breaking glass effect
 

How do get the effect where when someone drops a glass cup or sumpin and it shatters all over the place?I know you use sugar in some way but I dont know how to do it.

Markertek sells these things. They're made of some kind of harmless candy mixture, I think.

http://www.markertek.com/MTStore/pro...seItem=RX80011

Not cheap. About $190 for a dozen. Cheaper than getting sutures for multiple lacerations :-)

If you do a google search you'll find a number of suppliers of breakaway glassware and materials used to make them.

Dean Sensui
Base Two Productions

If you drop a glass on a tile or other hard surface, it will shatter all over the place. I've done that a few times, with plates. Buy a bunch of cheap ones, because you probably will need more than one take.

The suggestion of the special effect breakaway stuff is even better if you have the money to spend.

On a vaguely related topic, I don't know how the prop glass sounds when it shatters, so if you need to add the sound of glass breaking in post, wrap a lightbulb in cloth and hit it with something to break it. Very nice glass breaking sound.

I learned that at my wedding. My wife is Jewish and we included the traditional breaking of the glass. Using a light bulb sounds better than a wine glass and decreases the chance of cutting of the groom's toe.

Rick

Not sure if this will work for you, but, there is a nice piece of free shareware available from www.winmorph.com. Over at that site, Satish has a free plug-in that does a pretty good simulation of shattering the video frame. Perhaps your shattering effect will work when done in post...;-)

The Sunday comic strip U Can with Beakman and Jax once ran an article on making candy glass. It essentially involved boiling down a sugar mixture to hard crack and then being very careful with taking it out of the pan.

Trying to do this at home results in panes of glass that are only as large and as flat as your largest, flattest pan, and that are nowhere near as limpid as real glass panes.

This all reminds me of one of the most memorable shots (in my mind) I've ever seen. It's from A Clockwork Orange, when Georgie hits Alex up'side the head with a quart of milk.

Don't ask why, I don't know. But that has stuck in my mind for over 30 years as a very impressive piece of cinema.

for some reason, when i think of A Clockwork Orange and someone getting hit over the head i don't think of the milk scene, but rather a later scene which involved a rather large statue of a mans privates.

Zac

Hmmm... I wonder what Dr. Freud would have to say about that? ;o)

Making Glass
 

The sugar/glycerin base for making glass is very time consuming and, to me, not worth it. I did it for the theatre years ago and the beer bottles that I and the 'brilliant' director (SARCASM) were odd shaped and problematic.

He built a mold and I painted the inside with the mixture of sugar and glycerine. Can't remember the propotion. It was difficult in maintaining consistancy of the surface, thick and thin. Then it was baked. When it broke it had a less than desireable effect.

CRACK - - PLOOP

I would go to the dollar store and buy a bunch of 'breakable' cups, put on the safety goggles, and smash them that way.

By the way, I am assuming you want to see this on the screen. You'll probably need to add some sound in there too.

Cheers!

I've seen a sound effects device that makes a breaking glass sound. Guess what? It uses real glass and a hammer on a mechanical arm is swung into the pane of glass. Sounds just like glass breaking. I'm told it's what they use on the David Letterman Show for the glass breaking effect.

I've seen that glass breaking effects 'box' in action in a radio play. The college radio station had one two for on-air smashing.

Cheers!