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The GAU-8: Does any movie get it right?


Antorian

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I've watched a few films that feature the A-10 and every time I've seen it shoot off the GAU 8, the sound of the gun has been completely off. Has anyone seen a movie do it right? The worse offenders would be Transformers and Superman.

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The only movie I recall seeing that got the sound of a rotary cannon right was 'The Final Countdown' (Countdown to Zero?) where the USS Nimitz goes back in time to the day before the Pearl Harbour attack. An F14 shoots down a Mitsubishi Zero using it's Vulcan. When I watched the movie as a child, I didn't even realise the 'brrrrrrrrrr' noise was the F14's gun! They obviously just used the real sound from the shot, and didn't add in a sound effect to replace it. Otherwise, it's universally incorrect.

 

I think it's to do with perception - Hollywood will always replace a sound to be more inline with what they think people will expect. My personal favourite, and I have seen it in quite a few movies, is the trusty DHC6 Twin Otter. It's a clunky looking twin turboprop aircraft often used for skydiving. I love them, I used to fly them a lot. But in the movies, Hollywood often replaces the whine of the turbines with piston engine sounds. I think they think that people will expect a small twin to be powered by 'car' engines, not 'jet' engines!

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I think it's to do with perception - Hollywood will always replace a sound to be more inline with what they think people will expect. My personal favourite, and I have seen it in quite a few movies, is the trusty DHC6 Twin Otter. It's a clunky looking twin turboprop aircraft often used for skydiving. I love them, I used to fly them a lot. But in the movies, Hollywood often replaces the whine of the turbines with piston engine sounds. I think they think that people will expect a small twin to be powered by 'car' engines, not 'jet' engines!

 

You speak much truth. Most of the time Hollywood either isn't concerned with realism or if they are concerned they only wish to capture what the majority of their audiences THINK is realism. Like the fact that any time a car goes around a corner they throw in screeching tires and smoke. People expect it so Hollywood delivers, I guess.

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I've watched a few films that feature the A-10 and every time I've seen it shoot off the GAU 8, the sound of the gun has been completely off. Has anyone seen a movie do it right? The worse offenders would be Transformers and Superman.

 

Worst offend is in Stargate Atlantis Season 5 Episode 19 "Vegas". It sounds quite like .50 cal or so :megalol:

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Spot on. Mainstream movie and videogame producers are giving their consumers what they want (and expect) to see and hear. For example, how many movies or games has speed of sound taken into account. You can see the explosion, and hear the BOOOM at the same time, no matter how far it is from the camera.

 

I still remember when I first set off an explosive charge in Operation Flashpoint (one of the few games that have it right). The tank blew up, and some second later, I heard the boom. First I thought "Weird, the sound is bugged", and few seconds later "Oh, wait, that's the way it's supposed to be! How great attention to detail!"

 

But I guess most movie spectators would be surprised to hear delayed explosions.

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I think the people at fault aren't the movie goers with their expectations, but the people who do the foley for the movies, the directors and the editors.

 

Most of the time when they add sound effects the footage they work with is silent and devoid of any original sounds. So if they see a "machine gun" fire on screen, they come up with a really cool machine gun sound. And even if they did do a real sounding A-10 burst, Michael Bay will go "Hey, what's up with that really load fart noise!?"... "Put a real gun sound in there!" :lol:

 

Personally I think there's nothing cooler than film makers getting it right. Unfortunately most of the time guns go bang instead of crack, explosions rumble instead of thud, there's no speed of sound and of course there's sound in space.

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But I guess most movie spectators would be surprised to hear delayed explosions.

 

 

Then they must be very surprised when watching a firework lol

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I think the people at fault aren't the movie goers with their expectations, but the people who do the foley for the movies, the directors and the editors.

 

 

 

Personally I think there's nothing cooler than film makers getting it right. Unfortunately most of the time guns go bang instead of crack, explosions rumble instead of thud, there's no speed of sound and of course there's sound in space.

 

I think you are partly correct but movies don't make money unless people go watch them and directors who make failures don't direct much. I know people won't stop watching movies just because they are wildly unrealistic but it would be nice if people would use more common sense and be more educated about a wide array of subjects and then go on to expect common sense and some realism to come through in movies.

 

But you are right, it's great when movie makers get it right. I'm not as annoyed at sounds in some cases as I am with mechanics. That is one reason I liked the movie Shooter and don't really care for the movie Sniper. There is a distinct difference in long range ballistics, optics, and shooting form in those 2 movies.

