I am gun owner and advocate but I whole heartedly agree with this video. You don't need real guns on set. If they can tell its an airsoft gun then quite frankly you should check out your story because the viewer is bored and not paying attention any more. Real guns are cheaper (and more likely to be available in indie productions) and I have been part of a production where real guns were used in lieu of props. I spent more time discussing our safety protocols, making sure no ammo existed in the building of the shoot, while familiarizing each person involved in the scenes as well as making them feel comfortable than I spent setting up the actual shots. This was because, it was easier and the director had a gun that he could borrow. It cost un-needed time and concern and it brought nothing to the authenticity of the production. On the flip side, I have had a friend die to single bullet fired due to something that was truly accidental and not very negligent. Its just not worth it. Suck it up and play it safe... or take a chance and end your career or, god forbid, a life.
It's amazing that when creating a fictional world, with grown ups pretending to be something they are not, that a 'real lethal weapon' is needed for authenticity.
Bravo. Thank you. As a person who grew up and appreciates guns, but also as someone who lost a good friend to an on-set shooting just like this, yes, yes, a thousand times YES.
💯 agree, Prop guns and unloaded air soft guns are perfect in combo with SFX in post. It’s also pretty cost effective. It’s never worth risking someone’s actual life to get an effect in camera. It’s a major tragedy what happened.
100%. Why is it that no one else is talking irrefutable reasoning from a risk analysis point of view? Could it be the NRA and others fund the film & tv industries?
I agree with you in principle but it will be impossible to universally enforce. All we can do is willfully exclude functional firearms from set and use any of the really good replicas that are out there. Electric and CO2 blowback are almost identical to the real thing, and adding the smoke & flash in post is so easy to do that it's trivial. However, I'm sure there will be some productions and filmmakers that prefer to use the real thing. Also, it doesn't matter how many safety protocols you put in place. Those protocols have to be observed and carried out by humans, no matter how diligent, will eventually make a mistake. Unfortunately mistakes involving firearms are always dangerous, and often lethal.
There are several industry organizations, including the AMTPT and the unions, with enough sway to ensure that real guns are banned from tproductions of any size. If they fail to do so, local, state and federal authorities may feel obliged to act. (New Mexico is already rumbling as much.) You are right, though: at the lowest levels of production, like my own little jams, little more than common sense and the honor system will be in force.
I've never agreed to do music videos with guns being involved because of stuff like this. If there is a real gun on set, it's going to be laying somewhere, or completely dry
Ban the guns, don't ban the guns I don't care. She was a friend. We were working together on the 7th. Or at least we were supposed to be. The deeper root cause of this is the continuing disregard for crew safety. Productions routinely time and time again will disregard numerous complaints and the unions do not do enough to protect their people. Where was Local 600 after their people reported numerous safety concerns? Where was Sonic aftra? Why isn't there a ubiquitous sag requirement for a licensed safety officer when Firearms are involved? An inexperienced armor was hired as a fourth choice because she was the cheapest. She was not given enough staff to perform her job because it would have been cost prohibitive. When two literal fucking warning shots went off the week before and numerous safety concerns were brought before it's both production and Local 600 nothing was done. The gun was the symptom but the negligence is the disease. My friend is dead and the conversation has turned political instead of solution-based. Banda guns and give the actress green sticks that we fill in with CGI later I don't give a damn. But please, hold production responsible. Edit: this is a talk-to-text fueled rant. I apologize for typos and whatever illegible mestousis turned into
I'm very sorry for your loss. Certainly those responsible for the shit conditions must be held accountable. But we also need to acknowledge that movie sets are no place for deadly weapons so that this can't happen to anyone else on any set, big, small, good or bad.
AMEN BROTHER!!! They have numatic response guns now that mick the kickback but don't really fire live rounds. I believe it was designed by WETA in London. Long story short, I agree, SFX and VFS is so good now, we don't need to be using something that dangerous on ANY set! It's just a sad thing that didn't need to happen.
this has to be some sort of set up. A gun should have never even been in the set in the first place lmao. Even in a sea of prop fake guns, there shouldn't be a real gun. Somehow there was.... It was a set-up.
Oh boy so as a professional actor 42 years and a world record holder with six shooters… I’m having a little bit of a problem with some of the stuff you’re saying. Now I know because I also am the owner of the Mechanical Bull association and also of reenactors around the country I know that insurance companies are not in the money of paying out there in the money of taking in your money. So there’s that statement. Second of all prop guns that actually do fire blanks that are prop guns and not real guns in my experience and I have a lot of it are garbage they are plugged barrels and they fire out of the sides of guns are not realistic and they’re actually more dangerous than real guns in some ways because they come firing out of the sides of the guns. In regards to using a real gun and said yes as an armorer add an expert with these guns there is protocol to be followed and should be. You know as well as I do this type of situation is only happened maybe two or three times going back as far as Hexum can’t remember his name the model they decided to put it up to his head and shoot it and a wad came out and killed him. No in regards to airsoft I absolutely agree they’re really good choices as well and yes after affects are awesome and I’ve done enough cowboy films or even modern weapon films to tell you that it’s a great alternative however… Watching someone fire a gun that doesn’t know what guns act like or feel like is most of the time pretty transparent and also a little embarrassing watching someone that doesn’t know how to handle a gun and handle a gun. As much as I agree that you’re right you don’t need to use real guns I also want to say that yes there’s a little machismo attached to cowboy films and guns but I will say that blanks in a real gun are what should be used and not unfortunately really shitty unprofessional armorers like the one on rust who happens to be the daughter of the most famous armorer in the world Thell reed… it was his daughter who was the armor on this film which is bizarre because you think that all the years that she spent with dad and learning that trade that she would’ve been able to stop what happened. However from what I know and I’ve done probably about 20 interviews when that happen internationally talking about this because of my expertise… The biggest problem I see is that whether it’s fake or real they don’t train the actors to handle the weapons the way they should. Because as for me onset I would be able to understand know if a gun is cleared and handle it appropriately… Yes I have rambled a little bit here but I appreciate you approaching the subject and giving your opinion. I have a lot of right wing friends and I will tell you this much it’s very bizarre that when we have all the school shootings they’re the ones screaming at the liberals about being able to have their guns but it is weird now that all of my right wing friends are screaming at me saying you should never point a gun at anybody… Well you should consider going on a movie set because that’s exactly what happens in a movie set. Though you can adjust the shot to not pointed someone perhaps the biggest problem here was they didn’t spend enough money to get the real professionals they should’ve had. Will Please forgive my lack of grammar and punctuation I just decided to use Siri because I couldn’t contain myself anymore and I had to respond. Also FYI you have a very good RU-vid channel and I dig it
