Rebels w prop guns stopped by police

A little rebel tale from real life. Proves you gotta be careful about "stealing scenes" with gunfire involved.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/11/13/dnt.movie.set.scare.whdh

(maybe they haven't seen the green project, stu?)

- Jonas

Well if nothing else it's a bit of publicity for them.

Clearly though, they aren't too bright. Running around with airsoft guns is one thing, but a real gun loaded with blanks can still hurt/mame/kill someone. (Remember Brandon Lee?)

*sigh* They were probably using homemade explosive squibs too.. sounds like a darwin awards candidate to me.

Well, someone would have to die to get a Darwin Award...

True.. but cops don't mess around in those situations.. They're lucky they didn't get shot.

Agreed... they were incredibly lucky.

When I was shooting my last feature we had to recreate two fire-fights from the Bosnian War... We had insurance, a professional armourer, a closed and secured location, we were shooting in the middle of nowhere and we'd informed the Police we were using firearms in the area...

And still, on the first day of the shoot, our 3rd AD had the life frightened out him by a Police Armed Response Team! (In the UK not all Policmen use guns!). If we hadn't followed the rules we could have had a real situation on our hands.

Being a Rebel is one thing... being an idiot is something else.

Reminds me....

Years back, I was "lucky" enough to be "the guy to hold people away" when my friend was shooting a fiction short that involved someone assaulting a girl. The scene took place in an underground road passage thingy, and the actress (very talented) was SCREAMING her lungs out. And they did like 50 takes, or so it felt.

Every take, people would come running to the tunnel entrance to help the poor girl in distress (I mean real people, not actors), yelling "what the hell is going on there!!!", and it was extremely emotionally challenging to send these people away, and convince them nothing was happening, all the while the girl was still screaming.

And the really weird part is - even though people didn't look like they believed me, they all went away. And the police never showed up. Scary shit, huh? All it takes to get away with a two-hour rape at a public place is to have one guy who keeps people away, saying "nothing's happening, it's just a movie".

Now that's messed up...

and for some odd reason it reminded me of my first short. We were shooting a car accident scene on a road near my house. It was night, we were using the car headlights and not much else to light the scene. I had military-grade smoke bombs (hadn't bought my propane fogger yet at that point..) to provide the ambiance -- until I ran out of those and cheated a medium two shot by having a guy puff on a big stogie just off the side of the lens (really. it looked almost the same too.)

Anyway, we had a guy laying in the street flopped halfway out the car door for a good couple hours. People drove by, didn't stop, didn't slow down.. nothing. No problems. Eventually a cop comes and says he got a call that someone was tied to a phone pole. Ok.. First off, there ARE no phone poles near where we were, there was a light pole but nobody was even by it really. I explained to him what was going on. He didn't have any problems with any of it just said he was responding to a strange call. Then he spotted our airsoft gun laying in the grass.

Cop: "What's that?"

Me: "Oh, just a prop sir.. it's plastic, doesn't fire or anything"

Cop: "You do realize that if one of you had been holding that when I pulled up I'd have gotten out of the car gun drawn with backup on the way right?"

Me: "Umm.. yes sir. I guess it's a good thing we weren't then, eh?"

Cop: "I should say so. Finish this up and get out of here it's getting late." (we were in a residential area -- seems the prop gun changed his mood slightly)

Me: "Oh, no problem sir, we were just finishing the last take as you pulled up." (More or less true. we wrapped the location as I had enough footage already anyway)

Of course, after all the money and time and hassle that went into that project it never saw the light of day (and never will)... we didn't get nearly enough coverage for most of the scenes, the best looking stuff was the very first stuff that was shot, and didn't find out until after the fact that there was large drops of water on the lens for most of it -- I could have lived with that if there was ever a shot that the water actually had hit the lens, but no.. it was just there.. and it covered up half of one of my actors faces. I still can't understand how my DP didn't notice it, but -- bleh.

Looking back I think the film was doomed to fail. One of the primary roles was to be played by a dog. It was basically this homeless guy's best/only friend. The dog died the week before we started shooting so I had to rewrite the script to write the dog out of it. The only good thing about the shoot really was discovering my ability to procure locations. On a whim I walked into the local Amtrak station, because we needed some kind of transportation depot (was originally supposed to be an airport but post 9/11 there was no way that was gonna happen).. Long story short, I got the location, no problem -- no need for permit or insurance. I also got a seedy motel room and access in front of and behind the front desk of the same motel all free. Very Happy

Anyway, wow did this post ever wander far from the point. I'll just shut up now. Embarassed

I can make it wander further... Laughing

So, on my first short I had a scene where a man needed to walk his dog down a country road at night... we cast a Yellow Labrador... so the night of the shoot we're there with our entire crew and the volunteer fire brigade to provide us with both a generator for the lights and water for our rain... but their tender breaks down so we're without both rain and power and thrown onto batteries... then the dog's owner turns up. Our dog had gotten into a fight and was at the Vet's, so she had brought out her other Labrador... which was BLACK!

