Arrow cam in movies

Reviewing the archery of Disney's new Mulan reboot trailer, I got an idea to talk about spinning arrows. Arrows don't fly straight, they spin. This is a desired quality for an arrow since spinning the missile around its axis makes it fly more straight, so it makes the projectile more accurate. The same mechanism works in bullets that are shot from rifled firearms.

The spinning for arrows is enhanced by the fletching, the three feathers at the back of the arrow. Some flething is glued and tied parallel to the arrow shaft, but some are attached slightly twisting around it, so that they form a kind of propeller. This is called helical fletching. This guides the air flowing between the feathers to turn the fletching, and thus also the arrow, away from it's path, and so the arrow spins.

Now, I'm not a physicist, but to my knowledge, all arrows spin in flight. I've seen it with my own eyes. If the fletching is helical, it accelerates the spin (slightly decelerating the arrow) thus making it more accurate, but straight fletched arrows also spin. Here's a picture of straight and helical fletching.

There is a video by the Slo Mo Guys that (as a by-product of a stupid experiment) shows clearly how much the arrow spins. Their arrow has four fletchings instead of the standard three, but it doesn't matter. Here you can see the arrow in flight in slow motion. From looking at the video I would estimate the arrow to spin about 15 rounds in the circa 10 meter distance between the two guys. This is a lot. I was surprised how much it spins. Maybe some arrows spin more, some less, but they all spin.

Some of the arrow's flight physics is beautifully explained in this video by Smarter Every Day. It mainly deals with the so called archer's paradox, but also shows arrows flying (and spinning) in slow motion. Really a great video.

Now, many movies have emplyed a so-called arrow camera. There's a whole TV tropes page for the arrow cam. These shots are abviously all done with CGI, so no actual arrows were shot (neither with a bow or with a camera). That has lead to some mistakes. Usually these arrow camera shots are used when depicting awesome feats of archery, shooting the bad guy from really far away really accurately. Most common mistakes done in post production are that the arrow has no arc, but flies straight to the target. The producers of this shot in Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring said that they tried it but it caused motion sickness to the viewer. I believe them and thus it's a good decision. But making the computer generated arrow spin doesn't cause motion sickness since that doesn't affect the way the digital camera is moved. It just follows the arrow. But often times the arrow doesn't spin, or spins only slightly. While the distance shot with the arrow is usually pretty long in these shots, the arrow should spin many many times before hitting the target.

Let's take a look at different movies handling this arrow cam shot.

Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)

The trope might have been invented in Kevin Costner's movie, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991, at least that's the first example listed in TV tropes. The arrow cam shot was initially cut out of the movie, but was included in the film's trailer and proved to be so popular that the editors put it back in the movie. It's used at least twice in the film. I think the first time it was done with CGI in this movie. Only the tip of the arrow is visible under the camera. It works otherwise well, but the arrow doesn't spin, instead it wobbles as if to spin but then rotates a bit back to the other direction. An arrow will never do this, it's impossible. In computer graphics the spin would be easy to do so I don't know why they didn't do it. Watch it here. Later Robin Hood shoots two arrows to cut a rope, latter of which is shown in sideways arrow cam. This is done mechanically and looks better. Now the arrow does spin many times around itself, which is correct. Watch that here. It is a bit strange why they didn't make the arrow spin in the first arrow cam scene, when they obviously knew it should, since they made it spin in the second scene?

Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

A few years later Kevin Costner's Robin Hood film was parodied with Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which really is an awesome and funny movie. I've already rated some of its quirks before, but now I watched the trailer, which copied the arrow cam straight (well, not exactly straight, you'll see) from Costner's Robin Hood. The arrow is attached to the camera here as well, and as previously, doesn't spin at all. Watch it here.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring when the fellowship is in Moria, goblins shoot at them. Legolas of course shoots back, much more accurately, and with an arrow camera shot bullseye's one of them between the eyes. This was one of my favourite scenes in the entire film, which is full of my favourite scenes, so it says a lot. The computer generated arrow is shown wholly in camera, and it does spin, but only about one full round, while an arrow at this great distance should have spinned many many rounds. Watch it here. But at least it spins!

The Avengers (2012)

In Avengers Hawkeye shoots (with dubious technique) many arrows. One he shoots at Loki is shown in arrow cam, first from the tip, then at the side. The CGI arrow spins vigorously as it should, yay! Watch it here.

Mulan (2020)

Just when one could hope that time has corrected this mistake, that movie makers wouldn't fall for the Robin Hood trap anymore, and make arrows spin like they did in the Avengers, came along the new Mulan reboot. Arrow cam is featured in the trailer and it follows the arrow from behind which has now become a standard. The arrow however does not spin at all. There is a slight rotational movement, but it doesn't spin even half a turn during a very long distance shot. Watch it here.

Summa summarum:

All in all The Avengers faired the best in this arrow cam test, since their CGI created arrow spins a lot. LotR takes the second place since Legolas' arrow spins slightly, but not enough. None of the rest show spinning of the arrow at all. So, try to remember moviemakers of future: arrows do spin. A lot!

There are several movies and TV series including the arrow cam that I couldn't find footage of now, so they are not reviewed in this blog post. If I find videos of them in the future, I can add them. These include at least the following: Army of Darkness (1992), Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995–1999), Xena: Warrior Princess (1995–2001), The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008), Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010).

For the light end note there's a really funny scene in the parody Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993), where Charlie Sheen's character uses a chicken as the arrow, and we get a chicken cam shot! And no, it doesn't spin, but I don't know how chicken fly when shot from a bow. Watch that here to conclude everything.

Six shooting archery in Robin Hood – Men in Tights

Since today is the leap day, and it's only in every four years (except in years that are divisible by 100, but not by 400, in Gregorian calendar that is) you get a special extra post: Cary Elwes! Of course from the hilarious comedy film Robin Hood – Men in Tights (1993). Real Robin Hood, if he would've existed (which he most probably didn't) would not have worn tights, or known about the leap day for that matter, since they used a Julian calendar at that time. All of this is irrelevant to archery though.

So this time I want to talk about how Cary Elwes, I mean Robin Hood, shoots six arrows at once. It is most probably a reference to western movies with their six-shooting revolvers. Of course you cannot do this with a bow. The second picture shows Hood placing the arrows carefully on top of each other to the bowstring. But there's nothing to keep them there, all aligned beautifully. They used some kind of movie trickery to make that happen (secret arrow holder or glue perhaps?), but in reality this would not work. If shot like this, some of the arrows would surely fly out of the bow. Possibly poorly, hindered by the collapsing arrow pile. Many arrows would just land a few meters ahead or just straight frop off the bowstring and fall to the ground immediately. It would be completely impossible to aim all these arrows.

And what would be the point of it? If an arrow can kill a man, does it need six arrows to kill him six-times more dead? This is precisely the point why the Greeks didn't employ in great numbers the repeating catapult they invented (yes catapult is an arrow thrower, and not a stone thrower, like the ballista), it was too accurate! The same happened with the invent of the modern machine guns. All the arrows and bullets flew to the same spot, which is counter-intuitive after the target is already dead. With machine guns they made the bullets sparse out in flight so they would cover a larger area. With the repeating catapult they couldn't fix that problem, so it wasn't much used in warfare. There is no point of shooting several arrows at once, since they will hit the same target, which is not needed. It is a waste of arrows. Much more useful would be to shoot the arrows one after another to different targets. Now he would have potentially killed six enemies instead of hitting one target six times.

The film is great though, you should watch it if you haven't seen it already. And watch again if you haven't seen it in recent years.