Lots of things are “often lazy writing”, including sword fights, sex scenes, et al.
Comedy can be done in a trivial and absurdist setting.
Drama needs some stakes, and one very visceral way of creating those stakes is to put someone’s life at risk who the audience has spent time creating a relationship with.
So comedy can still be entertaining in a Barney Miller type setting, but drama? I don’t see it.
Is it the gun fights that make you a fan of Westerns? I’ll admit the three way showdown in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time, but it was the story behind the circumstances of that climax that made it interesting. Most gun fights are just guys shooting at each other until somebody gets hit. Compared to the choreography of a sword or fist fight, most gun fights seem remarkably identical and boring to me.
Yes, of course the gun fight must fit in a great story arc, and funnily I had the shoot-out scene in “The Good, The Bad And The Ugly” in mind when posting. Another one would be the crucial shooting in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”. Both excellent Westerns with great narration that climax in a shooting scene.
Hmm.
•What constitutes over-representation? How would you determine this? Would guns be OK in documentaries about WWII or assassinations but not in movie depictions like Saving Private Ryan or The Conspirator?
•Would it make a significant difference in the level of gun violence if we didn’t make TV shows depicting trigger-happy cops, drive-by shootings, or armed robberies?
•When do you determine that writers are including gun violence due to being “too lazy”? Is it by number of episodes that introduce gun violence as the conflict, or do setting, characterization, and other elements matter?
•How do you depict a culture that’s practically obsessed with guns without in fact depicting guns? When does gun violence become gratuitous?
• How much of a factor should audience preference be? If 90% of viewers of a TV show watch mainly because they hope to see shootings, should that be ignored even if it means ratings would plummet?
•Which leads us to the old argument : When do the arts and entertainment mirror social trends and when do they create or popularize them? If movies, TV, literature, plays, etc. stopped focusing on guns, would that reduce the number of guns and the amount of gun violence? (And would that require not showing old movies and reruns, too?)
Good directing is often the perception of something without actually showing it. Some of the best horror movies I’ve seen involved techniques that created a terrifying monster without ever showing the monster. I still remember a movie from when I was a kid that involved a haunted house. The sound of clawing on a door and then the sound of something heavy striking it combined with the visuals of the door starting to fail was absolutely terrifying. There were all manner of cinematic techniques used to build suspense.
It was far cheaper to film than some cheesy swamp monster and much more effective. And even though CG has come a long way in the last 20 years it’s no substitute for the techniques honed over the years.
I don’t understand the level of gratuitous movie gun play or violence in general. I had to refrain from laughing out loud when I saw Taken in a movie theater. It was it’s own parody of shoot-em-up movies.
Out of curiosity, are guns overrepresented in non-gun-culture film industries, like say in England? I honestly don’t know. If so, maybe it has something to do with there only being so many different kinds of stories to tell. If not, that might be a good example to point to for arguing that there could be less gunplay in American film.
James Bond, any Guy Ritchie film, endless rafts of WWII films…
If anything, guns are probably more overrepresented in British films than in US films, if only because guns are so much rarer in the UK than in the US.
This might be a good place to add this shootout scene from Michael Mann’s ‘Heat’.
Scroll to 4:15 for the action. This is one of the best gunfights in film history.
A few points:
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If you want to hear what blank fire is, this is it. Normally, gun blank sounds are removed and new gunfire added on a Foley stage. They tried to do that with this scene, but couldn’t get the echoes and such right. So they just left in the real sounds of all the guns firing. It was a great choice and adds a lot to the scene.
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Blanks are LOUD. You can hear them echoing through the streets.
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The actors were all highly trained for this. Proper trigger discipline and gun handling throughout. So much so that I’ve heard this scene is used for police and military training. The part where they are advancing under cover fire is straight from the Marine handbook. The weapons guy on this film was ex-SAS.
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Val Kilmer in particular is very good, Watch his mag changes. They are about as good as it gets. Note he also fires the gun after the mag change, meaning he was using blanks and not just dummies. That’s still dangerous, both to himself and the crew, but he maintains barrel and trigger discipline. Watch when he turns to shoot behind him. There is a cameraman behind and to the right of him, so he spins to the left to shoot. When he turns back forward he lifts the gun barrel to the sky before turning. At no point does the barrel ever come near the cameraman.
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There is no serious recoil. You see the guns jerk a bit, but that’s due to the blanks cycling the action.
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People point those real guns at other people, and shoot blanks at them. All frm a ssfe distance, though.
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The guns aren’t the only safety concern here. There are hundreds of explosive ‘squibs’ all over the place. Those can be dangerous. Ever wonder why you usually see people get shot in the shoulder instead of center chest? Stunt coordinators don’t like putting squibs over the heart, as they can pack a bit of a punch to the actor.
