Gunshot FX- Where to get/make squibs?
 

After doing some reading, and always having been curious, where do you get squibs from for gunshot effects? Is there an online place to order? Are they protected- and require a permit? Has anyone made them?

I have my own ideas of construction- usually with igniters from model rocketry and such, but I'd like to a. be as safe as possible, and b. go right to the source.

I'm also aware of the "pull string' effect, but I'm also interested in smoke and buying blanks.

Info greatly appreciated!

Jeff Patnaude

Check out this link - A good detailed article on squibs and fake blood.

LINK: www.dvfreelancer.com/articles/squibs.html

Jeff, my real thought here is to hire a pro. Gun powder, esp black powder, is touchy stuff. I am a shooter and ammo reloader and I have a healthy respect for this stuff.
Ask you local mayor who does your Fourth of July fireworks and contact them. They may know somebody.

If you make something yourself and someone gets hurt, you're going to get in a lot of trouble. You could even get hurt just creating this stuff.

Depending on what you need, remember you don't need fire to make smoke. You can use a gardening product called "diatomatious[sp] earth". If you hit a small pile of that with a burst of air, you get smoke. That's safe, just don't inhale.

Hire a pro.
 

Joe's right on. Dealing with squibs and blanks is a very dangerous business. We always have a special effects technician handle all of the squibs and / or an armorer to handle all of the blank firing weapons.

Besides, when you deal with squibs, you are dealing with explosive charges, ignition charges, incendiary devices and other things that go boom!

Probably not a good idea to get stopped in this day and age with a trunkfull of "bomb making" equipment unless you are a licensed technician.

Diatomaceous Earth, also known as Fuller's Earth is used to simulate bullet hits. These are plastic capsules, filled with Fuller's and fired from a specially modified paintball gun. The same is done with Zirconium, these are called "Zirc Hits", and the difference is that they spark on impact.

Gunfire, in real life is very anticlimactic. It is nothing like what you hear in the movies.

The best sound effects that we have ever gotten were from full-load theatrical stage blanks fired from specially modified firearms. Always remember that a "blank" will kill you just as fast as a real bullet if you are not careful. This is why we have an armorer on set to handle the guns, EXCLUSIVELY! He does nothing else except that.

I have a good link for smoke effects on my other computer. I'll post it tonight.

RB

Bob Shelley's SFX - Atlanta
 

Try these guys. They are located in Atlanta and provide what you're needing. They work on feature projects all the time.

Bob Shelley's Special Effects: 404.622.9245

Try reading these links.

non-explosive bullet hits

http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/blood/index.html
http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/blood/blood.html

Here it is.
 

http://www.tri-esssciences.com/specialeffects.htm

Some pretty cool smoke / fire / blood effects.

RB

I guess everyone knows about that Masonic ritual gone bad? True story, happened this week. They made this inductee sit in a chair and set up bottles and targets around him. They then brought out a gun to scare him that supposedly was loaded with blanks. Only, they brought out the wrong gun ...

I heard about that.
Brandon Lee- killed on the set of "The Crow" the same way.

Jeff,
 

Brandon Lee actually got killed in another type of incident.

Apparently the barrel of the gun was fouled, by a round that was "fired" inadvertently using only the cap. The firing cap produced enough energy to force the projectile into the barrel and lodged it there.

Fast forward to when the gun was supposed to be fired using a blank, which they did...the blank caused the projectile to leave the barrel and strike Lee. Killing him.

I don't remember what the outcome of the case was, whether it was negligence on the part of the Prop Department for not having checked the barrel, or what.

There was a case many years back where a soap opera star was joking around and put a gun loaded with blanks against his temple and pulled the trigger thinking that it would be a great joke. I don't think I have to go into detail about what happened next.

At long distances the bullet kills you. Up close, as in a contact wound, all you need is the explosion of gases to scrammble your innards, much like a powerhead or bang stick kills a shark.

