WHOOMF
There was never any question that our teleportation effect was going to be explosive. As I said to Max, “We’re Detonation Films, not ‘Twinkly-Little-Lights’ Films.” Oh sure, I love Star Trek as much as anyone, but to me, there has never been a better teleportation effect than Monty Python’s “Tim The Enchanter.”
Hey, any excuse to go outside and blow stuff up.
The real muzzle flashes and bullet holes and flying wood we already had, of course. And explosions too, but as I am sure Michael Bay would agree, you can never have too many explosions. So my other son John and I concocted a batch of effects utilizing our special blend of coffee creamer and other additives (to give a richer color palette.) We ended up with several different shots, such as this:
which were combined to give the overall effect. I personally liked the yellow-orange color but Max felt (probably correctly) that it wasn’t “unique” enough and besides it overwhelmed the actual appearance of our hero. So he Doppler-shifted it to the blue spectrum. Given that it is theoretically being caused by burning hydrogen (the instantaneous displacement of air caused by the arrival via teleportation splits the water molecules in the air and ignites them) a blue flame is easily within the realm of technobabblage.
This, however, is just the beginning. It’s nice to have a library of cool effects to draw from, but it is even more fun to have an excuse to create additional effects. And we will.
So this is my life. I get to work with my sons. I get to be part of creating a cool comic adventure. I get to develop new effects. And I get to share it all with you, the readers, who make it all worthwhile.
I can’t thank you enough.
— Bob out.
