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Damn cool! Here's my first attempt at green screen special effects. I added the sound effects of the hammer cock and gunblast, of course!

http://h4h.com/louis/media/muzzletest.avi

P.S. Excuse the unmade bed in the background. Doing laundry is how I spent most of Easter Sunday!

Pretty cool. What program did you use for the flash? I've done some pretty good muzzle flash tests, but I've yet to incorporate them into a real story. Me and my friend had one, but we got sidetracked by some stop-motion projects.

For gun blasts, I've found that you don't have to worry about making the flash look realistic, it can just be a white blob. If it's fast enough, nobody will notice. Also, something I picked up from Ben Burtt and Indiana Jones: use a rifle shot for the sound of your hero's pistol to give it some extra character. That is, if you don't care about absolute accuracy. For example, I've used the sound of a BAR for a pistol, and it makes the gun sound like a mean mofo.

A practical effect for muzzle flash which can be pretty neat follows: take an AirSoft pistol and pour a small amount of baby powder (I suppose flour would work too) down the barrel. Be warned that this can mess up your pistol, and you might have to take it apart and clean it and re-oil it afterwards (though with the oil gone, the slide should stay back when you pull it, thus giving you an "out of ammo" prop).
Simply cock and shoot. A fine cloud of white powder will come out of the barrel, and it gives a great film noir look, though you probably don't want to use it for a more modern action feel. Picks up good against dark backgrounds.

Robert Treder wrote:Pretty cool. What program did you use for the flash?

I'm using Screenblast Movie Studio Great product for the price: $99 bucks!

For gun blasts, I've found that you don't have to worry about making the flash look realistic, it can just be a white blob. If it's fast enough, nobody will notice.

Yup. I grabbed a muzzle flash off the web, but I ended up using the program to make it really blurry, and it looked better that way!

Also, something I picked up from Ben Burtt and Indiana Jones: use a rifle shot for the sound of your hero's pistol to give it some extra character. That is, if you don't care about absolute accuracy. For example, I've used the sound of a BAR for a pistol, and it makes the gun sound like a mean mofo.

Heh, I'm using the pistol sound effect from "Raiders" in that clip!

A practical effect for muzzle flash which can be pretty neat follows: take an AirSoft pistol <snip>

Sounds like an excellent idea. Matter of fact, this muzzle test was just that, a test. I want to augment it with a light flash, and I had the idea of squeezing a baby powder bottle just out of camera view for the smoke!

This is great, because I used to use firecrackers and other fireworks for this stuff!

Pretty nice stuff. Keep practicing.