.

I wouldnt use a coke can, they have a tendnacny to rip, rather than duct the force upwards. Id use a bean tin, or even better - cardboard pyro tubes. Make sure you bury it.

You need to use granulated powder, as powdered powder does not burn fast enough. If you have a local muzzle/black powder firing place near you, you can try to get some from them, but it wont be easy. You can make it, but thats another project.

again, I need to say, you must be VERY careful when doing this kind of thing. Just incase you blow your arm off, I feel i should say now that its not my fault should that (or anything else) happen.
 
Forgot the photos;

n506442569_598940_7301.jpg

n506442569_598942_8032.jpg

n506442569_598948_117.jpg

n506442569_598956_4498.jpg

One of the kamakazi-cams that was put inside the car. It was destroyed obviously, and it was my job to peel the miniDV tape out of the camera. The production gets through four of these cameras A DAY?!?!
 
Lone, if all else fails and you give up on trying to do it the real way, hoarp may be a tech, and is right if your not you really should be messing with this stuff unless you got on on sight, i know a buddy who lost most of his skin on his left arm thinkin he could make a flash pod. But go to www.videocopilot.com and look at ther composites dvds they got fire balls, smoke dirt. It may be the CGI you may be againts but its better than loosen your house or a friend.
 
Yeah I had to do a training course, then 6 unpaid jobs as an assistant, then another three day training course then an exam to get my certificate.... Theres a lot of things that can go very wrong with stuff like this...
 
Sorry I haven't replied, been looking around for a place to test out small things..

imag0005wy6.jpg


Found an area where I could film in possibly. Try out a few smaller versions of an explosive.

imag0008gg0.jpg


Then I came across the best sign of all, was very comforting.

imag0012dj9.jpg
 
Do you have any recommendations on how to light or time the explosion. Without the person getting harmed.. standing there lighting it? I read up on fireworks fuses and basic trails to ignite it. At the moment I think the firework fuse would be the best?
 
you guys are some good ones.

Hoarp, I have a question for you.

I was planning on doing an explosion, basically blowing up a car. But I was going to green screen the actors and just blow up a model of a car already on set. So basically rent or borrow someone's PT Crusier, then go and buy a scale model PT Crusier. I had planned to simply use a little lighter fluid inside of a sprayer (home made blowtorch). I used to make these things as a teenager. I was going to cut a hole in the bottom of the model, as well as break the model apart then tape it back together (so the parts will fly in different directions). Then I was just going to get under a "green painted table", set the camera and just use my homemade blowtorch to make the car explode from the bottom.

Then simlpy "green screen in" the final explosion.

Here are my questions:

Will this work, i.e. look convincing?

How do I get more smoke, like a dark gray or black smoke added. I know there are a few chemicals that when burned could make a nice scale model smoke. I think the fire blast would look okay, but the lack of smoke would give me away.

So if you could post comments on all of this, it would be great!
 
A real life explosion is very different to film explosions. Film explosions are usually pretty soft and slow, so for this, you need to avoid HE (high explosives (although you should avoid that anyway) and gas charges. What your suggesting would most likely just set fire to the car without blowing it apart. Cordite flakes (from shotgun shells) burn fast, but with enough energy to gently push your car parts apart. A small amount of cordite flakes (probably about 30 flakes) should do it... Do tests, but be careful. Bottles of flammable stuff and fire is a dangerous thing. If you can overcrank your camera to a higher frame rate, then do. if not, then shoot with a fairly high shutter speed (400th +) and use optical flow re timing with Motion3 to slow the footage down.

The best thing to do is experiment, but dont be tempted to mix up something dangerous, like black or flash powder. Fire is pretty dangerous, do it outside, dont wear anything flammable, use eye protection and dont do anything stupid. If your about to set fire to something and you have a WTFAID moment (thats What The F*&! Am I Doing) then dont do it.

Keep buckets of water and fire extinguishers close to hand.
 
For timing, its a bad idea to give control of anything dangerous to something un predictable. By that I mean dodgy mechanisms involving alarm clocks and mouse traps etc. Pyro fuse works, but it can produce smoke and sparks that can ruin your shot. The most efficient way is to pick up an Estes model rocket igniter. This is a box that takes four AA batteries, and has a cable with two crocodile clips. You clip this onto the rocket igniters, and you press the button to set it all off. The Ignitors are quite expensive though, but its reliable and safer than any other mechanism.
 
You should be able to get someone who is good at pyro in Maya to do the explosion for you digitally. Since you can fine tune the car explosion as you see fit. But that is expensive and time consuming. Standard day rate starts at like 50 dollars an hour. An effect like that could run you a few thousand. Actually - since I do this stuff - will run you a few thousand. Much safer that blowing up a car though.
 
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hoarp001 said:
A real life explosion is very different to film explosions. Film explosions are usually pretty soft and slow, so for this, you need to avoid HE (high explosives (although you should avoid that anyway) and gas charges. What your suggesting would most likely just set fire to the car without blowing it apart. Cordite flakes (from shotgun shells) burn fast, but with enough energy to gently push your car parts apart. A small amount of cordite flakes (probably about 30 flakes) should do it... Do tests, but be careful. Bottles of flammable stuff and fire is a dangerous thing. If you can overcrank your camera to a higher frame rate, then do. if not, then shoot with a fairly high shutter speed (400th +) and use optical flow re timing with Motion3 to slow the footage down.

The best thing to do is experiment, but dont be tempted to mix up something dangerous, like black or flash powder. Fire is pretty dangerous, do it outside, dont wear anything flammable, use eye protection and dont do anything stupid. If your about to set fire to something and you have a WTFAID moment (thats What The F*&! Am I Doing) then dont do it.

Keep buckets of water and fire extinguishers close to hand.
Click to expand...

I don't know what to mix up, so I'm not doing it unless I know it'll work. I'm more of a safe filmmaker. That' swhy I figured a small fireball on a model would be much better than trying to blow up a car (much cheaper too :)) But I'll look up the cordite flakes and maybe come back with more questions.

Any other ways that you know off. I planned to overcrank the camera (but thanks for that) I'm just looking to blow up a nice model car, but make it look as realistic as possible.

Mattykins said:
You should be able to get someone who is good at pyro in Maya to do the explosion for you digitally. Since you can fine tune the car explosion as you see fit. But that is expensive and time consuming. Standard day rate starts at like 50 dollars a day. An effect like that could run you a few thousand. Actually - since I do this stuff - will run you a few thousand. Much safer that blowing up a car though.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's the problem with 3D artists - it costs so much. But I respect the amount of work. I used to dabble in 3D was never really that good at it. So I respect the work.

How much would it cost to put a few bullet holes in a car? I figured I may do a lot of Afer Effect Bullet Holes, but a few more detailed ones to focus on and maybe a tire getting shot, might be cool to add into the array of shots.
 
Maybe a few hours. I'd say something like 100 - 150 for an independent short. Explosion could be done much cheaper too - depending on your budget and time constraints.

Depending on what house you use - independent guys typically work with the film maker. Larger houses charge by hour or flat.
 
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