Gunfire & Muzzle Flash Effects, Part 1

This series of articles focuses on creating realistic gunfire and muzzle flash, reflections, smoke, kickback, ejecting shell casings, bullet hits, and the rest, for filmmaking.

Part 1 covers Real vs. Movie Effects. By paying special attention to what a gunshot looks like in reality, you can craft more believable effects. Think of it as an exercise in taking a close look at something that happens so fast that your brain can’t keep up. By slowing down and breaking down how it looks in real life and focusing on the individual elements, you’ll be able to recreate that reality in your filmmaking. Sure, you can use an out-of-the-box effect, but getting the physics of ballistics accurate is the bullseye to hit! That said, you can always amp things up for drama.

In part two, we’ll go over plugins and tools to help you recreate some of the effects, with tutorials interspersed throughout. In future articles, you’ll learn about where to find 3D models and stock elements for your gunfight scenes. Then, in the last article, we’ll focus on the all-important sound design for your gunfight scene.

Featured image credit: Photo by Andrey Zvyagintsev on Unsplash

Part 2: Gunfire and Weapons Sound Design

In any action film or video game, the sound is as important as the visuals. In this article, we’ll focus specifically on Gunfire and Weapon Sound Effects. We’ll feature some tools to help you create your sound design, resources for sound effects, a few tutorials, and perhaps, a couple of freebies.

Check it out!

Guns: Real vs. Movie

In this video from Corridor Crew, a group of VFX Artists who run a production studio, learn what Hollywood commonly gets wrong in films. This video encapsulates the purpose of this article, to help you get your gunfights right. This video makes for the perfect introduction.

A Breakdown of Gunfire and Muzzle Flash

• Muzzle glow. Right before the bullet leaves the barrel of the gun, the gas pushes the bullet from the barrel, creating a glow.
• Primary flash, Intermediate flash, and Secondary flash. Caused by the mixture of superheated gasses leaving the gun as the bullet speeds out of the barrel.
• Sparks. Unburnt powder leaving the gun after the weapon is fired makes sparks.
• Smoke. Smoke after the fire… In other words, the smoke appears just AFTER the Muzzle Flash.

Notice the reflection of the muzzle flash on the actor and gun

Create a bright orange spot (or whatever color your muzzle flash is) on the hands, arms, and face of the actor, as well as on the gun. This should only last as long as the muzzle flash.

The video below from Slow Mo Lab shows the reflection of the muzzle flash on the shooter’s hands, the gun, and more, and in slow motion.

Smoke

Don’t make the smoke too prominent and know which guns create smoke and which do not. Make sure your smoke color matches your shots. If the smoke is shot over black, use a layer mode set to Add to easily key the smoke.

Make smoke with particle emitters or with plug-ins for creating smoke. You can also composite stock footage of smoke on your gunshot scene.

Tutorial: Render VDB Volumes in After Effects This tutorial explains how to create VDB volumes in After Effects using Superluminal Stardust and VDB volumes from Pixel Lab.

Silencers and muzzle flash suppression

Some guns come with suppressors that are meant to disrupt the shockwave of gas coming out of the barrel so the shooter is not blinded by the brightness of the gunfire. The FBI and ATF refer to suppressors as silencers, as do most movies.

Does your actor have a silencer on his gun? If this is the case, don’t add much or any muzzle flash but do include some smoke. Also, you’ll still want to add some sound effects, just quiet little “click-click”s and not big bangs.

The video below shows Baby Face P showing what a silencer sounds like in real life.

Ejecting Shell Casings

Get to know which type of shells will be shown ejecting from your gun if you’re adding them in digitally. Here’s a handy table of handgun and rifle cartridges.

Here’s an example of shells ejecting from an Airsoft gun, for reference.

Gun recoil or kickback

Recoil is the backward momentum that is created when a gun is shot. The Wikipedia entry on recoil is quite interesting, talking about Newton’s second and third laws. There are two recoils when a gun is shot, the kickback from the escaping bullet and another from the gas that follows the bullet out of the chamber. For more on that, see The Physics of Everyday Stuff: Gun Recoil.

In Hollywood films, you’ll often see characters being thrown several feet back from a small handgun, but this may not be the case. Take into account the size of your actor and the type and size of the gun. For drama, though, you may want to include a bit more recoil than would exist in reality.

Bullet Hits

Time to talk about the other end of the gunfire: the victim and anything hit by bullets.

Victims do collapse when shot but don’t fly backward from the momentum of the bullet. However, it’s your movie and if you want to increase the drama, maybe your actor needs to fly backward when shot. For more on this, check out One Shot Drops: Surviving the Myth, an FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin.