Mona Lisa nail gun art

[Jenn]

Comment: Wonder what kind of nail gun and compressor stands up to this?

I think the answer would be none, it's a fake.......I'm sure

[One-Fang]

It seems unlikely anyone could be that accurate from that distance. He also seems to get both fine lines and broad sweeps from it - is that possible with a nail gun? I would expect anyone who actually could do this to stop from time to time to reposition. The volley is almost consistent with this, which would make it almost impossible to move from place to place on the canvas between shots.

[TallGeekyGirl]

There are a lot of videos like this floating around on YouTube. They feature contractors and construction men who appear to be capable of incredible feats with simple hand tools.

Such as, Tape Measure Tricks:



And Throwing a Sawblade Through a 2x4:

[DemonWolf]

when it gets close up, you can see that the nails are too evenly spaced and at too even a depth to have been done by hand from that distance. also, no nail misses or bounces off.

My guess - a blank peice with the finished version underneath. They used a computer art program to "paint" the blank peice (CGI) and remove the blank to show the one with the real nails during the second or two when the canvas is out of frame.

[DemonWolf]

Originally Posted by TallGeekyGirl

There are a lot of videos like this floating around on YouTube. They feature contractors and construction men who appear to be capable of incredible feats with simple hand tools.

Such as, Tape Measure Tricks:

seems posibly with a rigged tape measure and enough takes. All you'd have to do is get the little hook to latch. It'd be eadier is the object being grabbed was magnetic.

And Throwing a Sawblade Through a 2x4:

Not possible. The saw blade is too light to do anything other than stick into the wood. My guess is that the wood was CGI'd. Basically, take a normal peice of wood. Throw the saw blade (may take a few tries, but that's what editing is for!) and CGI the wood "breaking."

[TallGeekyGirl]

I have a high-def, wide-screen monitor, and I watched the Mona Lisa one full-screen. At that size, it's quite obvious that the nail-ribbon is CGI.

Plus most nail guns have a safety built in so that they can't fire except when in solid contact with a hard surface.

[Eddylizard]

Dude, I contracted you to build me a house eight months ago. Now where is my house?

"Oh here have this representation of the Mona Lisa instead."

Can I live in this? If not - builder FAIL!

[Tabbyclaw]

Originally Posted by TallGeekyGirl

I have a high-def, wide-screen monitor, and I watched the Mona Lisa one full-screen. At that size, it's quite obvious that the nail-ribbon is CGI.

You don't even need that much definition; in the small video it's obvious that the ribbon is twisting and kinking in ways that bear no relation to what a solid strip of nails moving at high speed would actually do.

-Tabby
the princess with claws

[Casey]

Originally Posted by Richard

Plus most nail guns have a safety built in so that they can't fire except when in solid contact with a hard surface.

This safety can be easily removed. Don't ask how I know.

[Eddylizard]

Casey I'm not going to ask how you know, but neither am I going to ask you to do some work around my house.

[Richard W]

I wonder if Leonardo's friends hung around his studio while he was painting, saying "Yo, over there dude! Paint that bit!"? I bet he'd have been glad of the help.

(eta) I like the bit at the end where his impressed friend says "Picasso there, uh?" Well no, not really...

I don't think they'd need a physical blank to do it; they could paint out the nails digitally and just add them back like that. The way the picture develops doesn't seem to bear much relation to the way you'd actually draw it or what he's doing with the gun.

[One-Fang]

Originally Posted by DemonWolf

Not possible. The saw blade is too light to do anything other than stick into the wood. My guess is that the wood was CGI'd. Basically, take a normal peice of wood. Throw the saw blade (may take a few tries, but that's what editing is for!) and CGI the wood "breaking."

Meh, you think too much. You don't actually see the piece of wood at all before it breaks. The convenient ruler covers it. My guess is, totally sawn-through piece of wood balancing on something light like a balsa support underneath it or something. Throw the blade hard enough to snap the balsa or knock it off the support, and boom - awesome shot.

The dust from the blade 'sawing' the wood is almost certainly added in digitally later. I can't imagine any way to fake that in the live shot.

[Troberg]

Fake, for several reasons:

* As any shooter will know, shooting from the hip like that is very inaccurate.
* You can't keep the rate of fire that those nails appeared at with a semi-automatic for that long, especially not if you want to maintain accuracy.
* The rate the nails appeared at is much higher than the rate of the trigger pulls.
* Not a single nail bounces off another nail (which would also be quite dangerous, and they should have worn more than simple eye protection).
* All the nails are hammered in perfectly straight to exactly the same depth. A nail is hardly a ballistically stable projectile, and I wouldn't expect such perfect results.
* A nail gun is not made to fire nails on a predictable trajectory. There would be a larger inaccuracy inherent in it.
* No one got hurt. Due to the risk of bouncing nails off other nails, and nails tumbling and not hitting point first, nails should be flying all over the place.

Also, but I'm not quite sure of this, I've never seen flat head nails used in a nail gun, I've only seen nails with a small conical head (Dyckert in Swedish, have no idea what the English word is. See image for dyckert on wikipedia: http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyckert).

Originally Posted by Richard

Plus most nail guns have a safety built in so that they can't fire except when in solid contact with a hard surface.

Can be "fixed" with a bit of electrical tape.

[Adelaide]

Originally Posted by Casey

This safety can be easily removed. Don't ask how I know.

As the spouse of someone who has been shot by nail guns several times (at least one time with the saftey guard, albeit an unusually sensitive one, in place), I can attest to this.

[Ulkomaalainen]

Do we have to mention that the appearing of nails on the board is not consistent with the nail gun position? Possibly most easily seen with Mona's left (from our perspective: right) eyebrow, which appears while Mister da Vinci is aiming down.

Plus, as already mentioned, the movements do not leave traces when he changes position, and he paints at different speed (brushes vs outlines) while there's no discernable difference in the gun's speed.

Still a nice video.

[BenPenguin]

If you follow the link in the annotation it takes you to this site: http://www.integritywindows.com/?page=skills2010 It appears to be a viral advertisement for building games.

[callee]

Originally Posted by Troberg

Also, but I'm not quite sure of this, I've never seen flat head nails used in a nail gun, I've only seen nails with a small conical head

The nailer in the video is a coil roofing nailer (a porter-cable, from the looks of it). The nails on the paper are coiled roofing nails. The video is fake (for the other reasons you mentioned), but they did use the correct gun for the nails they used.

[jimmy101_again]

Troberg is almost certainly correct. A typical nail is not sufficiently aerodynamic to fly properly. It'll start to tumble within inches of the nailer. Nails will be hitting the wood at all kinds of angles and rebounding all over the place.

Shooting from the hip a person would be hard pressed to even hit, let alone hit to an accuracy of a fraction of an inch, a 4'x4' piece of plywood at a range of a couple feet.

Add a laser pointer, and perhaps use roofing nails with the large plastic washers (for aero stability) and you might have a chance at say a couple inches accuracy at a couple feet.

Jimmy "yes I've fired nails out of all kinds of launchers" 101

Originally Posted by Richard

Plus most nail guns have a safety built in so that they can't fire except when in solid contact with a hard surface.

Which is quite easily defeated, by either taping the safety mechanism down or removing it completely. Common practice on construction sites. Not saying the video is real by any means but don't rely on the "safety mechanism" as an argument for why it's not.