"Hell For Leather"

Hell Ltd.

The script called for a brick to bounce off of Satan's head just as he sings the lines "Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone" - we manufactured a lightweight brick and painted it up to look as realistic as possible. In order to give it the illusion of weight, the film speed was clocked up, so that the brick appeared to move more slowly making it seem heavier.

At the climax of the opera, Satan lets a fart towards the 'Christ' like figure of a barefoot man. As Satan lifts his coat tails and brings his cigar to his backside, he ignites his fart in a 'Voluminous Fireball'. This was achieved by editing together a number of components to create the final effect:

Initially we have a close up of Satan's bare backside as the lit cigar is thrust into view. we positioned a short plank just below the edge of frame, at a safe distance from the actor, on which we arranged a strip of gun cotton, peppered with single base nitro propellant powder. An electrical ignitor was attached to this on a direct line of sight between the camera and the lit cigar, by igniting the material at this point the flames seem to erupt from the cigar.

The other parts of the overall effects consisted of using a parafin powdered flame gun to make flames shoot from Satan's backside.

Two different rain effects were required, one for close up work and the other for long shots of commuters dashing through the rain. A rain bar was constructed for the close ups. The larger rain effect required the use of a powerful pump system to pressurise a water supply and fire it into the air, where it could fall as relatively natural rain.

Both Rain effects required backlighting to make the rain drops visible to the camera.

The 'Sinners Party Scene' was shot over two days, during this time we had to build, tend and extinguish eight practicle fires that featured in just about every shot. With more than thirty actors and extras in the area, safety was paramount and a constant vigil was kept from safety fire extinguisher positioned just out of camera shot.

Satan rips a page from a book depicting how sinners will be punished in hell and ignites the page with his cigar - the director wanted the page to ignite and burn rigorously so a sheet of flash (nitro-cellulose) paper was used to create the effect.

After Satan lights his fart, he and his minions fall to hell. To realise the directors vision a CGI artist was commissioned to create the background and composite the actors onto it. In order to present him with the material he needed the actors had to be filmed on DVCAM against a chroma key (blue) screen. So as to give the impression that the actors were in freefall, they were balanced on a small bicycle seat attached to a chroma key painted pole, this allowed them to move their arms and legs freely, without any obvious means of support. Two of the costumes worn by the actors had tailed coats, to make these flutter as they 'fell' we simply used thin fishing line, which we tugged randomly from our position just off camera.

There was a short line in the lyrics sung by the heavenly voice :"I'll see your head on a sharpened stick", The director wanted to see Satan's head skewered on a spike - our initial thoughts were to have a photo realistic replica head made, however the budget simply could not stand such an expense for what would be no more than six seconds of footage.

So we came up with a more cost effective method which consisted of manufacturing a prosthetic neck appliance for the actor and hiding the rest of his body behind a fake wall, shooting the scene with a wide lens would then give the illusion that his severed head was standing clear of the wall with a sharp spike entering from below and exiting through the top of his head.

One scene required the priest to run towards the camera leaving a trail of dust as he ran, the pursuing gang would then ride towards and past the camera pumping out plums of exhaust smoke.

To solve the problem of the dust cloud we hung a lose bag of talc powder from his belt, as he ran his heals kicked the bag, creating a small cloud of dust. The motorbikes were rigged to carry small 90 second pine resin smoke grenades, which produced an excellent trailing cloud of smoke.