I don’t think any “green-screening” would be necessary as the goal would be to superimpose a muzzle flash, not to entirely replace a portion of the background with an artificial image.
I mean that having something to key off of would allow the CGI to place the flash in the proper place with proper orientation. Like if the gun is at an angle, then the flash should also appear to be angled. But sometimes the CGI flash doesn’t seem like it’s lined up or oriented properly, so it looks fake. If there was something sticking out of the gun with motion dots on it, the computer could figure out the exact placement and angle so that the flash looked perfect.
Muzzle fire is bright enough to light up the surroundings, so if you really want it to look right it can get complicated.
I never drink… wine.
That’s just bad CGI work, ISTM. If you want something to present the exact angle to a computer you could have discrete guides on the weapon itself. And I don’t think any keying would be necessary but I haven’t thought the whole thing through in much detail.
But really, it’s not that hard to ascertain the precise angle that a prop weapon is pointed. A good example of the more expensive and time-consuming parts of the CGI work was suggested by Folly.
Dwayne Johnson’s statement about using exclusively rubber guns, like the proposed legislation from the California lawmaker about banning actual guns from movie sets, may sound good to the layperson, but neither idea really gets at the true problem, and just adds another layer of procedure and double-checks. As has been demonstrated by hundreds of film and TV productions and possibly millions of on-screen gunshots over the decades, the existing safety framework is entirely adequate as long as its protocols are followed.
No — the real problem here is that film crews are overworked to the point of exhaustion, which makes them sloppy, and they are professionally punished for insisting on adherence to the written rules, which incentivizes collusion in lax procedures. A real solution puts teeth into workers’ rights, making endless 15-hour days a rarity and insulating people from backlash when they blow the whistle on unsafe practices.
But then it’s not surprising that The Rock would make a statement like this, considering he’s one of the worst offenders when it comes to abusing film crews’ schedules. He is notorious for compelling inhumanly grueling hours, demanding that work continue through lunches and dinners day after day after day. Union contracts include meal penalties to discourage this kind of abuse, but Johnson’s nine-figure projects just absorb this as a cost. He has cultivated a positive, audience-friendly image, but he is deeply unloved by the below-the-liners on his sets.
Don’t be fooled. He’s not addressing the real problem. He’s just managing his brand, which is all he ever does now.
I hope I didn’t miss a post saying the same thing, but I’ve been thinking while reading this thread that actors sometimes have to pretend to shoot and sometimes pretend to be shot.
It may be because I do not know much at all about the mechanics and expense of executing either one, but why should the shooting have to be so realistic that it is practically indistinguishable from real shooting? The being shot aspect clearly can never be real and always needs to be simulated and acted.
If the viewers can suspend their disbelief for the being shot part never being real, is it so important for the shooting part to appear absolutely accurate?
Just musing about this since this very sad situation occurred. I hope they get to the root of it.
We’ve all managed to live with the Enterprise whooshing in space. We can manage unrealistic shooting.
There are very talented CGI compositing artists out there who understand the way gunfire can be made to look realistic, and though it takes extra time to do it, is worth it if accuracy matters to the story. However, that time can be reduced if a dedicated plug-in was developed, e.g. much like Andrew Kramer’s Lens Flare app or Lightsabre plug-in, that will address the commonalities in a dynamic and creative, and accurate, way, leaving the artist to just line things up and play with some sliders.
And he completely missed my point because I was specifically talking about firearms, not violence or war.
And you missed my point–movies don’t feature firearms because they’re trying to appeal to gun enthusiasts like the sort of people who watch History Channel documentaries on John Browning, or who go to gun shows. They are no more a “crutch” for storytelling than all story telling which features war and violence, which is a significant part of human story telling. They feature guns because they are featuring combat and violence, and firearms are the weapons of modern combat and violence. I’m a little embarrassed for you I had to explain that so bluntly as it was patently obvious with even a little bit of effort.
Why does almost every cop show feature gun play? Most police have never even fired a gun in the line of duty. Guns are featured in drama way out of proportion to their actual use in real life.
Okay, you understand if there was a fictional narrative TV series featuring a policeman who, in a simulation of real-life police work, spent an entire season of 13 episodes sitting in his car running radar to catch speeders; and then the next season was showing him spend 15 hours doing paper work over a number of days, it probably would not be considered entertaining?
How many of the Mycenean Greeks do you think were warriors? Why don’t we have tales from that time about Menelaus the Shepherd of Iolcus, who lived for 52 years, during which he raised many sheep and goats, was married, and fathered 5 children, three of whom lived to adulthood. He never learned to read nor write, lived in the same hovel he was raised in, and never traveled more than 15 miles from the place of his birth. He died of a short illness in his bed.
What reason might you imagine we don’t have any famous stories like that that were passed down from 3000+ years ago like we do the Odyssey and the Iliad?
Most of Barney Miller was paperwork! And the people they brought in were never big time crooks in any sense. Most weren’t even what we’d call bad people.
Stop with the straw men. We are talking about guns. They wouldn’t be over represent in film and TV if writers weren’t too lazy to find other ways to bring conflict into their stories or so inclined to cater to what has frankly become a fetish on the part of a large portion of their audience.
There are different kinds of cop shows. Action, and procedural. Procedurals focus more on the day-to-day tasks as they methodically solve a case. Very little running around, car chases, or waving guns in people’s faces, a lot more interviews, forensics, and examining dead bodies. These shows are phenomenally popular, and should be more common in America. But instead even shows like Bones or CSI default back to guns over and over.
Medical dramas exaggerate the frequency of major trauma events, or once-in-a-lifetime surgeries or the need for a defibrillator (see ER for example). Dramas featuring fire personnel have way more major incidents than real life (see 911 and 911: Lone Star for examples).
Okay dude I’ve been alive since the 1950s, I’ve seen police procedurals. Even those show highly dramatized versions of police work, and almost none of the drudgery. Like even great shows like The Wire show basically the interesting shit, not the 95% of the job that is a lot of waiting around doing nothing, or working through very mundane calls and cases. The Wire at least suggests that much of the job is long and tedious…they just don’t sit there and make you actually watch Sidnor and Freamon listen to 300 hours of wire taps. They just tell you that’s what they had to do, and instead have the actual scenes being more interesting content.
There is literally no straw man. You asked why firearms are shown so frequently. I said because war and violence are shown so frequently. You’re acting like the two are disconnected, they are not. I’m confused why you think there’s something special about “firearm” versus like “why do so many Medieval movies focus on the Knights” or “why so many Roman movies focus on the gladiators? Rome didn’t even have gladiators for large portions of its history!”
A gladiator fight is interesting and novel. A gun fight is boring and ridiculously unimaginative. It’s often shorthand for good guy wins, bad guy loses. It’s often very lazy writing.
A gun fight also can be very thrilling. Ask me and millions of other Western fans.