If you've ever tried to pull off an action film, you know the hardest part is getting realistic explosion and gun effects (and of course, convincing your friends that you really do need to shoot the same punch from 50 different angles). I've seen it attempted countless ways ... lens flares, white flashes, and just sound effects on their own with no visual panache ... but nothing ends up looking as fantastic as what you see in Hollywood.

Enter Detonation Films.

I've never seen such easy to use explosion and weapon effects for so insanely cheap in my life. You could drop a couple hundred bucks on a cool and flexible program like Motion (which does a decent job at pyrotechnics) but they take the cake with their free clips, and explosion packs which barely top the mark. Budget action aficionados rejoice!

There is, however, one trick to using these things correctly. You'll have to have a decent editing program that allows you to change the compositing mode of a clip. Detonation does a wonderful job of explaining it in their "Shotgun pack" tutorial.

So get some free vids and start blowin' stuff up! (and don't forget the sound effects).