Beautiful! Makes the point!
Prop Gun Kills Cinematographer
- Thread starter jonpais
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Beautiful! Makes the point!
Liam Hall
Veteran
Yup.
FrameFarmMedia
Veteran
As a cinematographer these seem like the perfect solution. You get realistic practical motion and lighting effects and everyone on set doesn't need to wear hearing protection and take downtime for safety between takes. Seems like a win win solution. I also have a feeling that any insurer of a movie with live blank rounds will make it really expensive. Producers will only look at other options when they are forced by rules or cost.
combatentropy
Veteran
I'm surprised this is cutting edge in 2017 (when this video aired). I would have thought fake guns with realistic effects like recoil, bullet ejection, and lighting, would have been in development for decades.
I'm all for this. Even with real guns with blanks, blanks according to this video still don't give realistic recoil, I guess because it is mainly the inertia of a real bullet leaving the chamber, not the gunpowder, that makes a real gun kick. Very hard to realistically act like a gun has kick, by jerking your hand as you fire it. It is much better to have a prop provide its own recoil through some mechanical means.
Also ambient light from a flash would be better done with on-set lighting, or in this case on-gun lighting. I guess LED bulbs make hiding lights in a gun easier. But honestly I wonder if it would be easier to have a gun with a bulb sticking out the front, which flashes to provide the light across the actors and set, and to paint out the bulb in post, than to paint in lighting effects in post.
Also would be ideal for prop gun to emit its own smoke, than try to realistically add it in post.
It is a hard task, especially to do all that in little revolver for a Western, instead of a big sci-fi rifle like in this video. But again, I am surprised movie-gun technology is not farther along in 2021.
Real guns could be used only in case of an extreme close-up of a gun, in a controlled environment, and usually not the same shot as when the character actually fires the weapon.
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Fake guns work pretty well. Post has known how to deal with it for decades. In 1977 one director used cap guns in place of real guns. The caps were used to give the actors a bit of sound to make them feel like they were really shooting. Afterwords the folks in post production added the real gun sounds and flashes. This was when all effects were done optically and sound was done on 35mm stripped film. It seemed to work ok. So how hard could it be 45 years later? Skip to 1:45 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLgsf8Pei6Q
combatentropy
Veteran
The guns in Star Wars had neither smoke nor recoil. In a way it's easier to make a passable sci-fi gun than one for a western.
jonpais
Well-known member
Nowhere in my post did I mention anything about asking for or giving advice. What I said was that forums are cesspools of misinformation.
briandrys1
Active member
Misinformation is found all over the internet, including YouTube, Facebook and various websites. There's no reason why forums can't have it too, but as I mentioned, it depends on the membership of the forum.
jonpais
Well-known member
Well, we've already got one guy who claims the union employees walked off the set primarily over money (in other words, they didn't give a crap about the working conditions) and another claims they didn't walk off - that they were fired! I tried unsubscribing from this thread, but i keep getting notifications.
briandrys1
Active member
People will always make different claims, the problems tend to arise when they're not corrected. In another industry forum, someone claimed that a bullet couldn't pass through one body into another. There were three replies informing them that it was possible and gave instances when it had occurred.
Statement from Hannah's attorneys:
"Safety is Hannah's number one priority on set. Ultimately this set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced. Hannah has no idea where the live rounds came from,"
"Hannah was hired on two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer," the statement says.
"She fought for training, days to maintain weapons and proper time to prepare for gunfire but ultimately was overruled by production and her department. The whole production set became unsafe due to various factors, including lack of safety meetings," it said.
"Safety is Hannah's number one priority on set. Ultimately this set would never have been compromised if live ammo were not introduced. Hannah has no idea where the live rounds came from,"
"Hannah was hired on two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer," the statement says.
"She fought for training, days to maintain weapons and proper time to prepare for gunfire but ultimately was overruled by production and her department. The whole production set became unsafe due to various factors, including lack of safety meetings," it said.
Oh my. I'd get another lawyer.
I hear Vladimir Putin is available.
I see your point concerning "hired on two positions" the lawyer could have worded it better but it also means that the production company and producers were cutting corners by giving her additional work possibly unrelated to being an armor . I would like to know what is the second position.
ahalpert
Major Contributor
This is something I've been worried about since I first heard of the accident: I don't know who is responsible, but I do know that the deck is stacked against the nobodies involved. Not only are poor, young crewmen less able to muster legal muscle, but maintaining the rights and reputations of the big stars and producers involved is in the economic interests of the production and the state
combatentropy
Veteran
Assistant prop master. Neal Zoromski turned down the job because of it, saying, "I felt it was completely unsafe."
--- Veteran prop master explains warning signs that led him to turn down Rust job
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