Have you ever wondered how they get those great explosion effects<\/strong> in films? They look so real. This was a question I was pondering myself as I began working on my next film.<\/p>\n As we went into pre-production, we looked at the Civil War battle sequence on our shot list. We knew that there were going to be several 6lb non-lethal cannons<\/strong> involved in that sequence. The question staring us in the face was: how do we go about filming a sequence with this type of practical effect<\/strong>? And how do we do it in a way that doesn’t\u00a0endanger our actors and stuntmen? Well, there are three important things that we discovered we needed to do… research, prep and placement<\/strong>. Let’s go through each one of these together.<\/p>\n On any film, if you want it to be successful, you need to be successful at research. The first step for any action sequence is to look at how you want to\u00a0film the scene.<\/strong> I’ve always found it extremely helpful to look at what worked well in the past. With this in mind my crew and I looked at many different war films from over the years and saw how some shots worked and some did not.<\/strong> The three final films that we set aside as concrete inspiration for storyboarding were the films Glory<\/a>, Saving Private Ryan<\/a>, and Paths of Glory<\/a>.<\/p>\n In this clip from Glory, you can see that trees are exploding<\/strong>. During the Civil War, cannons would often be aimed at the tree line above the opposing side. Upon impact, large quantities of debris<\/strong> would rain down on the soldiers below. They would also volley mortar rounds either straight ahead or in an arcing fashion, which would give you the debris explosion on the ground.<\/p>\n1. Research is key.<\/h3>\n