Let's talk about an explosive shot from "The Blues Brothers" (1980).

First, here's the whole sequence.

As a kid, I really thought they "just" blew up a Chicago building for this shot. In reality, various parts of the city were shut down to film the incredible car chase at the end of the film. But this? A brilliant visual effects shot by effects legend Albert Whitlock.

There's scant information about how this shot was accomplished - from what I heard, Whitlock printed a photographic frame of the street onto a relatively simple foam miniature.

A real frame of film from earlier in the sequence, and the first shot of the vfx shot.

The miniature which only included the distant building and a bit of car detail, was wired with pyro and was blown photographed at high speed. The flashes were probably created by hand-drawn roto mattes.

The shot, gamma'd up:

The foreground pieces including the rear car, most of the police car, the roadway, the lamppost and the structure of the elevated train was a painting based on the same photo reference, photographed separately and optically composited against the miniature pyro photography.

If you look really carefully, you can see some debris bounce off the police car's trunk... then disappear through when it hits the matte line. You can see a bit of weaving between the painting (which is only the front face of the car) and the miniature photography.

More debris that falls through the matte line.

Nobody's looking here. The shot is brilliant and totally works.

For "Blues Brothers", Albert Whitlock worked with the team of Bill Dutton and Syd Taylor, who went onto form Illusion Arts visual effects shop.

Learn more about Whitlock at Matte Shot, the great website run by NZPete.

http://nzpetesmatteshot.blogspot.com/2011/04/illusionists-of-illusion-arts-bill.html

One more look, to help visualize how the shot was done. The photo-printed miniature was extremely simple. Watch the Plymouth Hotel sign--even though the sign hangs perpendicular to the building, the sign and building fall together, since the model at that spot is a single plane.