Help! I need gun flashes

[Jon49]

I'm doing a movie for school and i would really like to have the gun flash in some kind of way so it looks kinda real. The problem is my school only has basic video editing software that comes with Imacs.
If anyones got some ideas they would be highly appreciated

[Phaethon]

I don't know what kind of gunfire we're talkin about here, but if it's just a couple of *pop* *pops* then you may want to consider having the barrel of the gun out of frame, but have a strobe-light flash on the character and the environment. It gives the illusion that a muzzle flash is happening out of frame, and it works. However, if we're talking about an all-out gun fight the best thing I can recomend to you, considering the software you are working with, is to insert either a pure white frame every time the gun is fired or, if you can, place a lens flare over the barrel of the gun, to give it a flash effect. Two things to remember if you can do the lens flare idea: 1. If you can choose from different lens-flare types, then experiment. Some lens flares look alot better than others when it comes to faking muzzle flashes. 2. You should place the lens flare on 2 consecutive frames. A large one on the frame when the shot is fired, and then a much smaller one, almost just a dot, to give the illusion the barrel is red hot after the shot is fired. It's a small thing but it looks better, and a little bit more realistic. I hope I could help, man. Good luck.

[deanl]

Hey there.

You could think about compositing stock images as apose to drawing the muzzle flash.

Here's a few I found.



There are a few programs like ALAMDV that will do this for you automaticaly. Check it out. http://www.csb-digital.com/alamdv/

Despin out.