I was actually wondering if live rounds might be needed for some shots

Sure, but common sense would dictate that you keep a log of all ammunition and lock it back into storage once the live shooting is finished. The record of ammunition purchased should match the remaining stock plus the ammunition fired. And all weapons should be checked that they are unloaded and signed back into the armoury as soon as the live firing is finished. Having a mixture of loaded and unloaded weapons lying around and people not knowing which is which is just asking for trouble.

Sure, but lots of folk seemed surprised that there would be live rounds on set at all, or, you know, Americans..

If they were using prop guns to fire live rounds as ‘target practice’ (shooting tin cans in the desert possibly), as suggested above, then this would explain a lot……….

Without making light of the incident, by bizarre coincidence, it happened 27 years to the day, when Alan Partridge did the same on Knowing Me Knowing You.

I can’t imagine a scenario where they would be (legitimately) using live rounds on set?

Surely the “bloke shoots bottles on a tree stump” scenes are done with blanks and then something to make the bottle shatter? Or are they expecting Alec Baldwin to actually hit something with an old colt army revolver?

I can’t imagine a scenario where they would be (legitimately) using live rounds on set?

One potential situation is filming weapons being loaded. You need rounds that look real for that, so you need real bullets even if the round doesn’t contain propellant. One potential problem is that if the bullet (or wadding, or anything) from a prop round lodges in the barrel and a live dummy round (i.e. with propellant but no bullet), then you have accidentally assembled a fully functioning live round with both propellant and a bullet.

thols, that’s what happened with the Jet Lee incident isn’t it?

Given the potential for something to get stuck in the barrel you’d have thunk that clearing the barrel by pushing a rod down the barrel after and before each discharge would solve that problem.

thols2
Free Member
I can’t imagine a scenario where they would be (legitimately) using live rounds on set?

One potential situation is filming weapons being loaded. You need rounds that look real for that, so you need real bullets even if the round doesn’t contain propellant. One potential problem is that if the bullet (or wadding, or anything) from a prop round lodges in the barrel and a live dummy round (i.e. with propellant but no bullet), then you have accidentally assembled a fully functioning live round with both propellant and a bullet.

You’d use dummy rounds, look like live rounds but without any propellant or primer in them, looks exactly the same, just has no explosives in it.

Same with shooting stuff, all would be done primarily with pyros, or digitally added after, not many scenes would have the actor firing and effect in the same frame where it would be hard to do digital these days. There’s a lot of scenes where it’s all digital in terms of the effect, they dry fire the gun and the flash and so on are added after.

Without making light of the incident, by bizarre coincidence, it happened 27 years to the day, when Alan Partridge did the same on Knowing Me Knowing You.

Third time brought up, still not funny.

Third time brought up, still not funny.

Never said it was funny.
Just an absolutely bizarre coincidence.

You’d use dummy rounds, look like live rounds but without any propellant or primer in them, looks exactly the same, just has no explosives in it.

Yes, but if the bullet from a fake round lodges in the barrel and a dummy round with propellant is then loaded, you have a live round with propellant and a bullet. Even if the bullet is just rubber or plastic, it will still be lethal at close range.

thols2
Free Member
You’d use dummy rounds, look like live rounds but without any propellant or primer in them, looks exactly the same, just has no explosives in it.

Yes, but if the bullet from a fake round lodges in the barrel and a dummy round with propellant is then loaded, you have a live round with propellant and a bullet. Even if the bullet is just rubber or plastic, it will still be lethal at close range.

Can’t happen if you can’t actual propel the projectile of the bullet, it’s a dud, you strike it and it’ll just leave a mark on the primer, nothing else, especially on revolvers where the round isn’t inserted into the throat of the barrel prior to firing.

You’re not understanding the problem. The problem is that if any debris is in the barrel when a blank round with propellant is fired, that debris becomes a bullet. So there’s a two-stage process. The first stage is that a harmless dummy round without propellant or primer is loaded, for example to film the weapon being loaded. However, if the fake bullet dislodges from that dummy round and nobody realizes that it’s still in the barrel, you have a bullet loaded without propellant. The second stage is that a live blank round (with primer and propellant) is loaded to film the weapon being fired. You now have a functional firearm with a bullet, propellant, and primer, but everybody thinks it’s only loaded with a dummy round.

