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By Michael

Most amateur/semi-professional video/film makers will want guns at some stage or another, but given the low budget that usually accompanies these sorts of films, hiring modified weapons which fire blanks is usually not an option. After unsuccessfully looking around on the web for a cheap alternative, I decided to come up with my own method, which is detailed here for your convenience.

It requires the ability to edit your footage on your computer. If you aren't going to edit your footage on your computer at all, this technique won't work for you, and the only real option you'll have is to find proper Hollywood guns or pay mega $$$ for a post production to add flashes and sound.

Part 1: The Props

I originally was after a gun reminiscent of the Pulse Rifle from Aliens, and was planning to build it out of wood and PVC piping. After realising how complicated this was going to be (and after all, I'm a nerd, not a carpenter) I decided the best alternative would be to go hunting for a Super Soaker style toy and modify that.

After a small hunt (I tried about 3 stores) I ended up settling with an M16A2 shaped water pistol from Crazy Clints. It cost me AU$7.95. It was flourescent green and pink. Naturally, I bought a can of black gloss spray paint for about $6.

I spent the next few hours slightly modifying the weapon - I drilled a large hole into the barrel instead of the trademark waterpistol pin-prick opening and removed the thin plastic water hose which drove the water up from the clip. I also stuck some gaffer tape over the filling hole and removed the standard cap that comes with it, hiding the fact that it is, in fact, a water pistol, not an M16A2 5.56mm Semiautomatic Rifle. After spray painting it black, I now had a weapon that looked good on camera from a distance and for close-ups, with moving parts (the loading action on the water pistol worked, originally intended to add pressure to the water pistol, and the trigger of course moved back + forwards).

I nicked a shoulder strap from a spare lap-top bag I had lying around and attached some hooks to the rifle, so now I had a gun with a strap that could be pointed straight at the camera in close-up and still look quite realistic (thanks to the wide open barrel).

The only thing missing now was the muzzle flash and sound when I pulled the trigger.

Part 2: The Muzzle Flash

I got some really shoddy gun-firing footage (make sure the actor feigns recoil - it makes life easier for you to see where the shots should be), captured in my bedroom with my webcam (hence all the dropped frames). Normally, you'd be working with DV or analog footage captured from a real camera, but hey, who's counting, right?

Anyway, I saved the clip as individual frames in BMP format using Virtual Dub 1.4. So I had a list of files from gunflash000.bmp to gunflash440.bmp. I then scrolled through the frames in slow motion (this is easy to do with ACD See Classic - just open gunflash000.bmp and use the mouse wheel or page-up and down to scroll one frame at a time) and worked out which shots would look best with a gun flash - thanks to the brilliant actor's recoiling, it was easy to see where the shots should be. I wrote down the relevant frame numbers, and then took to Adobe Photoshop. Paint Shop Pro would also work.

The first thought I had was "What the hell does a flash really look like, anyway?" To answer this, I took to my favourite DVD, Aliens. Plenty of scenes in dark tunnels where marines fire sideways, giving you a good glance at the actual gun flash in freeze frame. After getting the feel for the flashes, I got out the good old airbrush and started working my magic. I came up with the following 5 flashes:

Flashes 1 & 2 are the same, flipped vertically. Flashes 3 & 4 are the same, flipped vertically.
Flash 5 is a "semi-flash". On film, not all the muzzle flashes pick up equally
(due to timing of the camera and the duration of the flashes).
Sometimes these semi-flashes appear.
I decided to create one just for true-to-film emulation value :-)

Now that we have the flashes ready, all we do is:

• Open up the BMP frame we want to edit,
• Add a random gun flash as a new layer to the frame,
• Position it (this includes rotating, scaling),
• Set the overlay mode of the flash layer to "Screen",
• Airbrush some fake light into the scenery,
• Airbrush some fake light onto the actor.

This will give you a sufficient gun flash. Repeat this procedure for each frame you need a flash.

There are a tonne of programs available to convert an image sequence back into a video clip. Some personal favourites of mine include Adobe Premiere and Nothing Real's Shake. As most of you will probably be working with Premiere, all you need to do is select File -> Import -> Movie... then select the file gunflash000.bmp and check the box marked "Image sequence". Click OK and you're done.

Part 3: The Sound

Here comes the easy bit. Gun shots are readily available from TV shows, web pages, computer games, etc. etc. I nabbed the MP-5 from Counterstrike. Simply add a gunshot sound at the beginning of each firing frame. That's it. I added some background music by The Orb for fun.

The Finished Product

Download the finished clip as a DivX AVI (578KB) (Get the latest DivX codec here!)

Download the finished clip as an MPEG (512KB)

Any feedback is much appreciated.

One goddamned thing leads to another goddamned thing.