Hey guys, Yannick here for Cinecom.net and welcome back to Copycat Friday.
And today we are doing something we were thinking about for a long time.
Exactly seven months.
In September we went to IBC, a huge media tradeshow,
and there we saw some Swedish indie filmmakers.
They were doing a presentation about their newest movie the The Unthinkable,
or Den Blomstertid nu Kommer.
The Unthinkable.
And they were talking about doing realistic explosions.
They used miniature buildings and blew them up.
And that is what we are showing you today,
realistic explosions with miniature models.
We're going to blow up this big skyscraper from PNC.
Not for real of course, because I don't like jail,
but with our miniature practical effect.
And we are doing it practical because we really like practical effects,
and also you will have more control over the explosion and the debris then with stock clips.
You can really make something in your own style and likings,
something custom for that project.
And the extra plus side:
after you will have a stock clip of an exploding building.
Yeah, you are probably thinking now:
"Well, why not just use 3d software to blow it up?"
Yes, that's also a perfect way to do it,
but to be honest, we just started with 3d
so our skill level is still mediocre.
And this practical way of blowing up miniatures is also a technique they use in Hollywood,
so it must be good.
Just look at the movie Independence Day and the destruction of the White House,
or the new series The Mandalorian.
Here the spaceships are all miniatures
and they used the same filming technique as in the old days with Star Wars.
Okay, enough yapping. Let's build our miniature.
We are using these super small ceramic bricks we bought in a hobby shop,
and the first step is to build a large enough building.
We made our walls wide and high enough
so that we had some wiggle room in post-production.
Also, if you build it big enough with enough stones, you will have more debris when it explodes,
making it more realistic.
Now because we are building a miniature version of the building, you have to use a tele lens.
This will give the feeling that your mini building is actually bigger and thus it will blend better in your shot.
We also placed the wall higher up on a elevated platform,
then we wrapped the platform with green paper and placed a green screen behind our wall,
this way you can use the falling and flying debris in your shots.
So don't forget to make sure that you have enough space around your wall when you film,
because you want to record as much debris as you can.
Make your framing and of course shoot everything from a tripod.
But hold up!
Make sure that you film in slow motion,
because our miniature is small and filming it at a normal speed will look fake.
The small components will move too fast and will look like they don't have any mass.
Slow motion will fix that, making it all look heavier.
Now let's blow up some stuff!
Disclaimer though, try to be safe, guys.
Safety is priority.
Above everything.
Even the perfect shot.
Be safe, guys.
Be safe.
Now let's create the explosion in After Effects.
We are going to use a stock clip of a city, which we of course found on Storyblocks Video,
our sponsor.
It's an online library that we use constantly.
From their 4k stock clips, about every theme you can imagine,
through their After Effects templates.
Just download it, take your personal logo and drop it in the template.
And badda-bing badda-boom,
you have a stunning logo animation without all the hard work.
You can really find everything on Storyblocks Video for every situation,
it's a must-have filmmaking tool.
And believe it or not, you can download an unlimited amount of assets for a single price per year.
So don't waste time, go to the first link in description below and start downloading right away.
That, aside let's start with the tracking of our stock clip.
Choose track camera and let After Effects do its thing.
Now, select a tracking point on the building, right click on it and choose make null and camera.
Next, let's add the exploding wall shot.
Of course, remove the green and mask out the part that you want.
Then with the lumetri effect match the colors of the two shots.
Add the gaussian blur to the exploding wall so that it matches even better with the building.
Now make the wall 3d and let's position it on the correct location.
Open up the properties from the null object and copy the transform property.
Now paste those properties to the wall clip and this will automatically place the wall on the right spot.
However, you need to turn the opacity back to 100 and maybe fine tune the placement of the wall
because After Effects can do some strange things sometimes.
Now let's make the wall blend even better with the building.
First, bring back the windows.
Duplicate the original shot and place it above everything.
Also, let's name the duplicate windows to avoid confusion.
Then duplicate the wall clip and again place it on top and name it matte.
Now select the windows clip and set the track matte options to luma matte.
Boom!
We already have the windows back.
Next up, bringing back the colors.
Make another duplicate of the original clip,
place it on top and name it color adjust.
Now select that clip and set the blending mode to saturation
and if needed use the lumetri effect to make the blending even better.
Look at that.
It's all blending together quite nicely,
but I want to make it even better.
Let's add some rubble in our hole.
We are going to use this stock photo to place behind our wall shot,
but before we can do that we have to pre-comp some layers.
First, duplicate the 3d camera tracker,
then select everything besides the original clip and the original camera.
Right click and select pre-comp.
Of course, choose move all attributes to a new composition
but you probably won't have any other choice.
Okay, now take the shot of your broken building and place it underneath the pre-composed layer.
Make the building layer 3d and again place it on the right spot in your scene like we did before.
Now, select the pre-composed layer and create a mask in the hole.
Feather it to your liking and of course animate it so that it opens up when the wall explodes.
Voilà!
You can see some debris through the hole.
Of course use lumetri to color match it with the rest
and last but not least,
add some stock clips of an explosion and some smoke to it all.
Boom!
That's finished.
The local police have just reported a bomb found in the PNC tower,
Downtown, Kentucky.
The bomb squad is present at the site and they have live video for us.
Squad,
I think I cut the wrong wire.
Sorry guys.
Yeah, I know. It's my first day here.
Yeah, sorry about that. You know, you learn by doing right?
See you at lunch, guys. Oh Gary, can you take my soup out of the fridge so it can defrost?
Yeah. Thanks. Alright, See you guys at lunch.
Okay guys, time for Yannick's Fun Fact Fountain!
The biggest Hollywood explosion ever?
Well, that title is of course for James Bond.
Who else?
In the movie Spectre they blew up a building with a thousand litres of kerosene,
24 kilos of explosive devices,
and over a ton of dust and debris.
And the craziest part of all, they still added debris in post-production.
Like a ton of dust and debris isn't enough.
Anyways, thank you so much for watching.
I hope you learned something new.
Thank you Storyblocks Video for the support,
and like always...
Stay creative!
As a news anchor of Cinenews I was actually not impressed by Yannick's explosion.
He built this way too sturdy.
This whole thing should have come off.
There, that's better.