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You know what makes me mad about sound effects in movies is when you see a four-stroke dirt bike sound like a 2-stroke. Drives me crazy!

 

The Place Beyond the Pines? I think they had both two stroke and four stroke sound at the same time in that movie, for just one bike :)

 

And of course, the bike had at least 666 gears.

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You speak much truth. Most of the time Hollywood either isn't concerned with realism or if they are concerned they only wish to capture what the majority of their audiences THINK is realism. Like the fact that any time a car goes around a corner they throw in screeching tires and smoke. People expect it so Hollywood delivers, I guess.

 

Sure,they do same much more on Explosions.Normal Explosives dont make big fireballs which slowly increase their size into the Air.Its just a "Woooom" Explosion sound and some Smoke in real.But a realistic explosion makes no fireballs and they want fireballs so they just take a Barrel,put a bag with Blackpowder inside,then a bag with car fuel,and then the barrel is buried into ground.When the Blackpowder is ignited it will produce a large fireball with the Car Fuel coming out of the barrels open top.

 

When they want to blow up a House,they remove all windows and replace it with clear plastic foil,then they pump Methan/Propan inside and light it up.Big Fireballs will come out of each Window and Opening and on TV it looks like the whole stucture exploded.Most times this effect is combined with a wire attached to actors belt,and a soft underground in back.Then the wire is pulled strongly so the actor is flying backwards (onto the soft underground not visible in TV) and it looks like he would been blown away by the blast force.

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Sure,they do same much more on Explosions.Normal Explosives dont make big fireballs which slowly increase their size into the Air.

 

You're mistaken. A fireball may not happen with every explosion, but they do occur frequently with large bombs. I'm willing to give Hollywood the benefit of the doubt* in this case.

 

 

 

* one notable exception is with Hollywood frag grenades, which really shouldn't make fireballs, ever.

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And the classic sound, when wheels on cars sounds like they drive fast inside a concrete parking house, on dirt roads.

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Here'a a classic movie that just gets everything right:

 

 

I have never seen a more accurate portrayal of claymore mines in a motion picture.

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Here'a a classic movie that just gets everything right:

 

 

 

I have never seen a more accurate portrayal of claymore mines in a motion picture.

 

WOW, Boris, thanks for sharing that. I've tried to watch that movie before but just couldn't. What's NOT wrong in that clip? It's like they looked at everything that was correct and deliberately did the opposite.

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WOW, Boris, thanks for sharing that. I've tried to watch that movie before but just couldn't. What's NOT wrong in that clip? It's like they looked at everything that was correct and deliberately did the opposite.

 

No Probs!

 

While Commando is an awful combat movie in terms of realism, it is one of my all time favourite comedies :lol:

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You're mistaken. A fireball may not happen with every explosion, but they do occur frequently with large bombs. I'm willing to give Hollywood the benefit of the doubt* in this case.

 

 

 

* one notable exception is with Hollywood frag grenades, which really shouldn't make fireballs, ever.

 

Have you ever actually compared the Hollywood fireballs to the fireballs in that video? Because they are completely different. Those real world fireballs throw up a bunch of dust and brownish-gray smoke, not to mention the pressure waves, that Hollywood fireballs never have.

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Have you ever actually compared the Hollywood fireballs to the fireballs in that video? Because they are completely different. Those real world fireballs throw up a bunch of dust and brownish-gray smoke, not to mention the pressure waves, that Hollywood fireballs never have.

 

I think his point was simply that real world explosions often have fireballs too, not that Hollywood and real life explosions are more or less equal.

 

It is fairly obvious in most movies and TV shows that the method for creating said fireball is completely different than what happens in a real world explosion, so the fireballs in movies definitely don't look right. They usually are much larger than they should be, they usually involve too much fire and not enough smoke, dust, debris, etc (except the obvious debris placed conspicuously for the purpose of being thrown through the air to make it look "cool") as you pointed out, and they usually either have too much force or not enough depending on if the good guys or the bad guys are in the vicinity of the explosion.

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I decided to go watch a few A-10 scenes from movies after seeing this thread, and in doing so, I found a cockpit scene from Terminator: Salvation -

c49e6af53ba7b1e233cc5b22af20a054.png

:megalol:

Yeah, I saw the clips of this on youtube, surprisingly good for the sound of the GAU-8.

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