How to Make Breakaway Bottles

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Shaun O'Rourke with Eleven Bravo Productions and I'm here at Suite D at EUE Screen Gems Studios, the largest studio complex on the East Coast and today I'm going to talk to you about how to make breakaway bottles. Now we've watched for generations in the old west movies and in action films all around people taking bottles and crashing them over people's heads. Well there's a certain technique that Hollywood uses to accomplish this and it doesn't have to do with breaking real bottles over people's heads because of course that's dangerous so what they do is they take a two part system, the first thing you have to do is get yourself a bottle and then you are going to mold it with really really heat sensitive silicone. Once you have a mold of that you are going to carefully slit that mold apart and pull it off into two halves and then you are going to put those back together and seal them up really really tight and seal the seam just to make sure that nothing leaks out because what you are going to take is you are going to take a two part solution, half pecolastic and half pecotex, now that's a formula that's been used in Hollywood for generations. Once you mix those two solutions together you are going to pour them into your mold that has the negative for your bottle and you are going to swirl that around, real slowly and the reason you are using silicone is because silicone can take heat. Those two chemicals reacting together put off a heat and it could be sensitive to people's skin so you are going to want to make sure you use gloves and try not to spill any of that stuff on you for safety reasons. Once you swirl that around and swirl that around and make sure that it is really coated on the inside you are going to let those two parts set. Once they set and they have cooled, you'll pull the silicone apart and there you will have your bottle, but you have to be very very careful. This type of bottle is very sensitive to be touched. It's very brittle, even a jar just slight like that could shatter the bottle so you have to be very careful with it when you have it done. When you do your little Photoshop fake labels to go on and you are going to apply them you have to be very careful as well when you are doing that because any little pressure can break these apart. Now if you don't want to make one yourself because it is a tedious and a long process and it could be a lot of work for nothing if you, if the bottles break before you even get to your independent movie or your movie site the best way is to find production houses online that make fake bottles. Now they're expensive, they can range anywhere from $30 up to $150 for one wine bottle but let me tell you something, these guys are pros that have been doing it out there for years and they know what they are doing and you are going to get top quality and they are shipped perfectly and packaged perfectly so they deliver a product to you that is only ready to break when you are ready to break it on set. So these are my tips for you. You can make it yourself or I highly recommend you go to a special effects house that specializes in breakaway bottles. You buy them there and you are going to have the best bang for your buck when it comes to crashing a bottle over someone's head in your film but remember safety is first so you want to make sure that your actor's are comfortable when they are getting hit with bottles or bottles are exploding around them so those are my tips for you on how to make a breakaway bottle. I'm Shaun O'Rourke. I'm here at Screen Gems Studios and I just told you how to make a breakaway bottle."