I had the pleasure of working on the artist Spencer Day's first video, The Movie of Your Life. The concept was to incorporate iconic scenes from movies past into the video. I was Special Effects Supervisor for the project.
After meeting with the Director and Director of Photography I began basic storyboards:
I then moved onto the Martian spaceship needed and the exploding house. The idea was to go low tech to capture that "B" movie look.
I purchased a cool model and assembled it for the shoot.
With the ship complete, it was on to creating the exploding house.
The house was foam board and balsa wood.
The house had an open side for the "debris" to blow out from. These were pieces of cork, balsa wood, sponge and baby powder blown with compressed air. Flash paper and flash powder were used for the fire and explosion.
The actors would be composited into the scene in post production along with the Martian ship and other visual effects.
I also got to build a model of the Lockheed Electra 12A for the Casablanca scene.
