Sound design sells everything. You could shoot your film on PixelVision and if it sounds crisp and clean, it'll be a winner. See the sidebar for our thoughts on sound design.

And since we're in the fake firearm business, we place a certain amount of emphasis on using easy and inexpensive digital effects to add realism to gun scenes. We'll talk about adding muzzle flash and simulating slide movement and casing ejection, with some walkthroughs.

post production tutorials

Flash

Muzzle flash has become an expected element of cinematic gunfire. And luckily, you can add it in post with a minimum of trouble.

Now, if you're planning on using a program like Adobe AfterEffects, then you're going to be able to add flash over a timeline, and so we hope you'll be able to follow along as we discuss working with still images. All the concepts apply to working with a time-based editor like AfterEffects as well.

But for those of us that aren't as adept at AfterEffects, there's hope. This walkthrough assumes that you're able to work with your footage on a digital platform, whether you're cutting on Avid or Final Cut Pro or Premiere or Vegas Video or iMovie. (If, for some reason, you're not cutting digitally, you'll have to digitally capture the gunshot footage and then make a tape output to cut on whatever archaic system you're using.)

If you've shot your footage with a light source, such as a strobe light or camera flash, to simulate the muzzle flare on-set then you're ahead of the game. Find the frames with the flashes and export them out as still images. If you haven't shot with a mimic light, you'll have to choose the frames that best approximate the moment of the gunshot. (If your actor is shooting a gun on full automatic, you may want to put some temp sound effects in to determine the approximate delay between gunshots.)

Open your exported frames in an image editor such as PhotoShop. (You'll want to de-interlace the frames. This will eliminate the jagged look. In PhotoShop, it's under Filters > Video > De-Interlace. Choose "Interpolation".)

Now you'll need a reference flare to add to your frames. You can paint one from scratch; remember, it's fire and should be orange, brighter towards the center. Remember to paint on a new layer of the image! Or, you can digitize a clip from your favorite action movie, find a flare you like, export the frame and cut & paste. You can find some reference material on the Internet as well.

Once you've positioned your flare over your frame, you can touch up the video image as well. If you haven't used a reference flash, you can brighten up the foreground a bit; if you have any reflective surfaces in the frame - eyes are very good, as are flying casings; try adding a tiny, bright reflection. Lens flares can also be used - infrequently, to be sure - with good results.

When you're satisfied, save your image and import it back into your editor, placing the single frames over their non-flared counterparts. Like anything else, it takes practice to work perfectly. A common error is to make the flare look too sharp over the image; you may want to decrease the opacity or feather the edges of the flare, and consider adding some grain to match the texture of your base image.

If your actor is shooting an especially large-caliber weapon, you may want the flare duration to be more than one frame; you can have it grow, flash, and decrease over the span of three frames, for example.

Slide Movement

If you've got a shot that's close enough to tell that the gun's slide isn't moving with each shot, there's an easy way to fix it. Export about five frames after the gunshot and open them in PhotoShop. Cut the slide out of the images, use the Rubber Stamp tool to fill in the empty area with appropriate background, and paste the slide back in at varying degrees of retraction, depending on which frame you're editing. (Be sure to add Motion Blur to the slide.) In AfterEffects you can make this a keyframed motion.

Import the resulting images or sequence back into your timeline. The metallic sound of the slide moving and clicking into place should be a part of your sound design.

Casings - Subtractive Method

This is the "Subtractive Method" because it involves removing unwanted casings from the frame. Say, for example, you have a wide shot of an actor firing a gun. You've planned to use this method, so as he fires, you've tossed a casing across the frame, crossing over his gun and falling to the floor on the other side.

With this method, you erase the casing from the frame before it gets to the gun, and leave it in afterwards. The end result is that the casing appears to originate from the gun. This is easy enough to do in AfterEffects or PhotoShop; export out the frames in which the casing hasn't gotten to the gun yet, then cover up the casing in each frame by using the clean background from a different frame. You can cut & paste or use the Rubber Stamp tool in PhotoShop with good results. This is the same technique, basically, as stunt sequence "wire removal".

Casings - Additive Method

The "Additive Method", as you might surmise, involves adding casings to your image. It's the same technique as adding muzzle flash, above, except that you're pasting an image of a flying shell onto the frame. AfterEffects is good for this, since you can keyframe the movement over time; some editing programs, such as some Avids and Final Cut Pro, will allow you to superimpose the casing image and keyframe its movement. If you use PhotoShop, you'll have to add the casing to every frame in a sequence, moving it a little bit in each successive frame. The problem with this is that you can't judge the speed as accurately as using a timeline-based program.

The image of the casing itself can be cut & pasted from another film frame or photograph, drawn (it's basically just a brass-colored rectangle; color it with the Gradient tool in PhotoShop) or scanned from an actual casing (a product we carry). You'll want to add Motion Blur to your image, since it should move very quickly. Consult your favorite action movie for reference; it's better to make it move too quickly than too slowly.

Flashes added in post can lack depth

Sound Design

Some movies can be saved through editing; others are beyond hope