Magic suit materialization effect?!

Eriek

New Member
Hi, I've got an idea for a sci-fi-ish thing knocking around in my head. The characters have "magic suits" that materialize when they call on them.
I think it'd be neat to do the materializations by *somehow* blowing the "magic suit" costumes off of the actor(s) and filming it in reverse in slow motion, so that it looks like the "magic suits" are materializing on them when played back normally.
I really don't know anything about the nuts-and-bolts of practical effects, so I thought I'd ask here.

Is there any kind of 'trick' fabric that disintegrates easily (smaller particles the better) that might work for this?

How can I safely 'blow' the clothes off the actors? I saw some things that used compressed air to emulate gun shots, could that technique be adapted? I guess you could also do it on silicone models if you needed more 'firepower' to do it, but I think it'd be better to do it on actors if there's a way to do it safely.

Thanks.
 
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I guess one thing to know would be what the suits look like. If you have gone over the designing process already.
 
Hey, thanks, I haven't yet. I wanted to hear more input from people who know about these sorts of things first. Like if it's even do-able, and what materials, fabrics, techniques would be useful, etc.

I'm leaning toward them being made out of soft fabric, though, which is why I was asking about that.

Thanks.
 
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The way I can think of is pre-cut tear-away costumes with monofilament attached to each piece and a crew of people standing just off camera to literally pull the costume apart on cue... Requires some serious set up and lots of assistants... there may be an easier way, but I do not know it...
 
As Buliwif says, the first idea would be a tear away suit. Because a material that disintegrates in small particles (and holds up before disintegrating) sounds like a very difficult thing to do. At the end it looks like it would have to be something that is applied rather than previously manufactured.
A crazy idea could be body paint of some kind.
Or leaning towards CGI, but I don´t know a word about that.
If we were talking about armour suits or similar there could be a chance of finding a castable material that is so brittle and weak that you could "explode" it someway. Sounds crazy too.
I recall this film called Interview With the Vampire (I think that´s the title), there is a scene where two characters turn into "ashes sculptures". And suddenly break down and become powder. A beautiful practical effect. I remember reading what they used, but can´t recall what material it was. I guess it was some out of the kit mixture.

Looks like a hard one to achieve, and if feasable, expensive.
 
That was Stan Winston Studios working on that effect on Interview with the Vampire, which was a combination of mainly optical effects layered with a foam sculpture that was pulled apart. They used a similar but more practical effect for the nuclear dream sequence in Terminator 2... the bodies were sculpted in styrofoam and pre cut into sections, and packed with scraps of paper napkins painted in tempera paints and dried, so that, when hit by a blast from an air canon, blew apart like so many ashes...
 
This would be a very environment-sensitive option, but I have seen sets where the actors are wearing white outfits and have images projected on them, whether it be for transformations, color changing, etc... The outfits serve as the 'movie screen', if you will. I've seen really impressive stuff, but then the actors were also typically stationary, and the imaging was exactly super-high definition. Just a thought, any ways, good luck with the project!
 
Thanks. Are there any movies out where they use that trick?

I have actually seen it used in live performances, but once again with very little movement. If you google PROJECTION MAPPING CLOTHES you can see some good examples. :thumbsup
 
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