I have one of these as well. The muzzle blast of the .350Rem Mag out of an 18.5 in. barrel gets some serious attention whenever I take it to the range.
Are there ANY movies that *accurately* represent the noise of a gunshot and peoples' reaction to it?
That’s the film I came in here to mention, as loud noises are typically followed up with a continual “ringing ears” effect over the soundtrack.
Yeah, I wonder if there hasn’t been a reaction against faked-up gun sounds. On Michael Mann’s TV shows, *Miami Vice *and Robbery Homicide Division, there were of course limits on how loud gunfire could be. So in Miami Vice, at least, they added extra sounds (like a backwards lion roar, iirc) to give the gunfire an impressive effect. This was publicized negatively in the 1980’s by someone saying, in effect, Well, of course real gunfire doesn’t sound that cool.
Given a) the real risk of hearing damage, & b) the fact that the hard of hearing (like me) will have trouble following a movie with huge variations in volume, it makes sense to represent whispers louder than reality and gunfire softer. So on reflection the weird overlays make a sort of dramatic sense.
Me too - in fact, I seem to recall threads here on the SDMB where it was generally agreed that the sound of gunfire, when heard across or down the street, was more like a loud ‘crack’ sound than the ‘BLAM!-CRASH!’ sound used in movies.
(granted, most people in this thread seem to be talking about gunfire in a confined space)
And it ends with what is, for me, one of Mamet’s greatest exchanges ever:
DeVito Don’t you wanna hear my last words?
Hackman I just did.
You just can’t replicate a true gunshot for film or TV. As the OP stated, guns are LOUD.
Non-shooters don’t have any idea. Everytime I point out that this or that character would be deaf, both of my kids roll their eyes & yell “Dad, it’s a MOVIE!”.
Terminator 2? Breaking Sarah out of the wacky hut? They make it to an elevator where Arnold is shooting a shotgun, then Sarah unloads a .45 at the T-1000. I wouldn’t want to be in there even with earplugs under my headset. Guns indoors are unbelievably loud.
I have an Armalite AR-50. The muzzle brake on it is huge, and if you’re 45degrees to my side, the blast is incredible. Ever watch a tank’s main gun fire? See how the very dirt all around just jumps up and hangs for a moment? That’s what a .50BMG does.
I was taping a shooting session, and about to fire, when some idiot with no headgear on walks by. He sees I’m about to fire and sticks his fingers in his ears. No matter.
At 45 degrees to the muzzle, he caught it all, and started cussing up a storm.
Good times…
The polar opposite is true as well. Hollywood never gets suppressed weapons sounds correct. If you shoot a supersonic round (9mm, most rifles), you’ll get a supersonic crack the same loudness, even if you don’t hear the blast itself. Only a bolt-action with sub-sonic rounds is what we call “Hollywood Quiet”
Loud music until 1:20, then crank it up.
Abe Zapruder’s movie did a pretty good job.
In regards to peoples reaction. My memory is telling me that a director somewhere did something like this. They had the main actor doing his thing (probably somethinng like looking into the camera like he was talking to someone). The director, without telling the actor what was going on (and probably gave him a somewhat inaccurate script), had somebody fire a blank closeby (probably right behind the actor and just off screen). And of course, as the actor is delivering his lines it scares and startles the shit out him at the right time (just what the director wanted).
Anybody recall this or am I just inventing it out of whole cloth?
This is the example that always comes to mind for me, even if it does occur in an already ridiculous science fantasy. (Which I happened to really enjoy, but that’s beside the point.)
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Watched The Kingdom a couple of nights ago (good movie by the way), at one point someone fires a heavy machine-gun next to the female investigator and she was depicted as being hurt and stunned by it.
The human ear can discern around 140dB of audio dynamic range (ratio of softest to loudest sound that can be heard). The gunshot would have to be pretty close to the 140 dB limit. The electronics used to process audio will limit what can be used in a movie or home theater. A CD player at 16 bit resolution will do around 96dB dynamic range. Advanced digital processors with higher bit rates can go as high as 144dB dynamic range in theory but the analog circuitry the audio must flow thru to reach the speakers will limit that range back closer to the 100 dB mark.
Probably a good thing.
I never realized gun shots were as loud as everyone always says. The ones I have shot and heard shot didn’t seem that loud. But I guess I my idea of loud is different than most.
Mythbusters did this, though right? Didn’t they say the sound can be duplicated pretty well, but obviously not the decible levels? I’m not sure about anything I posted just now. Sigh. Why do I post when I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about?
I don’t know about the noise factor, but I always thought the shooting (and wounding, and killing) scene on top of the parking garage in *Fargo *seemed extremely realistic. So much so that it’s very distressing to me to watch it. The father-in-law’s reaction to being shot seems extremely true-to-life, and Steve Buscemi’s wound looks 100% real. It makes my jaw ache just to think about it now.
Oh, yeah. Yikes. As odious as his character was, I actually felt a little sorry for him.
The first time I heard .44 magnum being fired It reminded of being close to a ground strike by lightning. It isn’t just a matter of being loud, even though it is loud even through plugs and muffs. You can feel the pressure hit your chest.
I noticed a Desert Eagle in .44 Magnum isn’t nearly as loud.
I remember the first time I was behind a berm and heard the crack of a rifle round passing overhead. It took a couple of times before I actually figured out what I was hearing. Of course, my reaction was, “Those morons can’t even hit the berm!?”.
That reminds me of the movie, Joe Kidd. There is a scene where someone is shooting at them from several hundred yards away. You would hear a thunk when a bullet hit someone and then a report from the rifle a second or two later, but there wasn’t a crack from the bullet itself. Did they just screw up or were they implying that the bullet was sub-sonic when it got to the target?
Just saw the Anglina Jolie action thriller Salt and, without giving too much away, there are several scenes were pistols and machine guns are being fired in enclosed spaces without ear protection and, moments later, characters are talking. So… not too realistic.
One thing that really surprised me when I fired a .44 revolver the first time was, besides the tremendous noise, was the force that came back through my arms. There was unbelievable energy there.
It felt like I was holding up a phonebook and someone was hitting the other side with a sledgehammer at full force. And, with regards to Newton, I realized that that same amount of energy was coming out the other end contained in a little piece of metal. I thought, 'Oh my God, people are hit with these things?" As far as pistols go, is a .44 magnum even necessary?
Strictly speaking, what you are sensing is the impulse or change in momentum, which is a vector quantity. (Energy is a state quantity that is derived from measurements such as speed or temperature.) The kinetic energy in the fired bullet measured at the muzzle is around 1200 ft-lbf; the respected and hard-hitting .45 ACP, by comparison, has around 420 to 430 ft-lbf of kinetic energy in the SAAMI spec loading and about 500 ft-lbf in the high pressure loads.
As for the necessity, the .44 Remington Magnum was not designed for law enforcement or combat use, but rather for large game hunting where greater penetration is needed than for a human target. The .44 Magnum is massively overpowered for personnel combat use, and aside from popular film series involving maverick cops and unstoppable vigilantes is isn’t used by law enforcement.
Stranger
I’ve never fired a .44mag, but used to do a lot of target practice with a .357, and even with that gun I sometimes wondered the same thing.
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