Making A Realistic Gunshot Like In Squid Game

Squid games

I don't think I need to explain what Squid Games is anymore. This Korean series got over 142 million views on Netflix making it the most watched Netflix Original series ever. Followed by Bridgerton Season 1 with 82 million views, Talking about crunching numbers right!

One of the things that happen the most in this series is beyond a doubt people getting shot. It happens multiple times every single episode. So this gave us the perfect reason to explain you how to create a realistic gunshot and impact from A to Z. Because these seem quite easy to do but are in fact quite difficult to pull off good.

Squibs

To create gunshots practical there are a lot of different ways a squib can work. Squibs are usually detonators used for gunshot impacts. In bigger productions there will be a small blood bag on the talent with right under it a small explosive. Upon detonating it the blood bag explodes and makes it look like a bullet hit the talent.

Ofcourse creating a pyrotechnic squib like its called is only meant for professionals. Its extremely dangerous to tie up explosive charges to people if you have no knowledge about it so please don't try this at home.

Another and safer way for us to recreate this is the air squib. Instead of an explosive blowing up the bag we use compressed air. You can attach a tube under the blood bag connected to an air compressor and upon impact release the air. Ofcourse this works best with medium and close up shots since you are hooked up to a big machine.

You can also have a more compact yet still powerful enough way to shoot blood. You can use the exact same setup as previous but instead attach a bike pump to it with a C02 cartridge. This delivers a serious blast when released. It's perfect for long shots and your talent can hold the trigger in its own hands so you don't need to paint away a big compressor and a tube attached to your talent.

Storyblocks

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