Debris

[Bullseye]

Okay so im thinking debris. Like dirt and dust in the air. 9/11 after the towers fell kind of thing, but a larger scale (yes LARGER scale).

Im thinking something like getting a bag of bark or something and blowing it around the shot but I don't know, what's the easiest way to do something like this?

It's the after effects of a nuclear explosion.... *sighs*

maybe some particle effect in after effects? or a combination of the two? i dunno, a little insight would be great.

[XhuntedoverlordX]

I'd get some cool debris stuff and wrap it around a large fire cracker. Then I'd video tape it.

[Bullseye]

like rake up some dirt and stuff?

it's going to be in the air for.. god, alot of shots, if not most of them. how can i manage keeping all this debris around? and whats an easy way to protect my camera (im thinking i must be insane, but isn't madness the best course to genius?), i had one get all buggered on me when i filmed on a windy day at the beach.

sand out the whole lot of it.

[XhuntedoverlordX]

Hmm, for camera protection there is an interesting article on Hackaday.com about making an underwater shell for video cameras, i'd imagine that if you used a stronger plastic for the underwater shell it could make a fairly effective blast shield. And I guess I misunderstood what you meant. Could you explain exactly what you wanted for your shot?

[Bullseye]

after a nuclear explosion i'm giving the impression that there is still debris in the air. think of the twin towers after the attack. new york was engulfed in the cloud of debris. in the movie he will be moving away from the cloud and debris into clearer areas, so i suppose i need some way to control how much is around and how to keep it raining down during the whole duration of the shot.

i should look up some volcano stuff, see how they do the ash in the air so thick for so long.

[aaronv2]

this is one of those opportunities where computer graphics would really help you out. tell me what your doing this for because to me the view you would have to see to know it is a larger scale would be a shot that is really far away... in that case if you take a look at all the wide shots

they are just plumes of grey smoke which would have to be done with either stock footage of some really thick smoke or some sort of volumetric or some sort of realistic sprite emitters using some trapcode filters or particle illusion.

if your talking about being on the ground then you would also be able to use a fog map on footage tracked with ash and flying bits of paper i always remembered the documents flying all over the place it was weird to watch all that paperwork just become useless after it happend floating in the air like a twisted american beauty moment.... um, anyway can you give us more info about it?

[ctbullet]

yes, i have noticed the scale, are you sure you want more!!

its virtualy impossibly, even if your stealing sand or bark you want be able to get a large enough smount to get any way near that geeze(above)

like aaronv2 said, you're going to have to resort to stock footage and track mattes, its the only way

what is this for may i ask? explain the shot more?

[Bullseye]

like that but with alot more debris. less smoke than the twin towers pic above, but framed on the actors, so you don't really see the larger scale.


ummm.. lemme find a better pic...

this guy's sweeping ash off of a roof, but it gave me a good idea for a rig. a hose connected to a vaccuum and set to blow outward and let it rain down on the actors, but again, the enormous amount of debris... geez.



maybe even just a cloudy look might do like



basically this guy locks himself up while the nukes hit, and then he re-emerges a week later into the wasteland that's left and has to get away from the radiation and other things... hehe. they can all be close or tight shots, nothing really wide (to preserve budget and amount of freaking stuff thats in the air), and alot of the story is about him moving away from the impacts, so less and less dust would be needed.

[DEDFX]

if your using it for a ground shot theres no point to have it scaled larger than 9/11 clouds, the cams view will be taken away by dirt and you will see nothing, what is it an A-Bomb going off?

[Bullseye]

the A bomb already went off. but i figure, close to the impact, dust would still be in the air. im saying in general, i want the appearance of a larger scale, but i dont need the huge overhead view of the smoke coming out of the ground, i can keep it on the character.

[Kentertainment]

Most Hollywood production obtain styrofoam and sculpture them into a piece of debris and then paint it. An old trick in the book that you can do is get a cinder-block and break it and have somebody over the cameraman dropping the chunks about a foot in front of the camera, this gives the perspective that larger things are falling.

[OutcastJiob]

Good idea, Kentertainment--but I doubt if large chunks of debris would still be falling a week after the blast.

Here's how I'd do it, and mind, it'll be a huge mess, and I have no idea how you're gonna clean it up. You're gonna want a lot of dry, dusty dirt, and then have people off-camera chucking it into the air with shovels. Then you need some more moist soil and have some other people throwing that up into the air. Careful not to overdo it with the moist soil, though, because really, I think there'd be a lot of fine dust in the air a week later, not a whole lot of heavy materials. Break up a lot of those little foam packing "peanuts" and have someone on a ladder/the like and drop them into the frame from above the camera's view--again, don't overdo it! Throwing a lot of corn starch, or coffee creamer powder, into the air can't hurt either, but with all that dust and other stuff floating around in the air, your actors and everyone else involved in the shot are going to need dust masks. . .and really, the guy wouldn't be walking around unprotected, so you shouldn't have trouble putting a mask into his costume. (I'd be wearing a HAZMAT suit if I was out a mere week after a nuclear explosion, you can be sure of that!)

Having a fan--or a leafblower--around to swirl the dust and debris up wouldn't be a bad idea either.

[aaronv2]

id do it in 3d... no cleanup and total control. it would be easy to do with some smart filming you could easily do it.

[FabianJansen]

I'd just grab a bunch of friends and have then throw pieces of jump to eachother from each end of the frame behind the character and throw in CG debris and dust over the front of the character

[aaronv2]

the dust and smoke wont be moving like that. it will be a fallout sort of nuclear winter sort of thing... you want it ominously undynamic and barron with hardly any moving debris except for papers and small ash particles blowing around in the wind. if you just throw dirt and styrofoam at the actor as they walk then thats exactly what its going to end up looking like.