Is it just me or do gun effects in movies seem very weak over the past 10 years or so?

They sound more like they're shooting a quick cap gun or fire cracker. People talk louder than the gunfire

Movies used to make gunfire more convincing and attention getting (like in real life) It drowned out and carried above the rest of the noise in the movie and often even had some kind of echo effect.

Warner Bros from the 1940s-1990s always seemed to be the best at it.

I.E. in the 1948 movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre when Humphrey Bogart catches Tim Holt falling asleep, takes his gun away, orders him back into brush in the dark and moves out of view....the loud ring of two gunshots that follow after a few moments of silence leaves you no doubt as to what just happened and even startles you a little.

In the 1972 movie Magnum Force when the motorcycle cop pulls the car of mobsters over and is quietly talking to them, we are startled when he pulls his revolver and the loud effects of a .357 Magnum start ringing out as it guns them down in the car and quietly walks away.

And of course we all know Dirty Harry's famous .44 Magnum cannon sound effect.

The "Diplomatic Immunity" BOOM "has just been revoked" from Lethal Weapon too was quite the attention getter as Danny Glover's M-19 rings out after a neck turn

Paramount isn't bad either.

Indiana Jones entering the Nepal Bar with his S&W firing away at German thugs was effective.

But all movies prior to 10 years ago tried, however they could, to make guns sound like what they were: Loud, carrying over everything and attention getting.

Now they all sound like a wiffle bat hitting the sidewalk.

Even when they "remaster" sound effects for older movies, they make them sound very weak and less realistic. Such as in the dirty harry movies. Sound more like a door slamming shut.

Or the Terminator. The gunshots in the "remastered" version of that sound like popcorn popping.

While watching prison break I noticed when a secret service guy draws his glock you hear a loud noise like the safety is being disengaged or a decocker or something of the sort.

Have you bin using you ear plugs? Hearing lose is cumulative. A women goes to the Dr. and complains "I have thes strange problem, I have this gas all the time, but it's weird it has no smell, and another thing it has no sound." The Dr. starts fill out a RX. "What's that?" she asked. "It's for a hearing aid, tomorrow we will work on your sinuses."

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A republic if you can keep it

I'm seeing a lot of the TV police procedurals where the M.E. is pronouncing that the CoD was a .22.

They bark like a 9 and the hole in the muzzle end of the Glock (always a Glock) looks like a 9, but for whatever reason, the writers have declared the Hollywood Bad Guy firearm of choice is now a .22.

And when the gun is described as a 9mm it is said to be a "large caliber handgun".

The poor old dead homeowner? A rusty revolver he had no idea how to use!

So that's what has happened to all the .22 ammo, taken off the market because they are to dangerous.

Or when they are in a combat situation and rack a round into the chamber of their primary weapon they are using to stalk a bad guy just at the moment they see them probably to scare them into submission to eliminate violence in movies, or are holding a firearm on someone with the hammer back on like a 1911 then rack again, geesz I always carry with a round chambered and safety off, but then again I'm not making the big bucks in the movies. Oh and don't forget the firearm firing with the slide locked back, gotta get me one of those 20 round 1911's though that fire with the slide locked back.

And there seems to be a lot of smoke after the shots are fired!

Hollywood has been blowing smoke for years now.

And I always like the part where the good guy can hide behind a wooden crate and when the bad guy peppers it with an AK, the bullets ricochet off the wood in a shower of sparks!

It used to bug me, now I'm just amused.

My favorites are never ending mags

Just watched Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and the bad guys were shooting Steyr AUGs at them and they hid behind an air conditioning duct. And yep , the bullets ricocheted off with sparks.

Have you had a hearing test lately? I thought it was quite the opposite. I see 9mm`s makeing cars sommersault, explode like a bomb, choppers knocked out of the air etc. Also like hearing those bullets ping off the railings in dark warehouses etc.

