Choose Your Weapons: Recommended Assets, Training, and Software

Okay, so if those are the bare necessities, what are the things that aren't quite bare necessities, but you should really have if you can afford them? Absolutely!

Let's get into them!

Disclaimer:
These are specific products that are currently available. We haven't received any compensation for listing specific products in this list. The named products are mentioned here specifically because we've found them personally useful and would be remiss in not mentioning them to you. All links to specific products are actually to their reviews, so you can see how they were originally reviewed by our team, long before this article was conceived.

	Highly Recommended Assets

Video Copilot's Action Essentials 2
Andrew Kramer does it again by creating the most incredible collection of post-production assets for filmmakers wanting to make gun fights and action films with Action Essentials 2. It includes a plethora of muzzle blasts, blood spurts, couch hits, dirt explosions, bullet holes, and animated shell casings. While there are a few minor things missing, this is an amazingly complete set. At $99.95 for the 720P collection (or $249.95 for the 2K set), this is an incredible value, especially since all of these effects were filmed with a REDOne camera and were then been pre-alpha-channeled. (In other words, they were shot with a camera that doesn't get rid of the color information so that, when you key the footage, it's as clean as it can possibly be. Then this keyed footage was laid over a transparent background so you can just lay them over your footage without worrying about any blending modes.) Further, high grade 3D renders have been included for things that couldn't be filmed, including multiple forms of shell casings for hand guns and sniper rifles.

(This gets us to the afore mentioned psychological factor I mentioned about slow-motion called the "Shell Effect". Essentially, the human eye is drawn to the brightest thing that is in focus in a shot. So long as the things around it don't noticeably distract from it, the human mind rebuilds a scene based on what it's focused on. This means that, if you want to trick the audience into thinking that you shot a scene with an ultra slow camera, you can slow down the movement of your shell casings until they can be clearly scene for a few moments and your audience will believe they are watching ultra slow-motion footage. While this won't work if too much movement is happening in other parts of the frame, this can be a powerful effect if you spend some time planning the choreography to accommodate it, which is another reason to do short test films before you do your big projects. For just one example of this idea, imagine a side profile of a sniper who ejects his shell casing and suddenly the casing slows down in mid-air and, as it does, the sniper goes out of focus while the camera appears to focus on the shell casing which glitters in the sunlight. If you remember to animate a tracked smoke trail coming out of the shell as it flies through the air this could look incredible!)

FXHome's HD "Footage:" Collections
Rather than putting all of their assets in one collection, FXHome has chosen to put their assets in different collections based on what your needs are, from gunfire, to blood, to gore, to flames. (Although they do include a more diversified sampler called Footage: Special FX, which is shown here, its quality is a bit varied and its a little pricier, so picking up one of the specialty HD collections is probably a better bet.) This allows you to get the specific types of effects you're most interested in. They're not pre-alpha channeled (which means you have to use AE's blending options to composite them yourself), but they're quality is quite good and some of their elements, like bullet holes, are a bit nicer than the ones in Action Essentials, in my opinion. At $50 a set, you can decide exactly which collection you'd like.

But what if you want to make something with a few more effects, perhaps with a more stylized look like Sin City or Sucker Punch? Then you want to consider the following elements, as well.

	Recommended If You Want 3D and/or Greenscreen Effects in Your Gunfight

Video Copilot's The Bullet
You know that, ever since you watched the Matrix and Wanted, you've been pining to be able to do a bullet tracking shot. Well, Andrew Kramer shows you how to do just that in The Bullet. Not only does he show you what you need to do in production, and how to do things in After Effects, he also teaches you three different 3D programs (you choose whichever one you want to learn): Cinema 4D (my personal fave), 3D Studio Max (the pricier option), and Blender (the free option). He includes a full copy of Blender and the demos of both Cinema 4D and 3D Studio max with the training. He also shows you how to build 3D bullets and teaches you the best way to use After Effects sequences as discreet projects for each FX sequence. I was blown away by how much stuff he crammed into this series. It'll take you awhile to do, but you will be totally blown away by how impressive it is and how much you'll learn about AE in the process. This could be the second best $49.95 you've ever paid (after the DV Rebel's Guide). Just remember to have a digital camera on set if you're going to do these sorts of things, because you do need to make sure to take photos of the area around these scenes to create a 3D world in post. (We ended up modifying this set for our work on Day 419 after the fact without taking all those photographic assets. While we got a setup that we liked really well, it would've been ten times easier if we'd had the photos from the set.)

