Spooks

August 09 i went to work for Treend construction, whilst i was there we got a large job from the BBC tv series Spooks. We were told to build an exact replica of a hotel front in order to blow it up and map the image over the original. We Painted the entire face black so that the special effects team could chroma key it out and just keep the explosions, the reason we didn't use green or blue (traditional chroma key colours), was because using natural light the green or blue would give the smoke a tint, using black retains the white smoke.

It took 1 week to build and paint the set in the workshop, 3days to put it up in location, 1day to blow it up and 6hours to tare down the remains.

The Build

We made Camera Hides to protect them from the debris

Special Effects Equipment - CO2 Canisters, Attached to bins of sugar lass and balsa wood, aimed at balsa wood window frames

Window Blast


Smoke - sped up




Debris



Fire Ball
The fire ball was made by placing these charges in the drums and then putting bin bags full of a chemical cocktail ontop, then simply detonate the charges.

Aftermath

In total i worked for Treend Construction for 2weeks and earned £680