Scenes are filmed showing someone firing a weapon. Very rarely is there a scene where you actually see both the shooter and the shootee in the same frame. He really didnt need the gun to rehearse in the first place. He certainly didnt need to aim at crew members. Even with plastic/rubber guns you dont point them at others. How the gun discharged is still unknown. While I highly highly doubt he had any bad motive in this he was negligent in the way he handled his weapon imo.
You think actors rehearse shooting scenes like this?
They do rehearse like that, more or less. And John Wick’s gunfire is entirely digital CGI effects. And that Monty Python sketch you can see John Cleese is not pointing the gun directly at Graham Chapman, it’s way off to the side.
The bottom line is that there’s no good reason to have guns capable of actually firing a shot (blank or otherwise) to be on set. They filmed Star Trek with plastic props and added the phaser effects later; they can do the same with thoroughly disabled gun props.
We see the shooter and shootee in the same frame, do we not?
In one of the performances I mentioned above, I was required to hold the other actor from behind with the weapon pressed against their head, as in a hostage type situation. As you can imagine, we were very, very, very careful in how this scene was staged and performed.
This is absolutely the standard for modern-set productions, especially for weapons with minimal smoke and recoil. See the John Wick clips above. But for a period piece with old-fashioned firearms, the jump of the weapon in the hand and the smoke are very hard to fake. The movie in question was a Western, so prop guns with actual discharge are not unexpected.
The actor is usually filmed shooting in close up and cut to someone getting hit.
Not in the examples I showed above. By your logic, Keanu Reeves is being irresponsible and unprofessional by pointing a prop gun at someone on the set.
Oh, and regarding this:
It’s actually very common for actors, especially those with little weapons experience, to get in the bad habit of making “bang bang!” or “pew pew!” noises vocally because their guns are inert and nonfunctional during rehearsal, and the actor instinctively fills in the missing noise.
- He said “rarely” and it is rare
- Monty Python was like 1973, and they used what is essentially a cap gun
- When it’s 200% safe to do so, they will choreograph it that way more often. No guns are actually being fired in John Wick so there is zero risk
Actually his excuse is that actors are often paid to point weapons at people and pull the trigger. That’s how acting and props work. It’s not a firing range, it’s a movie set. The set and props are supposed to be safed by technicians, and the actor doesn’t oversee those people.
But they are using a prop, right? I can’t see how you could effectively rehearse the scene without feeling the weight of the prop in your hand and knowing how it’ll react when you use it.
Yes. It’s either the actual prop firearm, rendered safe by the armorer or weapons officer for rehearsal purposes (to be loaded later when cameras roll), or it’s a separate safety prop with the same shape and weight.
In this case, it sounds like it was the actual prop firearm, mishandled by the armorer.
Heh. Reminds me of Ewan McGregor’s first scenes doing a lightsaber battle, and being told he was “making the noise”.
Maybe they could hire people with specialized skills in pretending that the stuff in the script is happening for real, if there are any such people to be found in Hollywood.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the Venn diagram of “A-list Hollywood actors active in the Year of Our Lord 2021” and “People who are intimately familiar with the use and handling of 19th century firearms” is two completely separate and distinct circles.
[quote=“snfaulkner, post:78, topic:952960, full:true”]Except props aren’t firearms. And that’s not what happens on set.
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A pistol isn’t a rifle, but if something can fly out of the end and do damage, then you should treat it the same no matter what it’s called.
Are the actors being paid to be firearms experts, or are they being paid to act? In an industry as heavily unionized as Hollywood is, this is a very important question.
The first thing I thought was “This is a set-up”.
To get somebody killed, or to wreck Baldwin’s life.
We do it in training all the time.
