"Breaking Out the Big Guns..."

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When doing business in a volatile region, backing up your claims requires more than just money.  We continue where we left off with the last update, with an image of one of our more intricately built props from the film.  This Sniper Rifle has been heavily modified to suit both an outdoor and indoor functionality.

The rifle's magazine is loaded horizontally instead of vertically to provide the least encumbrance in moving the rifle quickly.  The ejector slot is on the rifle's right side.  A rectangular bar over the scope protects it from damage while also allowing good clearance if the shooter wishes to hide under foliage while decreasing the chances of an obscured view from camouflage falling on top of the rifle.

The crates feature Ethercorp's icon-style "Octagon-E" logo, a prominent symbol in REVERSION.

The prop is lit differently from how it appears in the film to allow more of its details to be visible.

DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY:

This rifle, much like the Congo-Sec Armored Suit featured earlier, follows the "near-future/next-step" artistic direction of REVERSION.  In line with this this fictional rifle harkens back to the tradition of sci-films from the 80's where weapons were frequently combinations of more than one conventional weapon.

The rifle's original main body is based on a Steyr HS .50 with elements and accessories from a Barrett M82 and part of the barrel and weighted under-carriage from a Walther WA-2000 rifle.  Smaller mods were inspired from the SVD Dragunov rifle.

The ejector lever was extended to balance the rifle visually and make it appear even more interesting.

At the time the weapon was modeled, it wasn't clear yet how much "little actions" would occur in the script other than the overall main action.  We weren't sure yet whether there would be a lot of re-loading or maybe we'd want the weapon to jam to make things a little more tense, for example. So to cover bases, the weapon was modeled with many moving parts and basically this made the weapon an actor of its own with an armature.

To that end, the weapon had an armature which allowed movement for the trigger, the ejector, and the magazines were a separate object that could be detached along with individual rounds and cartridges.

Credit goes to Anton mostly for the modeling of this weapon, our VFX team led by Mitch took care of most of the materials along with reviews and tweaks from other team members.