Re: kVA Effects on Discovery Channel

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net> 

 > Original poster: "David Trimmell" <humanb-at-chaoticuniverse-dot-com>
 >
 > I think it is a great service when really interesting demonstrations are
 > brought into our schools or other realms that children can
 > see/experience. The folks here that produce such nice sparking and
 > arcing equipment and demos really deserve a kudos!
 >
 > Regarding the Pyro aspect, I think KVA has gone far in getting a TC
 > involved in SFX, but they really are a small fish in the sea. Many in
 > SFX (and media, etc.) will use the tried and true effects, as realism
 > isn't really the product!

There ARE producers (for Discovery channel, among others) who DO want to be
"technically correct" even if you're going to leave out a lot of the
details. I've been involved in several productions where the producer and/or
director were concerned about whether what they were going to show was in
the realm of possibility (but let's distinguish that from "probable" or
expected).  For instance, a show talking about Jovian lightning, about which
we don't know a whole lot, they wanted to make sure that the orders of
magnitude were reasonable (i.e. can we say million times bigger than earth
or billion times bigger).  I was able to find credible scientific references
that estimated energies, etc., (from the half dozen or so photos of Jovian
lightning, and radio emissions) and using that against known energies for
terrestrial, come up with a credible estimate.

I've also been involved in the early stages of pitching a concept and been
responsible for discarding a concept, just because, although visually
attractive, it wasn't plausible (breaking the laws of nature, e.g.).  Sure,
sometimes things go through anyway, but, given the chance, most producers
are amenable to mild fact checking.

There are also directors who insist on doing things for real, with no
flashpowder, no CGI, no double exposures or compositing, etc.  Such
directors give you the chance to develop things like giant artificial
tornadoes (UK Volvo commercial with the Tornado chaser) or to hook up 100
still cameras to simulate a moving camera (Canon with Andre Agassiz).  They
may still present an unrealistic overall picture, by editing or story
telling devices.

To a certain extent, such legitimate effects give the producer and director
some bragging rights. (I'm sure the ad agency folks for the Volvo job went
back to the UK and had many a glorious pub tale derived from their
experiences.)  There's a certain "stud factor" in doing it for real, rather
than relying on CGI (not that CGI isn't impressive, and incredibly difficult
in its own way, but people don't get injured or die on CGI jobs).

There's also the aspect of making the final visual product be truthful to
the viewer, taking into account the recording limitations of the media.  I
worked a job where we were filming an exploding wire type effect.  The wire
goes so fast that the film doesn't capture it (reciprocity failure), even
though, if you are standing there it's mighty impressive.  I worked
countless "rain jobs" where we made it rain on the scene.  Invariably, the
rain rates in such things are phenomenal by natural standards (feet per
hour), but real rain is almost invisible when photographed. If you want the
viewer to see the sheets of rain coming down, it HAS to be unrealistic (very
large droplets, very large volumes of rain), because of the limitations of
the recording medium.  You can also do things like add milk to the water
you're raining with, to make the drops more visible.  Or, another example,
rather than using real ice for hailstones, which don't "read well" on film,
we used water softener salt pellets.  Looks very real (to the point where
professional meteorologists, seeing the clips, asked when we filmed, because
they had checked the records and the last recorded hailstorm with that size
hail was 20 years before).

<<This subject is starting to drift Off Topic.... - Terry>>