long range shooting and the movies
- Thread starter joeblow38
- Start date
That was because the Barrett keep malfunctioning on the set and wouldn't cycle............got this info right from the set Armorer.......
Go watch Sniper Legacy. 10 minutes in, there is a scene where the spotter is doing the math, actually holding a windmeter to measuer the wind, and feeding the data to her sniper (spotter is female). The sniper (lead actor) can be seen making click adjustments on his scope. After the firefight when the team arrives back at HQ, the sniper is talking to his CO about him making his own calculations in his head - which basically means the average viewer will not be subjected to further technical babble and drag the rest of the movie.
Ok let the questions fly lol. I was the weapons coordinator on shooter. It VERY hard to get productions to care about the technical side of a lot of things. I can tell you how many times I've heard " no one cares" or "no one will notice" or "we don't have time for that much detail". Remember that movies of this type are action driven generally. Not detail driven.
- Location
- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
The only people who care about the technical aspects of shooting are shooters. If the movie is too technical, attendance will suffer, because the regular folks don't care. Still, some things annoy me. When the hero in "Shooter" shot the soup can with his .408 CheyTac, the muzzle blast would have blown his poor dog right off that rock. It takes time for a bullet to reach a long range target, so when the shot is made from the point of view of the target, the sound of the muzzle blast should follow sometime later than the sound of the bullet impact. Same with explosions, if you see something blow up in the distance, the sound comes later. When the hero makes a successful long range shot, please make it look like he's trying, unlike the Quiggly bucket shot. As for shooting at a mile, if I can zero my rifle to hit 80" high at 100, I'll be close, so provided I account for wind speed, and direction, spin drift, mirage, coriolis, temperature, elevation, humidity, rifle cant, velocity spread, errors in range estimation, and variances in bullet BCs, there's nothing to it!!!!
I would never claim that I am an expert in long range shooting, but I am a student of the subject and that is why the more I learn the more I can not help but to start dissecting fiction from what is real when I watch a movie. I know that when it comes to movies, entertainment is the name of the game, but like I said just can't help myself but to pick out a few things that just rubs me the wrong way. Now that we are on this topic here is mine, in the "American Sniper" the fake recoils. What the hell kind of a twitching are doing? Also is it just me or they are using air rifle to mimic al the through the scope shoot scenes? I have never shot a 300winmag or 338lapua, but I am sure it would not look like that. I know it is dumb, but hey, everbody has a breaking point..
I'll try and answer any questions you might have to the best of my knowledge. Don't get too excited lol it's not all that you might imagine.
Mystic Precision
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Summerland, BC
hey, if the movies were factual based, they wouldn't make it through the first fire fight cause every one/most everyone got hit. Ever wonder why the bad guys bullets just seem to miss but the good guy never does?
hits all the bad guys while running and shooting GANGSTA....
The bullet proof wooden tables, cedar fences, car doors, the lists go on.
If you want to see very good CQB type HG gun handling, have a look at John Wick. That was alot of fun AND the visuals and audio made sense. Listen for the difference between the 9mm and 45 ACP... you even hear the casings hit the ground AFTER the bang. The Hero does a bunch of tactical reloads and runs out of mags.
If you want to see silly, watch Furious 7 where a mini gun runs WITHOUT power and the belt reloads all be itself. Hollywood ammo... lasts forever.
Jerry
hits all the bad guys while running and shooting GANGSTA....
The bullet proof wooden tables, cedar fences, car doors, the lists go on.
If you want to see very good CQB type HG gun handling, have a look at John Wick. That was alot of fun AND the visuals and audio made sense. Listen for the difference between the 9mm and 45 ACP... you even hear the casings hit the ground AFTER the bang. The Hero does a bunch of tactical reloads and runs out of mags.
If you want to see silly, watch Furious 7 where a mini gun runs WITHOUT power and the belt reloads all be itself. Hollywood ammo... lasts forever.
Jerry
Awe.... this is a lot of bs that there's no room for it in the movie.
Movies can absolutely squeeze in "some" plausible technical detail without boring the video game players.
Bad guy 632 yards out, up 12.75 minutes, 1 mil wind, fire
Moving target, 40 mph 550 yards out. up 10.5 minutes, lead 5 mils or whatever.