Sometimes dealing with blanks is more dangerous than live rounds as it may lead people to believe that, since no bullets are fired, no one can get hurt.

RB

Be creative and use cool editing. Gun fires, cut to guy bleeding. It works!

I think you need a license to use firearms and stuff.

heath

I asked the same question on this board last summer. Someone gave me this link:

http://www.creative-effects.com/Spec...Guns/guns.html

They're really cool, but just to warn you -- you'll need insurance to rent one.

Please BE CAREFUL. Brandon Lee and THE CROW come to mind in these discussions...

heath

The link I posted is for a non firing gun. It's pretty cool. It uses an electric charge to ignite flash powder. I haven't actually used one, but from the video clip on the site, it looks realistic. Plus they have everything from handguns to an M-16.

As far as safety goes, sure... I'd think twice before firing at someone's head, you never know what can happen, right? But if you read through the description they provide, it seems safe. It's just that the safety it provides is gonna cost you.

Just fake it in post. Hell, Rodriguez did a lot of that in Once Upon a Time in Mexico and you can't tell the difference. Watch his behind the scenes video.

there is a software called ALAMDV this is built for such effect.
in fact it just uses a suite of picture to make the animation.
You can leave the soft and just use the picture in premiere ot after effect if you need.

...but he used squibs in Mariachi
 

Rodriguez enhanced OUATIM in post but for "El Mariachi" he had a real squib attached to a weight lifting belt strapped to the chest of the actor. Carlos Galliardo would then fire the squib at the right time. They used to put the fake blood in condoms with the squib inside the condom instead of behind it.

And don't forget the famous guacamole gun his crew invented for Desperado....

The gun looks real but the firing is pretty fake.

Particle Illusion :)

i was having good fun shooting from a banana and watching the tracer stream across the screen and seeng the shells drop to the ground.. good stuff :)

Is this from the website? I couldn't find any video of what these 'non-guns' look like in action.

I was going by the badly compressed GIF. Just by looking at that, you can tell the guns do not fire realisticly. Too much smoke/muzzleflash.

How fake it looks depends on the editing. If you cut away quick enough it should look fine. When working with a low budget, anything you do effects wise is gonna come down to how you edit it. Robert Rodriguez may come off as the cool, one-man band filmmaker, but he's still a Hollywood filmmaker, and has a budget to match. He can shoot a scene with Antonio Banderas waving a gun around then add all the effects in afterwards -- he's got more money and resources then anyone on this board.

This is purely my opinion and I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but when it comes down to effects and low budget filmmaking, you have to ask yourself at some point during preproduction -- am I gonna sell this movie? If the answer is yes, then you gotta look at your effects with a highly critical eye. You might throw in a gunshot with AlamDV or After Effects, and it might look cool to you -- but thats because you made it. Yeah -- it might impress some of your friends and family who probably thought adding a gunshot was something only professional Hollywood effects people can do, but will it impress the thousands of people you need to go see your movie in order to move your career along?

When it comes down to it, the best low budget effects are the ones that aren't there at all -- the effects that leave themselves up to the audiences imagination. I know it might not be "gunshot" related, but think of the chainsaw scene in Scarface. A lot of people will say that's one of the most gruesome scenes they've ever seen, yet all you see is blood splattering on Al Pacino's face. It's the sound of the chainsaw, the situation, the atmosphere that make the scene work -- not the actual image of the chainsaw cutting a guy up.

Just think creatively about your effects and save the money you'd spend on food for your cast and crew -- they'll love you for it :)

Good thoughts Denis. Absolutely, work with what you have and think creatively.

There's no question that you should rely on your creativity, but the honest truth is that, thanks to technology, we have many of the same post-production tools at hand that the biggest Hollywood studios do and they're less expensive and certainly much less dangerous to use than squibs and blank-firing guns.

There is no reason an independent -- who has more time than Rodriguez or anyone else to get it right -- can't fire up a copy of after effects and create some very convincing gunshots, etc.

