John Woo style shoot out.....

[DanO'Bannonrules]

In the finale of my movie, the lead character goes mental with a gun (9mm)
and it ends with a shoot out with the cops.

One of the cops jumps as he fires his gun, but I want him to get shot in mid air
but the force of the bullet hits to spin him in mid air?

Again, can anyone help (We're working on a micro budget ie. self financed!)

[Spoon boy]

Not Really.

[F]

okay, this may be really dumb, but how about just tying a rope to him, make the knot be on one of his sides, and then when he jumps through the air, some guy hiding out of frame or behind a couch or something pulls the rope real hard and see what happens. ..er..
f

[DanO'Bannonrules]

Thanx F, we'll give it a try (my cast are very
adventurous!)

[hairbrain]

Dan,

You've got a few posts up here that show you have a keen imagination and vision for movie sequences. What unifies most of them, however, is their reliance upon expensive effects work done in post.
F's idea of tying a rope to an actor is good. Ideally, however, your actor should be wearing a body harness. The rope would then be tied to some part of the harness; the shoulder. When the rope gets pulled sharply by man or machine it will pull the actor off by his shoulder and not just his whole body in general. This would start to insinuate that he was hit in his shoulder by something (a bullet). As a final `practical` you might want to tie a bag of blood with a little detonation device in it to this same shoulder and have it go off at the same time as the jerk. This blood spattering might be enough to pull off the bullet look. This is probably as far as you can go with this effect in production and now you should hand it over to `post`.
If you were thoughtful you will have painted your rope bright blue or green (depending upon the scene and the actors costume). You will also have hidden the harness well under the actors clothing. With these done all a paint artist has to do in post is paint out the blue rope frame by frame, replacing it with bits of the background. To further help the paint artist you will also have taken some raw footage of just the background for them to paint back in. If you haven't been thoughtfull and done the above then the time, and therefore the cost involved in doing your shot, will sky rocket. Finally, on an artistic basis, you may be unhappy with the splashy blood as it exploded from your actors shoulder.... it just doesn't look real!. You've spent good money making everything else look good so why let the bullet wound look crap. To do this, however, your looking at getting 3d computer graphics done for you. Using an expensive operator on expensive kit you finally get the result you first envisioned.... only ?4,000+ later.

When films like Jurassic Park are made they don't suddenly crack open a new cupboard filled with the "really good" computers. They use exactly the same people and equipment which you too would have to use to get your little shot done. If you're lucky you either have compositing or 3d skills yourself or you have a friend who can do it for a cheaper budget. But there is one cheap way around the whole problem.......

Editing & Camera angles. I know exactly what went through your head when you thought this end sequence up... "It'd look really cool if we could have a cool looking end sequence". But so many young film makers are so lost in their own visions that they cannot see that what they'll probably end up with is "A really crap looking end sequence". Why?
They've done the classic `Ed Wood`; they've seen the shot so firmly in their imagination that they've failed to realise what the actual pragmatic result they are likely to make will look like. Even as they sit and watch their film they, like Ed Wood, see it as they imagined it (still in their heads), and wonder why everybody else thought it was crap.

So my message to you Dan is... if you haven't got friends in high places, look at the tools which are at your disposal... the camera, the editing room, some bags of blood, and actors. Take fast choppy cuts, body parts being hit, a shoulder flies through the air, a close up of the fired gun, etc etc. This is a much more down to earth approach and is one which will help you to ensure that the shot looks as cool as you can possibly make it. After all what would John Woo have done if computers never existed?

good luck

[eddie]

I have to agree utterly with hairbrain, well put.

In a nutshell you can make your filmmaking simpler (and probably more effective) if you dont rely on post production for anything at all. Pre-production is everything.

Using the approach above I guarantee you are more likely to come up with an imaginative and entertaining result, rather than a cheap copy of an effect we have seen a thousand times before.

[Mods]

If this fails, why not just get a table and make him stand on it and spin round, but keep the camera POV just above his feet so you don't see the table.

I don't know, I haven't dablled with those kind of effects really. The only one we tried with a rope was a tornado movie, we tied a rop to someones feet, they held a tree and looked like they were being pulled up into the air. Which worked quite well actually Even if it did result in an injury.

My action scenes don't have fancy effects, just in case the movie turns out as crap as Hard Target


Mods

[Gwailofilms]

Do it in three shots.

Shot one: Wide(ish) Have your guy jump and fire and land on a matress/cushions/bed of nails/whatever off-camera.

Shot two: Close-up of the squib effect going off (sorry, I'm assuming, but check out Exposures guide to squibs. I use it all the time).

Shot three: Back to wide. Have the guy (in his bloody shirt do his jump & fall again, but spinning at the same time (he should be able to do this, providing he's not a huge fat bastard).

Then just cut the whole lot together in the edit. Simple.

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