Bang, Bang .....fix it in post?

Make Movie Prop Gun Realism Without Breaking the Bank

We've all seen amazing movie prop gun fx and blank gun shootouts that look and sound amazing. Think of the gun battle scene in Michael Mann's 'HEAT' or the beach scene in 'SAVING PRIVATE RYAN'. Ok, these films used mega budgets and real weapons with blanks, managed by skilled weapons handlers and not little Indie films. Small productions can however achieve similar results with a few small and inexpensive methods:

Talent Firearms Training
Talent who are not comfortable or don't know how to realistically handle prop firearms are both unsafe and look bad (unless the character is supposed to be a gun noob!). Our tips are:

• Hold a 1/2 day or few hour training session on safety, handling prop weapons, how the character is supposed to be trained in weapons use.
• Real firearms have a recoil when fired but not all have the same 'kick'. Firing full auto with an assault rifle prop will need a lot of barrel and weapon movement. Think about how to realistically simulate this.
• Use foam or rubber firearm props for fight or stunt scenes (don't try the knockout scene with a regular prop gun - it'll hurt!)

Realistic Prop Guns
Obviously a dollar store $2 plastic toy is going to look like an el-cheapo film prop. Different weapons have nuances when the operated. Automatic pistols have a slide that moves back and forwards when fired; automatic rifles have a bolt that moves; hunting rifles need a bolt to be operated and so on.

• Use airsoft pistols for an authentic look when being 'fired'
• Use cheaper but realistic 3D replicas for set dressing

Help your Post FX Artist
As seen in the image above, some real weapons have a massive muzzle flash in low light conditions. In daylight, the same weapon may have zero or minimal muzzle flash.

• Don't use cheap VFX muzzle flash in a daylight scene - it looks fake.
• Real weapons have some muzzle smoke but not like an 1800's cannon!
• Low light muzzle flash also lights up the talent and surroundings - on set use an LED photoflash strobe on a press switch or microphone trigger to fake the muzzle flash reflection (its near impossible to do in post).
• ​For sound FX, consider whether your shoot-out is indoors or outside, because real gunfire audio differs widely depending on the location. 
• When using VFX for gunfire, don't forget about the ejected shell cases. We use ActionVFX which has a good set of free downloads here. They also have good audio and other bullet hit effects.

Check out the folks at ParaLightWorx in Germany who do great work with replica weapons for WW2 short films. Their 6 minute single take video is one of the best we've seen lately for weapon effects (all 5.1M views!) which are all VFX (except the grenade explosion).