Every explosion you see on screen was boring long before it was exciting. That's the point. By the time a pyrotechnic effect fires in front of a camera, it's been planned, diagrammed, tested, and rehearsed until every variable is accounted for. The flash and the bang are the last thirty seconds of a process that started weeks earlier in a production meeting. If we've done our job right, the most dangerous moment on set is also the most controlled.
What Pyrotechnics Actually Means
When most people hear "pyrotechnics in film," they picture a car flipping through a fireball. Fair enough. But movie explosions are only one piece of what pyro departments handle on a daily basis. The real toolkit is much wider and, honestly, much weirder than audiences realize.
Squibs—small explosive charges hidden under wardrobe or set walls—create bullet-hit effects. They're tiny, but they require precise placement and exact timing with the actor's performance. Flash pots produce a bright burst of light and smoke for magical or supernatural gags. Fire bars generate controlled flame lines along walls, across floors, wherever the script needs fire that starts and stops on command. Concussion mortars deliver the deep chest-punch blast you feel in a theatre without producing shrapnel. Spark hits simulate ricochets and electrical failures. Smoke pots fill rooms with haze for mood or to sell the aftermath of an explosion—part of the broader practical effects toolkit that gives VFX teams real elements to build on. Detonating cord can shatter a wall or blow out a row of windows in perfect sequence.
On something like The Boys, we might use all of these on a single episode. One scene needs a subtle spark hit on a countertop. The next needs a full building-front blowout with concussion, debris, and fire. They're both pyrotechnics. They both require the same licensing, the same discipline, and the same respect for what the materials can do.
The Paperwork Before the Powder
Nobody in this business wakes up the morning of a pyro shoot and wings it. The planning process starts with the script breakdown, moves through technical scouts, and ends with a detailed effects plot that accounts for every charge, every wire, every safety zone.
Risk assessment is the backbone of the whole operation. For each effect, we map out what we're firing, the blast radius, the thermal output, and the fragmentation pattern if any physical material is involved. That determines the safety radius—the minimum distance that cast, crew, and equipment need to maintain from the effect. On a big gag like the setpieces we've rigged for Reacher, the safety radius might clear a hundred feet in every direction. On a small squib behind an actor's shoulder, it might be inches. The math changes, but the process doesn't.
Ontario's regulatory environment adds another layer. Every pyrotechnician working on a film set in the province needs to hold a valid pyrotechnics license issued under provincial and federal regulations. You can't just hand someone a firing board and say "good luck." The local fire department gets notified for any shoot involving pyro or open flame, and depending on the municipality, you may need a fire safety officer physically present on set. We've worked across the GTA for years—on See, Resident Evil, FUBAR, The Boys—and the permitting process is something we build into the schedule from day one, not something we scramble for at the last minute.
Coordinating the Chaos
Pyro doesn't exist in isolation. It intersects with almost every department on set, but the two tightest relationships are with stunts and camera.
Stunt coordinators need to know exactly what's going to happen, where, and when. If an actor or stunt performer is within the effect zone, their position is choreographed down to the step. We work out timing together—when they jump, when they hit the ground, when the charge fires behind them. The margin between "looks incredible" and "someone gets hurt" is measured in fractions of a second and a few feet of distance. That's not something you figure out on the day.
Camera operators need to know what's coming so they can protect their equipment, frame the shot, and not flinch when the concussion wave hits. A flinch at the wrong moment means the take is wasted, and with pyro, you often get one shot at it. We walk camera through the effect in advance. We tell them what they'll feel, what they'll hear, and exactly when it's coming. No surprises.
Then there's the safety meeting. Before any pyro effect fires, every single person on set gets briefed. Not just the department heads—everyone. The caterer, the PA at the road lock, the background performers. They hear what's happening, where the safe zones are, and what to do if something goes wrong. It takes ten minutes. It's the most important ten minutes of the day.
Rehearsals vs. the Real Take
Here's something that surprises people outside the industry: we rehearse without pyro first. The actors walk through the scene. The camera moves through its choreography. The stunt team runs their sequence. Everything happens exactly as it will on the live take, minus the explosions.
Why? Because you need to confirm that every moving piece—human and mechanical—is exactly where it needs to be before you add explosives to the equation. If an actor's mark is six inches off during rehearsal, you adjust it now. You don't find out when the charge is live.
When we shot pyro-heavy sequences for Pompeii and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, the rehearsal process was extensive. Multiple walk-throughs, multiple camera rehearsals, then a final checks pass where every wire gets tested, every circuit gets confirmed, and the firing board gets armed only after the first AD calls for it. The actual "fire in the hole" moment is almost anticlimactic for the crew, because by that point everyone knows precisely what's about to happen.
Almost anticlimactic. Then twenty pounds of black powder go off and you remember why you got into this business.
One Take, No Margin
The reality of pyrotechnic work in film is that many effects are one-take propositions. You can't un-explode a car. You can't un-blow a wall. If a set piece is rigged with det cord and breakaway materials, that set piece exists once. The rebuild might take a full day or more. So the pressure on that single take is enormous, and the only way to handle that pressure is preparation.
We've been doing this out of our 50,000-square-foot workshop at Dynamic Effects Collective in Toronto for years, across shows like What We Do in the Shadows, Gen V, and Black Phone 2. The shows change. The gags change. The preparation doesn't. Every effect gets the same process whether it's a $200 flash pot or a $50,000 building demolition. Load the charges. Wire the circuits. Test the continuity. Brief the crew. Clear the zone. Roll cameras. Fire on cue.
The exciting part is the last two seconds. Everything before that is procedure. And procedure is what keeps everyone safe enough to do it again tomorrow.