Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The Best Shot of The Day

Sunday's shoot of In Double Dutch had one extremely memorable shot: when one character shoots another character, the actor was going to use a blank in their gun to get a realistic effect. I told the actor we'd be doing a dry run first, without any live blank at all... just to help them block out the scene.

But I lied.

We told everyone, discretely, that her gun was actually "weapons hot"... that is, we told everyone except the actors. (We also had a tenacious firearms consultant who would not have agreed to this unless it had been safe. He observed everyone's movements, ready to intervene if anything were to go awry.)

Two cameras were trained on her final shooting position: one close, one medium. Her shocked expression and natural gun recoil were so real I can remember hearing a collective gasp in amazement from the crew.

We even have a clip of it from our videographer's camera:

All the behind the scenes footage was shot by Steve Papineau, whom you can actually see here holding the boom. Thanks, Steve!

1 comment:

Christopher said...

Proof that directors are callous bastards! :)

I like how your firearms consultant enforces trigger discipline after the shoot: "Watch the trigger!"