[Affected]

So we spent a day at school rigging things with explosives and blowing them to smithereens, and filmed it all with a high-speed video camera. Result: carnage at 1000 fps.





(the first two images I brightened up a bit so you can get some idea of what is going on, the footage is a bit dark at times.)

Now, I have video, and have made a torrent:
http://80.221.58.42/bombs.torrent

It's about 650 mb, contains 13 clips. I'm seeding that on a pretty fast line, but if you download, I'd appreciate it if you'd consider seeding it for a while. I'll seed it "for now", probably at least a week or so. Maybe this is useful as reference for someone...

[Andromeda]

what mirthful mayhem ...
... i am envious.

my connections a bit wonky, cant download your torrent..
whats all this about ?

school project ? fun and merriment ?

if its just for laughs and kicks, then where'd you get the 1000fps camera ?

[Jabo]

I love love love high speed photography and filming. unfortunately, 650 mb is too much for my line, but the pictures are pure bliss! Good work, must've been fun!
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CA SB|Flickr

[balistic]

I'll try to grab this and seed for a while once I get home tonight. I'm a sucker for 'splosions.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[Gecko]

awesome.

can we hear a bit more about this... technical side and otherwise. very interesting stuff, and nice shots!
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Gecko
[email protected]
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[Affected]

I don't know if there's that much to tell, but here goes:

we were shooting a short piece, in which we needed to blow a door in with a breach charge. The DP and production designer figured it was best to do it with a miniature. They got a professional pyro guy for the pyro FX, since no-one at my university has the permits or the expertise in general for that. Those guys aren't exactly cheap though, so the school chipped in, provided they could turn it into a mini-course on explosive FX for film.

So, one morning, a bunch of us students gathered around a table to hear about the basics of using explosives on set, the risks, the considerations etc. Safety drill. Then we were told to gather up things we want to see destroyed, to come up with a specific way we want them to go off, and also why we want it done that way - the pyro guy said it's easier for him to work when he knows what the desired effect is. Not that he rigged the explosives, we did that ourselves after learning even the detonators are enough to blow your fingers off...

So the basic components were: electric detonators, which are just small metal tubes with a small amount of explosive inside, and two wires coming out one end, and a kind of explosive cord, basically looking like plastic clothesline, except with an explosive agent inside. The cord is fairly inert, which is why the more volatile detonator is used to set off the cord. Apparently the cord is in mining etc. used to detonate dynamite, but for our purposes it provided plenty of boom.

Detonators:
http://www.fireandsafety.eku.edu/VFRE-99/Recognition/Initiation/ElecDet-1.jpg
Cord:
http://nordics.orica.com/NR/rdonlyres/6A6DB21B-5A13-4627-8B51-0AF9F6B2B217/0/RioCord.gif

So, anyway, we all rigged something with what we thought was the suitable amount of explosive, and went off into one of the studios to blow the stuff up. Some of the explosions were done with just the detonator - the coffeepot for one, and some other things as well. The fruit too, and the Pikachu maybe. The Pikachu also had a payload of yoghurt inside, not that you could tell from the footage. Sure made a mess, though, as did the fruit...

Then, having blown up the sundries, we rigged several door miniatures and blew them up until we got the right look. For the doors we also used a mortar (a pipe with gunpowder at the bottom and the payload on top) synced to shoot sawdust through the doorhole about 20 ms after the main explosion. The sawdust ignited, creating a nice ball of fire. For the actual short, the doors were filmed on 35mm film, but the fastest our camera could go was 60 fps, which was decidedly less spectacular than the 1000 fps the video camera got to. I don't recall what precisely the camera was, I just know it shot 800x600 frames, and a lot of them. I believe there are several cameras capable of that.

And, well, that's about all I can think of at the moment.

[The Insane Lemur]

awesome! sounds like fun!