Muzzle flash computer generated digitally on TV shows

O

Oldjarhead

New member
Has anyone noticed on crime TV shows like Person of Interest, and Hawaii Five 0, that it appears gunfire muzzle flashes seem to being digitally produced by computer on film. Fake blood spatter as well. I know this, because I have carefully observed when TV shows have someone firing a semiautomatic handgun, I see muzzle flashes, but no slide movement at all. No cycling another round. The only exception is during close ups.

Does anyone have any inside information on this? Just curious. Seems to make sense. Saves time, and makes the gunshot scenes easier to film, I expect.
 
I read that the CGI muzzle flashes are used in place of blanks to cut down on noise and scare people into thinking an actual shooting is happening.

Yeah, it looks dumb because nothing moves, the slide doesn't move, there's no recoil. I remember watching a movie with Dwayne Johnson, the future President of the United States, where he uses a Ruger Alaskan with .454 Casull ammo and it never recoils when he shoots it.
 
I watched a low budget zombie film once where I noticed some of the shooting frames were kind of wonky. The character was in a dark sewer system shooting an MP5 but there seemed to be a kind of "twitch". I slowed it down and played it, and every muzzle flash for the MP5 was a very short frame of a person shooting an AR15 outdoors with the camera focused on the muzzle.

I guess that was cheaper than paying somebody to digitally input flash and noise.
 
Yeah, it's probably much cheaper and safer to use airsoft or rubber guns and add effects in post production.

I recall a Syfy Channel movie that used spray painted Nerf guns!

I assume all blood splatters are fake.
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You ever watch Eagleheart :eek:?
 
"Lol, you never watched me work on my Jeep! Great 37 year old hunting wagon, but dang does it ever keep my skin well ventilated!"



Are you on TV?
 
Yeah they've been doing both for a few years now. in a number of TV shows and made for TV movies. That's where it began and looked exceedingly fake at first. At times the flash comes from an couple of inches away from the muzzle. It saves them money, time and hassle from neighbors. Blanks can be troublesome as well (remember Brandon Lee).

The fake CGI blood is obvious as well. That also saves time. It takes too many takes to get the blood spatter shot out of a squeeze bottle to hit just right or fly through the air in a perfect arc. But CGI and a kid can do it in a couple of minutes. How else they gonna get Tara Reid to chainsaw ten sharks flying through the air?

They coming out with a new version of The Mummy. It'll be all GCI. Makes me miss Boris Karloff in the original.

tipoc
 
I pick up apart TV, but blood splatter has never concerned me. I always understood TV is fake and people are not getting shot.
 
It's true, they'll use rubber guns or more commonly airsoft.
It looks incredibly fake.

the walking dead has been known to cheap out alot.. don't recall the season number where they're at the prison but you could actually see them shooting revolvers where the cylinder never moved.

It's also pretty obvious when they do the cheesy "Hollywood recoil" acting.


Back before they had CGI to try to add this stuff in they use other methods.
According to the Day of the Dead commentary track they use propane based prop guns to produce a muzzle flash more reliably.

Apparently since most film is shot at like 24 Or is it 25 fps?
even on automatic fire with real weapons they might only get a muzzle flash like every 3rd or 4th shot on film.
The lay audience expects muzzle flash I guess.

Some might say the move to post effects was about being safer..
But Im fairly certain in most instances it's a cost saving exercise.
You can get a lot more airsoft guns than real ones, not to mention the ammo.

Unfortunately it really cheapens the already budget strapped movies imo.
especially since they usually don't CGI in things like slide or cylinder movement and ejected brass.

It's fine for amateur movies or youtube video's but has no business in a serious film it never looks right.
 
Advantages to using fake guns and CGI muzzle flash:
  • No need for costly armorers on-set
  • No need to carefully supervise cast and crew members with felony records (e.g. Mark Wahlberg, Danny Trejo, Snoop Dogg)
  • Reduced safety risks (Google Jon-Erik Hexum and Brandon Lee)
  • No blanks consumed = lower cost
  • Rare and/or historic firearms are more easily obtained because non-firing replicas or deactivated wallhangers can be used, and there are no problems obtaining oddball-caliber blanks
  • Fantastical imaginary prop guns don't have to be built around "real" functional actions in order to fire
  • Filming is less disruptive in populated areas
  • Easier to arrange permission to film in locales with strict gun-control laws
  • No coordination problems, such as timing the gunfire and the bullet-impact squibs to match one another
  • [EDIT TO ADD] No issues with obvious flinching by actors (e.g. Gert Fröbe in Goldfinger)
(Partially cribbed from an earlier post of mine :))
 
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JoeSixpack said:
almost always easily spotted as CGI. cheezy
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Not necessarily; it depends how good the actor is at faking recoil, and how much time the producers are willing to spend in post-production. A lot of low-budget and time-critical productions (i.e. direct-to-video movies and TV shows) have easily spotted CGI; major studio movies, less so.

One certain disadvantage is that the actors need to be taught to feign the effects of recoil.
 
> Dwayne Johnson, the future President of the United States

Dwayne who?

Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho has dibs, I think...
 
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