VIP Behind-the-Scenes: Gunshot scene

For our VIP Members only, here’s the full behind-the-scenes video on how we “shot” the scene where evil gang leader Bane (Aaron Valencia) gets shot. We won’t tell you who shoots him, or what happens next, but we will pull back the curtain on how moviemakers “shoot” someone without firing a real bullet!

Here’s the video, and below we’ll tell you how we did it.

How We Did It

You may have seen other movies use “squibs” for gunshot wounds, and real guns firing blanks. Those are great but they are somewhat dangerous, as the squibs have small explosive charges and the blanks in guns use real gunpowder. Our solution works just as well, but is totally safe.

First, the “squib” is actually a condom filled with fake blood (water, cocoa and food coloring) and then taped onto the actor underneath his shirt. Special effects coordinator Jared Lindsey rigs a fishing line around the squib and out through a small hole in Aaron’s shirt.

Then Jared positions himself just off camera, and at the moment of the gunshot, pulls hard on the fishing line, breaking the condom and squirting the fake blood out through Aaron’s shirt. Aaron had to time his acting to fling himself back against the wall at the same moment.

The gun we used is called an airsoft gun, used by gamers and similar to paintball guns except airsofts shoot a small plastic BB at non-lethal speed. This particular gun uses propane gas to propel the BB and cause the slider on the gun to “blow back” just like a real semi-automatic. Of course, we don’t use any BBs in this gun, we only want the effect of the gun kicking back the actor’s hand a little and moving the slider.

Everything is timed with the director’s voice commands. It’s not easy getting two actors and the effects supervisor to all move at the exact same moment. And if any one of them messed up, we’d have to clean Aaron up, put him in a new shirt, re-rig the squib and start all over — that’s a long process. Fortunately, everybody did their thing right on cue and the shot came out perfect the first time, as you can see in the final clip.

We hope you like the clip and the little BTS (behind-the-scenes) story. Thanks for supporting BROKEN SPIRITS and stay tuned for more BTS updates!

Pete Bohush
Director