After a little research, I found that another way that would give you perhaps better results would be to buy a blank firing prop gun. Is it a pricier option then say special effects, yes, but it would give you the sound, feel, look, and flash of a real gun without the need to edit in anything other then bullet impacts and ricochets if any which is a lot easier then editing in all of that plus all of the gun flash and noise also.
As ever, IT members seem to jump straight into thinking about how to create an authentic look without considering that unless it's accompanied by an equally authentic sound an authentic look is pointless! If the end result is that the audience perceives/feels that something is not quite right or even wrong, the authenticity of the cinematography and/or VFX is irrelevant. It only becomes relevant in combination with the sound.
BTW, presumably because of safety/insurance reasons most commonly a quarter charge blank is what is used during filming and regardless of how authentic this may or may not look, it certainly doesn't sound authentic and gunshots are therefore always replaced in audio post. Actually, it's very difficult to make good quality weapons fire recordings and there are in fact some in the professional audio post world who specialise in this specific area of film sound. Besides, using blanks is a much more expensive route to take because in addition to the actual equipment, you need a weapons expert on set because even blanks are dangerous! Regardless though, the OP states they don't have access to blanks, so that knocks that idea on the head anyway.
I'm making a short film which is coming up in the next 4-5 weeks. I have a gunshot at the end of the film and was wondering if anyone knew of some good tips/tricks that would help make it authentic enough from a wide angle.
On the sound side of this equation, I would need more information than you have provided to stand a chance of providing a concise answer. You state "wide angle" without really explaining what you mean by this, is it a wide angle inside a large building or outside? If inside, what type of building and if outside, what sort of outside; a forest, a flat empty field, mountains or maybe down-town in a city? Also, how wide angle and what is the perspective of the audio? Sometimes in film, there maybe a relatively wide shot while the sound is from a different perspective, say the POV of one of our characters. I'm presuming you probably don't mean this scenario though and in any case, even though it's an extremely effective filmmaking tool, it's difficult to pull off effectively, especially at the lo/no budget DIY level. Most commonly the end result is just a mismatch between the visual and aural perspectives which makes the sequence appear wrong to an audience. It's getting the aural perspective correct which is the tricky part, even with an aural perspective which matches the camera's perspective. Notice also I said "correct" and not "authentic" as there can be a significant difference between the two depending on what exactly you mean by "wide angle".
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