Attention: Hollywood!

45King - I also thought the 45 pistol shooting in Saving Pvt Ryan was the most realistic I've ever seen. I commented to my wife at the time that it looked like Hanks was firing live rounds. I wonder why they can't do that. With the proper safety precautions and all the robotic cameras available, it should be possible.

deanf - I missed the primer snafu. I'll look for it next time.

Sometimes I even annoy myself pointing out all the failures to obey the laws of physics in movies or on TV.
 
Back in the early days of motion pictures, they did fire live rounds. Studios paid trained marksmen to shoot _around_ the actors when scenes required bullets to strike glass and/or walls.
 
Now that I think about it, I'm sure there's some safety rule about no live ammo anywhere near a set where even replica guns are being used. Makes sense, and probably explains the lack of primers. They at least could have made the effort with fake primers though.

That .45 shooting did look very real, but only when the camera was facing him. The shots looking over his shoulder didn't seem to have the same intensity. You'd think it would be t'other way 'round if they were using live rounds for some of those shots.



[This message has been edited by deanf (edited July 09, 1999).]
 
Darthmaum-Oops, "brain fart" on my part-you're correct, it was in "Eraser", not "True Lies."

deanf-I caught those dummy primerless .30 rds in the belt, too. Over all, though, I'd have to say that movie probably portrayed what a confused combat situation is like better than any other I've ever seen. I liked the sound editing for the battle scenes. A host of different bullet flight sounds, instead of the traditional "whining ricochet" sound. Whizzes, boomps, pops, cracks, thumps, slaps, whines, clanks...it was all there. Best was when occasionally tracers would fly by without hitting anything, making no sound. "Auditory exclusion" at work.....

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Shoot straight regards, Richard
The Shottist's Center forums.delphi.com/m/main.asp?sigdir=45acp45lc
 
Wow, this is a fun thread.

Heat, Nice potrayal of what a fire team using bounding overwatch could do in an urban environment.

Interesting side note, in the original version of Heat, which was a pilot for a TV series, when the baddie picked up the little girl, he was shieldling her from supressive indirect fire of the goodies, while in the movie version he was using her for a sheild.


Ronin, The baddies ALWAYS take the shot as opportunity allows, without hesitation. This makes this film much more realistic than anything made in hollywood, where the goodies can rely on the baddies to made speeches first.

Private Ryan. Aside from a few crimped blanks and muzzle flash issues, and of course, the infamous primerless .30cal belt, I thought it was excellent. In fact, I though Hanks character did a very good job of holding onto the 1911 respective of what kind of shape he was in. Very good.

Mel Gibson has very very very bad flinching problems, needs a coach. However, he is a certified gun hater who makes his living potraying bad firearms disipline, so who cares?

Last Man Standing, Bruce Willis has a most incredible pair of M1911s that although they do require reloading, they only require reloading about every 30 to 60 rounds. Very impressive.

All of the stuff about subguns not stitching nice neat lines, recoil, ejected casings and so on have already been covered. Two I would like to add are, bullets actually take time to hit, (well done in the Thin Red Line, and Private Ryan, ((in the thinredline, the one tracer scene almost made me duck, I did flinch pretty badly)). Another thing is Scopes. Dear Hollywood, I have never seen a 200power scope, nor have a seen a scope that constantly changes field of view, espcially in those little scope tubes that you seem to love so well.
 
"Last Man Standing" had some decent gun handling, even if it was a remake of "Fist Full of Dollars". Bruce even RELOADED! I felt like giving him a standing ovation(of one, anyway)for that. AND, one scene has him sitting at a table loading a PILE of mags for his .45 GM's. Not too shabby, methinks.
 
Grosse Pointe Blank with John Cusak has some great gun handling, and some terrible effects. The Foley guys (they're the ones who add sounds after the movie is finished filming) constantly added the sound of a hammer being cocked, even though Cusak was carrying Glocks. Cusak reloaded several times in the movie, and seemed to know how to handle pistols well. Dan Aykroyd used NY reloads all the time, and that was kind of cool. When Cusak used the Desert Eagle, they accurately portrayed the big holes it made in a wood door, as opposed to the smaller holes when guys with smaller calibers fired back. Some of the usual mistakes existed, empty guns not locking back, empty guns from one camera angle, then shooting from a different one seconds later, but overall, pretty good gun handling. Funny movie, too. I especially liked when Minnie Driver asked John Cusak to "Make this gun work..." and he casually racks the slide on a scoped Ruger P95 and hands it back to her.

[This message has been edited by joegerardi (edited July 09, 1999).]
 
Gee! Nobody mentioned Desperado. Ol' Antonio loaded and frequently reloaded. He must be the luckiest dude around. All those guys shooting SMGs shotguns and God knows what else, and they all miss. The gun I want from that movie is the rocket launching guitar case. WOW! Or if I can't have that one, how about the full auto guitar case?
Paul B.
 
All I want to know is where I can get that cool scope that Billy Zane had mounted atop his (fake) PSG-1 in "Sniper"? I want all those goofy little red flashing lights that contribute absolutely nothing to marksmanship!
 
What are you doing watching Hollywood junk for anyway, just giving them more dollars to pass on to Billary to keep them out of prison next year. Never could stand it when my allies were supply my enemies with aid and comfort not to mention the ammunition.
 
