Bullet Realism in TV/Film

POSTED BY: h0w412d
UPDATED: Saturday, April 7, 2007 06:14
VIEWED: 5138
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H0W412D

Friday, April 6, 2007 4:28 AM

i commend Firefly and Serenity for doing right what most other tv shows and movies do wrong, which is that they have sound in space. this may not be much to some, but scientific accuracy means something to me.

but i just noticed that like almost all other tv shows/films, Firefly also has "super momentum" bullets, where the target of a bullet flies back by a lot. in reality, if that happened, the person shooting the bullet would be pushed back by just as much force as they imparted.

im sure there're other instances, but i can only think of 2:
1) serenity pilot, where zoe flies back after being shot by one of patience's men
2) that kid who flew into the way of the shotgun blast intended for jayne in jaynestown had his body turned many degrees by the blast

i guess my actual question is, how concerned was Joss Whedon with scientific realism? he recognized that actions in space have no sound unless in an ion cloud but didn't take the super momentum bullets out.

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Friday, April 6, 2007 6:23 AM

I love the man's work, but he's not a hard science, engineering, technologically hip sorta guy.

Examples abound: one of the most obvious, in OMR, Vera needs oxygen around her to fire. A gunpowder explosion takes place inside a sealed cartridge ,the oxidizer is in there already. No mechanical reason the action needs oxygen or air. Warmth maybe, to keep the lubricants from freezing up, but not air.
And plenty of others...

CLJOHNSTON108

Friday, April 6, 2007 11:59 AM

Y'know, that bit about Vera needing oxygen sounded plausible to me when I first saw it.

Then I watched an episode of MythBusters, where they were trying to build a Black Powder engine, and they mentioned that gunpowder carries its own oxidizer, so it can ignite in a vacuum.

So disillusioned, but I still love that scene!

SHINYED

Friday, April 6, 2007 3:18 PM

All B'coats are here because we're all pissed off and confused...how can you have a sci-fi show without:
phase inducers
pattern buffers
tachyon pulses
deflector dishes
starboard nacells
the dreaded inverse tachyon pulse
anti-matter containment
shields
holodecks
doors that open with a whooosh
binary couplings
jeffries tubes
time warp calculations
light speed calculations
quadrants of space
bad aliens
good aliens
invisible aliens
shape shifting aliens
trans-dimensional aliens
time travel paradoxes
plasma venting
plasma relays
photon arrays
wormholes
universal translators
self destruct buttons
decontamination chambers
gravity pressure chambers
etc etc

Firefly doesn't have any of the above...so how can it be a sci-fi show....the nerve!

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Friday, April 6, 2007 3:43 PM

hey, ShinyEd- ya fergot

dilithium crystals.

FLATTOP

Friday, April 6, 2007 4:33 PM

I don't think Vera uses gunpowder ammunition.

I don't recall seeing any shell casings fly about the helmet when Jayne fired (or when any weapon is fired throughout the series or BDM). The only time I saw a recognizable cased cartridge is when Jayne was loading his grenade launcher getting ready to repel Reavers. I remember seeing them load weapons, but never a shell casing flying or unloaded to allow reload.

That implies caseless ammunition. Rules might be different for caseless, although if I were making a caseless round I'd include all of the propellant components in the mix...
Could be it was discovered to be more efficient to use ambient air (high capacity battery of some sort heats the air in a chamber & releases it to fling the projectile). That'd help explain why Mal & Zoey's weapons always make that "charging up" sound when the cock them at dramatically significant moments.

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CLJOHNSTON108

Friday, April 6, 2007 4:45 PM

What about Zoe's Mare's Leg, after she shoots Tracy in "The Message" and the Reaver in the cargo bay in the BDM?
Bouncing cartridges aplenty!

But I distinctly detect a bit of the Babylon 5 PPG effect when the weapons discharge!
http://frogstar.soylentgeek.com/wav/ppg.wav

ALLIETHORN7

Friday, April 6, 2007 4:51 PM

Ya'll fprget- 500 years in the future. There just HAS to be some type of advance in weapons technology (And, don't foeget, they just came off of a war, and war is the best for breeding new and even more efficient/sadistic ways to kill folks). It's entirely possible that, somewhere along the line, that some folk could have up with a bullet that packs a small enough explosive (Nitro, maybe?) to knock folk down when it hits- offers a big advantage to blow a guy of his feet and stun him for a couple seconds.
Also... it's a T.V. show... don't dig TOO deeply into it, or it loses its magic.

Having fun yet?

-Danny

I wanna take the Bullet,
The one aimed straight for your Heart;
I wanna meet the wolves halfway,
And let them Tear me APART,
But that's not the way they do it here...
THRICE RULES!!!!!!!!!

SICKDUDE

Friday, April 6, 2007 4:52 PM

Well, I still give Joss credit for trying.

For me, the hollywood cliche that makes me cringe every time is the punch to the jaw or chop to the neck that makes a person unconscious. Used all the time because it's easy, but it really doesn't happen. That's why I like Jayne's fight in Ariel. It's prolonged, terrifying, and brutal. Those guards don't go down without a fight, ultimately for their own survival.

"I am your father, Luke. Give in to the Dark Side, you nob!" - Doug McKenzie

REGINAROADIE

Friday, April 6, 2007 5:08 PM

Another action cliche that bugs me a bit is the shattering glass one. Where if a character is thrown through a glass window and the window shatters, that the person doesn't have any deep cuts or severe lacerations.

The only movie to ever portray that realistically was in this movie called A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD, where in the early scenes in the 60's the main characters older brother while high walks straight into a glass patio door, smashes it and has a huge piece of glass embedded in his neck with blood just gushing out.

That's why in THE TRAIN JOB, I loved the moment when Mal gets thrown through the window and it turns out to be a hologram.

**************************************************
"Have you ever fired two guns whilst jumping through the air?"
"No."
"Have you ever fired ONE gun whilst jumping through the air?"

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