As promised, it's time for some step-by-step tutorials. We're going to add muzzle flash, casing ejection and slide movement to two short clips of a replica gun. We've used an inexpensive plastic replica with few moving parts, and before we're done you'll see how convincing it will look on screen.

Tutorial 1 will cover fabricating all the effects from scratch. We'll be making the muzzle flare and the casing in Photoshop (the 'Additive' method). Tutorial 2 will cover using an existing image for the muzzle flare and using the 'Subtractive' method for the casing.

Both of these clips were shot without any of the on-set devices we've recommended here on this site, such as using a photo flash to create the shadows of a muzzle flash. The more you can do on-set, the better, as we'll see during the 'Subtractive' method.

If you like, you can download the raw QuickTime, import it into your editing program (iMovie, Final Cut Pro, Avid XpressDV, Adobe Premiere, Media100) (that was our shameless search-engine bait) and follow along with the tutorials.

tutorial 1: the additive method

tutorial 2: borrowing a flare/the subtractive method