Hollywood's Gun Fights

[TheOtherOne]

Anyone seen Shaun of the Dead?

Besides the zombies, I thought the gun scene in Shaun of the Dead was very realistic. None of them had ever fired a gun before (besides one who shot his aunt with an air gun) and when Shaun goes to shoot it for the first time nothing happens. Everyone starts yelling at him to give him advice. "Work the safety button" got me laughing. Finally he gets it to fire and although close to the zombies, he's constantly missing. They only had 29 rounds and I think out of all the shots he hit zombies maybe 6 or 7 times.

 

[juggler]

Collateral - I like that one. I watched the scene where Cruise shot the two punky dudes from retention.

Don't know how it's gonna come out, but I am going to introduce that scenario this weekend. Draw > 2 shots from retention CM target 1 > 2 CM/ 1 Head target 2 .... should be interesting.

Should I throw in the inside block with the weak hand?

 

[carebear]

Ah yes, the soon to become legendary "Yo Homey" stage.

Throw in the block.

 

[MBane666]

We did an episode of SHOOTING GALLERY with Mike Tristano, a cool B-movie director and movie armorer. He's got a huge amount of experience, including experience with people shooting real bullets at him, but he confirms that what Okie says is true...what the director wants, the director gets. Tristano shows them the right way, then they go right ahead and do it whatever way they want.

We've also done a series of training seminars with the top stuntwomen in Hollywood (I know, my life sucks, but someone has to do it), using world-class police and military instructors. We did an event in November, and I was standing up on a hill watching two (short) women — one who'd been one of the Mini drivers in "The Italian Job" and the other who'd doubled the sainted Buffy the Vampire Slayer for four seasons — run a stage where she'd have to exit a car on the passenger side, smack a close up steel falling target with a crowbar, run to open the trunk, get a gun out of a zipped pouch, load it and finish the stage. The girls were scary good. The second unit director I was standing alongside said, "Congratulations, Michael. They're like vicious little Hobbits now. With guns."

Michael B

PS: WAY OF THE GUN is probably the best gun movie ever, IMO!

 

[TonyB]

One surprising place I saw good gun handling in a movie was Beverly hills cop..reloads....Eddie even does a one handed reload w/ his BHP...the sequels got progressively worse though...
also there was a movie a caught the end of on HBO recently..Killing Emmett something or other...where a cop is dying and hires a hit man to kill him...the hit man uses a 686 at the end and actually uses speedloaders that are in holders on his belt..pretty cool....

 

[T. Bracker]

Although in one of the Beverly Hills Cop movies, Eddie grabs a ride on a moving garbage truck or cement truck and you clearly see his gun fall out of his waistband, but then at the next scene he has it with him again!

 

[R.H. Lee]

Just got around to seeing "Heat" last night. How about the shootout after the bank robbery?

 

[ScorpioVI]

Y'all need to see Way Of The Gun. The best Hollywood portrayal of guns and gun fights, ever. They only fudged up one scene the whole movie as previously mentioned. (Benicio Del Toro + Galil = Horizontal Stitching).

Don't know how it's gonna come out, but I am going to introduce that scenario this weekend. Draw > 2 shots from retention CM target 1 > 2 CM/ 1 Head target 2 .... should be interesting.

Should I throw in the inside block with the weak hand?

We did the "Hey Homey" stage at the last IDPA match I went to. Too short for a stage though so they added a few more targets which you had to engage while retreating.

 

[nomadboi]

I've worked as armorer on a couple Indie films and local theatre productions here- I run a small props rental business. Mostly for no pay, never for big bucks.

Some directors listen and follow through. Most listen and then take what they want and toss out the rest. If cartooney action will sell better or fit their vision better, that's what they'll do.

Generally I'm happy if I can just keep them from killing anyone- one director was quite insistent for a while about wanting an over-the-shoulder (and down the barrel) view of multiple people being shot close-range by a real shotgun firing blanks. Eventually talked him into a different angle so the shooter could aim off target and not have it show, but it took a while... and took blowing some holes in cardboard to make my point.

Too bad nobody makes good replica shotguns that are safe to fire at close range...

 

[Jim K]

If you are puzzled by some peculiar looking movie guns, or concerned about blanks harming a actor, you might realize that more and more movies use dummy guns. If real guns are used, insurance costs go way up. If blanks are used, costs go a lot higher. So directors use pure dummy guns (cast plastic usually) and the flash and bang are added to the digital master later, just like the "light sabers" in Star Wars, where actors waved fake sword hilts at each other and IL&M added the light and the "clang". "Bullet hits" on walls, cars, etc., are faked by small explosive pellets placed in the target and painted over; they are fired by electricity. That is why you see "bullets" seeming to strike sparks, something that doesn't happen with real bullets.

And no one runs out of ammunition.

Jim

 

[nomadboi]

Yeah, the home-made squibs (those bullet hit things you mention) we used on the last film I worked on ("Bullets, Blood, & a FistFull of Cash) were really sparky and smokey... just the type of powder they used, I think. It'll look a bit funny when people spark and smoke (as well as bleed) when shot, but hey, when you're on a really tight budget, them's the breaks.

We used a mix of Airsoft, Blank fire, real, rubber/resin, and pfc replica guns.

 

[GhostRider-Nine]

What about Bruce Willis in Die Hard 2....I wish I had me one of them 300 round mags for my 9mm.

 

[Rebeldon]

Don't forget the Glock 7.

"That punk pulled a GLOCK 7 on me. You know what that is? It's a porcelain gun made in Germany. It doesn't show up on your airport X-ray machines, and it cost more than you make here in a month."

 

[GhostRider-Nine]

Yeah, I always wanted one of them too.

 

[RyanM]

(long time lurker, first time poster, but I won't bore you with a long intro)

I haven't seen that many movies, so the only one, of what I've watched, that seemed to have an even vaguely realistic shoot-out in it was Taxi Driver. At least everyone's reaction to being shot is quite more realistic than the "bang, you're dead!" approach of most movies.

For instance, the first guy Travis (the anti-hero) shoots, a pimp, is hit point-blank in the stomach with a .38 spl. He yells "oh, oh, oh!" and falls over, clutching at a doorframe for support, but is able to stagger into a nearby building and shoot Travis in the neck later on. Another guy is hit multiple times in the head and neck with a .25 ACP, and staggers backwards, firing wildly, instead of just collapsing instantly.

I also took the time to mentally count the shots, and none of the guns exceeded their capacities; .38 snubbie, 5 shots; .32 or something, 3 shots; .44 magnum, 2 shots; another .38, 6 shots; .25 auto, 6 or 7, I forget.

The biggest problem, probably, is the blood was rather orange for some reason.

Far from perfect, like the .44 blowing half a guy's hand off, but definitely not the worst, not at all.

 

[PrudentGT]

"Congratulations, Michael. They're like vicious little Hobbits now. With guns."

...ROFLMAO! That made my day -- well, that and learning that I wasn't the only one who watched the 'Yo Homey' scene from collateral a dozen times...