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.

Archery in the new Mulan film

I just watched the trailer for Disney's live action Mulan reboot. Years ago I was forced to watch Mulan 2, which was a nightmare. Compared to that, this cannot fail, but I really hope it will be better than those other completely unnecessary live action reboots of animated Disney classics. I saw the original Disney Mulan in 1998 in the movies, and I really liked it. Shan Yu, the leader of the evil Huns was a terrifying baddie, I really feared him as a child. And the avalanche scene was awesome!

After some googling around I found out that for some reason Shan Yu is not featured in this reboot (replaced by a random witch in stupid clichéd fantasy costume). This reboot also lacks Mushu, the Cricket, and captain Li Shang (who would've made men out of you all)! Apparently (as the producer of the film stated), the moviemakers fealt that having a superior officer of Mulan felling in love with her is "inappropriate" for this age we're living. As if it would've mattered in ancient China! Seems like I don't need to go to see this movie after all. Sad.

At least the film looks cool. I really love the colours used in this movie. Why is it that ancient and medieval China get's to bee colourful (as it was) but ancient and medieval Europe doesn't (it was too)? Could we get colours back to European historical films also, please!

Costumes in this trailer looked pretty good, especially for a Disney movie! They feature actual Chinese helmet and armour designs from almost the right time period (a few hundred years too new compared to when the story of Hua Mulan was originally set, but then again it's a fantasy story not based on real characters, so it doesn't matter as much).

Archery features heavily in this trailer, and got me excited, so let's get to it!

While not delving into too much detail, let's just say these recurve bows with long siyahs (the unbending parts at the end of Asiatic composite bows) were often used in China from the Han dynasty through the Yuan dynasty (206 BCE–1368 CE).
What is also good is that the archers start their draw from a level above their heads, which is done in East Asian archery, such as Japanese kyūdō.

 Mistakes:
1. All soldiers wear leather bracers. If these are meant to be archer's bracers, then only the archers should wear them, and only in their left arm. And they should be smooth side inside the arm, not like shown here. Leather bracers were not a part of traditional Chinese armours.
2. These bows make a creeking sound when drawn. If a bow creeks, it's somehow broken. I hope not all of these bows are broken. A standard movie cliché, a mistake nonetheless.

Other good thing was that the commander shouted: "Release!" instead of "Fire!". "Fire" was never shouted before the invention and/or widespread use of firearms. Bows don't shoot fire, but arrows, so English language commands to shoot with a bow were most probably "shoot", "loose" and "release". This was really excellent to hear from this trailer.

Now I changed the language in the speech bubble to Chinese since Chinese didn't historically speak English. I don't know Chinese, so according to Cambridge Dictionary this 发射 means "release". More specifically: "Release; to fire a bomb or a missile (= flying weapon), or to allow it to fall". They have used the word "fire" there also, so I don't know if this would be correct term regarding arrows, but someone who knows Chinese can correct this.

 Mistakes:
3. Archers are shooting upwards to create a rain of arrows.

Arrow rain is often depicted in popular media, such as films, games and books, but there is insufficient historical evidence of it being done, at leat regularly. Archers did not stay stationary on battlefield and launch arrow rains after another, but instead they were an inseparable part of the armies, they moved around the battlefield, often among infantry soldiers searching for targets to shoot. The used trajectories of arrows were much flatter and the distances shot much shorter than often imagined by modern people.

4. Mulan here is shooting with a Mediterranean grip. And that is also erroneous, since she's using all four fingers, instead of the regular three. This is anyway not the style of shooting prevalent in Asia, instead she should be shooting with a Mongolian thumb grip. I hope this was just one scene, and she uses the thumb grip in the rest of the movie. Otherwise the archery coach is to blame for this.

5. We have an arrow camera stolen from TV tropes storage of clichés. But it's not a bad cliché, I like it a lot, since it's fun to look at. That's not the mistake. But the arrow flies a long distance (nothing wrong with that either) without spinning. Arrows have those fletchings at their back to give the arrow a spin in the air. This works the same way as rifling on a gun, which makes the bullet spin around it's axis. This spinning makes the projectile fly more accurately. This arrow doesn't even make half a spin during this flight. It's impossible.

Legolas did it better in the The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. His arrow spinned somewhat, while still too little, it looked more believable than Mulan's arrow in flight.

All and all the new Mulan trailer faired exceedingly well compared to many other travesties of archery I've seen during the last few years on screen. Good job!

Compare here how this reboot fairs against it's predecessor regarding archery. I think this new one did a better job in that respect (easier to do it alive than to animate, and some of the mistakes of the animation is due to the exaggerated characteristics of cartoons, not suitable for live action, so it is understandable). It seems I gave both versions of Mulan the same amount of mistake points, but I had more good to say about archery in this live action one.

Mulan (Disney's)

This archery scene is only made for fun in Disney's Mulan animation of course, but they still made some mistakes in it.


Mistakes:

1. Both Mulan and captain Shang shoot left handed in this scene, while they are otherwise right handed.
2. Mulan uses a Mediterranean grip, which is wrong in two ways. Mediterranean grip uses three fingers, Mulan uses only two. The second mistake, they didn't use that release method in China. Asians used mostly Mongolian release, which utilises the thumb holding the string. It requires a thumb ring.
3. Captain Shang shoots three arrows in this scene to show how well the Chinese soldiers must learn archery (and after a training montage Mulan and all the others have learned this trick). Shooting three arrows is possible, but hitting three flying targets and then nailing them to another target is not. Of course, but this is a fun scene, so I won't complain about it anymore. Although I really put the red ring here because there's nothing to keep those arrows holding there.
4. Shang uses four finger grip, but again, it's necessary in this three-arrow-shot. Anyway, usually using four fingers is not a good idea, since it turns the string too much and can effect the flight of the missile. But the real mistake here is the Mediterranean style instead of Mongolian.
5. Arrows don't have any space behind their fletching for fingers to grip and the fletchings do touch both Mulan's and Shang's fingers while they draw.

Good, or... at least okay I guess:

1. Recurve bow, since Asians mostly used these. Although it doesn't look much like a Chinese bow.
2. Hip quiver, again different than real Chinese quivers, but at least it isn't a standard Hollywood back quiver.
3. The arrows are on the left side of the bow here. It would be right if they were shooting with European style, and the bow would be properly on their left hand. But now it's actually not wrong either, since Chinese (as most Asians) shoot the arrow on the thumb side (right side, but in this case, when the characters are mirrored, on the left side). This is most probably a coincidence, they certainly didn't think that much while drawing this scene. It just happened to go right this once. Arrow on the wrong side of the bow is one of the most common mistakes.

And finally a photo from the beginning of the 20th Century. Manchu archers demonstrating Chinese style archery. Note the arrow on the right side, "overdraw" style of shooting, very long fletching on the arrows and typical East Asian quivers with arrows held in place only at their tip.