Understanding how flares work

Whilst working on this film, I have had to research a lot and I have learnt a lot in the process. In my storyboards from last year, I drew the flare as more of a bright, expanding firework that would take up the screen. However, when it came to actually animating and designing the scene, then I realised that that wasn't accurate at all.

So this afternoon I have been learning this history of flares, flare guns and the life of Edward Wilson Very. It has certainly been interesting to see the changes it has gone through over the past 100 years.

To be honest, with things like this I like to watch videos as a reference to see how it would look, move or be used. I really struggled to find any footage of a flare being used but researching about them definitely helped me understand better.

Below I have attached the links to some of the websites that helped me and one of the videos that I used as a reference for the flares look.

https://www.explainthatstuff.com/flares.html

https://www.boatus.org/findings/45/

Below are two the concept pieces I did to see what the flare could look like before I started animating.