If you bother to look at Rodriguez's behind the scenes video on Once Upon a Time in Mexico, you'll see that he did the majority of his hits using his "guacamole gun" and post production After Effects work. This had little to do with budget and everything to do with time, convenience, the failure of the blank-shooting weapons to arrive on time and the fact that they couldn't rig the location without damaging things.

Technology is our friend and, rather than COST us more money, it SAVES us a considerable amount, it allows us to be MORE creative, and every independent filmmaker should embrace it whole-heartedly.

Rob,

Very true -- technology is our friend. If it wasn't for technology we wouldn't be able to grab a mini dv camera and shoot a movie for a fraction of the cost of film.

What I'm trying to say is that -- from what I've seen -- a lot of the effects being done with these programs in independent films are pretty cheesy, whether it be a muzzle flash or a ghost walking across a room.

Please point me in the direction of a low budget film that used After Effects or a similar program without falling into the realm of cheesy.

Ahh, well now we're talking about two different things. I would have great difficulty pointing you to a low or micro budget MOVIE that wasn't cheesy.

But these movies aren't cheesy because of their cheesy special effects or cheesy technology. They're cheesy because, unfortunately, MOST of those attempting to make such films aren't all that talented or don't have the skills to pull off what they're attempting to pull off.

I would blame the moviemakers long before I'd blame the technology.

That said, I do think there are a number of micro-budget moviemakers who are both talented and skilled with special effects. The makers of 405 the Movie (www.405themovie.com) did a remarkable job. There's a guy named Ryan W who has done some pretty amazing special effects (www.ryan-w.com) at home and wound up getting a job at Lucas Arts because of it.

There's a teenager (www.peerlessproductions.com) who is well on his way to being a master of special effects.

Again, it comes down to the PEOPLE involved, not necessarily the tools they use.

There's a website (in the UK I think, linked to this DV INfo website) that teaches you how to make bullet hits for bodies using nothing more than a rubber tube run under the shirt filled with your favorite blood concoction and blown out through the compressed air of a lawn and garden sprayer. He has online video clips showing how cool this looks. It looks great and it is not dangerous at all. If I find the site I will post it.

Is this the site you're talking about?

Thanks Nick, I was looking for that link to post, you beat me to it.

I'll say it on behalf of DVinfo:

"DON'T USE EXPLOSIVE SQUIBS UNLESS YOU ARE *PROPERLY* TRAINED OR HIRE A PROFESSIONAL, OR WE WILL PERSONALLY COME AND KICK YOUR ASS."

Thank you.

Rob,

If you read about the guys who made "405," they're both visual effects artists. Ryan W.'s stuff is cool, but I had some trouble trying to watch the other kid's work. None of the videos wanted to load.

I'm not trashing the technology. Plenty of Hollywood productions have used After Effects. What I was trying to say is that the majority of filmmakers are not visual effects artists. There's always going to be the execeptions, but the average filmmaker who writes a script, grabs a mini dv camera, shoots a movie, and then throws it on the computer to edit it most likely isn't going to create convincing effects. I feel that effects on the computer are best left to people who specialize in them. That's my opinion. I just don't want to come off as trying to bash technology and effects programs, because that was never my intention.

As far as OUATIM goes, I went back and again watched the ten minute flick school, the tour of troublemaker studios, inside knb fx, and listened to the commentary for the chruch shootout scene. Unless a special edition came out with different features, never once was there a mention of After Effects. I'm not saying it wasn't used, just that I didn't hear it mentioned. He did however, talk about adding a bullet wound with Photoshop. What I noticed is that he often says "I referenced the shot so we can go back and add it in post." "We" being a special effects team. In the tour of troublemaker studios, he shows how he communicates with the effects house over the internet. He also shows some of the visual effects artists at work. If you watch the credits you'll notice there was quite a few people working on the effects. Rodriguez is definitely inspiring, but he also uses a team of professionals to do a professional job.

I think special effects is best when it is seamless, so by my definition it is not possible to point to such a film.