Kyle Roberts, Michael Strapac and I just got back from Atlanta, GA. We were invited to Atlanta this time as Squib FX to work on a still secret project to use our non-explosive bullet hit rigs to shoot up a bunch of zombies. Atlanta is a hot spot for zombie activity in recent years with The Walking Dead having shot every season there.
We spent an amazing (and super fast) 4 days shooting just outside of Atlanta in Calhoun. It was beautiful there and the people of the town were all super friendly and inviting. We did 76 bullet hits in total by my count in those 4 days, and we got our reset time between takes down to 2-3 minutes a lot of the time. Of course it helped that they were zombies and already had some blood on them so we could be a little bloody with our resets.
Many of the bullet hits were captured on The Phantom slow motion camera. Peter Cotte of Granduer was shooting at a super fast frame rate I think between 800fps and 2000fps. The bullet hits playbacks were amazing. I can’t wait to have some of Pete’s footage on my reel! And we were able to see the physics of our hits in a way we’ve never seen before. It was awesome.
So.. we were really able to demonstrate the benefits of air powered squibs over explosives from a number of angles, we left a couple of producers very happy with their decision to drag us along with them, and we met a really great cast and crew of people that I can’t wait to tell you more about…