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5:13 Bouncing miniatures was addressed in one of the clips at the "piercefilm productions" channel. The remedy was to stick a container (a jar or a plastic bag) of lead pebbles or birdshot immersed in a viscous fluid, like oil, inside the prop that would fall. If the oil-and-lead dampener was well placed, it would make the prop "stick" to the ground.
I saw several demonstrations of such works that contain multiple sources of cinematic effects .. This video provides ideas and solutions to how to produce cinematic shots that closely resemble the reality. Your work is beautiful and your explanation is helpful, demonstrating an intelligent and an understanding of the work and of the ways to use the resources you have. Good job
Great work. I'd add a shock wave that come afterwards with a slight delay, specially in the background. Samples from the Beirut port explosion might help ro visualize.
I watched both the original upload and this one. In both you mention putting the one building in the foreground to cover up the chimney bouncing. Couldn't you have roto'd the chimney to cut it out and put it on a still of the area it falls into? Doing it this way you could even animate the cut out chimney so that it ends up lying flat on the ground and maybe even roughen the edges of the part that broke off from the building. It is more work but I find the chimney falling over is the part that really makes the shot look like a model.
It's actually shocking how simple this sort of thing is. I say simple meaning the technique itself on a broad level. The devil is in the details. Getting the right size model, right frame rates, right lighting, right materials for the model. Having someone ridiculously good at roto. Figuring out all the little details to add in to flesh it out, etc. One of my favorites ever was the helicopter crash into the house from Bond. That one was so well done it was hard to believe it was a miniature at all.
Hello, i love your tutorials and i really love that you remake older tutorials with your upgraded skills! I just want to suggest that you try working in a 32-bit linear colour space like aces and composite the fire assets using an add or linear dodge blending mode instead of screen. This is the "proper" way to composite fire because it doesn't become transparent and keeps its colours. Great job, nonetheless! Greetings from Romania!
My opinion: That chimney falls too quickly - such a huge and heavy building cannot fall this way. And because everything have to seem as a real big houses and flames and smoke and dust clouds, this all has to move more slowly too. Including shock waves. And sound with delay, 300m=1s, with diminshed higher freqs, and with more reflections (echoes) from area around. I am looking forward if you will want to try it with those new settings.
I build larger framed models. I then add texture elements to the real life model by making a matte painting in photoshop. I film my own fire and explosions using the model and scale it back in the composite as well slowing the flame down always helps
Very good job :) Pretty nice result :) One idea came up in my mind while I was watching the explosion: some of the cars' alarm system could be activated with light&sound effects :)
I was just watching Demolition Man and I thought I noticed a practical miniature scene in one of the opening shots of the film which made me wonder how possible is it to do realistic flames in miniature on a no-budget diy film? I think yours is a great test, I'd like to see more practical miniatures in home-made films.
Oh my gosh plaster of Paris when you said that it took me back to when i was 12 ( now 47 ) and made a storm trooper with that with a metal mesh to keep the shape man i wish i had the photos to show you. so when filming explosions i guess you would film at 48 or 50 frames per second so when put into post you can slow it down. Yes i work in post production as an film editor and colour grader using DaVinci Resolve.
Couple of things to keep in mind with explosions and debris. Unless it's a gas station or something with lots of flammable substances, there typically won't be a fireball. Even with a building with flammable material, if there is a large bellowing flame, the amount of smoke produced will obscure a majority of the fire. The other thing to keep in mind is that anything with bricks or masonry will crumble either during the explosion or upon landing impact. A majority of the explosion from something like this would be white/grey from the mortar of the bricks disintegrating. The camera pan and frame wobble do a good job at selling the effect, though!
Great job! A real test would be to plug this amazing work into a scene and not tell people the story behind it. Knowing it is not real, I think people watch the final product with an eye towards spotting everything that doesn’t look right rather than marveling at how well it was done. I had my Yorkie attack a Christmas village, you know all those little shops and scenery pieces people set up at Christmas? I filmed it at 120fps then had a remote control helicopter fight him. Fun!.
Thanks, also for materials to build miniatures e.g scenery like buildings (landmarks) what tips or materials would you highly recommend to get the closest looking building creation?
