Gunshot Test

Seeing as there is going to be a gun in the video, I thought I would test some gun shot effects. I knew it had to look realistic and therefor had to think about a number of things:

Muzzle Flare
Flash from the gun
Where the flash will light up
Gun sound effect
How it would effect James and the surroundings
Smoke from the shot

Firstly what I did was create the muzzle flare which only had to last 1 frame. I looked at shoot out scenes from action films such as "The Bourne" films to see how large the muzzle flash was and how long it had to last. I then created the flash by adding in a colour effect. The flash wouldn't hit everything so I masked out areas that the light from the flash would hit, for example James's face, his hand, stomach and the fence behind him. The smoke was a clip I found which originally had a black background but I was able to screen it out, only leaving the smoke. The sound is a simple gunshot sound which I matched with the timing of the muzzle flare.

Obviously in the final version we will not use a nerf gun but if we can make it look convincing with a nerf gun then I think we can make it look great with a realistic pistol!

Here is the gunshot test video:
Gun Shot Test