Test Footage: Gun Shots
This is some tester footage I tried out for any kind of fight scene that could be included within the opening sequence of my film. For this I tried out a few different kinds of fight scenes, including the use of guns, punches and pushes, all of which could be used within a typical movie fight scene.
The shot where we tried out using a gun, involved editing the footage within Adobe After Effects to get the best and most realistic effect I possibly could. When doing this, the three key things I needed to do accurately was the muzzle flash on the actor and gun, creating the tracking path at the end of the gun for the smoke, flash and fire to follow and distort around and an accurate syncing of the gun shot sound with when the gun appeared to kick back.
I started off by changing the 'Project Settings' of the testing footage to 32 bit channel and sRGB colour, and then ticked the 'Linearize Working Space'. This did:
- Changed the way the colours work, to make them act more realistically
- Better simulated the way lighting is shown and simulated (meaning any areas of footage where there is no lighting is shown as black, as it would be shown as if you were viewing it in real life)
Doing this made it so the addition of a muzzle flash and flare to the footage would add another layer of realism and make the gun shot more believable. The first step to making the gun shot seem real was adding a solid colour layer with an orange/yellow tone, similar to the kind of lighting fire would give, and then masking around the actor, gun and anything else that the light from the muzzle flash would shine onto. I did this by using the Pen Tool and drawing around the outside of the actor and gun, but didn't spend too much time making it 100% accurate as the simulated muzzle flash would only be seen for a very small amount of frames, normally around 1-3 frames. You can see that there isn't as many pen points around the actor, which is what reduces the accuracy but also reduces the amount of time and attention need to focus on this step.
Next, I had to make a tracking point at the muzzle of the gun for the flash, smoke and sparks to follow. I did this by using the automatic tracking point built into After Effects, but this only worked accurately for the first few frames because the gun muzzle moved in such a large distance between the start and the end of the time it was being tracked that the software couldn't track and detect the one point accurately. Because of this, I had to manually track the point for each individual frame. This didn't take long because there was only a small amount of frames to track along, and provided a lot more accurate tracking sequence and meant the muzzle flash properly followed the end of the gun.
After I added the tracking point to the muzzle flash and sparks layer, I set the muzzle flash layer to slightly distort at the end of the flash by making it so the end would be a few seconds behind where the flash comes out of the gun and act as if the flash was being pulled up as the gun flung up, and this helped the flash not seem like it was just attached to the end of the gun, but actually coming out the end. Even though this doesn't make a huge difference, the difference is still noticeable and definitely improves the look of the footage.
Then I had to sync up the audio, which was the gun shot, with when the gun appears to kick back and when the muzzle flash originally appears to come out of the barrel. Originally, I struggled to get the gun shot to sync up correctly with the gun kick as the audio file I had of the gun shot didn't originally start at the very start of the file, and instead played a few seconds into the file.
To fix this, I opened the gun shot sound file within Audacity (a free audio editing program) and trimmed down the gun shot sound file started at the exact of the audio file, instead of a few seconds in. Then when I put it back into After Effects I was able to place the audio file at the start of the frame and the sound and the gun barrel movement synced up correctly.
Next, I had to make a tracking point at the muzzle of the gun for the flash, smoke and sparks to follow. I did this by using the automatic tracking point built into After Effects, but this only worked accurately for the first few frames because the gun muzzle moved in such a large distance between the start and the end of the time it was being tracked that the software couldn't track and detect the one point accurately. Because of this, I had to manually track the point for each individual frame. This didn't take long because there was only a small amount of frames to track along, and provided a lot more accurate tracking sequence and meant the muzzle flash properly followed the end of the gun.
After I added the tracking point to the muzzle flash and sparks layer, I set the muzzle flash layer to slightly distort at the end of the flash by making it so the end would be a few seconds behind where the flash comes out of the gun and act as if the flash was being pulled up as the gun flung up, and this helped the flash not seem like it was just attached to the end of the gun, but actually coming out the end. Even though this doesn't make a huge difference, the difference is still noticeable and definitely improves the look of the footage.
Then I had to sync up the audio, which was the gun shot, with when the gun appears to kick back and when the muzzle flash originally appears to come out of the barrel. Originally, I struggled to get the gun shot to sync up correctly with the gun kick as the audio file I had of the gun shot didn't originally start at the very start of the file, and instead played a few seconds into the file.
To fix this, I opened the gun shot sound file within Audacity (a free audio editing program) and trimmed down the gun shot sound file started at the exact of the audio file, instead of a few seconds in. Then when I put it back into After Effects I was able to place the audio file at the start of the frame and the sound and the gun barrel movement synced up correctly.
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