Hey man you might not like it you might think that you could have done better or that you could do better now but damn that is impressive work you have done I love it I hope someday I can do something like this amazing work
Okay, interesting question. So the key to making the miniatures look bigger is to shoot on wide lenses, but then the audience can kind of tell that you moved inward as a posed to if you shot it in real life. The obvious solution would be to shoot on a longer lens, making it seem far away, but then that reveals the fact that it’s a model. Would a laowa lens fix this issue? Seeing how they try not to distort the image, would that help sell the effect?
Nice effect. As others said, the biggest issue is the chimney falling too quickly. I also feel like the fire in the building is moving too quickly for how far it is, it makes it appear like small flames placed in shot, instead of large flame at a distance. Also a larger explosion out of the front entry door would also appear realistic. This looks too contained for how large this explosion is. 🤷♂️
The fact is: even if the effect is cool etc. a towen would never fall like this after an explosion... check some building collapses, it's completely different
As I mentioned on another vid, there are two common tropes used that are "tells:" 1) The added shaky cam, including the "wobble" from a shock wave. For some reason, modern FX artists think this makes shots look more believable, when in fact it doesn't. You can actually look up pyrotechnic vids of actual explosions (some much closer than your camera is meant to be), and they don't cause wobble. If the camera were locked down on a tripod, the most you'd get would be a brief "jitter" from the ground vibrating. I don't know why artificial handheld has become the standard for, "hide the fact that this is an FX shot enhanced with CG." 2) The other "tell" is the color grading. At 7:54, the various elements are composited well, but the color has been so desaturated that the fireball doesn't look vibrant. In fact, the colors are considerably washed out.
@estadiofifa10lol 1 Yes, but only in real-life situations, like security cameras. Television and film follow the same rules as stage plays; that is, the events of the story occur inside a "box" and the audience observes the events from behind "the fourth wall." This means that the "camera" doesn't exist (from the characters' perspective). It's an invisible device relaying information to us. So if an explosion happens in the characters' world, it shouldn't cause camera shake because _the camera isn't supposed to be there._ A similar modern trope with CGI is when spaceships or other fast-moving vehicles zip by the camera, and artist adds artificial wobble meant to be from it's shock wave. Which if you think about it, makes even less sense if the shot is in space, as there is no shock wave in space because the craft isn't moving through any kind of medium; it's in a vacuum. But here again, the "camera" isn't supposed to be there. It's why I loathe modern films & TV shows that utilize handheld shooting instead of locked-down, dolly, or steadicam shots. Handheld implies that a cameraman is following our fictional characters around.
@estadiofifa10lol 1 Err, yes, it most definitely is. Have you never heard of the phrase, _"breaking the fourth wall?"_ It's when a fictional character looks directly into the camera and addresses the audience (thus acknowledging that they're aware they're being observed).
@estadiofifa10lol 1 Yes, I'm aware of that. But as I said, the "wobble" only exists because the audience is supposed to know the _camera_ exists. In fiction, (dramas, stage plays, etc), the audience and any cameras are meant to be invisible to the characters. That said, the camera shouldn't wobble from an explosion because _it isn't supposed to be there._
It depends what you are doing. For compositing I use Adobe After Effects. For regular editing, Premiere, Final Cut, Da Vinci and a whole host of free programs are perfectly fine
This video is superb 👍. You should have added the indicator signal(light) in the car while the sound is played. The chimney falling scene if delayed would be perfect. Overall this video was Superb 👌👌❤️.
Want to get inspired to make your own film? Watch my free webinar here: My Top 10 Tips for making your passion project on a budget 😎www.diymoviemaking.com/pl/2147593183
The chimney fell too quickly... otherwise its amazing 🔥🔥
Was thinking the same thing too
Yes, the chimney was the playmobil giveaway.
The trick to fixing it is shooting it in slow mo and slowing down the explosion time and debre
True, it should have also crumbled at the base. But overall this shot and edit was very effective.
My first thought, same with the debris. Immediately exposes it as a miniature.
5:13 Bouncing miniatures was addressed in one of the clips at the "piercefilm productions" channel.
