Some friends and I are staging a scene for a movie we’re making, and it requires some guns. We were planning on buying some squirt guns and painting them, but I know you need the orange tips for regulation purposes. Anyway, we don’t really want orange tips in the movies, and I don’t feel like editing it all out. It would be easy just to pain them flat black, but what sort of permission do you really need? For movies when they have prop guns, do they have to have an officer on scene to make sure they’re not real? Would we get a permit or something like that?
Call your local cops and talk to them (not 911). They will tell you what to do and probably be quite helpful. A few years ago some local students were making a movie on a downtown street and they had an oil drum painted in dayglo colours and labelled “toxic waste”. The police and fire department mobilized and were walking around in those moon suits and the young filmmakers were busted. I thought it was total bullshit and those bastards mobilized and incurred all kinds of taxpayer funded expense just to compound the offense and get the students into worse trouble. It all could have been avoided if the students had gotten in touch with the police PR liason and made whatever the necessary arrangements were. You probably have to get a filming permit.
I don’t think those orange tips are anything regulatory, I think it’s something voluntary by the toy manufacturers.
Hmm… You don’t say where you’re at but I assume from the orange tips it sounds like England. Check your local regulations around the area. In Los Angeles, they use companies called “armorers” that provide prop guns (and real ones) they handle all the permits, and can provide provide guns with blanks. Even blanks are dangerous so they keep pretty tight control over them (mostly).
I once had a movie film shoot in front of my house while I was off at work and my girlfriend was home in the middle of it. The film crew packed up and left at the end of the day, but the armorer had not returned to pick up his weapons used in the shoot that afternoon. Not having any crew left at this address, the director asked my girlfriend if she wouldn’t mind letting them leave their guns at MY house until the armorer picked them up? So I walk in the door after coming home from work, and what do I find? My girlfriend in sitting in the living room, staring at a pile of 20 real live Uzis. I inspected them and verified they were real actual working Uzis with no ammo. The armorer did not return that evening. I spent all night worrying about a pile of machine guns in my house. They came by the next day, just as I was about to call the LAPD and ask them to send someone by to take the guns away. But I was having a bit of trouble trying to figure out how to explain the the LAPD that I had a pile of machine guns I wish they’d come over and get them, and not get shot the SWAT team in the process.
There are usually provisions in the law for film makers.
Chas, your girlfriend must really be pretty to get a film director to leave $20,000 worth of props at her house instead of putting them in the trunk of his car. Are you sure he did not let her “star” in a private film?
While those Uzis would have been converted to only fire blanks, they are still legally machineguns. The armorer is required to have someone on site the entire time. Getting shot would be the least of your worries. Your were in unlawful possesion of a machinegun, 10 years/$10,000 fine for each one.
I’m glad you are being thoughtful about this.
Some friends of mine decided to stage a fake gunfight for a video on top of a parking garage one night. Pretty soon they were surrounded by police helicopters, and police cars drove up, yelling for them to stop their “gang fight”. My friends pointed out the cameras and showed them the scripts (where it called for the gunfight) but the officers were insistand that it was a gang fight. Finally the police left, and while it makes for good stories, it was a bad scene all around.
Is there any way you could film the scene indoors or some other place where people won’t bother you? If you do, you can probably just go with your spray-paint idea (assumeing you don’t mind people noticeing that your guns are fakes) and avoid a lot of hassel. It sucks artistically, but when you are working within a budget you have to do those things sometimes.
Al Zheimer’s advice is very good indeed.
Get in touch with the police and make sure they know what’s going on. If you come to them and in effect offer to make their job easier, you’re way more likely to get a positive response.
Put down in writing when & where it’ll happen, hand a couple of copies over to the officer you’re talking to, and there’s a fair chance it’ll be posted where the dispatcher can see it, preventing mishaps due to communications problems. Probably the worst thing that’ll happen is a couple of bored officers strolling by the set, if it’s a slow crime day. Offer coffee.
Handling the fakes responsibly while shooting - ehm, I mean filming - goes without saying.
S. Norman
Prop guns. In California, it is illegal to buy a fake gun that looks like a real gun. This is because a guy forced his way into the local NBC affilate and forced consumer reporter David Horowitz to read a statement armed with what looked like a .45 calibre pistol. It turned out to be a BB gun. After that, laws were enacted that provide for (IIRC) a $10,000 fine for bringing a “counterfeit” (i.e., “non-gun”) into the state. Toy guns were required to have the red plug in the barrel, and/or be non-realistic in terms of colour or design. I have a plastic model of a P.08 “Luger” pistol that I built before the legislation (the law isn’t retroactive, AFAIK). I wanted to get another one a few years ago because the one I have is missinf a part, but even the models are banned. I believe there is an exception in the law for filmmakers, but I haven’t looked into it.
Permits. Permits are required even to film in your own apartment in L.A. A friend of mine says there is a “rule of three”, where a “film crew” will not be hassled if there are three or fewer people involved in the shoot. I haven’t lookied into that though. (As far as shooting in your own home goes, unless the neighbours complain it’s unlikely you’ll be caught. Guerilla filmmaking!)
If you’re going to use guns (and real guns are easier to get than fake ones, based on the law I mentioned above!) you must have a filming permit. Otherwise the police will not know you’re just making a film and someone can get killed by them. I’ve worked on one film in California where there were guns involved (okay, there were others way back in the early '80s we did on super-8, but people weren’t as paranoid back then). The shot was out in the desert, and the gun wasn’t fired. We didn’t have a permit, but the chances of getting caught were slim. I was working on my best friend’s film in New Orleans a few years ago. He had a permit, and he also notified the police that he was making a film and that blanks would be fired (indoors). No problems there. BTW, two of us took charge of the revolvers on that one before and after each take. We made sure there were only enough blanks for the shot in the cylinder. We didn’t want any accidents.
Big-budget pictures can hire armorers such as Stembridge Gun Rentals. On your own, you’ll either have to use prop guns or borrow real ones from friends. You may want to use real guns when you will notice if they’re real, and plastic ones if you have to drop it, slide it on the floor, run with it, etc.
The first thing to do would be to call your local film commission. They will tell you what you need to do. Even if they tell you it’s not required to notify the police, I’d say it’s a good idea to call the police department’s Public Affairs office (after you have the permit) to let them know what you’re up to.
One more thing about the police. We were filming in a New Orleans cemetary and a cop came by. He wasn’t on-camera, but he helped us out with some crime scene tape for our location (a murder scene). It’s always a good idea to be friendly with the cops.