Arrows do bounce. You can
skip arrows off the ground. I've seen people skip arrows along water. Hello! I'm Jim Kent, known to the wider world as Grizzly Jim. I'm a traditional archer, YouTube creator. I'm lucky enough to have
traveled all over the world, sharing my passion for
traditional archery. Today I'm back to look at some archery clips from film and TV to judge how real they are. Mother: My boy! He's at full draw there. He's got a pretty solid anchor. You can see him massively
flinch as he shoots. Once you've been shooting for a while, you get over that. You don't have that flinch. You don't anticipate the shot so much. But when you're fairly new to archery, that's something that's pretty typical. But he's given the feather a lick. I don't know why you'd do it. Why? I mean, why would you lick it? I mean, that's been in the dirt. An arrow will spin as it
flies through the air, especially with a feather. Feathers come in two flavors. You've got left wing or right wing. One will make it spin one way, the other will make it spin the other. But it doesn't fly straight. Arrows, when they fly through the air, they oscillate like crazy because you've got all this energy coming from the back and pushing. It's usually fairly weighty up front. It takes a couple of seconds for the back to catch up with the front. So you end up with this
hugely oscillating arrow flying through the air. Obviously the more tension in the rope, the easier it would be to cut. If there wasn't much weight there it would be very difficult to cut. But if it's under a lot of tension, that would cut through quite nicely. I don't know, to this day,
why he rips a feather off, because they compress to almost nothing. But you can shoot two arrows off a bow. You can do that. It's not an efficient way of doing things. The bow doesn't know that there's two arrows on the bow, the bow just thinks there's
one very heavy arrow. And obviously the heavier the arrow, the more energy's used up trying to propel that arrow. I think I'm going to have to go eight, just because of the feather thing. If I use a quiver, I tend
to use a back quiver. It gives you a nice low profile. Quivers you tend to either wear on your hip or your side or your back. When you're in the woods, you tend to want to keep a
sort of fairly slim profile, so a back quiver is quite useful. Arrows do make a noise
when you shoot them, but they don't quite make a noise like you expect them to, unless you use something called a flu-flu, which is an arrow with really
big feathers on the end. The noise that they make is so satisfying. Now, he's got this weird
grip on the string. He's got the arrow on the
left side of the bow, I think, and he's holding the string like that, which isn't what you do. If you really wanted to
hold the string upside down, you'd need the arrow on
the right side of the bow. I imagine that's more of an
aesthetic thing than anything. You can hear, as he draws up, you can hear the bow creaking. Now, this is a trope. And that's when the bow
comes up to full draw, you hear it creak. Bows don't creak. If your bow's creaking when
you come up to full draw, it's probably going to explode on you. But the archery's a little
bit all over the shop. I'm going to go six. Yeah. I'm going to get
some hate in the comments for that one, but I love
"Lord of the Rings," so don't come for me. Soldier: Archers! I've tried this. And what actually happens is when you wrap something
around an arrow and shoot it, the arrow goes, but that tends to stay. So you end up with a bit of linen on fire by your fingers, which isn't a great idea. I'm sure there was other ways of doing it, but it was actually a small
cage on the end of the arrow that had had something
flammable in the cage. So when you shot the arrow, the force of the arrow going forward didn't force it down the arrow shaft. It's all about quantity over quality. So you'd send a lot of
arrows skyward, up and over, to try and sort of rain down hell on the opposing side. There's a very famous English battle, the battle of Agincourt, where the English famously won the day because of their archers
doing exactly that. I kind of like the way the arrows are bouncing off the shields.
That's quite realistic. I would've definitely employed that tactic if I was at Troy. Got a bracer on to protect his arm from the string. So, what happens is, when you draw a bow back and let it go, the string, in an ideal world, would come nice and
straight past your arm, but it doesn't. Because
it comes off the fingers, if you see a string in slow motion, it actually comes towards
the bow like this. So a lot of time you tend to sort of bash your arm with the string, and that sort of bracer there would potentially stop that. Give that one a seven. She's got an anchor point
sort of under her chin. She's looking very, very straight, very good sort of target-archery style. And there's nothing wrong
with target-archery style, but it is very good for
shooting set distances. She's going to be competing
in the Hunger Games, so she's going to be in sort of more combat sort of situations, so that isn't really the
right sort of archery for that sort of scenario. She's going very quickly, and you see it a lot in films where people are shooting very quickly. Archery, for me anyway, is always a little bit more measured, a little bit more "take
your time" a little bit, like get that perfect shot off because it takes a long time to kind of load your bow
up again and shoot again. In the Middle East, they
do sort of archery where he's very quickly loading the bow, shooting very rapidly,
and it's an amazing skill. I imagine the bow is a very low poundage, because the poundage required
to actually do any damage, you're going to need sort of
a fair bit of poundage there, and it takes time to pull it back. So she's not really shooting with the greatest amount of kind
