This effect also offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty to apply it in a wide vari­ety of ways. Basi­cal­ly, we most­ly sim­u­late the effects of pro­jec­tile impact from hand­guns here. Depend­ing on the sub­strate, the effects are very dif­fer­ent and we rough­ly dis­tin­guish between human body, soild, wood, met­al, brick­work and props. From a cer­tain size on, we speak of an explo­sion.

What would an action movie be with­out pic­tures like the ones on this page? Bland… Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are also attempts to replace the real thing with dig­i­tal effects. But then the sub­tle ran­dom­ness of such effects unfor­tu­nate­ly falls by the way­side. Usu­al­ly with the result, that these images all look alike and the view­er gets a bor­ing over­all impres­sion.

Also not to be under­es­ti­mat­ed is the effect on the per­for­mance of your actors. Inter­ac­tion with a real impact on your own body or its imme­di­ate sur­round­ings can­not be replaced by dig­i­tal post-pro­cess­ing. These emo­tions you’ll get togeth­er with the effect for free, so to speak.

The imple­men­ta­tion almost always requires the coop­er­a­tion of sev­er­al depart­ments, e. g. a. Art, vehi­cles, con­struc­tion, cos­tume etc. There­fore, ear­ly col­lab­o­ra­tion is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed here, as the prepa­ra­tion of i.e. a car body or a set with many hits can take many days.

But your audi­ence and the crit­ics will thank you…

BASICS

99% of all bul­let hits are done with spe­cial pyrotech­nics. For this pur­pose, offi­cial approval is manda­to­ry. With­out it, our work will be a crim­i­nal offence. Expect at least two weeks of pro­cess­ing time!

If you want to use props, we need to exam­ine them care­ful­ly. If there is the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dan­ger­ous splin­ters, we will need to recre­ate it as a so-called break­away prop.

ON LOCATION

In this case, we sel­dom do bul­let hits in exist­ing build­ing sub­stance, as we usu­al­ly have to car­ry out drilling and cut­ting work. More like­ly parts of the orig­i­nal will be made as break­aways and assem­bled or mount­ed on site. The own­er or man­ag­er of a loca­tion also needs to a pro­vide a (writ­ten) agree­ment to the production.

Out­side, bul­let hits are usu­al­ly not a prob­lem unless we have to do them on and into plants for exam­ple. In some cas­es, irrepara­ble dam­age must be tak­en into account here.

In build­ings, the pres­ence of a fire alarm sys­tem must be checked and deac­ti­vat­ed before the effect.

IN THE STUDIO

Bul­lets hits inside a stu­dio are usu­al­ly trou­ble-free; how­ev­er, atten­tion should also be paid to exist­ing fire alarm systems.

ACTORS

Spe­cial care must be tak­en when shoot­ing into the vicin­i­ty of per­sons! Bul­let hits for use near peo­ple are spe­cial­ly man­u­fac­tured and can­not be replaced by “nor­mal” bul­let hits with­out any exception.

Actors and actress­es will always be instruct­ed by us before the effect is per­formed. Depend­ing on the com­plex­i­ty of the scene, it makes sense to pro­vide us with sev­er­al cos­tumes for prepa­ra­tion in advance, as bul­let hits nat­u­ral­ly have a destruc­tive effect on the material.

CREW & EQUIPMENT

Only in the rarest cas­es, prob­lems will arise for the gen­er­al equip­ment on set. Only in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty of the effect dan­ger lurks, thus most­ly the cam­era is inv­oled. We will glad­ly advise your cam­era crew and man­u­fac­ture pro­tec­tive hous­ings etc. if required.

It goes with­out say­ing that a stay in the active area of the effect with­out good rea­son is not per­mit­ted. For cam­eras, remote heads should be used if pos­si­ble. If this is not pos­si­ble, we will work out a solu­tion togeth­er with you.