Monday, December 03, 2012
How That Football Field Was Blown Up in The Dark Knight Rises
gizmodo.com: The Dark Knight Rises was pretty incredible for many reasons. But one of the most jaw-dropping bits was when Bane blew-up an American football stadium right at the start of a game. Here's how they actually did it.
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11 comments:
I absoultley love articles like this one. I have always been interested in the "how" which i guess is why I am in theater. Massive effects like blowing up the football stadium are interesting because I always think about how the team desided to stage such an effect. The raised turf and the intricate pyro. The direction of the pyro and how it would read on screen also seems to me like it would be an interesting challange.
There was obviously a ton of digital manipulation done to this sequence from the movie, but I love the fact that there was actually some pretty convincing pyro and actual stunts. There's something about having a person really fall into a hole in the field, as opposed to a computer generated person doing the same thing that really appeals to me. Watching the making-of clip also reminded me how different special effects in live performance are from those in film. When you're doing an effect live, it's much more a challenge to be able to achieve what you want to do. With film, all you need are some specialized visual effects programs and a highly skilled artist, and you have a football-collapsing explosion.
WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD
The most impressive aspect about this scene was the mysterious yet genius casting decisions and how they could pass manchild Mayor Luke Ravenstahl as a place kicker and a WR Hines Ward as a kick returner. I don't want to spoil anything but there is a lot of buzz in certain Hollywood circles about a possible post-Nolan Batman sequel centered around Batman's sidekick Robin. There's a very important easter egg found in this scene that is hard to deny the speculation of a Robin-centered sequel. Here's the proof:
The comic-book Robin origin story is of a young circus performer, Dick Grayson, who is orphaned when a crime boss kills his parents during a show. Its no stretch to convert the theatricality and spectacle of the circus to professional football. Let's look closer at Dick Grayson? Ignore what you've heard about GPD heart throb John Blake, Robin will be played by a football player. I've already addressed the dramaturgical oversight of casting a WR as a kick-returner but there's a reason to Nolan's casting oddity. Dick Grayson becomes a ward under Bruce Wayne (SPOILERS who is also Batman.) And in the 1960s Batman TV show Robin was played by actor Burt Ward. ward, Burt Ward, HINES WARD. Batman's sidekick needs to be both physically fit and have a deep-seated drive to fight crime and injustice anywhere. What better candidate to continue the fight against the League of Shadows than a Gotham City Rogues player whose team mates and livelihood were destroyed by Bane. (Also consider the political symbolism that the player literally received the motivation from the Mayor of Gotham, i.e. Pittsburgh.) Were the special effects cool and impressive? Absolutley. Am I excited for the Robin movie starring Hines Ward? YES!
Ok thats really cool. I would love to be prt of the process to come up with how to do something like this. Even though i have no clue how to do the computer stuff i would love to work out the place ment of the ditches and the idea of raising the football field. and the clumps of dirt that are exploded is absolutely brilliant.
This is so amazing. I've always wanted to work in film, so watching these video's of film trickery is amazing. The way that all the layers are manipulated to form a completely scene that would have been impossible to create as seen is absolutely stunning. If I had choose any other track of study it would have been visual effects. I just with the video hod shown more of how they went in and edited all the explosions and planed everything out so it worked so well. The final product was flawless.
This little video cleared up some speculation on this particular scene from DKR but leaves one glaring one left: What does "UPMC" stand for in Gotham City?
It was my understanding that they actually blew the field up. Hines Ward is… just. that. good.
Matt - It is not uncommon for a wide receiver to be the return man on a football team, although it is more common for a corner back, or a more specialized player (i.e Josh Cribs, or Devin Hester). It certainly would not have been Hines Ward (he was slow as molasses), but your logic is undeniable. Some may call your argument conspiracy theory -- sounds more factual to me.
On a more serious note: I am glad I do theatre because I don't think I would be able to sleep at night if I had to decide whether it was safe to "blow things up" around performers. I had a hard enough time deciding about a wall floating - one step further - Why don't we set that wall on fire? No Thank you.
I loved this movie artistically. After I saw it, I immediately went online to see if there were special effects videos and photos, and of course there were. I was really surprised that they didn't use something like green screen for this scene though. I didn't really think the raised turf was needed because the Special Effects department just put their own ground in anyway. I thought it would have been easier to to if they covered most of the ground with a green floor, leave the holes and turf areas for pyrotechnics. Then they would just add the field on the bottom. Of course, I'm no expert at this, but I feel like they added one more step in this process.
That definitely was one of the coolest parts of the movie. Being from Pittsburgh and seeing it in Pittsburgh it was awesome when the entire audience cheered at the end of that. Its super cool that they raised the whole field to get that shot where someone falls in, and also use real explosives. The amount of work that goes into shooting such scenes which are only a couple minutes long are what make some movies really cool. Special effects of course are not quintessential to a movie but if its an action movie you are probably not exactly going for the plot.
Ahhh that's absolutely incredible. I LOVE seeing videos and articles giving such an in-depth behind the scenes look at a film! I love films, but even more I love seeing how everything is done in the films. This scene in "The Dark Knight Rises" was certainly a perplexing one. The extremely high level of realism, yet the logistically impossible nature of it made me very intrigued to learn how they accomplished such a shot. And here's the answer! So amazing.
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