- Joined
- Jul 4, 2024
This thread is for talking generally about The many errors, mistakes, and "what were they thinking" moments throughout the history of the visual medium.
I made this start because I particularly want to talk about how dumb Hollywood prop Masters are for ever allowing real bullets and real guns on a set at the same time. Handing actors loaded guns has led to at least two major incidents in which people were murdered, most famously being Bruce Lee's son dying on the set of the crow, the lesser one being Alec Baldwin reenacting the okay corral on some shitty Western set. Both of these tragedies occurred because the prop master, who is ultimately responsible for these things, screwed up and gave actors real guns loaded with real bullets when they should have been blanks.
There is absolutely no reason why fully functional bullets should ever be on set. I realize that they have them there for scenes where an actor is pointing the gun at the camera, they want the bullets to be in there and for them to look as realistic as possible. You can make fake bullets that look identical on the exterior to real bullets, but are absolutely and completely 100% safe. All that would need to be done is buy a loading press, which you can get for probably less than $100 these days, and press a lead bullet into a brass casing. That is it. Now you have a bullet that looks identical to the real thing in a revolver but cannot go off, because it has no primer and even if it did have a primer there's no gunpowder to explode and push the bullet through the barrel.
I made this start because I particularly want to talk about how dumb Hollywood prop Masters are for ever allowing real bullets and real guns on a set at the same time. Handing actors loaded guns has led to at least two major incidents in which people were murdered, most famously being Bruce Lee's son dying on the set of the crow, the lesser one being Alec Baldwin reenacting the okay corral on some shitty Western set. Both of these tragedies occurred because the prop master, who is ultimately responsible for these things, screwed up and gave actors real guns loaded with real bullets when they should have been blanks.
There is absolutely no reason why fully functional bullets should ever be on set. I realize that they have them there for scenes where an actor is pointing the gun at the camera, they want the bullets to be in there and for them to look as realistic as possible. You can make fake bullets that look identical on the exterior to real bullets, but are absolutely and completely 100% safe. All that would need to be done is buy a loading press, which you can get for probably less than $100 these days, and press a lead bullet into a brass casing. That is it. Now you have a bullet that looks identical to the real thing in a revolver but cannot go off, because it has no primer and even if it did have a primer there's no gunpowder to explode and push the bullet through the barrel.