The remedy was to stick a container (a jar or a plastic bag) of lead pebbles or birdshot immersed in a viscous fluid, like oil, inside the prop that would fall. If the oil-and-lead dampener was well placed, it would make the prop "stick" to the ground.
Man I love this channel. Its exactly up my ally.
Considering the size of the model and the low budget the result is actually surprisingly good :D
Very cool and smart. we love it. amazing
I saw several demonstrations of such works that contain multiple sources of cinematic effects .. This video provides ideas and solutions to how to produce cinematic shots that closely resemble the reality. Your work is beautiful and your explanation is helpful, demonstrating an intelligent and an understanding of the work and of the ways to use the resources you have. Good job
Great work. I'd add a shock wave that come afterwards with a slight delay, specially in the background. Samples from the Beirut port explosion might help ro visualize.
I watched both the original upload and this one. In both you mention putting the one building in the foreground to cover up the chimney bouncing. Couldn't you have roto'd the chimney to cut it out and put it on a still of the area it falls into? Doing it this way you could even animate the cut out chimney so that it ends up lying flat on the ground and maybe even roughen the edges of the part that broke off from the building. It is more work but I find the chimney falling over is the part that really makes the shot look like a model.
Special effects personal from the 50s, 60s and 70s would be amazed. Keep up the great work. Thanks.
It's actually shocking how simple this sort of thing is. I say simple meaning the technique itself on a broad level. The devil is in the details. Getting the right size model, right frame rates, right lighting, right materials for the model. Having someone ridiculously good at roto. Figuring out all the little details to add in to flesh it out, etc. One of my favorites ever was the helicopter crash into the house from Bond. That one was so well done it was hard to believe it was a miniature at all.
Wow, I really like how you break it down into bits. Great work🔥
Hello, i love your tutorials and i really love that you remake older tutorials with your upgraded skills! I just want to suggest that you try working in a 32-bit linear colour space like aces and composite the fire assets using an add or linear dodge blending mode instead of screen. This is the "proper" way to composite fire because it doesn't become transparent and keeps its colours. Great job, nonetheless! Greetings from Romania!
This guys work feels really earnest.
Love the details in all your videos, thanks man, great job
My opinion: That chimney falls too quickly - such a huge and heavy building cannot fall this way. And because everything have to seem as a real big houses and flames and smoke and dust clouds, this all has to move more slowly too. Including shock waves. And sound with delay, 300m=1s, with diminshed higher freqs, and with more reflections (echoes) from area around. I am looking forward if you will want to try it with those new settings.
Speak english much????
Damn dude....
Nicely done. Great to see how far you came from the original green screen footage to the final piece.
These videos are amazing, you’re doing a great job detailing these alternative methods.
Favorite effect is the dolly shot made famous in Jaws - would love to see how that was done.
Definitely
Zooming in whilst moving out. You're welcome.
Impressive! I love stuff like this. For such a basic model the end result really isn’t bad at all.
this was CRAZY COOL! Love it
2:44 lol amd try to remove later. Smoke and some fire is hard to key in out out❤😊... im subbin
Thank you for sharing valuable knowledge and experience of real projects
I love your channel man, keep it up, amzing work!
Thanks, very kind
Expected the car lights to blink :D I'm joking. Great work!
Many thanks!
Wow so good, your channel will blow up any time
I build larger framed models. I then add texture elements to the real life model by making a matte painting in photoshop. I film my own fire and explosions using the model and scale it back in the composite as well slowing the flame down always helps
wow good job i onestly didn't know that this was the way of creating the explosions !
Very good job :) Pretty nice result :) One idea came up in my mind while I was watching the explosion: some of the cars' alarm system could be activated with light&sound effects :)
Awesome video! I wonder if simulating the physics of the building exploding in something like cinema 4d would be an improvement or not
This is so inspiring and amazing. Thank you...
So very cool... my old VHS Camera did not have a chance
I was just watching Demolition Man and I thought I noticed a practical miniature scene in one of the opening shots of the film which made me wonder how possible is it to do realistic flames in miniature on a no-budget diy film? I think yours is a great test, I'd like to see more practical miniatures in home-made films.
