Top 10 Shootouts in Western Movie History (Before CGI Took Over)
What thing comes to your mind first upon hearing the word 'Western'? It's probably cowboys, and one of the iconic attributes of cowboys is a gun.
Westerns became widely known for their gunfights, and we compiled a list of 10 of the most iconic ones.
The thing about Westerns is that the majority of them were made when the VFX industry was in its very early stages of development, so to make the shootouts look intense and cool, the crew had to rely on the things that we won't be able to wrap our minds around. It was hard, it was dangerous, and it was extremely creative.
The build-up of tension is palpable through the careful camera work and ominous sound design; the clouds of dust make the characters look like hazy silhouettes of themselves as the bullets start flying — or, on the contrary, everything ends quite fast and the loud sounds of gunshots fade into the eerie silence broken by the click of the safety and some thumping on the road.
These movies achieved so much with so little technology available to them and were able to pour lots of emotions into significant scenes that became the genre's staple.