The Penguin VFX Team Developed A New Kind of Prop Gun for Safer Shootout Scenes

The Penguin TV series is breaking new ground with a set of new VFX tricks to make those shootouts look even more thrilling.

By Kofi Outlaw

The Penguin Episode 2 gave viewers their first real taste of what a full-fledged action scene looks like in the show. (SPOILERS!) At the start of the latest episode "Inside Man", Oz Cobb/Penguin (Colin Farrell)  double-crosses the Falcone mob family by informing their rivals in the Maroni mob when and where to find the drug stockpile the Falcones are trying to relocate to another town.

 Oz gets himself caught up when The Falcone underboss Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly) orders him to ride on the truck that's getting hit; the Maroni heist goes down and Oz is forced to fight for his life while still keeping his cover with the Falcones. The result is a bloody shootout on the backstreets of Gotham City, which proves that The Penguin will not slouch when it comes to major action set pieces.

Reactions to the Penguin seem to indicate that the violence and action have been impressing viewers (if not shocking them). However, during HBO's "The Penguin – Inside Episode 2" featurette, Visual Effects Supervisor Johnny Han revealed that the team working on Penguin actually developed a new type of prop gun to use on set – one that could offer the actors the physical interaction they needed, give the directors and VFX teams something convincing to build on, and keep everyone on set safer than the prop guns that used to be used in such sequences: 

"So for 'FEMA heist' our team developed these flash guns where they look like regular guns but they have an enormously bright camera flash that could be triggered by the actors so that they could wield it and feel that flash of light as they pull the trigger," Han explained. "We felt this was a really unique approach to doing gunfire because for safety it helps us not use real guns on set."

Hollywood's use of prop guns in film and TV productions once again gained infamy after the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while filming the western movie Rust in 2021. A prop gun that had supposedly been cleared for use on set actually discharged a live round while actor Alec Baldwin was pointing the weapon down at a camera that Hutchins was holding, while filming a scene. It was the same sort of accident that also claimed the life of actor Brandon Lee while filming The Crow in 1993.  

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The legal consequences and public backlash to the Rush shooting re-opened the discourse on using real guns in film and TV productions, with many stunt and VFX teams exploring new possibilities for filming shootouts. That said, there have been criticisms from both performers and fans that using rubber guns and adding muzzle flashes and noise as post-production VFX simply cannot compare to the realism of prop guns and blanks. The team behind The Penguin may be onto something with weighted prop guns that actually produce muzzle flash lighting effects. 

The Penguin is now airing Sunday nights at 9 ET on HBO, and is streaming on Max. 

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