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Special Effects Services

SFX Pyro & Explosions



Explosions are without doubt, one of the most exciting and rewarding of special effect, providing "real" in-camera, stand-alone effects, which are unparalleled in impact and obtaining the best reactions from your actors.  Real Explosion Effects are also hugely beneficial to VFX as a base for adding a wealth of additional visual effects and elements.

There are numerous types and sizes of explosions that we can create, but for simplification, we have categorised them into three main groups. Immersive, Near and Far explosions.  We are well known for our incredible Immersive and Near explosions and for Far Explosions with work in scenes involving vehicles and small building sets etc.

Creating amazing explosions & Car Crashes requires careful advanced planning....they never happen by accident!  Just the right size and always perfectly timed and synchronised is what you will get with FilmSFX!

Over the years, we have developed in-house, a host of innovative and "safety-first" solutions for creating the most impressive, safe and budget friendly explosions and car crashes in the industry.



Vehicles

FilmSFX Small Air-Mortar Immersive SFX Explosion

Driverless "Car Crashes" Flips & Explosions are a speciality for FilmSFX.

Whether a static car fire or a full high speed driverless vehicle crash with flips, rolls and explosions, we have the tools and experience you need... whatever your budget!

  • High Speed Crashes & Rolls
    Our most exciting and visually stunning types of crashes, utilise our remote car control system to facilitate the most dangerous of crashes to be achieved without any risk to life.  It takes around 1 hour to modify the vehicle and then our SFX tech will operate the vehicle remotely.
    Add to that our vehicle flip system and the most exciting flips, rolls and impacts can be safely achieved.. all without the need for a driver.
  • Car Explosions
    Utilising various pyros, our propane poppers, flame bars and smoke, we can create highly dramatic car fires and explosions.

Actor Immersive

FilmSFX Small Air-Mortar Immersive SFX Explosion

"Immersive" Explosions are those scenes where the following is required:

  • Talent/Stunts immersed in the explosion blast and debris field.  These can be small IED type explosions to surprisingly large explosions, which  give the effect of large bombs and explosions in buildings or locations. Ideal for war/battle simulation too.
  • Created using Air-Mortars with dust and debris and limited cold-fall pyrotechnics such as electrical failure simulators and flashes etc..
  • Totally Safe for the close proximity of actor/stunts to be immersed in the blast.
  • Props/Sets/Locations are not  damaged
  • Quick resets when multiple repeats or different camera angles required.
  • Can easily be shot on a single camera with the action/explosion easily reset

Close Proximity

FilmSFX Actors close to the Explosion Field with pyrotechnic propane fireballs and flames

"Close Proximity" Explosions are those scenes where the following is required:

  • Explosions are larger and mostly contain fireballs and flames, but the Talent/Stunts still need to be in-shot and very close to the explosion field and possibly immersed in dust debris.
  • Created with a combination of Air.Mortars, Pyrotechnics, Propane Poppers, Wet/Dry Lifts & Debris materials
  • The impression of  danger and close Proximity can be enhanced with  camera angles and focal length to  compress the perceived distances
  • Props/Sets/Locations may have some minor damage and/or scorch marking
  • Repeats possible with sufficient setup times
  • Single or Multiple Cameras are beneficial

Large

FilmSFX - Large Wet Fuel Explosion with black-powder lift

"Large"  Explosions are those scenes where the following is required:

  • Talent/Stunts well away from the explosion field
  • Usually created with black-powder charges and wet and dry lifts with larger amounts of debris materials and pieces of the set/props etc..
  • Any idea of  Proximity is created using camera angles and focal length to compress the actual distances or added in VFX
  • Props/Sets/Locations are intended to be destroyed by the explosions
  • Repeats unlikely
  • Multiple Cameras to capture different angles as separate takes unlikely.

In-house Tools - SFX Crashes & Explosions!

Vehicle Crashes & Explosions

FilmSFX Car Flips and Explosions

Remote Control, Driverless Car Crashes

Some vehicle crashes are too dangerous even for the very best Stunt teams.  That's why we  can convert most standard cars/vans to be remotely driven by our trained and highly experienced technicians. This means that driving at speed into immovable objects, such as other cars, buildings, walls, trees or off the edge of a cliff for example, can all be done completely safely without an actual driver in the vehicle.

Pyrotechnic Car Launcher 

To further enhance the scenes, we can also fit our pyrotechnic car launcher, which depending upon positioning, can flip or roll a car through between 180 to 360 degrees or more.

Flames and Explosions

We can also add fire balls and explosions to create even bigger impact, using our propane poppers and pyro lifts.

Contact us today, you will be amazed at our pricing!!

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Propane Poppers - Designed and manufactured in the UK by FilmSFX

FilmSFX Manufactured Propane Popper for Explosion SFX

Propane Poppers - SFX Explosions

An invaluable tool for creating repeatable and safe fireball explosions, which can be easily concealed   in vehicles, buildings, sets and locations for an almost unlimited variety of explosion.

At the heart of the propane-popper device are three main components

  • Propane & Mapp Gas Versions
  • Explosive charge to pierce the Propane Can
  • Secondary  Pyrotechnic to ignite the escaping gas and also provide additional pyrotechnic effects

We build these ourselves in two sizes to accomodate up to 400mg Map or Propane cans ensuring  all our experience in the field can be incorporated into the latest design and to ensure  they are built to high safety and quality standards.

