A little while ago, someone asked me about physical effects (i.e. explosions). I just finished a job where the client wanted to see lots of stuff blow up. We had lots of little things blow up (i.e. trash cans, mail boxes, fences, etc) and three large effects. The first thing we did was a three tier water fountain (see video of it here). Then, we had a minivan fly across a street, crash into a phone pole, the phone pole breaks and falls on the minivan, and the transformer ontop of the phone pole explodes. See video of that here. I know these videos aren't great and they are mpeg so they don't really fast-start very well, but whatever. Oh, and there is some bad language in the videos. Viewer discretion advised (this being a student film site and all).

But, by far the largest thing was the two story house we built and then blew up.
It went from this:

To this:


See the explosion video here
and the aftermath here. I didn't record any of this video, as I was asked to help the fire suppression team (I'm in the yellow pants).

well hope you enjoy.

Ha. That was great. So were those for a film?

Wooooow! Amazing. Details please!

Ummm, Details:

It was for a commercial, although I'd prefer not to say who for until the spot is airing–it's really not that big a deal, but I'd rather not say. The spot has a long post production schedule (4 months) because of the extensive CG.

The location was on the Warner Brother's Ranch (backlot) on Blondie Street. This is where Pleaseantville, leathal weapon, dream of genie, and a whole lot of other things have been filmed. Incredibly, the house was built in 2 days.

We actually shot two different spots. The first one involved deconstructed cars driving around. That is why the minivan in the driveway is missing body panels. Two of the other cars we built were here and here

The explosion is the largest this year in LA county (and there were rumors that it was the largest ever in LA county). It was a 3-wall set, which is highly unusual (most are either one or two sided sets). I don't really want to get into specifics about the explosion, but as you can see from the video, it was big!

Awesome. You guys blew the **** out of that house. I've got to see this commercial.

SWEET! That was crazy. Can't wait to see the commercial.

Thanks. That's just SO cool.

So, was the house made of extremely thin materials or something? It looked like the exterior walls just vanished.

yeah, the set construction people did an incredible job. The explosion guy said he had never seen so much care go into building a house that was going to get blown up a week later.

The siding and roof was made of 1/4" Luaun stapled to the 1x4 frame. It was amazing, they actually cut the luaun for the roof like real tar comp shingles. The detonation cord ripped right through the luaun sending peices everywhere.

Amazing, simply amazing.

Is luaun that stuff they use for everything that someone was telling me about? The stuff that is apparently the reason film and theater are destroying the rainforest? It sounds familiar.