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...