How do you make an Airport look like an Airport? That was the challenge that we had at the beginning of the year, on a project where we needed to make a currently closed terminal appear like it is open and then make it appear that a bomb had gone off there.

To do this we had a team of 32 crew, working across 3 days on site, with 12 actors, 25 Stunt & Specialist Support Artists and 200 Support Artists used to play our airport occupants. After filming a pre-explosion sequence, we then had a 3 hour rapid redress of practical FX, art department, wardrobe and make up, to create the post explosion environment.

Live action footage was then supplemented with a CGI explosion, built in layers of ignition, dust, smoke and debris, placed into an exact 3D model of the site.

We filmed this in a “single” 20 minute take (in reality 2 x ten minute takes stitched together) across 22 CCTV cameras and also filmed an 8 minute drama on site, and used the footage in a larger 27 minute drama.