Practical muzzle flashes at night?

P

panag3

New member
Hello DVX User's, I'm new here, but have been using the search feature to get info for years now. However, today I have a question:

I'm going to be shooting a battle/ shoot out scene at night. There will 'bad guys' on a hill in the distance with guns, and they will be shooting down at the good guys.

I would rather not do the muzzle flashes in post, I think it would be tough to do being as it will be super dark out. Blank firing guns are also out of the question.

So with all that, what are my options? Any ideas?

Thanks in advance!
 
I would do tests with photographic strobes--I used one for gunflashes in a scene and met with limited success. In some cases the flash was localized on the actor's body in a realistic manner. All of them were captured in a somewhat interlaced fashion on my DSLR though, if you've seen how these cameras handle strobes you'll know what I'm talking about. It's worth testing under the conditions you specified though, since it worked the best for me in more contrasty lighting. It'll probably look better farther away, and it should give you something to work with in post at least.

An alternate method I've thought of for doing this kind of thing would be to light the actor shooting the gun with a continuous source (a big enough flashlight or one of those little LEDs perhaps) and then bring the actor back down to a shadow with a masked, localized effect, and strobe that shadow layer rather than the reverse, if you will.
 
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I know what you're talking about and it's an interesting approach. If you could post some clips online so we can see how it turned out.

Perhaps a quick momentary "on" from a flashlight off screen on to the actors face in combination with a post added muzzle flash would be a good supplementary combo.
 
I've seen a really lo-tech approach with ordinary torches being momentarily 'tapped' on. From a distance, it gave quite acceptable results. Some torches have an adjustable flasher function, which helps with getting the timing right.

As with any night shooting, different cameras give wildly different results, and even the same camera will give wildly different results with different exposure etc settings - you presumably want a certain amount of detail to be visible with no 'shooting', but for the muzzle falshes to look believable on top of that. You definitely need to do a variety of testing before the real shoot.
 
Are you shooting this from the good guys POV/angle (ie distant shot)? You can play with the flashlights/torches. But you might find them too "white" to be of any help alone. A yellow gel or maybe even some CTO will color the light flashes.

But you also have to make sure these are shot dead on at the "mock flashes", because any side views will not have the typical "bloom" gun flashes have, and therefore will be instantly recognized as flashlights. And also remember......gunflashes really only last a few frames, do you have anyone fast enough to cycle the flashlight button that fast? Even if you did, the light put out would really be nothing.

Camera flashes will look just like camera flashes, so a non starter, IMO. The best way to get "Hollywood realistic" looking gunflashes is either in post, or blank firing guns. Have you look at Youtube and searched "night shoots" or night gunflashes to see what the real ones look like?

What you didn't share is what weapons they would be firing? M4's typically have very little muzzle flash:
Tracers and noise are the only way you can tell they are firing.

AK47'son the other hand have a bit (very little bit) more flash:

Don't get me started on his lack of safety.

The big muzzle flashes are primarily Hollywood fiction for modern firearms, unless your characters are firing black powder muskets. The only time you would get a big bloom is a bad load of powder in the cartridge for most modern weapons.

Just wanted to give you both a Hollywood perspective and what the real thing actually looked like. If you split the difference....you will be ok. But doing it in post will probably look more realistic than trying to rig a practical with lights.
 
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If I was going to test out a solution to this I would start with a snooted (Or a can light) tungsten open faced light on a rheostat dimmer. The snoot or can light would give a bit of shaped directionality and quickly cycling the dimmer on and off would give a kind of bloom effect as the color changes with the voltage increase and decrease. I tested doing that with an open faced 650 a good while ago to try and get a lightning effect and it did not work for lightning because of the color temp change, we ended up with an arc welder giving the best simulation of lightning (on the budget we were working at). The project we were testing for fell through because of the money, but I am glad we got to do some tests. I remember liking the effect of the tungsten done that way with a dimmer and thought it was more appropriate for an off screen explosion or fire burst. If you try this, keep some spare bulbs around (Well, you should always keep spare bulbs around, but that is another thread). Vigorously ramping a bulb on a dimmer is hard on the bulb. The biggest thing would be getting the timing right. That is why you test.

You know, in thinking about this thread, I have a question. When I was testing out as noted above, the project was intended to be shoot on film, so the overexposure of a bright burst of light was not that big of a deal. Now, with the cameras we have highlight handling and overexposure/clipping can sometimes be problematic. How this is handled by each individuals camera would need to be established by testing, but, I was wondering if anyone else thought this might be a problem?
 
A practical muzzle flash tends to last around 3 frames at 24 fps; ramp up in the first frame, full up and then ramp down in the third. You could never get this effect with a rheostat or dimmer, it's simply too fast. Most tungsten units have a longer decay time than this, even if you were to snap them on and off.

I described in some thread how I did this years ago on a low budget film and again more recently; pushing a tungsten unit into a silver bounce aimed back at the subject at an angle similar to what an actual muzzle flash would do, then taking a show card or similar with a hole cut in the center and articulating it between the unit and the bounce. The effect is essentially an off/on/off and you can regulate the length of "on" by how quickly you fly the card. It's very simple and effective.
 
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