Simple Practical Effects

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wheatgrinder

Hi all,
in typical wheaty fashion, Im shooting tomorrow night, and have no idea how to achieve what I've written! lol.

The setting.. a high action shootout in a typical suburban kitchen. Very short.. 1 minute or so..


How to do a practical effect of a dinner plate getting shot by a laser beam? Laser bean, VFX I can do.. but I want the plate to be really affected. It can explode, spin around or whatever.. any ideas....???


General debris flying around while hero ducks behind kitchen counter. flour blown out of straws? bits of paper thrown at the actor.. more ideas?

I will have smoke..

Can be over the top.. silly is good.

Thanks
 
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Can't think of anything to do with a dinner plate.
Will it be used as a shield?
Who's shooting at who? Each other? Kids, adults, alien mercenaries, terminators?

If you have a leaf blower you can have fun with that: Box of cereal explodes & paper table napkins fly into air

Table salt gets knocked over = bad luck!

Any of your kids have Lego Star Wars figures? Those can be blasted off the counter.
 
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the scene is between hero and a man sized robot. The robot shoots lasers out of its eyes, the man is hiding behind the counter. The first shot is from the laser eyes and hits the diner plate causing it to exploding or to fly off..

The guy is behind a counter taking fire from the robot.. this is the bulk of the scene.. so I need to suggest off screen violence.. some debris flying over the counter will sell it..

by the way, this is my house, my kitchen and I have to clean up when done..


EDIT: Just writting it like that gave me an idea.. the more stuff I have on the counter at the beginning of the scene all orderly and clean, the more I can show chaos by making a mess of it.. without actually blowing up my counter.

Maybe I can throw together some air activated squiping things.. a few stealthly placed kitchen items.. grocery bags (already in the script) and.. magic??
 
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so have some plastic light weight objects on the counter.. maybe with some shredded paper other light weight debris.. mixed in..
Aranged all nice..

Tape a flash light with a red gel on the end of the leaf blower...

.. roll the camera , fire up the leave blower and "strafe" the counter, blowing everything all over the place.. with the "red" beam of light. Add the laser in post.. and booya..

whatdayathink?
 
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You should be able to make some simple air canons out of something like a paper towel tube - seal off the bottom with gaff and a piece of aquarium tubing, then use a compressed air can (computer duster stuff) to blast air through the tube. You can easily reload the tube with cereal, paper bits. etc. You probably don't have time to order it now but rubber glass (http://www.amazon.com/Rubber-Glass-Broken-Shards-props/dp/B00GRKLESO) fired out of the canon would work well to simulate exploding glasses (shoot a locked-off shot of the glass on counter, then remove glass and fire canon through the space where the glass was), and would also be safe to throw at your actor.

Not sure about the plate. I'm thinking it may be easier to pre-break a plate and then stick it together with rubber cement so it's easy to re-shatter. Or, going with the leaf blower idea, break the plate and then loosely assemble the pieces in place on the counter, then blast them apart with the blower aiming straight down from above at the plate. Cut that from a shot of a clean plate and it should work well, plus the air blast will push other stuff around it emphasizing the force of the blast.
 
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