Just watched Saving Private Ryan again and this time I paid close attention to the details. I am still impressed with the accuracy. The M1's ran out of ammo after the right amount of shots. Not all, but most of the actors simulated recoil effectively. I paid special attention to the 30 cal. belts. In some scenes I would swear the cartridges had primers, and in others they didn't. When the heads were shown straight on, right after Miller was shot, they definitely had primers. The German sniper should have had one huge shiner. He had the scope right up against his eye socket.

As an interesting aside, I noticed in the credits that the USMC advisor, Dale Dye, also played one of the Colonels during the War Dept. scenes.
 
Bushmaster,

The gun coach for "Last Man Standing" was Thell Reed, one of the original five Combat Masters. He also coached on "The Quick & the Dead", "Tombstone", "LA Confidential" and more recently in the TNT movie "Purgatory", in which all the rounds had primer hulls only, courtesy of CCI.

Also coached for "Gunfighter's Moon" and "The Newton Boys" both of which he also appeared in.

Some gun coaches are good! Alas, too much of their efforts sometimes end up on the cutting room floor.
 
Oh man, I'm gonna eat it here but...
I was a location sound recordist for the film biz here in hollywood for over a decade and here's the scoop.....

1. After 26 takes of the actor screwing up his lines...the director no longer cares when the weapons master suggests that the actor didn't simulate recoil.

2. After 30 actors and extras leave their expensive prop firearms laying around the lunch table instead of returning them...the weapons master no longer cares if the actors simulate recoil.

3. After 6 18hr days in a row...nobody can pronounce recoil, let alone worry about it.

4. recoil is hard to convincingly simulate.

5. Recorded gunfire sounds like crap. 99.9% of all gunfire you hear in a movie is added later.

6. Movie scenes are mostly shot out of order. Sometimes days apart. The "Script Supervisor" is in charge of "continuity" which means things like what clothes they are wearing, and which eye was black and such. My experience is that Script supervisers mostly know nothing about firearms, and the weapons master is too busy keeping the actors from pointing the guns at the crew to inform them that a 6 shooter only fires 31 shots.

7. It is a common saying in the biz that "if they are looking at that, then we are doing something wrong" This would pertain to things like missing primers and such.

8. Any idiot knows that the hero unloads his gun and counts his ammo when he goes around corners and therefore needs to re-rack the slide or pump that shotgun again. You just don't see them do it. Use some imagination folks :)

9. What I'm sick of is that fake looking fire gel they put on the stuntpeople. What a bunch of whimps.

10. When you are making 10mil a year, you are too busy mansion shopping to worry about this stuff.

Anyway, if you have any questions about what goes on at the sets....just ask. I still have a vague and dreaded memory of it.

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Same Shot, Different Day
 
SameShot - Your point #7 was the same point I made a while back when we first started discussing Saving Pvt Ryan. If the guns and mistakes were the only things the viewer noticed, then they missed the real story and the humanity of the movie.
 
I'm going to give you a movie that did it right. Maybe two movies.
If you haven't seen it, search until you find "The Beast". Its about a lost Soviet tank in Afghanistan. Filmed in Israel with REAL T-55's (though the Israelies had replaced the 100mm main gun with a NATO 105mm). Real AKM's. Real Lee-Enfields. Real RPG. The MI-8 was really a Dassault Super Frelon, but I'll let it pass.
When the tanks fire, the muzzle blast raises an instant line of dust all the way to the target. Explosions aren't big fireballs.
What I don't know is if it is accurate to say you can take the rear sight leaf spring from a Lee-Enfield No1 Mk 3 and use it for an RPG-7 hammer spring.

I'm not sure of the name as I saw it a long time ago. I think it is called "One Final Shot". Australian movie about ANZAC SAS troops in Viet Nam. Very good.

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Dorsai
Personal weapons are what raised mankind out of the mud, and the rifle is the queen of personal weapons. The possession of a good rifle, as well as the skill to use it well, truly makes a man the monarch of all he surveys.
-- Jeff Cooper, The Art of the Rifle
 
The Aussie film was The Odd Angry Shot, if I rmember correctly. A real good film.

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Ne Conjuge Nobiscum
"If there be treachery, let there be jehad!"
 
SameShot,

I've heard that being on a set is pure hell enough times that I don't even want to go near one. Your comment about actors and extras leaving expensive prop laying about and generally abusing them reminds me of an incident during the filming of a fairly recent western, with gun-spinning involved.

The gun coach had a newly Grade 3 engraved SAA, gold plated with ivory stocks and could not resist taking it to the set and showing it off. Fully aware of the abuse prop guns take, he issued STRICT instructions that his personal gun was not to be touched.

So the prop crew - aware of the importance the coach attached to this gun (and probably tired of the constant spinning lessons) removed the case containing the fancy gun from the safe one morning when the coach wasn't looking and hid it. They had previously bought a fake gun, spray painted it gold and white - gave it to the most inept gun handling actor on the set and waited for the right moment.

Of course the coach didn't have the time to shake down everyone on the set, he was busy, extremely worried about his treasure, and was keeping an eye out while working...when out of the corner of one eye he catches a flash of gold spinning in the air, completing the downward portion of it's long aerial arc directly towards a CONCRETE sidewalk.

Now this gun coach is known to be fast on the draw, but his launch to the estimated landing spot would make Ozzie Smith envious. It was a miracle catch!

Maybe the resultant road rash rubbed out his sense of humour, because he still can't see anything funny about the incident.

Hollywood people are strange like that. ;)
 
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