Best Muzzle Flash

J

jinvernizzi

Member
Hey guys,

Who do you use for muzzle flashes. I have seen Action movie essentials. Any ideas would be great. Not overly priced but also not cheap. Thanks!
 
Buy the book "The DV Rebel's Guide" by Stu Maschwitz. Not only is it a great read but on the accompanying DVD are a bunch of muzzle flashes.
 
Videocopiloet.com has a great set of muzzle blast you can buy, all set and ready for you to use. It comes with some great extras too.
 
I think much more important than the muzzle flash, which can be made in photoshop relatively easily, is the smoke and ejected casing. The stuff on detonation films looks pretty good for that (minus the casing, which I guess you'd have to animate).
 
Also, it's important to consider the illumination from the flash if you're in a night or low light scene. You don't have to be completely anal about it but you should bring the frame with the flash into PhotoShop and use the "dodge" tool to lighten surfaces that are closest to the flash (shooter's arm, furniture edges etc.) as a true muzzle flash will serve as a significant luminaire for that brief instance. A little bit of frame painting will do wonders for selling the shot.
 
I'm going to be shooting a scene soon where I need several muzzle flashes in a completely dark room. For that I'm going to flick the lights on and off, cut the bright section down to one frame, bring that frame into photoshop and spend a bit making it seem like it originates from the gun by doing selective brightening and darkening. It'll take a while to do 6 shots worth, but I think the final product will be worth it.
 
HBlack said:
I'm going to be shooting a scene soon where I need several muzzle flashes in a completely dark room. For that I'm going to flick the lights on and off, cut the bright section down to one frame, bring that frame into photoshop and spend a bit making it seem like it originates from the gun by doing selective brightening and darkening. It'll take a while to do 6 shots worth, but I think the final product will be worth it.
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Instead, I'd suggest using a camera flash (even a cheapie will do). Hold it approximately where the muzzle will be and activate it with video running. Grab the frame from the camera flash and you'll see it is throwing shadows appropriately from the same location as a muzzle flash. If you use the room lights you'll be getting illumination from the ceiling without the proper shadow throws and specular highlights you'll see with the flash. It makes a huge difference and doesn't require very much post work (as compared with trying to convert the room illumination into a muzzle burst illumination).
 
Yeah, I just type in muzzle flash on google and key out the black background. Then afterwards you can just play around with it in photoshop. This is a really cheap way of doing it though and you will have to find other sources for smoke, shell, etc. Also, I agree with what was posted up top detonation films is a great site! Even their free-bees really come in handy sometimes.
 
Don't forget that if you're going for realism, you rarely see a muzzle flash in direct daylight. It can very on the type of gun as well. I've spent a good amount of trigger time on an M4, M16, and an MP5, and I have yet to see anything but smoke coming out. Call me cranky, but I think muzzle flashes are way overused in indie films (and studio films). It looks much more convincing if you get some slide action and a shell eject.
 
Ive got a similar question as HBlack. There is a scene where the room is pitch black, and the muzzle flash from a gun illuminates the room during close quarters right. Would you suggest using a camera flash for this as well?
 
I've figured out my solution. Because it's only 1 frame, I'm going to have somebody holding a lightbulb on a stick up in front of the gun. I can then hide the lightbulb with a muzzle flash, and photoshop out the stick by making sure to get another shot of the scene with the lightbulb coming in from a different location. That way you get nice omni-directional light coming from your intended source (the gun). I'm actually going to be using a DSLR instead of a video camera for that, because I'm only using 1 frame anyway.
 
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