Phantom Camera

Rubber Bullets

Over the course of 2020, we have all been witness to protests that the news has captured and broadcast to us via TV, the web, and our phones. From “Black Lives Matter” to “End the Covid-19 Shutdown” and everything in between 2020 has been a year of worldwide unrest and protests.

One of the things that come with that, is police enforcement and crowd control using non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets. While rubber bullets are designed to be non-lethal, that doesn’t mean they don’t inflict serious harm on the person that gets shot with one. I’ve seen many social media posts showing the outcome of someone taking a rubber bullet to the face, or multiple bullets to the torso. The result is often devastating and debilitating, and it begs the question is there a need for them? I’m not taking sides here. I’m simply asking.

The video below demonstrates what rubber bullets are capable of. Especially when fired at close range. While the human body is more durable than an eggplant, this video brings home the truth about how much serious harm these non-lethal projectiles can inflict on a person.

Produced by Royale Film Co. and Dan Brown this video was inspired by the protestors in Austin Texas this summer. Protestors including a college student that suffered permanent brain damage when shot in the head with a rubber bullet.

Using a high-speed Phantom camera shooting at 2000 frames per second the video truly highlights what these “non-lethal” projectiles are capable of. And while the visuals are quite stunning and fascinating to watch, they also show what rubber bullets are capable of.

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SVT Powder ID – Trollbäck + Company.

The video below is a behind the scenes look from  on how they produced the SVT2 Powder ID. In world full of digital effects and post production CGI work, it’s refreshing to see that this was for the most part an old school process. In the video you see that  literally through colored powder by hand through a cut out piece of foam-core.  Sometimes no matter how good your digital tools are, you just can’t get the same results as shooting the real deal. This was shot at a whopping 1200 fps on a Phantom to get the super slow motion look.

“Inspired by the Holi festival of colors, our SVT2 Powder ID required us to develop our own mixtures to get the right viscosity for the dense and colorful look of our original designs. These colorful mixtures were thrown with human propulsion in a variety of scenarios; both with and without practically built “2” logos.”