What could be better than blowing the crap out of a bunch of consumer electronics? Blowing the crap out of them at six-thousand frames-per-second. And getting paid for it. It looks like Helios Design Laboratories had a blast (ha. ha.) with their latest project, an elegant run-through of a demolitionist’s fantasy. In ultra slow-mo, various gadgets explode into beautifully glittering fragments, the detritus of which eventually coalesce to form the latest Nokia.
While aesthetically beautiful, the technical hurdles were what made me curious about the spot. I talked with Alex from Helios, and he gave me a few specs:
“In order to minimize motion blur the shutter speed had to be at 1/10000 of a second. That meant a lot of light; at one point we were using 90000 watts. The heat generated when you focus that amount of light on a small area is insane: the plastic parts of the props would start melting after about a minute. Makes you kind of nervous when you know that they’re packed with explosives.”
Just another day at the office.
Helios also has some production stills from the project on their site, worth checking out.