of back tension and stuff. At that short distance, that would work. It's not the prettiest, but, you know, in that sort of situation, you're not trying to be elegant, you're not trying to be pretty, you're trying to save your life. Visually, very impressive. But you wouldn't use that
technique in a competition. I'll give that one an eight. Some of the movements are
a little bit out there. It's not necessarily right,
but it's quite realistic. 175 yards away. He's talking about a very long way to be very accurate with a longbow. Now, I'm sure people were
pretty accurate back then, but the equipment was very basic, the arrows were very basic. Archery's all about consistency. And in these sort of times, you wouldn't have had the technology to make an arrow exactly
the same as another arrow. You couldn't weigh them exactly the same. They can't see us. Maybe they thought that was luck. They were typically sort
of about as tall as you. So you know, 6 foot plus. For really smacking an arrow in, a longbow really does
hammer the arrows home. Very big draw force curve, lot of energy. If you look at sort of more war bows, which is a very high-poundage
English longbow, sort of 80 pounds plus. The bow I shoot is about 45
to 50 pounds in draw weight, which is quite substantial. I shot a 120-pound bow once, and it damn near folded me in half. He's put his hand in his pouch, and he's putting a powder on his fingers, possibly a resin or something. I'm guessing it's to help him get a smooth release on the string. There's not a lot wrong with that. It looks pretty solid. His head barely moves. A lot of people, when they're
first getting into archery, will be so focused on
where the arrow's going, they'll shoot and they'll move their head to try and look past the
bow and see where it is. He makes the shot, his head doesn't move, and I like that. That's a really good technique. You missed him anyway. I didn't miss anyone. If you can see through it,
you can shoot through it. You don't need a huge amount of space. Obviously the smaller the space, the more chance you've got
of something going wrong. The arrows don't fly straight, so if you're shooting
through something too small, as the arrow flies through, you could clip the back of it. In hunting situations, arrows quite often pass through an animal. You call it pass-through. But at that sort of distance, the arrow's going to lose a lot of energy. Because what feathers do, feathers stabilize an arrow fantastically, but they also act as a parachute, so they're going to slow the arrow down, and there were some quite
big feathers on that arrow. The bigger the feathers, the more stable, but the slower it's going to go. So, you know, 175 yards, the arrow's going to slow down a bit. I don't know if you'd get a pass-through at that sort of distance. So we'll go seven. Sorry, King Arthur. These guys have shot three arrows into a cement wall. If you shoot an arrow into something hard, it bounces out, especially if it's stone. Any archer that's been
shooting for a while and has taken a bad
miss and has hit a stone or missed the target and hit a wall, it absolutely pancakes the arrow. I can't actually see the types of points they're using on these arrows, but if they're trying to kill people, which it looks like they
are in a "John Wick" movie, they'd be using something
called a broadhead. But a broadheaded arrow is an arrow tip that's designed to cause
as much damage as possible. It's usually a two-bladed, three-bladed sharp point on the end of an arrow. They're doing some very
close-range combat. There is sort of some evidence of kind of the more martial side of archery. Generally, close-range archery is, I don't know, it's not really a thing. Archery's a long-range, mid-
to long-range discipline. It takes seconds to load the bow, to draw the bow, to shoot the bow. A guy with a sword could
do the job a lot quicker. They're definitely the more
sort of Eastern-style bow, which is really a precursor to the modern-day recurve bow. She's using it as a
club, which you could do, but they're generally fairly
light, these sorts of bows, and she's kicking the s--- out of guys with armor with a bow. I don't know how effective that would be, you know, to guys in armor. They're not very heavy
pieces of equipment. They're made of mostly, sort of, a wood or a wood substitute. We'll go seven, just because
it's such a good scene. It's really dynamic. It shows different styles of archery. That would be very heavy, and that would create a
lot of weight in the arrow, so the arrow would probably just flop in front of her. And also, she's got to
shoot it over her hand. But the thing I really like
about that little section there is the way the bow moves. Now, if you do happen to
film a bow in slow motion, they are like a wet noodle. They're wobbling all over the place. It's fascinating to see when you see something
like that in slow motion. And they've got the movement
of the bow completely right. That is exactly what a bow would do. There are people out there that have claimed to catch arrows. When I have seen it done, it's kind of more stunts where the arrow isn't traveling
particularly hard, isn't traveling particularly fast, and you sort of grab it out of the air. I've seen it done like that. But in a true situation with a true bow at a realistic poundage,
I think you'd struggle, unless it was at a very long distance and you could sort of
track it and whatnot. I mean, don't do it, because you're essentially
shooting an arrow at someone, which is stupid, so don't ever do that. I mean, they're dealing with some kind of fantasy elements there, but we'll give that one an eight, I think. I love this film. This is such a good archery movie. This guy here at full draw, now, the bow he's using is a nice little short-style hunting bow. He's got really, really nice form there. He's wearing finger protection, and that's the first time we've seen someone actually wear
proper finger protection in any of these scenes.
