Behind the practical effects in that impressive sequence in ‘The Amateur’. There’s a particularly memorable moment in James Hawes’ The Amateur that occurs when the character Charlie (Rami Malek)—searching for his wife’s killer—confronts the criminal Mishka Blazhic (Marc Rissmann) at a hotel rooftop glass pool in Madrid. Charlie ultimately causes the glass sheets of the pool to collapse, and Blazhic is sucked away by the water and falls to his death.  Behind the stunning explosion was a close collaboration between several departments, including special effects and visual effects. The film’s special effects supervisor Gareth Wingrove built a collapsing pool tank with shattering glass and 66,000 litres of water (approximately 17,435 gallons) for dumping. Production visual effects supervisor Jan Maroske, from Industrial Light & Magic, oversaw the VFX effort. Getting to deliver what was a highly unusual kind of practical effect was something Wingrove jumped on for the film. “The first thing to do was to go and see the pool that they wanted to shoot in,” recounts Wingrove, with the main shooting location being an actual sky-top pool at the Embassy Gardens in London. “The main interaction they needed was to see the water dropping with the performer dropping with the water. That was probably quite a tough thing to do in CG, but it’s what we could do practically and what was safe to do practically.” Wingrove’s assessment of the real pool helped him and his team determine the thickness of glass and how much of the pool they would need to build to replicate it for the explosion which was, of course, not done at the Embassy Gardens, but in a custom-built tank at a warehouse in north London. “We firstly designed a concrete tank which was a main holding tank,” describes Wingrove. “And then we built a steel structure at height so we could drop the water and glass into the second tank. It wasn’t really about the water falling between the buildings, it was about the water dropping with the performer in it. That was the main task with that shot.” For the actual collapsing moment that highlighted the initial dropping of Blazhic, an important consideration was that this was also meant to take place in a glass pool, which captured and filtered light in a certain way. “We had to match the lighting of the principal shoot at night,” observes Wingrove. “This meant we had to build as much of the structure with glass as we could. What we had was a steel tank, and then around the shooting area—where the camera is looking—we had glass panels.” “We used pyrotechnics to blow the glass panels on the side,” continues Wingrove. “We used compressed air mortars inside the water to disturb the water and get the water moving. As we initiated the effect, it created a lot of bubbles, a lot of movement and a lot of aggression into the water. We used a jet ski as well to disturb the water, which pushed the water through and made it look like the pool we built was bigger than it really was.” A hinged panel was utilized for the dropping moment. Then came the bagpipes, as Wingrove explains. “Well, we call them bagpipes, it’s actually a decelerator. One of the biggest things we had to think about when we were dropping the whole glass section was that we wanted some of it to break, but not the bottom pieces. We would want to shoot another take, so we needed to be able to reset it, and that meant we had to decelerate. As we dropped the section, before it got to its end and before the glass smashed, we’d have to decelerate the whole section. We did that with a set of what we call bagpipes.” Before the real explosion was filmed on the tank—a task that also involved stunts and wire work—Wingrove orchestrated a series of tests with a tank a quarter of the final size for safety preparations and for ‘look development’. “This tank just had one glass panel, instead of three,” states Wingrove. “I knew that the effect of the water dropping would work, but I wanted to test how the glass would break. We tested tempered glass, laminated glass, two sheets of tempered glass without a laminate in there. We tried about five or six different methods of glass and how they break. We also made a lot of plexiglass pieces to dress in on top of tempered glass to make it look like it was bigger glass chunks breaking.” When the time came to shoot the real effect, the plan was to capture two takes. One take was shot in the morning, after prepping the shoot the day before and loading in pyrotechnics that morning. Then the special effects team prepared a reset by lifting new glass sheets back into position and refilling the tank, while the shooting unit filmed something else. At the end of that day, a second take was achieved at the tank.  Wingrove enjoyed the collaboration process with visual effects supervisor Jan Maroske on the explosion. “From the moment we met, we were talking about the pool straight away, and all our conversations were about how we could do this. He was very honest with what he could and couldn’t do and what he would like to get from me and my team. It was really enjoyable working with him and his team. It was very clear what he wanted from us and what we could do and what they could do, and how we could help each other.” (L) Marc RIssman on the set of 20th Century Studios’ THE AMATEUR. Photo by John Wilson. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved. In addition to the main pool explosion, Wingrove also designed an effect for the water and glass hitting the ground, as well as several other practical effects shot for the film. This included a moment involving a tunnel ventilation fan that Charlie blocks with a piece of metal rebar to cause an explosion.  “We built that from scratch,” advises Wingrove. “We built the whole thing from the tube and we built a compressed air cannon inside. We had a small motor running a fan, but we molded the fan and we created a fan out of foam. Then we added some pyrotechnics into it and some spark hits. As Rami rammed the rebar into the back of the fan, we fired it on cue. It looked like it was enough to kill someone or take someone out, but obviously it’s got to be safe enough that you can fire it into some performer’s face.” Asked what kind of experimenting or testing was done with the density of foam that can be safely fired against someone’s face, Wingrove says “we’re constantly evolving and designing new soft pieces to throw at each other in the workshop.” The post How do you explode a glass swimming pool? appeared first on befores & afters.