Oh my gosh plaster of Paris when you said that it took me back to when i was 12 ( now 47 ) and made a storm trooper with that with a metal mesh to keep the shape man i wish i had the photos to show you. so when filming explosions i guess you would film at 48 or 50 frames per second so when put into post you can slow it down. Yes i work in post production as an film editor and colour grader using DaVinci Resolve.
Derek Meddings work inspired me to go into VFX.
Couple of things to keep in mind with explosions and debris. Unless it's a gas station or something with lots of flammable substances, there typically won't be a fireball. Even with a building with flammable material, if there is a large bellowing flame, the amount of smoke produced will obscure a majority of the fire. The other thing to keep in mind is that anything with bricks or masonry will crumble either during the explosion or upon landing impact. A majority of the explosion from something like this would be white/grey from the mortar of the bricks disintegrating.
The camera pan and frame wobble do a good job at selling the effect, though!
The fire ball should've been brighter and emit light before disappearing. Some lens flare as well.
I love miniature and VFX! Very good video!
Ok I see the first seconds and I'm like Thunderbirds are GO :D
Nicely explained video on miniature sets
Really enjoyed that, thank you
Thanks for making this, it was quite helpful!
Amazing what you all did, I love it
Great job! A real test would be to plug this amazing work into a scene and not tell people the story behind it. Knowing it is not real, I think people watch the final product with an eye towards spotting everything that doesn’t look right rather than marveling at how well it was done. I had my Yorkie attack a Christmas village, you know all those little shops and scenery pieces people set up at Christmas? I filmed it at 120fps then had a remote control helicopter fight him. Fun!.
So good!
Wow so very good
This is too awesome, extraordinary. Are you working on big vfx studios in your professional working time ? If not, then you're a genius. :)
Thanks, mostly just working on more normal client work!
Very nice! Die you used Production Crate pro?
just incredible
The camera movement really took the realism away a bit. Adding some fine film grain really helps the whole thing.
Pretty good!
Hi Steve, as a film creator/editor what safety precautions would you advise when exploding miniature buildings?
Definitely hire a pyro / safety person if you are able to. If not, at a minimum have a fire extinguisher, water, first aid etc nearby.
Thanks, also for materials to build miniatures e.g scenery like buildings (landmarks) what tips or materials would you highly recommend to get the closest looking building creation?
this was a really great video, i feel like the one thing the shot was missing for me was the light fall off from the flames
great, please more miniature scale model and VFX
Absolutely fantastic job
Im from Bangladesh,, i love your video
This is pretty cool on how you did
George Lucas peeking in is hilarious!
Fantastic. Thank you for your work.
Thanks for such informative tutorials.
AWESOME 💜👍
The effect look great. I feel the fire in the doorway should have been a little smaller and with a lot of smoke to hide most of the flames.
Awesome! Maybe even better if the added flames were slowed down to, if there was enogh frames ofcorse. Great job
Great tutorial! I love this channel!
dude that's great
Amazing! Thank for your videos. Very inspiring!
He should be hired by Christopher Nolan because he’s an amazing special-effects man
I like the term "Maxitures" when Miniatures are still pretty big
Really amazing techniques
I love old school!!!!
Dude you should have shot the footage at higher fps and then slowed it down. Huge objects move slowly.
Their camera could only shoot at 60fps, but honestly, I'd have just used a smartphone for the improved framerate.
Did you watch the clip?
He did say why he didn't do that you have to the HOLE video not just the finished product to realise that though.
Bro you didn’t even watch it
Amazing vfx.
Hey man you might not like it you might think that you could have done better or that you could do better now but damn that is impressive work you have done I love it I hope someday I can do something like this amazing work
Yes!!!
Okay, interesting question. So the key to making the miniatures look bigger is to shoot on wide lenses, but then the audience can kind of tell that you moved inward as a posed to if you shot it in real life. The obvious solution would be to shoot on a longer lens, making it seem far away, but then that reveals the fact that it’s a model.
Would a laowa lens fix this issue? Seeing how they try not to distort the image, would that help sell the effect?
