I was told the Brandon Lee story over drinks at a wrap party by the dolly grip who was working the show (now a key grip). The details are much more horrific than you described and caused me to rethink gun safety on set.

In fact I recently quit as camera operator on a national TV show over their very careless use of live ammo on set. The live ammo was required because it was supposed to be a “reality” tv show. Well after complaining about having hot weapons pointed at me for the dozen or so time I threw my hands up and walked away.

I am sure being on that set was horrific and everybody involved must’ve felt terrible. It is one of the most notable examples of gun safety gone wrong and serves as an unfortunate reminder that even when we think we’re being “safe” it’s good to double check anyway.

I don’t blame you for quitting on that show with the live ammo. All it takes is a small bump, or simple accident and maybe you aren’t here to tell us about the experience.

I’m surprised productions are willing to take these risks all in the name of a shot, or a movie, or a tv show. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one reality tv show that was worth another person’s life!

On one show I worked on one of the makeup people was taking care of a prop gun for some reason. It was repeatedly left onset without being wrangled which pissed me off and I kept telling the 1st AD to handle it but they didn’t. The final straw was when the makeup person handed it to a PA to basically play with. I walked off set and had my 2nd AC and camera PA follow me and told the 1st AD we would not go back to work until the gun is properly stored.

10 minutes later, when everything was where it should be, we went back to work. Never had a problem after that.

Last year we were shooting a mugging scene in an ally in Colorado Springs. We had all the necessary permits and permissions, but someone who will remain anonymous forgot to inform the Colorado Springs PD that there was to be a loud scream. All members of the crew, myself included were actually NRA certified competitive shooters and trainers. Lets face it… Its Colorado.

All standard safety commands were followed and the gun was a modified arisoft gun. The gun went off, the actress screamed, and a few seconds later the police come around the corner to a man with a gun and a woman covered in blood. I called a safety command active shooting training known as “Index.” Wich equates to “holster your weapon and leave your hands in plain sight.”

The command was followed to a t. I was able to get to the officer at his car and explain what was going on before he made it too far on set. He was pretty cool about the whole thing, and gave me good instructions for how to avoid police intervention ruining a really good take in the future.

The moral of my story is the index command can be issued by anyone… actor, crew, tech advisor, and everyone who knows it will immediately freeze. This allows the person who issued the command to ensure safety is being followed. This policy on a set also makes sure that safety is everyone’s business.

P.S. In Colorado, chances are most of the members on your crew will have guns, possibly on them. Make sure everyone is disarmed before you bring a prop on set. Lets face it shit happens.

Hey Joey! Nice to see you on the site. How you been?

With regards to your comment…

Sounds like that situation got handled the best it could thanks to everyone being trained and you willing to take action. I like the idea of a command that can be issued and everyone knows what it means, but I got to imagine it could get hairy if EVERYONE had authority to give it out. But, maybe I’m wrong.

Glad to hear that the police were talked to before anything got out of control. I imagine they wouldn’t have taken the situation very lightly at first and would’ve needed a lot of convincing to stand themselves down.

I wish every set involving guns was as safe about it as you guys were. Good work

My friend sent me this link to a news story about a few people who were shooting a Deadpool fan film, and during the shoot they were using a real gun as a prop and it accidentally went off and shot the actor in the leg, they thought the gun had no bullets in. It just makes you think how careless some people are, you would have thought if you were to use a real gun you should at least take all the bullets out first. They are just lucky it wasn’t more serious. Here is the article that talks about it. http://www.slashfilm.com/irl-man-shot-while-filming-deadpool-fan-serie/

I work here and there as a Prop Master, and I made the switch a long time ago over to “Airsoft” guns. I’m amazed how many people, even in-the-know propmasters, don’t know of these replicas. I insist that any production I’m on involving guns uses them.

If you don’t know, Airsoft guns use a small electric motor (for rifles) or compressed gas (pistols) to shoot small plastic BBs. The main selling point of Airsofts is that 99% of them are made to look and fire and feel as much like the original weapon as possible. In most cases, they’re mostly metal, about the same weight, and most feature “blowback”, where the slide actually pops back hard like in a real gun to simulate the experience more. Airsoft is starting to become a real “thing”, and there are dozens of fields across the World dedicated to it. Mostly in countries that don’t allow their citizens to carry guns in the first place. Go figure.

The pluses to using Airsoft are many: The look and feel just like real guns, and some are even licensed, and have all the real gun’s trademarks, useful for closeups. I call these Hero Guns. You don’t need any kind of special license to handle these, as they can NOT be modified to shoot real bullets. In fact, when I’m on-set, I don’t even bring BBs, even though the worst a BB would do is break the skin. But it’s better to be safe than shoot out an eye, as the gas does expel BBs at around 300-400 feet per second. So I just use gas on set so the gun makes the pop, and the slide slams back, and everyone’s happy and feels safe. They then add the flash effects in post production, as well as the cartridge ejection. It’s incredibly easy to do in After Effects, and you can find hundreds of videos (many by children) about how to do it.

As an example, in Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labrynth”, the production was not allowed to use blanks due to the holy grounds they were filming on, so they used Airsofts instead and added the effects later. Looks amazing. Same thing with Neil Jordan’s “The Brave One”; not a single blank fired, and it looks great. In fact, you will, every single time, get better results from the Airsoft method than you would from blanks, because not every blank is packed properly, and you’ll often get at least 2-3 rounds out of every magazine mis-firing and not flashing.

Also, Airsoft pistols are generally MUCH cheaper than real or blank-firing guns (often cheaper than renting), they’ll last a very long time, the good ones are made mostly of metal, and you save money in Insurance. You also save time having to “wrangle” the set to allow for live guns.

Due to the nature of different Airsoft markets, you can also get guns for your background actors for as little as $40 (for a Stargate-style P-90 or an M4), and, for guns like the ones pictured above, you’ll pay something like $2k. And it’s all-metal and heavy. Most people, even after popping the mag and checking the chamber, wouldn’t know it’s not a real gun. The pistols average, for Hero versions, around $125-175. Great thing is you can have a Hero and Dummy for throwing around without having to make molds or worry about damaging the Hero prop.

In the end, the best reason for Airsoft use on-set? No one dies or gets shot. I met O’ Barr at a small screening of the Crow, and he was so sad about Brandon getting shot. And don’t forget about John Eric Hexum.

Hope this helps some of you.