How It Works
Your Time On Set.
Same team, same materials, same safety standard as our flagship Doors Off day — condensed into a sharper, faster session built for anyone curious about the craft.
You'll walk in not knowing how a screen explosion actually works. You'll walk out having rigged and detonated one.
The Briefing
Coffee, kit, and a quick brief. Your SFX supervisor sets the scene: what you're about to do, every safety protocol, and the craft behind a great on-screen bang.
The Theory
An insider's look at how cinematic explosions actually work. Low explosives. Black powder. The principle of confinement — the difference between a movie bang and a real one.
Curating The Effect
The trick behind every great stunt: hard things that are soft, sharp things that are blunt. You'll get hands-on with rubber bricks, breakaway foam, and shatter glass — the props that make a hit look real on camera.
Timing & Choreography
Cinematic effects live or die on the beat. We recreate the principle in miniature — a model bridge collapse, a runaway steam train — and break down why the timing matters as much as the bang.
Bring It All Together
Under close supervision, you'll rig a real gunpowder charge, wire it to the line, and walk through the final safety checks alongside the team.
Action.
3 — 2 — 1. The detonator is yours. The cameras roll. The bang is real. You leave with the footage and the story.
- Duration
- 2½ hours (exact run time confirmed when you book)
- Frequency
- Sessions run regularly through event seasons — live availability shown in the booking calendar
- Age
- 18+
- Location
- Clifford, Herefordshire (~5 mins from Hay-on-Wye)
- Price
- From £125 per person
- Safety
- Pro Health & Safety supervision · Professional fire cover · Rigid protocols
Live Availability
Pick a date. Book your place.
Choose your slot online and we'll be in touch personally to make your experience truly memorable — no payment is taken at booking.
Book a placeAbout Us
High-quality, professional FX — from a master effects producer.
Every experience is led, start to finish, by master effects producer Tom Harris — over 40 years at the top of the industry, on productions you'll have seen. Real techniques, real materials, real film-grade results.