Nice video
Nice effect. As others said, the biggest issue is the chimney falling too quickly. I also feel like the fire in the building is moving too quickly for how far it is, it makes it appear like small flames placed in shot, instead of large flame at a distance. Also a larger explosion out of the front entry door would also appear realistic. This looks too contained for how large this explosion is. 🤷♂️
Thanks, yes if we ever tried this again I think it would look quite a bit better
So good
I like your work.
Cool stuff!! If the chimney could have fallen slower, and broke up a bit, that would have helped.
The fact is: even if the effect is cool etc. a towen would never fall like this after an explosion... check some building collapses, it's completely different
Thanks for your input Latana.
When are we going to see any of your work?
Great. The only thing missing is the latency of the explosion sound due to slow speed of sound, otherwise it is great. 😃👍
Wow 😍😍😍😍 my dream to recreate this scene!!!!
Inspired well done
thanks for sharing Steve Ramsden
Great class, thank you! 👏👏👏
Hi Steve, what did you use to detonate the model?
This was just a test lighting a fuse. But if we were to do it again we would likely attempt with a specialist pyro expert / detonator switch
As I mentioned on another vid, there are two common tropes used that are "tells:"
1) The added shaky cam, including the "wobble" from a shock wave. For some reason, modern FX artists think this makes shots look more believable, when in fact it doesn't. You can actually look up pyrotechnic vids of actual explosions (some much closer than your camera is meant to be), and they don't cause wobble. If the camera were locked down on a tripod, the most you'd get would be a brief "jitter" from the ground vibrating. I don't know why artificial handheld has become the standard for, "hide the fact that this is an FX shot enhanced with CG."
2) The other "tell" is the color grading. At 7:54, the various elements are composited well, but the color has been so desaturated that the fireball doesn't look vibrant. In fact, the colors are considerably washed out.
@estadiofifa10lol 1 Yes, but only in real-life situations, like security cameras.
Television and film follow the same rules as stage plays; that is, the events of the story occur inside a "box" and the audience observes the events from behind "the fourth wall."
This means that the "camera" doesn't exist (from the characters' perspective). It's an invisible device relaying information to us.
So if an explosion happens in the characters' world, it shouldn't cause camera shake because _the camera isn't supposed to be there._
A similar modern trope with CGI is when spaceships or other fast-moving vehicles zip by the camera, and artist adds artificial wobble meant to be from it's shock wave. Which if you think about it, makes even less sense if the shot is in space, as there is no shock wave in space because the craft isn't moving through any kind of medium; it's in a vacuum.
But here again, the "camera" isn't supposed to be there. It's why I loathe modern films & TV shows that utilize handheld shooting instead of locked-down, dolly, or steadicam shots. Handheld implies that a cameraman is following our fictional characters around.
@estadiofifa10lol 1 Err, yes, it most definitely is.
Have you never heard of the phrase, _"breaking the fourth wall?"_ It's when a fictional character looks directly into the camera and addresses the audience (thus acknowledging that they're aware they're being observed).
@estadiofifa10lol 1 Yes, I'm aware of that. But as I said, the "wobble" only exists because the audience is supposed to know the _camera_ exists.
In fiction, (dramas, stage plays, etc), the audience and any cameras are meant to be invisible to the characters. That said, the camera shouldn't wobble from an explosion because _it isn't supposed to be there._
@estadiofifa10lol 1 Perhaps, but it nevertheless is a undeniable "tell" that the shot is CG. Artificial shaky cam is hard to miss.
i love to see it
Amazing! The fire in the door needs to come out of the door, like combustion
Do you recommend a particular editing software?
It depends what you are doing. For compositing I use Adobe After Effects. For regular editing, Premiere, Final Cut, Da Vinci and a whole host of free programs are perfectly fine
super
You can do effects Transfiguration of iron man in marvel? Hope you help, thank you so much
I hope that if I can learn the technology , we can change the film industry in our country.
For great effect you should do chimney in 3D with simulation and add in post.
I'm looking to do something similar for a school project. Anyone know what type of charges they used or have any recommendations??
This video is superb 👍. You should have added the indicator signal(light) in the car while the sound is played. The chimney falling scene if delayed would be perfect. Overall this video was Superb 👌👌❤️.
the little smoke from the chimney is silly. it wouldn't just travel horizontally with the chimney :D
So damn good.
What are those modern movies that you had clips of