DIY IMAGING

ACTION MOVIE EFFECTS

Shoot a fight scene with a blood-spurting knife wound and a head smashing through a window. By Zack Stern

The perfect action scene needs combat, gore, and at least one actor going through a window. Here’s how I shot a scene with all these ingredients, from making the special effects to shooting and editing the footage.

Movie Glass

We wanted one actor to shove another’s head through a kitchen window. Who wouldn’t? We found a good location that had a single-pane window, 30"× 26", which we could swap out for our own fake-glass concoction. We made a harmless shattering window pane by casting sugar glass in a wooden frame (recipe next page). If your window is much bigger and has several panes, you can add thin balsa divisions between the panes. These will hold everything together

140 Make: Volume 09

until it’s shattering time.

First, glue together a rectangular frame to fit your window, using 3 layers of thin wood. Make all 3 layers flush around the window’s outer perimeter, but around the inner edge, sandwich the front and back layers around a narrower middle layer. This leaves a gap for the molten sugar to flow into. Glue the frame together and press the corners under weights until it dries (Figure A).

Put the frame on top of a sheet of cardboard that’s larger than the pane, and cut more cardboard to fit snugly in the frame and match the thickness of the bottom layer of wood. Cover the cardboard in the frame with aluminum foil (Figure B). Be careful to keep the foil flat; even small wrinkles in the foil will be cast into the sugar glass.

Cook the water, corn syrup, sugar, and coloring

Photography by Zack Stern