It might have something to do with the sound systems that theatres have now. Most of them are pretty deafening with just background music and talking. Throw in some realistic gun shots and most of the audience would probably have busted ear drums.

They do the same thing with two stroke and four stroke motorcycles / dirtbikes too they get the sounds mixed up. Since millions of dollars are
spent on movies they don't get the noise and sound right.

That's been my impression too. Saw one flick in which the noise of a gunshot was literally deafening. I'm not a Stallone fan, but thought he was good in "Cop Land". There's a scene in which the corrupt cops, knowing his character is deaf in one ear, touch off a Glock inches from the other one. At that point the sound track goes dead. Pretty convincing.

On the other hand, indoor gunplay scenes in which the characters can whisper to each other are just silly.

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Oh well, what the hell.

All the sound in a movie is done by foley artists. If you have trouble hearing stuff on you big flat screen it's because of the encoding and the little flat speakers in the new sets. Spring for a good sound system with all the speakers. It will make a difference.

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A republic if you can keep it

I hate when they get animal noises mixed up too.....like a mallard making Canada goose honks or a pigeon hollering like a crow

It's not just the sound that's not realistic. I was watching Snatch the other day and a guy was firing a 50 caliber Desert Eagle with absolutely no recoil.

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sticks-n-stones&hollowpoints

Swampeast's comment rings true when the movie/ad maked have a Bald Eagle sound like a Red-tailed Hawk. Unfortunately, Bald Eagles call is more clucking like a chicken on steroids!

My favorites are when bladed weapons - any bladed weapons are pulled/touched/looked at they make the ching sound even if they are pulled out of a leather sheath(!).

The other one is when the slide is locked back on a semi-auto and it makes a clicking noise like the hammer is being worked.

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Thread Killer.

Microphones that are made for speech or music do not do a good job with unusual noises like whips cracking and fists in the face. The mic itself is limited and the circuits filter some sound outside of it's range (limiting and compression). There has to be a foley guy to enhance these noises or at least special mike setups. Since the 'visceral' effects are hard to capture by microphone, foley artists often combine several sounds to make one.
Films made in the field are often not processed and guns sound strange coming across a TV.

Another possibility: The directors don't WANT the guns to stand out. There could be several reasons for this. It doesn't really make sense NOT to have foley processing these days because today it is a snap with computers.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

OP, have you seen Django Unchained? There's some scalp-lifting gunfire in that one!

OSHA......

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"IN GOD WE TRUST"

It's the movies

Sounds are normally limited on a DVD to 48KHZ and older movies even less. You would have to wear noise cancelling ear defenders at the cinema otherwise and the cops would be around your house if real gunshots were coming from your TV

You know what I haven't heard in a long time? A ricochet.
PaCHIIIIIING!

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

When Dirty Harry came on, a .44 magnum was 'exotic'. I guess with the shortages not everybody has a .22 nowadays.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

lemme put my audio engineer hat on and give you an answer.

The sound is edited into the soundtrack.
Reason being, a gunshot is a real bear to record due to its volume.
a condenser mic would eat it after the first real blast, A dynamic might hold the shock, but will lose the nuance in the upper registers.
trying to give it range to make it manageable makes for environmental coloration.

Instead, they pull in canned sound bites to work with.
These tracks are pre mixed to levels that adhere to soundroom standards so as to make them easy to work with. Thus, the gun isn't any louder than dialog, which is also mixed down to the same standards.

Ever notice how the heros gun sounds a bit meaner than the villans? ... sound pools, nothing more.

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it just needs more voltage

Wussies in charge of Hollyweird......................

"Airplane"... Peter Graves flying some sort of jet liner and you hear the sound of propellers justa hummin' away....

I believe the sounds on Airplane could be on purpose. The entire movie was a parody. Prop sounds would be part of that parody.

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I always take precautions

Oh, I don't know if I agree with the OP. Saw "Fury" at the theatre and I swear my eyes were crossed when we left. Couldn't even catch a nap!

