House explosion for indie film

M

msorrels

Well-known member
A local Seattle film maker needed a house explosion on the movie he is working on. I agreed to give it a try. This is that try. There is more story to it, but right now I just want to focus on the shot.



The shot was created in After Effects CS3. It uses stockfootage from VCE Pyromania, VideoCopilot.net's Action Essentials 1, and NCCinema. Also a little bit of particleIllusion 3. The hole in the house I painted in Photoshop.

The sounds are from Digital Juice. Everything else is just lots of layers, a bunch of roto, etc. The footage was shot with a Sony HDR-FX1000. There are some frame rate issues I'd rather not go into, lets just say it's not what I wanted it.

Comments are welcome.
 
The post-explosion smoke drifting towards the camera (just after halfway through) seems a bit too smokey, given the smallish amount of smoke at the actual explosion site, but otherwise i like this a lot.
 
Basically I think it works pretty well. The immediate explosion and the hole in the house were really good. As were the reactions of the actors. However, there were a few details that didn't work for me.

One was the smoke that comes toward the camera - I think it was too late and maybe too thin. Another was the lack of any debris flying out from the house. Where did the stuff that left the hole in the house go? The fact that you have that smoke coming toward the camera indicates there was a strong outward force in that direction - so surely debris would also have traveled the same path (and arrived ahead of the smoke). Also the leaves on those trees out front never moved.

This is relatively minor, but the fireball top didn't seem to dissipate convincingly. Seemed too sparse at the top prior to disappearing.

I'm no AE expert and don't know much about explosions. Just giving you some feedback from a layman's POV on some things that kept it from being 100% believable for me.
 
Your part wasn't all bad. The fire comes too fast and no debris falls. The big problem with the comp is the lack of reaction from the actors. They jump like a dog barked then kind of go on about their merry way. One dude continues his phone coversation. lol what's with the Dolly Parton wig on the chick??
I'd mask him out, if story allows.
I did note the reflection on the SUV. Nice detail.
Add some more debris, kill that end smoke and don't have all that fire just after the explosion and I think it'd be much better. I'd also redo the audio completely. Frmot he blast to the fire crackle, it's not close.
 
I thought it was great. The actors really helped sell it. I agree with Hudson's comments
about dust and debris, just not the cheesy door-moving-straight-at-the-camera.

A little off topic, but I found this video link of a nuclear explosion in After Effects. I liked
the fact that after the initial blast the camera did a slight "shake", as if it was affected.
Added a level of realism that might be appropriate to your shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCAWqSNHRmI&feature=related

Look forward to watching the next version.

Peter
 
With the way things are going in certain economically depressed areas, there are perhaps more options available... you could pretty much buy a house in Detroit for $500, get a permit and blow it up...
 
I like the reflection on the minivan, but your explosion is big enough to have an impact on the camera/person/observer across the street, but not big enough to crack the windows in the house? Also the car is too cut out form the scene, there would be some sort of reflection on the hood/windshield or see some orange through the windshield when its just burning.
 
I liked the smoke coming towards the camera. Maybe add some more shading or grading to it though. Also, the fireball didn't look quite right. Like it just vanishes. Other than that, no complaints on my end.
 
Thanks for all the comments. I've been working on this and the 7 shots that follow it (mostly adding smoke and some minor flames while the actors are talking and drive off) for about a month now. It's been an interesting experience. If nothing else it's helped explain to me why you really don't see a lot of vfx work on no-pay indie productions. I doubt I'd have been willing to sign up for this much work for no-pay had I known in advance what it would entail.

As for the debris I completely agree. I have been buying and collecting stock footage over the years (my copy of the VCE Pyromanina discs are on CD and all in SD) but I was kind of surprised to find that none of the stuff I have has any debris to use. Lots of fire that just wouldn't work. Lots of fireball explosions. But no wall explosion with debris. Kind of a surprise too me actually. But you never really know how useable any stock footage collection is going to be until you have a problem to solve. I made an attempt at doing some debris in 3d, but the end result wasn't very realistic, most likely because I didn't paint texture maps for the wood pieces and matching that overcast lighting with no reference materials (I wasn't onboard for the shoot) wasn't so easy. It's certainly a path that would have made the shot better though. Most likely I'm going to pick up some more footage to help close this gap, but that won't help for this.

The smoke at the end is a late addition. The scenes that follow it have the actors talking in the front yard and then driving off. Those scenes I added smoke over them. The initial explosion without the smoke at the end didn't seem to quite match up with the smoke added to the scenes afterwards. So I went in and added an extra smoke element. Given the comments though, I think perhaps I need to look at reworking that. The additional scenes may also be a bit over smokey (to sell the fact that the fire you can't see is real).

One of the biggest problems with this shot was there are a lot of reflective surfaces. I never could decide what effect the explosion should have on the front blue car. I actually did a version with the main fireball reflected on the hood, but felt it looked kind of fake. I do think something needs to be reflected on that car, I'm just not sure what exactly.
 
in real life a petrol explosion would leave a black cloud after the fireball, maybe add something like that instead of letting it vanish.
This is not a very good example of the black cloud but you could analize it and see how the fireball ends .
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I AGREE


other than that the explosion looks really cool.
 
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