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RUST murder By accident? / Did NRA training Cause the Rust Accident?

I'm still not getting what you need a blank for. You just need some sound and smoke. A goddamn cap gun can do that. A gunshot sounds like easiest thing in the world to foley over.

The whole "modifying bullets" way of making a prop round sounds like... not just dangerous but overly complicated for no real reason.
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm still not getting what you need a blank for. You just need some sound and smoke. A goddamn cap gun can do that. A gunshot sounds like easiest thing in the world to foley over.

The whole "modifying bullets" way of making a prop round sounds like... not just dangerous but overly complicated for no real reason.
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This, a thousand times this.
 
Crazy Chainsaw said:
As I said before, the easy way is too have all dumby rounds marked with green plastic instead of a primer cap, and all blanks used on set marked with a red Primer. Hollywood being cheap causes these accidents.
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Or to have no real firearms on the set.
The use of rubber 'weapons' for everything other than the 'hero prop' is already established widely in the movie industry.
Having hero props, which look and move like the real thing is trivially easy to make, such that they are incapable of firing real ammunition. Might cost a bit upfront in the making, but these can be offset by not needing to have a fire arm insurance (or something like that) for the production company.

Movie making is all about make believe. Movie money, telephone numbers and the like are all fake. There's no reason, why real firearms should ever be on the set.
 
There is even a whole industry that makes authentic-looking replicas that fire plastic pellets via compressed air. Between Airsoft props, foley, and adding muzzle flashes in post, there's probably no need for anything like a real gun anywhere near a movie set.

Certainly not for a reason as silly as "I can't act authentically in this scene without feeling the real weight of a real gun with real bullets in it."
 
JoeMorgue said:
I'm still not getting what you need a blank for. You just need some sound and smoke. A goddamn cap gun can do that. A gunshot sounds like easiest thing in the world to foley over.

The whole "modifying bullets" way of making a prop round sounds like... not just dangerous but overly complicated for no real reason.
Click to expand...

Recoil.
 
Crazy Chainsaw said:
Recoil.
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Is that why they used all those rubber firearms in various movies?

Besides. It is also possible to make something of a sliding mass inside the prop, so it can better fake recoil. Better at least than a letting the actor fake recoil with a squib load or something like that. And safer. Much safer.
 
Well okay I can see a valid point here. For a certain kind of verisimilitude. But if a director believes he has shots that need that verisimilitude, there are facsimile firearms that can do the trick, without being functional firearms capable of firing real bullets. Or if not, there should be.

And if you can't get your hands on one of those, then it's absolutely on you to make sure the real gun you're "forced" to use is properly safed. Even if you're just a big dumb actor who can't find the trigger if your finger is taped to it, you can always ask, "where's the armorer?" And if you're too dumb even for that, there's always the Director, the Producer, and the goddamn Director of Photography who's standing right in front of you while you wave a gun around, who can ask, "where's the armorer?
 
Again some of the most dynamic gun battles of all time have been filmed without so much as anything resembling a real gun or real round on set.

If Robert Rodriguez can make Once Upon a Time in Mexico, essentially a movie long shootout, almost 20 years ago on a budget of less than 30 million and make the gunplay look THAT good without using a single blank or modified weapon I don't know what problem we are possibly trying to solve.
 
It comes down to budget, and time.

Rubber guns are preferred because they'll come in under $10 to produce (molding, casting, & painting). Often, pop-houses stockpile rubber guns. They are always the best option based on production costs alone, especially in a movie with a lot of gun-carrying extras, and cast (cop, action, and war movies). You don't have to babysit them, you don't have to secure them, and they lower your insurance rate.

Real guns and modified guns come in second because they can be rented, and the expense is still cheaper than CGI (for now), and cuts down post-production time. Real guns have been used safely on movie sets for just over a century, something that cannot be said of automobiles, motorcycles, or helicopters, which no one is demanding the end of their use in movies.

We just coming up on the 40th anniversary of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre where the same principles were in play. Real chainsaws were used along with modified, and dummy chainsaws to create realistic on-screen action. No one was hurt because safety came first, and the movie's budget was under $140,000.
 
Dangerous activities require professionals who have a deep respect for that danger.

This set seems to have run off those professionals.

Personal anecdote that is only tangentially related:
I used to teach a short rock climbing course to groups of scouts. We’d do a demo and go over safety rules and procedures. We’d get each kid to climb to the top of a rock face and rappel back down. We would do anywhere from two to eight groups a day with the groups averaging around 12 kids and two adults. We instructed every single one of them in proper procedure and then promptly trusted them to not follow said procedure.

We were in charge of their safety the entire time, but they felt in control. The danger of a fall from 30 feet onto boulders is real. The helmet wouldn’t help much if they fell. And yet, a small band of climber ranging from 18-22 were able to keep all these kids from falling to their death.

Like all dangerous activities it is all about the process. The climb doesn’t start until the harness is checked at the bottom. The kid doesn’t get off the line at the top until they are clicked into a safety tether. The safety tether isn’t removed until they are on the rap line. The rap doesn’t start until the bottom person has the rap line in hand. (Little known fact, if you have a bottom person you don’t need to double rope when rappelling with a figure eight or similar descender. The bottom can stop everything with a gentle tug. Nice, right?) As all of this is happening we are talking the participants through as if they are totally in control. Constant communication and teaching them climbing terminology and etiquette. Minus the fat shaming.

The whole time the kid thinks they are living life on the edge of death when the realty is that they are safer up top than they are waiting for their friends to get done climbing.

That is how dangerous things are made safe. Process that removes dangerous choices from the participants. If a participant dies in that situation by diving off the edge of the cliff while untethered, then yeah the participant caused it, but the professionals are at fault too for allowing that to even be possible.
 
Even more tangentially related: My dad recently discovered that flying an airplane is a lot less fun than he thought it would be. Turns out the whole thing is an extended exercise in checklist management.
 
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