The beauty of the device is in its simplicity.  In our experience, simplicity = reliablity and repeatability. We own and can manufacture any number of these, so we can always pre-load several for very fast resets and re-takes or combine multiple units to make a larger single explosions or choreographed sequences of separate explosions, such as in a car chase, mine field, missile attack etc..

Extremely quick to set up and with our advanced wireless firing system, we can synchronously fire or sequence fire many units, combined  with other pyrotechnics and effects such as our Air-Mortars, smoke, lifts, flames etc..

With each Propane Popper using a secondary pyrotechnic to ignite the escaping gas, we can select from a variety of different pyrotechnic effects from a simple flash to rockets and 30m high sparkles to further enhance the explosions intensity and effect.

Perfect for explosions in car crashes or a sequence of fireballs or just one large explosion, the options are almost limitless and they are extremely kind to budgets too compared to almost any other way of creating small to medium sized controllable explosions....  A lot of bank for the buck, quite literally!


Take a look below for some examples of single Propane Poppers in action

Air Mortars/Canons - Safe Explosion Effects Designed in the UK!

FilmSFX Air-Mortar SFX Explosions

Air Mortars/Canons - SFX Explosions

Definitely one of our favourite and most flexible  "go-to" pieces of SFX Explosion Simulation equipment that we own.  The Artem Air-Mortar!

Whether it's at the heart of an "immersive" explosions or playing a supporting role in a much bigger explosion combined with fire balls, pyro, wet lifts, flames and smoke, our Air Mortar is a wonderfully flexible tool within our large arsenal of explosion effects.  Not only do we have various sizes from small to the very large, but they can be filled with an incredibly wide variety of dust and debris to give a wide range of types of explosion types and sizes and pressurised to simulate a small IED or a massive  debris/smoke blast from a distant explosion.  

As with most equipment, it can be used perfectly in scenes, stand-alone but also to form part of an array of Equipment, Propane explosions, pyrotechnics, flames and smoke  to create something much much bigger in scale and impact. Even stand alone, we have used multiple units to create a huge house blast or to simulate a complete floor of offices exploding on to actors and vehicles below.

Did we mention, that we can fill these with propane gas to create massive fireballs too.

We just love our UK made and designed Air-Mortars and we think you will too.


Take a look below at some sequences  of immersive explosions in a soon to be released Sci-Fi Series (courtecy of  the wonderful people at Black Hangar Studios) and other sequences showing different types of immersive explosions.
  • FilmSFX Actor Safe Air-Mortar Explosion SFX

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Pyro SFX Explosion & Spark Effects - by FilmSFX

From the smallest sparks to the largest explosion, Pyro is almost certainly going to be part of the effect.

At FilmSFX we have many years experience and know exactly what mix of pyro will provide the desired result for any scripted scenario.

Sparks, explosions, smoke and even simulating Fireworks are regular occurances for us and our clients.

Planning, knowledge, best in class Firing systems and hugely experienced technicians come as standard with our pyro SFX

Firework Simulations

It might surprise you as to how often we are asked to recreate a box of fireworks simultaneously igniting.  One might expect it to be simple enough to just set a box of domestic fireworks alight, but there are so many reasons why that's a really bad idea...

It's Unbelievably unsafe, there's no control of the timing, when or if they will fire, the duration or where they will go....

So, the solution is to create the effect using multiple types of pyro, all individually fired from our Firing systems to create a visually impactive, safe, controllable and reliable effect of a known duration, scale and known safety zones.

So don't leave it to chance... Give FilmSFX a call.

The Very Best Pyro SFX Firing Systems- Designed and manufactured in the UK & EU!

There is no point having the best planned and rehearsed explosion scenes, unless you can guarantee perfectly times firing sequences every time.

That is why we only use British, European or US manufactured Professional Firing solutions designed specifically for Pyrotechnic, including Ignius, Cobra, Firestorm and LeMaitre

FilmSFX iGNiUS Pyrotechnics Firing System

SFX iGNiUS Firing System - SFX Explosions


Our go-to wireless system for SFX explosions is the exceptionally robust iGNiUS wireless system. This has been designed and built in the UK by one of the worlds leading High Explosives Specialists.


Designed and Built for the rugged demands of commercial mining explosive work, with extensive safety and operator features, we rely on this system for  our Explosion SFX.  The system works wirelessly, so is very quick to make even the most complex of explosion installations and includes Wireless Relays and DC 12/24V battery boxes to allow us to incorporate non-pyro effects, such as our Air-Mortars and other relays triggered devices into a single operator controlled environment.  

This means we can be fast, safe and accurately timed when creating the perfect explosion for your production.
FilmSFX Cobra Firing System

SFX Cobra Wireless Firing Systems - Hits and Displays


The Cobra System is an extremely powerful and extendable wireless firing system, that can be used to fire hundreds or thousands of pyrotechnic or Firework articles.  This has been designed and built in the US by one of the worlds most renouned Firework firing system.


Built for the extreme demands of SFX and large commercial firework displays, the system has fantastic wireless range, with integrated safety and operator features, this system is used by us for our Blood Squibs, Pyro Musicals, Firework displays etc., due to it's range and scripted shows. The system works wirelessly, so is very quick to make even the most complex of installations and also includes DMX control, SMPTE control, Script/Computer control for effects, where pyrotechnics, DMX (smoke, Co2, Flames etc) can be seemlessly controlled alongside pyro and fireworks with frame accurate timing 
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