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One of the risks action stars have is hearing damage. Keifer Sutherland has permanent hearing damage from shooting guns on ‘24’. I’m sure lots of other actors do as well.
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There are shell casings, smoke, and flashes all over. This would be really hard yo CGI.
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Everything in that scene was shot safely.
I kind of feel the same way. Someone points a gun, it goes bang, and the story moves forward. I couldn’t care less if the recoil is realistic, or the slide is back, or that wasn’t an NYPD issued gun in 1946 , or whatever.
But there are lots of sticklers out there who scream very loudly if every detail is not absolutely authentic.
Moderating:
While the question of “(why) are guns over-represented in drama?” is an interesting one, it’s become a hijack to this thread about gun safety in film. If folks would like me to move some posts to a new thread, I can do that. (DM me) but please drop the topic in this thread.
Moderating; This sort of personal attack is inappropriate outside the pit. Please cut it out.
There are many movies where that is the case - both the shooting and the being shot are fake and obviously so to anyone with actual experience in these matters. Both war and cowboy movies from round the 1930’s through the 1960’s tended towards that.
There’s a contrasting trend in movies to make them more realistic, and it was that trend that led to more and more realism in props like guns and their effects.
I’ve heard the argument that unrealistic depictions of shooting and its effects can lead to real-life tragedies when people don’t take real guns as seriously as they should. I’ve heard the argument that realistic depictions of shooting and its effects are traumatizing.
Suffice to say, you aren’t the first to think of this, nor is it a new idea.
Missed the edit window: I wonder if the reason so many post-WWII productions had unrealistic shooting (such as no blood) was because so many people of that era had actual experience of war and had had more than enough of the real thing. They wanted the story without the gore.
Despite US “gun culture”, most people have no direct, real experience of guns or shoot-outs. Wonder if the yen for realism, in some, is connected with not having had actual experience?
Just a thought.
Keep in mind that “realism” in film means “closer to other films that aspire to be realistic”, not “closer to how it would happen in real life”. Film has developed an entire language to represent common tropes that often diverges from real life in such a way that it can often be jarring and fake seeming when the real real version is used.
For example, there’s a stereotypical silencer sound in films that sounds nothing like real life, bald eagles in films are dubbed with the screech of a red tailed hawk etc.
Don’t know about that. I, like millions of people, have hunted most of my life, and know full well what various projectiles do to living things, gore and all. But still, I can’t stand the completely inaccurate gun use depictions in most films. Having realism baked into the action scenes makes them definitely fresher and more vivid.
As far as accurately period weapons go, it’s the same as with the clothing, the housing, the transportation. No film is perfect in this regard, but the more anachronisms there are and the more they deviate from the facts, the more it takes me out of the story. But then, I’m a history professional, as are most of my friends.
The ultimate downside of this effect is that when two airliners fly into a couple of tall buildings which then collapse, some people feel that it “doesn’t look realistic” and must have been faked.
I saw a production of “the massacre of the innocents” (from the gospel story) in which people were “stabbed” with stylized weapons and red silk scarves represented blood. So, as each “sword” was withdrawn, the actor grabbed an end of a previously-hidden scarf, so it appeared that blood was spurting out of the victim.
It obviously didn’t look anything like real blood. But i wasn’t expecting it, and it was obvious what was being portrayed. It was completely effective from a narrative perspective.
So yeah, you can tell a gripping story without realistic weapons.
I don’t want to be “that guy,” but…
This death and injury are tragic, but were easily preventable had everybody followed the proper safety protocols. The calls to ban all guns from movie/TV productions is asinine. That’s like banning all automobiles because Roger Rodas killed himself in his, taking Paul Walker with him. They managed to make something as elaborate as Saving Private Ryan with only a couple of cases of “Garand thumb.” Why were there not multiple dead and injured during the shoot? Because the proper safety protocols were followed religiously, and they didn’t cheap out on the crew. You can’t make anything foolproof, because fools are just too damn clever. The best you can do is follow accepted procedures and keep an eye on the stupid/lazy/careless (ie “fools.”)
While this is ironic it brings up the point of what IS realistic. Over the years I’ve watched western movies where the clothing becomes more and more “realistic”. Certainly early western costumes were not authentic but it seems like some kind of need to redefine what is real. Put another way, the sets appear to imbue a “new real” to replace last years “new-real”. Are the people used as historic costume consultants wrong year after year?
I’ve never seen anyone shot so I have no idea what it looks like. However, my perception of how it would look is entirely driven by entertainment mediums. So, there may be a constant need to raise the bar of what is real to capture the attention of audiences. It certainly has become more and more graphic over the years.