Never said it was funny.
Just an absolutely bizarre coincidence.

Sorry, misread what you said.

@thols2 I think part of the problem is you seem to be using dummy and blank interchangeably, blank is a blank, dummy is an inert drill round.

“Can’t happen.”
That’s the kind of attitude that ends up with people getting shot and injured/killed on film sets. Technically correct, no doubt about it, but it’s exactly what happened when Brandon Lee was killed. Wherever there’s a human involved, there’s an opportunity for error. Brandon’s prop gun had a bullet from a dummy round lodged in the barrel because the dummy round had been improperly prepared and still contained the primer which still had enough oomph, upon firing, to eject the bullet from the cartridge. This then became pretty much the same as a live round when the gun was loaded with a blank. I’m assuming this would have been spotted if someone had correctly checked the dummy rounds when replacing them with blanks and noticed the bullet missing, or had confirmed the barrel was clear before loading the blanks. I guess everyone was just confident that it “can’t happen”.

No, I’m using “dummy” to mean inert, “blank” to mean live but without a bullet. If part of a dummy round, or any other debris for that matter, jams in the barrel it then becomes a bullet if a blank round is loaded. That’s why it’s a two-stage process, the first stage provides a bullet, the second stage provides the propellant.

As TheFlyingOx pointed out, this is exactly what happened to Brandon Lee, so saying “it can’t happen” is a bit foolish.

I find it flabbergasting in this day and age that you can’t either easily make a replica that looks convincing but is in no way an actual gun, and then add sound and light effects afterwards, OR create an electric replica that makes a realistic sound and flash artificially.
Absolutely amazes me that actual guns firing blanks are still used.

It can’t happen with a dummy bullet on a revolver, as stated, the projectile can’t just fall off and lodge in the barrel, that’s not how it works, it has to be forced into the barrel, through the throat and then it interacts with the rifling to gain the spin for stability in flight.

What happened with Brandon Lee was due to them making their own dummy rounds, which was basically taking the projectile off and dumping the propellant out, unfortunately they didn’t understand that a primer initiation produces gas, which means the projectile left the cartridge, but didn’t have the energy to leave the barrel.

@thols2 once again a reading incomprehension on my part. Sorry.

I think a repeat of the Branden Lee accident is an unlikely scenario.

More likely that they were using the prop guns to do some recreational shooting with live ammo in the desert (remember it is America) and there was a mix up….

As macruiskeen hinted at on the previous page, it seems like the assistant director was the culprit, a weapons grade f***wit (not even a pun in this case) by all accounts, with many previous complaints made against him as well as the complaints made against him on this set.

More likely that they were using the prop guns to do some recreational shooting with live ammo in the desert (remember it is America) and there was a mix up….

That sounds like terrible practice by adding an additional layer of risk by having live rounds on or near the set that may need to be separated from blanks or dummy rounds.

If anyone hasn’t read the Twitter posts from the set armourer linked up there, well worth a read to get an understanding of how things should work and why live ammo should NEVER be on set. It doesn’t speculate on how this happened but answers many questions about how these things should work.

https://mobile.twitter.com/sl_huang/status/1451797888158375937

I think a repeat of the Branden Lee accident is an unlikely scenario.

Most accidents are unlikely scenarios. It’s just that when you have hundreds of tv shows and movies in production at any given time, occasionally a highly improbable set of circumstances arises and a freak accident happens. For example, if an actor is doing the gun twirling thing and drops the gun which lands with its barrel jammed into the dirt, then it’s loaded with a blank cartridge and fired, any dirt stuck in the barrel will function as a bullet at close range. There are untold ways things can go wrong so unlikely things like that do happen sometimes.

The speculation in this thread is crazy.