And if you shoot a bow without any sort of finger protection, be that a glove, be that a tab, it's going to hurt, and over time it's going to cause serious damage to your fingers. First with blisters, then nerve damage. Release. Some people really do
prefer to close one eye and use their dominant
eye to look at the target. They're probably using some sort of system where they're using their eye
and the point of the arrow and sort of working out the distance and where they need to put
that arrow on the target to make the shot. I don't do that. I keep both eyes open. We see in 3D, so I like to see what it
is I'm shooting at in 3D. I get a bit more of a better
perspective for where it is, how far away it is. It's really good for distance judging. Now, this is why I like
this scene so much. He's going through something
now called target panic. And that is a mental issue. I mean, it's a very extreme
version of target panic, but he's going through something, and you get it with hunting quite a lot, you get it with sort of competitions. You just get into your own head, and it's very difficult to get a shot off. And it's so good to see a representation of someone really
struggling with the shot. And I've struggled with target panic. In films, you see everyone's
shooting, going crazy, doing everything perfectly every time. But archery isn't perfect every time. And what they're doing
is they're bowfishing. He's got a bow quiver
attached to the side of it, and he's got a fishing reel. You can tell he's been coached by someone that knows what they're doing. Bowfishing is an incredibly tough skill, and I've got nothing but respect for anyone that can bowfish. Because it's not just a
case of seeing the fish. Because of the refraction of the water, you've actually got to put it in a different place to where the fish is. It's a whole skill that I've
got nothing but respect for. Machines are going to fail, and the system's going to fail. He's got some very bright feathers on his arrow. Now, they're what's called, the two shapes you tend to get, you get a shield shape
and a parabolic shape. They're a parabolic feather, so they're round at the back. Very bright colors. Hunters tend to use quite
bright colors on their arrows. Sort of the oranges,
the pinks, the whites. They show up in a nature
environment quite well. They help you track the animal, if you're looking for the arrow. They help you find lost arrows. I think it's a very
realistic representation, so I am going to give
"Deliverance" a nine. Bows don't do that. Bows are under a lot of tension. I can't think of a plausible
way that would ever work. You'd have to string the bow. You'd have to put tension into the bow. That's not how bows work. It looks very cool. It's
very visually stunning. To shoot something far away, you have to shoot above it. The closer something gets to your level, the lower you have to get. Same with if you were
clay-pigeon shooting. You kind of get a lead on the arrow, so you're not shooting where the thing is that you're shooting at is, you're shooting it where it's going to be. An arrow does travel. It travels fast, but
not as fast as a bullet. Tracking it requires more
of an instinctive style. Theoretically could put
ballistics in an arrow. You can certainly get arrows that have got gunpowder in it and a charge that sort of causes a lot of damage. It's really hard to shoot in a helmet, but he's got a very, he's overdrawing the bow as well. He's pulling it back right back to here, which is a technique that can be used. I was in a little film once where I had to try and
shoot in a gas mask, and you can't get an
anchor point in a gas mask. It's really difficult. Arrows do bounce. You can
skip arrows off the ground. I've seen people skip arrows along water. There's a trick I used to do, and there's a little wooden ramp, and I could shoot the
arrow at the wooden ramp and it would skip up. I'm going four. Pull. What he's got there, he's
taken, what, three, four arrows? He's going to hold them
in his hand as he shoots. So he's not using a quiver, he's using his own hand as the quiver. And it's a technique where you sort of draw the arrow from your hand almost onto the bow straightaway. As I mentioned before, the kind of more Eastern
style of shooting, very quick succession. Again, getting as many arrows
in the air as possible. He's got this very low anchor point, very floating anchor point. That's difficult to get accuracy, but he's using an Eastern-style bow, the sort of bow that
you'd use on a horseback, and you can't really get
a good solid anchor point when you're on a horseback. And some of those archers
are phenomenally accurate. So maybe anchor point isn't everything for this sort of particular style. And I love Pedro Pascal.
I love Matt Damon. Ah, I'm going to give it a five. He's got a crossbow with a scope on it. Now, the thing is, with a crossbow, they are very accurate. It takes a lot of the
human error out of the bow, so it's literally pulling a trigger, as long as it's cocked correctly and you've got the bolt in. I did notice, he shoots the bolt, but the the bow still remains cocked. She's holding it for a very long time. That's a very long time
to hold a trad bow. Olympic archery is slightly different. You tend to have a
little device on your bow that sort of clicks when the arrow gets to a certain length, and you hold it full draw for
a bit and expand on the shot. So the shot sequence on an Olympic-style bow would be longer, but she's at full draw
for a very long time. The other thing I noticed
about her being at full draw, the way she's got the string, it's down the side of her nose. Now, what's going to happen, if that was a fully
fledged, full-poundage bow and she had a decent release, that's going to whip right past her nose and cause a lot of pain.
It's going to hurt. And if you do it again and
again and again, it's horrible. I imagine there is some sort
of indexing on the arrow for her to sort of feel. On modern arrows, you tend to have a little plastic index notch on there, so you can feel which
orientation the arrow is. So I imagine it's a
similar sort of situation. Let's give "The Hunger Games" a six. My favorite kind of archery movies, I mean, two of them are in there. The "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves," which I think is absolutely fantastic. It's a little bit cheesy. The other one in there is "Deliverance." It's such a good
representation of archery. It shows archery as, it's never perfect. There's always something
that can go wrong. And if you like this video, why not aim at the one above
my head and check it out?
