Well, still anecdotal I suppose, but as I have explained in the past, I used to work in Westerns when I was young (no special acting ability, but I could sit a horse relatively well having grown up on a ranch in the high country of Colorado and since my mother was a minor character actor in her time, she recommended me when asked and I used to work pretty regular in the waning days of the Western). And that’s pretty much how I saw it. In addition, some of it is what the old timers told me or showed me.
The stunt coordinator for Stagecoach was Yakima Canutt, who many consider to be the greatest stuntman of all time.
And if my question were about something as important and rare as a Presidential assassination, I’d have asked for firm cites.
Since it’s not, all I needed to be satisfied was a few ideas on how the effects could reasonably have been done.
Look at that clip again. If you hold the cursor over the sliding position “thingy”, and you place the cursor just off the slider’s center when the arrows hit, and click, you can replay that second over and over again. Both arrows were “hinged”. The bottom arrow is the most obvious. The clip starts as the first arrow is beginning its “spring”, and the second arrow you can clearly see swinging out. Both swing out from about the 1 or 2 o’clock position.
What you need and what I need are, clearly, different. We’re talking about use of real, true lethal weapons pressed into service as special effects when there were established theatrical effects that could have been used instead. I want a firm cite that film maker so-and-so preferred the real thing and why.
That would make sense, I was about to post that you can see the holes before the arrows hit.
I don’t see that at all. And after the arrows hit, the wood around it is undamaged. Wouldn’t there be a “scar” from where the arrows emerged?
It a twist on the sharpshooter dodge, in It’s a Wonderful Life, in the scene where George and Mary are at the Granville house (where they eventually move) and Mary pegs a rock, breaking a windowpane, Capra had a sharpshooter ready to shoot out the pane. He wasn’t necessary – Donna Reed was an ex-softball pitcher and nailed it first try.
You can see where the bottom arrow came out; there’s a black mark that appears and disappears a couple inches above the strike point, just when the arrow starts to move down. Maybe they had a flap of fabric or something over it before it sprang out.
If you time the clicks to repeat the scene over & over, it becomes pretty clear (at least to me).
But you can see the top arrow come in from frame-right and strike the panel.