At least show the guy scratching away on a sheet of paper to do the math, key it in to some ballistic calculating electronics and if the shooter is making clicks, make sure the scope actually has target turrets. So many movies show the guy turning his scope adjustment cap (not the turret - the turret cover) with audible click sounds. It's insulting to the audience.
Movies can absolutely squeeze in "some" plausible technical detail without boring the video game players.
Bad guy 632 yards out, up 12.75 minutes, 1 mil wind, fire
Moving target, 40 mph 550 yards out. up 10.5 minutes, lead 5 mils or whatever.
At least show the guy scratching away on a sheet of paper to do the math, key it in to some ballistic calculating electronics and if the shooter is making clicks, make sure the scope actually has target turrets. So many movies show the guy turning his scope adjustment cap (not the turret - the turret cover) with audible click sounds. It's insulting to the audience.
You mean gun? I don't deal with props just the guns used on the shows. Favourite gun I used on set was probably the GAU 21 we built for Godzilla. That thing was awesome. Nothing like seeing a .50 shoot 800 rpm! Was only on screen for like 2 seconds lol.Star stories...well I have a multitude of funny Steven Segal stories that I can tell in person but won't post them here lol. I've done 2 seasons of a TV show and probably 5 or 6 movies with him. Most enjoyable set. Well I just finished a movie in Calgary called The Revenant and I'd have to say the places we shot it were pretty incredible. Amazing back drops. Very enjoyable.
Everyone seems to have an idea about why the Barrett on Shooter was being cocked every time. So lets clear it up. The rifle was laying in the grass to the left of the boys. I had covered it with the drag bag but in the midst of all the things going on it became somewhat uncovered. Probably a combo of being bumped by Mark and everyone who was going in there to fix things during the strafing. The idea was that the helicopter would do a strafing run over the boys then come back and do another one in which Donnie gets killed. The guy playing Donnie had A LOT of squibs on him to make it look like a big caliber went through him. Squibs are a small explosive with a liquid blood pack that goes on top. Explosive detonates and blood shoots out of the hole. Very exciting lol. Anyways Donnie had 57 Squibs on him if I remember correctly. Supposedly that was the most anyone had ever worn at once. In order to get the effect of the strafing run they dug in probably 40-50 det cord poppers. They are a rubber matting with a spiral of det cord laid in on top of it. Then they wire it up and pile in peat moss, dirt, fullers earth which is a very fine inert dust and broken bits of cork for the chunky effect. So they call action and the helicopter comes in and the first strafing run goes well. The helicopter turns around and comes back down for the second run and the strafing happens but the squibs on Donnie don't go off. The take is ruined and they have to reset everything. Which takes like 3 hours. Eventually they get it reset and go again and guess what the same thing happens again! Now the det cord strafing is working perfect and throwing a metric sheit ton of junk and dust and peat into the air. It has to land and comes down all over everything including the rifle. The squibs on Donnie failed like 4 times before they hooked him up to 4 or 5 car batteries to get enough juice to set them off. What you see in the film was that one take. Anyways they go to grab the rifle to shoot the helo and it is covered in dirt etc. It wasn't working all that great before hand and the dust and crap didn't help. So in the actually shooting of that bit Mark only cocked it a couple of times. I guess one of the editors thought that it looked cool and made it seem like he was cocking it every time. The gas system was not off. It was just a finicky gun with bad editing. And that's the story of that.
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2stonedbirds
Regular
- Location
- Southern Alberta
Very cool Longshot, thanks for sharing that with us.
Donny Fenn1
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- East Kootenays
I guess Donny didn't want to die.
Maybe he wanted the movie to follow the book so the series could continue along the time lines of the book(s).
Maybe he wanted the movie to follow the book so the series could continue along the time lines of the book(s).
Chinbullco
Regular
- Location
- NW Alberta
So you guys think sniper movies are phoney. Oil well gushering done in movies is BS too. Squealing tires on grass. Exploding arrow heads with enough jamb to take out a bridge. Its entertainment not a friggin docuementory.
Personally I think its more entertaining when it has an element of reality to it. No one thinks it's a documentary. The way I see it they are not taking in to account the millions of service and ex service members who might go see the show if it were a little more real. That's all.