Some of the worst gun sound effects in any movie was in the old James Bond movies. No matter what the target was or what the down range field of fire was the gun shot was always a phoney sounding bang with a ricochet as if the bullet had hit a steel plate.

And all the gun shots sounded the same whether from a hand gun or a rifle.

As far as realism goes I've spent plenty of time around live gunfire both in target shooting and in combat situations and I'm not really sure I want my movie sound effects to duplicate it. It is a big reason why my hearing is mostly gone.

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Real men love cats!

You need to turn up your hearing aid!!!

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James Redfield
LM #497

First, I can't believe you all are fretting over something as silly as gunshot sounds in a movie. Anybody who posts on this thread really needs something better to do.

Oh, wait......

Anyway, gun sounds on TV or movies don't bother me much, but I do get kinda curious as to how the heroes and anti-heroes can take physical punishment that would cripple or kill a real human, but still jump up and fight the good fight. Slam someone's head into a steel girder, and they ain't getting up to punish you for it. On an NCIS episode last night, Agent Timmy took a full roundhouse clonk to the back of the head from a golf club, and rather than cave in the back of his skull, it just knocked him out. This stuff is so ridiculous, I gotta wonder about the intelligence of anybody who even watches it.

(again)... Oh, wait.....
Acebow

All about dat bass, bout dat bass...

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I'm Proud To Be An American!

When Warren Beatty made Bonnie and Clyde he wanted the shots to jar the audience. He had blanks fired into 55 gallon drums and recorded that.

I know the guy who makes their reloads. I have several I bought from him. Nasty things they are.

They got it right on this one:

My son was watching an old western last week, and I sat down to watch with him. So many fake ricochet shots off the rocks it was ridiculous! Old movies....new movies. It's all fake!

Thanks, Now I gotta go rent that movie.
Ronnie

The answer to your question is--because they are outsourcing special effects to China--like everything else.

That reminds me of "canned laughter" that you hear in many old TV shows.I guess they call it :"canned gunfire?"

Huh? Wha'd 'e say?

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Real men love cats!

And after several hundred rounds in an enclosed place, people can still hear. I you've ever been in any kind of firefight, you know you're going to br deaf for a while afterwards.

At the risk of being obvious, most movies today are weak and fake.

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50 Years of DSOTM

Gun shot sounds in movies haven't been "real" for decades, they've been edited into the track since long even before digital manipulation of the sound made it very easy. You can frequently catch that if you watch "Making of..." documentaries on the DVD's where you hear the pathetic pops of the blanks going off, before muzzle flash and synthetic bang are added by the editor.
By the way, best gun sounds in a movie ever: "Open Range" with Robert Duvall and Kevin Costner. Those guns whomp so beautifully you can even overlook Costner's apparent 10 or 12-shot single action Colt....

Shane has, IMO, the best gun sounds.

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Thread Killer.

On a different but related note, I'm sure you've all seen plenty of World War II documentaries with newsreel material.
I'm always surprised how many people are surprised when they find out that none of that accompanying sound is authentic; all those booming cannons, machine guns, bombs exploding, the clatter of tank treads, all fake. Well maybe not fake, but recorded elsewhere, and then added later, no matter how authentically the static crackles. There basically is no front-line footage from WW II with sound; lugging around a motion picture camera was awkward enough, the technology of the time made carrying the accompanying sound recording equipment impossible in a combat environment (which, to add a disclaimer, doesn't mean that somewhere someone may not have tried it; but 99% of the combat footage was silent).

It's not the sound effects. Your hearing, like most of ours, is toast.

What's funny is one of my pet peeves is the brass hitting the ground sound effect in most movies. I always thought it was over-used, especially when the actor is shooting in dirt. Then one day I video'd my brother shooting my Thompson in the desert. When I looked at the video later I was very much surprised to hear the brass clink as it hit the dirt-

The change in the sound levels of gunfire is just Hollywood's "Political Correctness" creeping into movies.

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Bill