It’s been a good few years now, but when I was doing some film work I spent an afternoon with an armourer on a small budget film.
A mix of weapons were in use in the film, from automatic pistols through MP5 sub machine guns to an M249 squad automatic weapon.
The pistols were converted to fire blanks only by changing out the barrel for one with a restrictive built in and the other weapons had an insert between barrel and flash suppressor to do the same, to allow gas pressure to be sufficient to work the action and allow the ‘flash’ through the muzzle.
The blanks used were different from those the military and police use insomuch they were ‘dirtier’ and produced a bigger muzzle flash. He did say that when filmed a ‘normal’ blank or live round usually produced little flash so to the viewer they did t look like they weee being fired.
Controls were very tight and I also remember that many of the scenes were filmed with the actors using airsoft replicas. When blank firing was underway as much of the crew as possible were cleared out of the way.
Another film I worked on exclusively used airsoft replicas. The pistols are gas powered so the action still cycles realistically and all the muzzle flash/noise was added in post production.

This is indeed a tragedy for all involved in the incident.

Having read all of the above comments it got me wondering about how the Heat shoot out scene was filmed.

Interesting behind the scenes clip here:

Actors trained on the range with live ammunition to make them appear more authentic on camera, with the actual sequence filmed with blank ammunition. You can see the plexiglass shields and face visors being worn by some of the crew members.

Just to shed a little more light on what really happened, Baldwin wasn’t even acting at that point, he was showing the camera crew how he intended to draw and aim the pistol, and as he did, the gun went off. He’d been handed a gun and specifically told ‘cold gun’, meaning no rounds capable of being fired.

Search warrant reveals grim details of ‘Rust’ shooting and Halyna Hutchins’ final minutes

And now the snot-gobbling shit-weasels of the ‘Murican Right are politicising the incident!
Parasites, the lot of them. 🤬

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/26/alec-baldwin-film-shooting-political-fallout-517171

A firearm incident also happened back in 1984… if anyone remembers the TV series Cover Up? (Holding out for a hero was the theme tune)

On-set accident
During a break between scenes on the set on Friday, October 12, 1984, Jon-Erik Hexum became bored with the filming delays. He began playing Russian roulette with what he believed was a harmless .44 Magnum prop gun and jokingly placed it to his temple and pulled the trigger. The shot sent the wadding from the blank cartridge at Hexum’s skull, driving a bone fragment the size of a quarter into his brain and causing massive hemorrhaging. Hexum was rushed to the hospital, where he was declared brain dead nearly a week later. On October 18, he was taken off life support.

He began playing Russian roulette with what he believed was a harmless .44 Magnum prop gun and jokingly placed it to his temple and pulled the trigger. The shot sent the wadding from the blank cartridge at Hexum’s skull, driving a bone fragment the size of a quarter into his brain and causing massive hemorrhaging.

Yes, hence the discussion above about how a blank cartridge can accidentally be turned into a fully functioning lethal round if any debris finds its way into the barrel.

Good video from Forgotten Weapons with a Canadian company that supplies prop guns to movies. The company come across as very professional, as you’d hope.

thols2
Free Member
He began playing Russian roulette with what he believed was a harmless .44 Magnum prop gun and jokingly placed it to his temple and pulled the trigger. The shot sent the wadding from the blank cartridge at Hexum’s skull, driving a bone fragment the size of a quarter into his brain and causing massive hemorrhaging.

Yes, hence the discussion above about how a blank cartridge can accidentally be turned into a fully functioning lethal round if any debris finds its way into the barrel.

Yeah, remember that one, was weird to even think of doing that with a blank in the gun, the sad fact is that there’s always something that will come out the end, even with a blank, hence why Blank Fire Attachments are used, but can’t really be used on film sets due to the way they look, also noting that BFA’s would not have stopped this current incident, as they aren’t bullet catchers.

^^ Interesting video that.

I vividly remember the blank firing demo with .303 Lee Enfield (that ages me!) from when I was in the ACF. No BFA as its a bolt action rifle.

Instructor fires a blank at point blank range at a piece of carboard from a ration box.

Cardboard flies all over the place and is riddled with holes.

Double post.

@beamers, me too – that and a flash bang under a helmet – loud noise and helmet launches into the sky. The guy who did the demos was our woodwork teacher – hard as nails, fought in North Africa in WW2, drove himself to hospital when he sliced the end off one of his fingers and a truly lovely human being.