Does anyone kn ow how to make gun fires hit the ground?

[smiles906]

I have plans of making a gunfight in my upcoming movieproject and I want scene where this character runs like and you see bullets hits the ground around him. Also i am thinking of doing this on the ground and the water. does anyone know how?

[Almondo99]

There's been many post on this in the past...
You could take a slingshot with a dirt clump or rock and aim it at a flour, dirt pile on the ground. Or take a board and make a fulcrum and have the actor step on that.

[UFProductions]

Slingshot all the way. Use a oval shaped rock for hits on water, that'll throw up the bigest splash, and use very tightly rolled up ball's of tinfoil for hits on dirt. For hits on other objects (Tree's, walls, etc...) use a small amount of dirt very tightly rolled up in plastic wrap. If you'r actors are afraid of being hit, the tinfoil is the way to go, it will hardly hurt if they get hit. (In the excitement of filming and running around they probably wouldn't even notice it.)

[justin!butcher]

paintball gun. just dont hit your actors and it is the most amazingly real affect....

[Radiate]

You should shoot little pieces of wood if its in the dirt(assuming there is grass), otherwise if its just dirt use UFProductions' idea with the dirt wrapped up tight.

[redkorn]

firecracker look good

[Radiate]

Yeah, but that would be a lot harder, how would you light it?

[maj_barnes]

Stick some wire into them and connect them to a 9volt when the time is right.

[I3lade203]

Yeah, the people who said slingshot have a good idea. BB guns I think might work too. You could also have someone off camera shoveling dirt and stuff into the air for an explosion or sort. ( Gyro did this in forgotten. ) I don't really think a paintball gun would work, because you don't want to see the paint.

[OutcastJiob]

If you want only a few hits, slingshots will work well, but if you want a lot of hits you'll either need a lot of people who can fire slingshots very rapidly. Or you'll need to bury small explosive charges and wire them to a control board, then blow the charges up in sequence as your actor runs--this is a more "complex" version of what some other people have already said.

[Epsilon]

Be EXTREMELY careful using live projectiles on a filming set. Injuries tend to occur often enough without things shooting around.

[OutcastJiob]

Pain is temporary, film is forever! Nobody cares about safety!

Nah, I'm kidding. Epsilon is absolutely right. Be very careful, especially if you're screwing around with slingshots or explosives. Either one of those can cause serious injuries if you're not careful and/or aren't thinking while you're using them.

Also, about the foil-out-of-slingshot. . .I'm not sure how well that would work. 1, if it's actually not powerful enough to hurt when it hits you, it can't make much of a bullet hit effect. 2, if it makes a good bullet hit effect it's powerful enough to hurt. I've never shot foil out of my "wrist rocket" but I've fired everything from rocks to acorns to ball bearings, and the only thing I've ever shot that wouldn't hurt if it hit you was a cotton ball, and that only flies about two feet anyway. So be extremely careful what you're shooting near your actors, and be very sure they've signed a medical release!

[NPMAX]

For ground hits I use my gas airsoft MAC-11 and put it on full auto, then for close ups I switch that for my real MAC-11no one has been able to be able to tell which one is real and which is fake because they are identical in size.

[I3lade203]

Yes, your actors should know EXACTLY where the gun hits are going to occur, as to avoid being hit by them. Do a few dry takes without the actor in there, to get your guy shooting pratice, and to make sure he has good aim.

[Epsilon]

I wouldn't use AirSoft... my experiences include the projectile tending to skew off in random directions...

[Almondo99]

Use the Slingshot way, it's safer.

[I3lade203]

Well, do a lot of tests with different things and see what works best for you, not what works best for us.

[UFProductions]

At first glance, the foil slingshot thing shouldn't work, but it does for a couple reasons. Because it has so much less mass than a rock it will not hurt (as much!), but because it is flying at the same velocity it has roughly the same effect on the ground. You aren't looking for projectiles burying themselves in the ground, just kicking up big poofs of dust. A ball of tinfoil will do this just as effectivly as a rock. The velocity of a paintball compared to an airsoft gun would be a good example of this, would you rather be shot with a 0.2 gram airsoft pellet fired at 400 FPS, or a 3.221 gram paintball fired at the same speed? The one limitation of this is range, the tinfoil, lacking mass, and therefore inertia, will lose velocity much faster that a heavier object.

[BlakJakDavy]

I wouldn't use AirSoft... my experiences include the projectile tending to skew off in random directions...

If you use an airsoft gun that can fire metal bb's it is less likely to have this effect and is more accurate than the slingshot so less likely to hurt anyone.

You could also use strafe footage from http://www.detonationfilms.com

[Zacatac927]

ok my uncle and i have found a safe and fun way, first you need a small tube of pvc piping i mean small like a a penny thick hole and stuff it with gun powder, then get model rocket igniters at your local hooby store and stick them in, then you need to get wires for all of the tubes hooked to the igniters then to a car battery (acctaully ours is a cmplex switchbards) and then touch every wires to the battery to make it go off and do that for all of them

[Almondo99]

How much is one of the igniters?

[MasterMike]

We used Detonation Films stock footage in The Forest. With the right transfer mode it worked a treat.