Cynematik • Cyndi Greening

What’s the best part of hanging out with a 13-year-old? Their life is video games, television and the internet … so they know all the fun things to do and the best places on the web about them. Yesterday, I drove to Sedona to take Alec to a wedding. On the way back, we were talking about special effects for film. We got to talking about squibs (little exploding bullet and blood packets). We went looking online and found it was very, very difficult to buy squibs if you weren’t licensed and bonded and, well, a special effects director. So, Alec says, “Maybe they have it on WonderHowTo?”

It turns out there is a website with a gazillion “how-to” videos on everything from how to fold a t-shirt in 2 seconds to building a solar powered USB charger. To be sure, there were some things I could learn that I had no interest in at all. We won’t even go there. But, in the area of MOVIE SPECIAL EFFECTS, there were 590 tutorials for do-it-yourself independent filmmakers. Everything from wounds and severed limbs to post-production effects.