What you need to know about prop firearms

Repost from an old entry in My Industry Blog -one of the first, actually- but one that I think the more filmmakers see, the better...


Gun primer for theatre and film, Part 1

While so many of our modern and dramatic conflicts are eventually (not solved perhaps, but) resolved with the use of firearms, it always surprises me how many people try to write, direct, or even just talk about things they don't know and feel the need to pretend they are experts. Ok, so we've all had to step outside our field of expertise sometime in our theatrical or film careers, and that's one of the fun things about the business... but if you aren't willing to do your homework or just fess up and ask for help, you can come across looking a little silly. This is probably as much the fault of the writers and/or directors as it is the poor guy they send to pick up the props from me, but making up or using what you think is cool sounding technical terms for things only works well in science fiction, where the things you're describing don't really exist. What's wrong with the engine, captain?; Why, it's the warp flux diuraneux crystal homogenizer- it's busted! Try that when it's your car needing fixing at the local garage, and they'll probably be happy to charge you for fixing several more fictional plot devices, since it's obvious you don't know what you're talking about.

With that observation as my motivator, I've decided to start throwing out some of the more common bits of info that I wish more people knew. There's no shame in not knowing any of these things, but as the folks from The Warren Report (who I was recently on a film board with at a UW career fair panel) say, Smarter Audiences Make Better Movies!


"I need a couple of 9 millimeters."
Very common, and probably not inaccurate. In terms of picking props for you, it's pretty useless, though, akin to handing someone your keys in a grocery store and saying 'Go pick up my car- it's the four cylinder'. Okay, we know roughly what size engine you have, but what color, what nationality, what body, how many people does it carry, is it street legal, stock or tricked out with aftermarket accessories, how expensive a car do you drive... even if you can't give an exact model and license plate, some of those more superficial descriptors will be more useful to the person trying to find that car in the parking lot than knowing what's under the hood. In movie terms, what the original power of the basis was may have nothing to do with what the prop looks like either- it may look like a four cylinder, but the stunt driving crew might have stuck that body on a race car frame and then rigged it to flip, roll over, and explode. Alternately, it could be a two dimensional plywood cutout that the scenery department built for background use only on a soundstage.

If I know that the character is an AWOL military officer from the first Gulf war, I have a pretty good idea of what he should be carrying. If it's a civilian, it'll be more a matter of personal choice and style, but also era, expense, legality, etc. This is the kind of stuff that will help find you the right prop. There's a link on the FightDesigner firearms page on choosing prop weapons for your production that may help.

Another along the same lines that I hear regularly is "I need a Colt .45". Again, this isn't as specific as some people seem to think it should be; sometimes it refers to an old western revolver (generally some version of the Peacemaker), sometimes they mean the Colt model 1911 (old US military issue or one of the many variations on that style), a semi-automatic with variations still in common use today.

While we're on the topic of caliber: these refer to the diameter of the bullet only. You can't look at the diameter of a hole in a piece of paper made by a 9mm, a .38, a .380ACP or a .357 and tell the difference- they're pretty much the same diameter- but with the exception of firing a .38 in a .357, you don't want to try firing ammo from one in a gun meant for the other. An M16, despite being a bigger gun, has a smaller bullet diameter (.223) than most handguns- yet the round of ammunition is larger, since the casing is longer and is bottlenecked up near the bullet. I just saw a movie poster where someone had obviously edited in rifle shell casings to look like they were coming out of a handgun.

The bullet is only the part that gets fired out of the barrel of the gun- it's the part that kills you. The round of ammunition that is loaded into the gun includes the bullet, the powder, and a casing (usually brass) with a primer in it. With shotguns, it's usually a metal-based plastic casing, crimped shut at the end to hold in the powder, wadding, and shot (lots of little bb-like things), with a primer in the back. You can tell if a round has been fired (or in film, if people are using fired brass to make dummy ammo) if the primer (in the middle of combat-caliber ammo, or the rim of little .22s) is dented.

I've also seen movie posters where they'd drawn in an entire unfired round of ammo flying out of the barrel of the gun- bullet, casing and all.

People will say they need bullets, but 90% of the time what they mean is they need ammunition, for film meaning either blanks (which are everything but the bullet, basically) or dummy rounds (everything but the primer and powder, or else solid metal or plastic replicas). Ammunition is loaded into a magazine for modern semi or fully automatic firearms- not a clip. Technically, a clip is just that- a metal clip that the back end of ammunition slides in to, clipping a number of rounds together (generally not as many as you'll find in a magazine, which holds ammunition inside it, is completely detachable from the gun so you can carry spares and swap out when one is empty, and they have a spring that feeds the ammunition up into the gun one round at a time). You can use clips inside some magazines, but generally clips are only found on old military surplus rifles- or some people use them with revolvers, as an alternative to a speed loader... but now I'm getting a little more off track. Suffice to say- generally what you'll be dealing with in modern theatre is rounds of ammo in a mag, not bullets in a clip.

Yes, I know, it's all semantics and details, but it can help you look more professional and help make your script more plausible. For every real person that's been a Navy Seal or professional assassin, there's a hundred screenwriters who've tried to sound like one.

...and that's your daily pet peeves for Monday, March 5 2007. (with a couple minor updates 8/13)
 
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