It’s a while since Fraktiv got in on the creative side of Christmas – our last outing was for a couple of UK TV commercials for IWOOT.com – so when our long-time collaborator and producer Tristan Goodley got in touch for us to put together an alternative to “The 12 Days of Christmas”, we were up for the challenge.

Working with BBC Worlwide’s ‘Head Squeeze’ YouTube channel, Tristran, madcap science presenter Greg Foot, special effects pyrotechnician Mike Sansom and the New London Children’s Choir, we put together a special edit entitled “The 12 Explosions of Christmas”, and as you might imagine, it involved explosives…lots of explosives!

With a smorgasbord of footage from GoPros, a FOR-A slow-motion camera, paired to a high-speed recorder and several DSLRs, and with only 24 hours to edit the feature, we had our work cut out in putting everything together, so Premiere Pro CC was our go-to choice to avoid any time-consuming clip conforming or transcoding. With the assemble ably put together by Tristan using Premiere Pro CS6 on a Mac, we effortlessly transferred the project to PPro CC on a PC workstation for final editing, addition of music and some very necessary colour-correction (owing to the mixed shooting conditions and the colour casts from the individual cameras). The sound was dealt with through Audition CC, allowing us to re-tune both the audio track and the choir’s performance to sit in the right key, which ended up working beautifully! Who would have thought an electronic version of “The 12 Days of Christmas” would work so well!?

Fancy singing along? Here are the lyrics:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, two science guys gave to me; 12 mince pies a’popping; 11 baubles blazing; 10 stockings spontaneously combusting; 9 reindeers a’rocketing; 8 brussels sprouts cannons firing; 7 bags of chestnuts roasting; 6 presents exploding; 5 Santas on fire; 4 flaming puds; 3 cracking crackers; 2 melting snowmen; and an eeeeeeee-pic firework tree!

And seriously, don’t try this at home!