Summer Movie Spectacular Blockbuster Secrets
Popular Mechanics|July/August 2018

EVERY SUMMER, HOLLYWOOD GOES BIG. BIG STARS. BIG BUDGETS AND HUGE VISUAL EFFECTS. THIS SUMMER’S TECHNOLOGY IS MORE SPECTACULAR THAN EVER. WE WENT BEHIND THE SCENES TO SEE HOW MAGIC IS MADE IN 2018.

Summer Movie Spectacular Blockbuster Secrets

HOW TO FAKE A VOLCANIC ERUPTION

BY

Anthony Simonaitis, pyrotechnics supervisor

THE PLOT

After a volcano destroys their island, the dinosaurs are brought to a sanctuary in the United States, where, instead of being protected, they’re sold off to the highest bidders. The bad guys genetically modify an even more-ferocious dinosaur. It escapes.

THE SCENE

As the characters run from a volcanic eruption, blobs of lava slam into the ground around them, throwing up dirt and lighting fires.

ALL THE LAVA and debris flying through the air was CGI, but the visual-effects people needed a practical effect when it came to the blobs splattering when they hit the ground. Wherever the lava interacted with the terrain, they also needed us to create ribbon fires that would be shown burning the vegetation, with smoke rising off of them.

For the lava bombs, our charges were made of something called detonating cord, a small-diameter cord filled with explosive powder. We spool out the length we need and wrap it into a flat disc we call a Frisbee. That goes into a heavy steel tray that we can set on the ground and conceal. We put material in the tray that will blow into the air and look like whatever the indigenous dirt is. The goal is to create a simulation of these hard chunks of lava hitting the ground and kicking up dirt. We wanted it to look like the dirt was being thrown out to the sides as if someone were stomping in a mud puddle. So we put sand on top in the middle, then covered that with a layer of mulch, thicker around the edges. When the charge blows, since the sand particles are small and light in color, you don’t really see them, and they hold down the explosive energy in the middle, forcing the mulch out the sides.

This story is from the July/August 2018 edition of Popular Mechanics.

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This story is from the July/August 2018 edition of Popular Mechanics.

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