I'm telling you... this woman was standing right next to me, the dog was on the lead and it was SOOOO black I couldn't see it... we just couldn't generate enough light to have any chance of seeing this stealth dog... it was invisible.

So, like you, we junmped into the car and rewrote the script without the dog... plus as the rain was also broken we had to create that by having a runner squirt a plant spray across the lens ... which also worked! He he

I like the direction this thread has taken.

For our first shoot we were doing a camping scene. We camped out for 2 nights before our important shoot. By this time, people were tired and the extras jumped in their cars and took off before the rest of us even woke up. They blame it on being hung over. So, we didn't have extras for all of the mass carnage in our 'everyone at camp has been slaughtered' scene.

Attempting to make up for it, we sprayed fake blood all over camp - about 2 gallons of the stuff. We then had our main female actor run around screaming as loud as she could. She did this for about half an hour. It was at this time that my brother drove up to camp and informed us that there were several sheriff police cars lined up not too far down the road. Luckily, they were busy busting a camp full of under age partiers camping down the road.

I can't imagine what would have happened if they had showed up at our camp with a woman screaming bloody murder and with blood and guts everywhere.

It also makes me wonder why they didn't show up. There is no way they didn't here a woman screaming "Somebody help me!" over and over.

	$1000 Film wrote:
	the rain was also broken we had to create that by having a runner squirt a plant spray across the lens ... which also worked! He he

Was that one of those hand held bottles that has the mist or straight stream settings on it? And I assume it would have probably been a mist setting? Sounds cool, I might have to try it. Very Happy

Today, when paranoia rules, running around with a black gun whether Airsoft or Glock is probably not a good thing --

-- without letting the fuzz know.

With no discharge of any kind, I shot the alley murder sequence one night in an alley downtown near lots of the usual action (restaurants, music clubs, etc.) with no problems. Real guns, of course -- a Glock 9mm mini, a .22 Jennings, and an H&K .40 USP. No ammo on the set of any kind. Of course, the cop who wandered by wanting to know what we were up to hadn't heard word, but if he'd checked, he would have found out that we *had* called the station and gotten an okay.

The genuine Reb action on that night was yellow tape emblazoned POLICE LINE -- DO NOT CROSS at both ends of the alley. Yes, ordinary people can buy that tape. It works. No civilians came in to bother us.

-- Paul

p.s. I tried to get the cop to turn on his spinning colored lights for me, but he wouldn't do it.

	Quote:
	Was that one of those hand held bottles that has the mist or straight stream settings on it?

Yeap... the trick is getting the mist of water through the beam of the mounted PAG light.

We also pulled a similar stunt in studio... we rebuilt our main location - a phonebox - in a blacked out studio... we then shot a light across the front of the camera... then dropped water through the beam of light from a watering can... into a large photo processing tray... voila.. rain (indoors).

I won a UK Royal Television Society Award for that one, and no one realised that 90% of this rain soaked production was shot in studio... we had guys asking us where we hired our rain rig from... I just refused to tell them, I mean I'd just picked up an award, beating their high budget films like a Truck driver's wife... and most of the Effects in it had been created with a watering can!

That's great!

So, for the spray bottle trick, was the light mounted on top of the camera, or was the beam shooting across the lens as in the studio? I'm definitely gonna have to try this out. Very cool. Smile

We'd been reduced to batteries... so it was a PAG light mounted on top of a hand head, shoulder mounted camera.

It only really works with tight shots... and you have to soak down the actor to sell the effect... well worth playing with.

I'm semi convinced you could pull the watering can/oblique light trick on location... providing you could wet down the location prior to shooting. (Don't quote me on that though LOL)

Something to this effect happened on one of my shoots. I had contacted the mayor of a nearby town, and had gotten full permission and clearance personally from him. I was assured that the police would be notified, and that the Parks and Rec Department was aware. The main character was using an airsoft Walther P99 when we were approached by a person.

He told us in no uncertain terms that use of our weapon was not permitted. He assured us that if the police saw us, we would be arrested immediately. He then demanded that if we were to continue filming, the magazine must be taken out. (Now I was thinking to myself, and met with my actors, how can taking the magazine out of a pistol make a difference? It'd look the same, magazine in or out!). After the man had left, I went and talked to the manager at the location quickly. He informed me that the man I had talked to actually believed that he had authority there, and was a local nuisance! 30 minutes of my shoot at the magic hour had been wasted by nothing!

So keep in mind, have some paperwork or a signature with you at all times to totally prove your permission to everyone. And in reality, you will not get shot (in most locations) if you have a gun, and are surrounded by cameras, lighting, and audio crewmen.