Spent cases of Automatic Weapons fire, Where are they?

[John Morgan]

The other day I was flipping through the channels and cam across a battle scene where some rangers were trying to take a building.  The entire event was shown through the eyes of the journalist/camera man who was filming the event for a mews channel.  (You know, with the word "REC" flashing with a red dot in the upper portion of the screen.)  

Well, the cameraman was crouched down on the right side of this guy who was shooting an automatic weapon.  (If I remember right it was a M-32)  He was less than 2 feet away from the guy.  (When they showed wide view scenes this was confirmed.)  Now, if I understand automatic weaponry right, there should have been spent cases showering the cameraman.  Yet, there was NOT A CASE IN SIGHT!  (OK so it turned out to be an episode of JAG so I immediately changed the channel in disgust but that's not the point of this post.)

That got me to thinking, in just about every movie and TV show where automatic weapons are used, one does not hear or see a spent case.  I've seen movies where the guys are shooting as they run down a hall, NO CASES BOUNCE ANYWHERE.   I know some of you are military and have been around automatic weapons fire.  Are the spent cases really that invisible or is this just more Hollywood Tricks (Like the gun never seems to run out of ammo).

[systemcr4sh]

Sometimes movies have spent cases appear in movies but alot of the time I figure they just forget about them. I don't know if you use blanks if there will be a spent case. But most big buget movies use blanks I think.

-Dan

[Mofo Rising]

Or you could have the opposite case and see spent cases everywhere, a la THE MATRIX.

[Flangepart]

Oh, yeah. Two extreams. Most all self loaders have a right hand ejection port, so the camera man would indeed have had a shower of brass. I put 50 rounds through a Glock 21 .45 pistol once, and had some hot brass land in my hair! I think some movie guns are opperated by compressed gas, and this may explain why no brass. Blank rounds have an extra load of powder for both inhanced flash, and to provide enough pressure to opperate the mecanisim. If you see an M-16, with a flat plate afixed in front of the muzzel, its to provide the back pressure that a normal blank dosen't have. In Starship Troopers, they used Ruger Mini-14's as the rifle basis. In the 5.56mm round, they used the bumped up charges for flash/pressure. I saw an scene from the T.V. Highlander. Two guys fireing loud, Loud Ingram Mac-10's. Long muzzle flashes,too....funny that, as the guns were equiped with Silencers! Those long "Cans" are supposed to hide flash and sound. Nice work, Mr Director! Sheesh! I know Andrew is as honked as i am at this incompitance. The Dirty Harry films i can recall, where the first films that accnolaged the need to Reload! Six, reload, six, reload....its realy not that hard, people!

[john]

Near the end of Escape From New York, when Donald Pleasance is shooting the Duke, you can clear see a stream of shells come out the right side every time he pulls the trigger.

[AkiraTubo]

The flipside of this is a Mickey Roarke flick called Rapid Fire (I think) in which they dedicate an entire scene to explaining that the weapons don't eject cartridges.

Then the director gives us extreme close ups of cartridges being ejected during gun fights.

[Neville]

This reminds of that Hot Shots 2 gag were Charlie Sheen ends up behind a wall of spent ammunition.