Is Sniper 7 The Latest Fake Gunfire Movie?

Above is the trailer for Sniper: Ultimate Kill (Sniper 7).  The movie will again star Chad Michael Collins, Billy Zane and Tom Berenger.

Something catches the eye though at around 0:37 and 0:41.  As both snipers fire their weapons, they give an awkward, fake-looking jerking motion.  Is this once again another example of a VOD movie cheaping out with fake CGI muzzle flashes?

This is really becoming a poisonous trend.  More and more VOD producers are going the route of cutting extra corners.

The benefits on their end are obvious.  You pay less money, because you don’t need to have safety personnel hanging around, you don’t have to worry about hot casings or someone’s eye getting popped.  I’d also have to assume that renting weapons that have been deactivated (filled-in barrels) is also cheaper.  You can still load a round and probably even field-strip them, but probably don’t have to worry about other costs and expenses.

Then you get your actors to simulate ‘recoil’ effects.  I first noticed this in Dolph Lundgren’s god-awful Battle of the Damned, then noticed outright abuse of it in The Marine 4: Moving Target.  While the former can be somewhat justified, the latter can’t (both are still VOD movies, but WWE has bigger resources).

The problems that this shit introduces are obvious.  First, it looks fake as fuck, from the jerking motion of the actors to the horrible CGI muzzle flashes.  Second, as demonstrated in ‘Marine 4’, it can lead to abuse.  If you have a limited number of blanks, you’re going to have a limited number of bullets fired, just like real life.  But if you have the ‘luxury’ of dealing with gunshots and muzzle flashes in post-production, the temptation is there to have the actors fire trillions of (fake) bullets, worsening the problem.  Go ahead and look at the shootouts in ‘Marine 4’, it’s just non-stop full automatic fakery.

Above, I can’t be certain is this is going to happen in Sniper: Ultimate Kill, but I wouldn’t be surprised — I can see the temptation to ‘post-produce’ gunshots for expensive sniper rifles even more than for something like a lowly AK-47.  Certain weapons are more expensive than others.

But if it does then it is a disgrace for a company like Sony to go this route, even for a VOD, and especially in a movie surrounding sniper duels.  I’m going to start tracking and naming/shaming this shit.  We support many of these types of movies on this site, and often give many of them a pass on the quality of their action.

But when you start screwing us on the meat and potatoes, no fucking way!