Doc's gun firing (sequential stills)

[doc3d]

When I looked at the digital video file I'd shot, the flash was actually there from firing blanks in the pistol, but the duration is only one frame (1/30 sec, I suppose...) Which is why I need to get a better pyro load. In any case, though you can't hear the bang it was loud enough to require ear plugs, which I was wearing. The weather here is freezing, with more snow on the way, so I bundled up in the "Gorbachev" style Astrakhan hat a buddy found in a Moscow flea market along with the greatcoat. Hooray for Russian surplus! The one thing those guys make better than anyone is cold weather gear.

Anyway here are a sequence of 6 frames, totally unretouched by Photoshop other than to convert them from mpeg frames to bmp to jpegs and size them down. You'll just have to think BANG!

Looking closely I can see a fair amount of debris ejected by the blast. I sure wouldn't want some clown anywhere near me on a movie set with an unplugged gun. Brandon Lee and Jon-Erik Hexum were two actors killed by "blanks" and many others have been injured.

Now, most of the gunfire gags are done optically, and for good reason.

doc

[Mr Webber]

Wow doc,
A lot of people have made some wickedly authentic Blasters around here
but this is the only one that would test positive for GPR and have a smell
to die for.........well, you know what i mean
You just need a microma watch on and id cast you in my remake
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Formerly offworld66

[andy]

You blinked

Andy

[joberg]

Geez Andy, I would blink too if I had such flash with my gun!
Doc! Dude what are you puttin' in your ammo? Man, easy with the magnesium

[phase pistol]

Ow! My ear!

[Mr Webber]

joberg wrote:

[andy]

[doc3d]

andy and joberg wrote:

[joberg]

Yeah Doc, I find it scary too. It's possible that Mr. Ford is wearing earplug not seen because of the angle of the camera shot, but no eye protection with that kind of flash and a good possibility of having some crap coming out of those vents!? I mean it's not a Colt Navy from the Civil War but still freakin' scary!

[The Loyalizer]

It was the early '80s, I'm pretty sure they went with the low tech solution of having him fire off blanks rather than doing any kind of optical effect. In fact I think the only time they were considering the use of optical effects for gunfire, was Leon's 'black hole' gun.
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"We began to recognize in them a strange obsession..."

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[BeastMaster]

I remember reading somewhere that the flash from the movie gun was merely a powder flash (sulphur or magnesium based).

though was there footage of HF just standing there whilst they ignighted it in the barrel whilst the camera was rolling? I cant remember if I've seen that or not
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"F*ck it, it's just a movie. Let him worry about it" Harrison Ford

[Noeland]

Well, it wasn't CGI, obviously. The muzzle flash is just a blank being fired. I never heard of them boosting the flash with anything, though I believe Phil and Rich speculated (before Karl's photos anyway) that the cylinder didn't turn on the hero gun, and it was only able to fire 1 round at a time.

But, I think that's been debunked now.

The danger of crap flying back depends on the blank, not the vents. The charter arms tend to send the unburned grains forward though. I've been showered with them many times behind the camera. In all that time, the actors never had any issues with blowback.

I've shot plenty of action scenes on MiniDV and muzzle flashes show up just fine, and should only be a few frames, or only 1 frame. If you have a full second of muzzle flash I think it's going to look very odd, and probably too long.

Still interested to see your results though.

And I don't know Joe personally, but he can take his time with return email, and it being the holidays, he might just be on vacation.
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I don't have enough blasters!

[andy]

Doc,

Here is a close up of the Worldcon hero I thought you might like. It is the left Cylinder cover showing a hole hidden behind a screw close to where you put your hole as a gas release.



Andy

[Noeland]

There is also a gap on the top of that side plate. It doesn't actually touch the steyr reciever.
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I don't have enough blasters!

[BeastMaster]

I think I read it in the paul m sammon book. they used a magnesium strip of some sort to produce the flare. no blanks were used. does anybody else remember reading this?
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"F*ck it, it's just a movie. Let him worry about it" Harrison Ford

[Noeland]

Sammon also wrote that the pistol was made from a flare gun. He's not a gun guy at all, and we know the hero gun is a real revolver, and based on the corrosion in the barrel, I'd say blanks were indeed used.

A magnesium strip? Is this even something that's made? Are you thinking of flash paper, or flash powder?
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I don't have enough blasters!

[joberg]

Flash paper is only used when even blanks could be dangerous due to the nature of the shot e.g. humans to close to gun=bad news!
The flash coming from the gun is not a Mg strip either.

[BeastMaster]

not sure if he said strip or powder, but it was basically mentioned in an interview with one of the crew. I probably couldn't find the segment if I tried, it's a big ol' book!

though whats bugging me is that I'm sure I've seen some sort of behind the scenes footage of harrison just standing in position and someone ignighting the front of the barrel letting off a pretty crap flash, most likely one of the out takes. however I could have imagined seeing this
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"F*ck it, it's just a movie. Let him worry about it" Harrison Ford

[doc3d]

Flash paper would not produce the flash pattern seen in offworld66's comparison shot, nor would flash cotton (e.g. nitrocellulose). Nor would magnesium ribbon which we used to play with in chem class. (Mg in its various forms was nearly as popular as making triodide or dropping lithium hydride rocks into toilets and then chucking in a match.)

Because film is subjected to so much filtering and image processing in post, I have to admit the color tones within the HF shooting scene baffle me. You can add all sorts of things to tweak the color of a flash (rem: I moonlighted fifteen years as a pyro crew chief-- public displays-- and we used to build some of our own shells, so I know a little about it. By no means an expert though.)

But it sure looks to me like that gun is firing a blank, and the blank has a fairly stiff load.

In the picture below, you can see the problems relating to a Bulldog with its cylinder shrouded, and also the fix I did on my gun to lose the cylinder/barrel gap released gasses. (The right side was no problem because I vented it around the bolt lever, the outfacing screw, and along the top.) The left side is another story. After a test fire, I drilled a vent hole to align with the barrel/cylinder gap. Maybe the cut around the screw in the original prop did the same function. But if you don't get rid of that gas burst, it's going to come out via the course of least resistance. And the back of the cylinder shroud has a large semi-circular gap. Any bit of crap that ended up between the cylinder and the shroud is quite likely to be blown backwards into the face of the shooter, plus the gasses...

doc

[The Loyalizer]