Greenscreen Made Easy
While it might be considered gauche to mention one's own products in the midst of an article, the truth is, my co-author, Michele Yamazaki, and I created Greenscreen Made Easy because there isn't another book on the market designed to break down greenscreen for low-budget filmmakers in an easy to understand way and for cameras that have less than stellar color recording. Designed as an easy to comprehend manual on the secrets of greenscreen, this book was the result of years of research and distillation on the subject. If you're going to do greenscreen effects for your gunfight, this is going to get you prepared to do it quickly (and includes a quick checklist of all the things you need to shoot it properly)! Published by MWP for only $20 a copy, it's a good value (even if I do say so myself)!

Creative Cow's Serious FX & Compositing
Another Andrew Kramer training set, Serious FX & Compositing goes into more advanced greenscreen elements and explosions. This is a great one to move on to after Greenscreen Made Easy and after you've gotten used to After Effects and to Kramer's training style in his website, the training that comes with Action Essentials 2, or the training from The Bullet.

VFX for Directors
While this may be one of the more expensive training sets,Visual FX for Directors is packed with amazing information for people wanting to do effects sequences, especially the sort of effects you would want in a greenscreen based gunfight. Per Holmes walks you through the complex world of tracking dots, how to create a greenscreen cyclorama, how to track a greenscreen window, and any number of other tricks. (While it's got a list price of $395, we do currently have a 30% discount for MFM members who follow us on Facebook!)

Cinema 4D
I mentioned it briefly in the Bullet information, but Cinema 4D is really a "must recommend" when in comes to 3D work, as it's arguably the easiest 3D program for new users to pick up and it has an amazingly powerful connectivity with After Effects. (The team at Maxon has worked with Adobe on numerous things in the past, so they've created a pipline that can allow more information to be easily imported in After Effects than any other 3D program. Literally, you download a plugin that comes with Cinema 4D directly into After Effects and click one check box when you export out a project and the entire thing opens up right into After Effects!) If you're wanting to track projectiles from snipers or pistols, Cinema 4D will make it much easier to do. Additionally, their recent Renderman feature, which allows you to easily mock up 3D backgrounds based off of physical photographs means you can even make the backgrounds of your fights look more epic. In the past, their most basic version had an underpowered render engine, which was the only reason I was hesitant to mention it to low-budget filmmakers. However, now the Core package of Cinema 4D has the full high quality render image so it's an easy recommendation if you're going to be adding 3D effects into your gunfights. At $995, it's about the same price as After Effects, but, like After Effects, has a number of ways for you to acquire it, including a student edition and upgrades from previous editions. (Unfortunately, Maxon's interactions with Adobe isn't quite so deep that they have a combo pack like Cineam 4D and Production Premium for a special price. Maybe in the future!)

Before we get into physical assets to consider for your gunfight, I want to mention a couple software plugins you really want to consider if you can afford them, as their amazingly powerful. These are the sort of things to save your pennies for, because they're pretty amazing.

	Save Your Pennies Plugins

Magic Bullet Looks
One of the most powerful ways we have to showcase the feel of a movie is through the color palette and effects used in the film. JJ Abram's Star Trek was defined by it's stylized solar flares, The Matrix was defined by its Green edged hue, and CSI Miami (or as I now call it, Horatio Caine: Hardboiled) is all about the tropical gradients. Magic Bullet Looks is one of those amazing plugins that can actually do some very powerful color correcting, as well as allowing you to come up with a completely stylized look for your film. If you could only own one plugin to adjust the look of your footage, Magic Bullet Looks would have to be at the top of the list. At $395 by itself (or $799 as part of the massive Magic Bullet Suite), it's not extremely cheap, but the fact that it literally has an almost unlimited array of options (and also ships with a number of film damage effects that were used in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror) makes it an amazing value.

Twixtor
If you're going to do a lot of slow-motion work, Twixtor is amazingly good at what it does. While it's not a cheap plugin at $595, it's impressively easy to use and very powerful. If you end up needing to do a lot of interpolation slow motion, then this is the way to go! (Plus, technically, it works just as well in Premiere Pro and FCP as it does in After Effects, so you might not need to go into AE as much with this plugin.)

Now that we've discussed what some recommended assets, training, and software are, are we able to choose our additional props yet? Certainly! We'll cover that in our next article:

Creating Gunfights #4:
Mix and Match Stuff to Consider Getting For Your Gunfight

The director of two feature length films and half a dozen short films, Jeremy Hanke founded Microfilmmaker Magazine to help all no-budget filmmakers make better films. His first book on low-budget special effects techniques, GreenScreen Made Easy, (which he co-wrote with Michele Yamazaki) was released by MWP to very favorable reviews. He's curently working on the sci-fi film franchise, World of Depleted through Depleted: Day 419 and the feature film, Depleted.

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