Latest / Indie Film Podcast / The Real Horror of Indie Filmmaking: Set Safety Mistakes

Transcript

The Real Horror of Indie Filmmaking: Set Safety Mistakes · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
0:02
And I am Chuck. In the month of October, we're
0:04
talking about the horrors of indie filmmaking.
0:06
And this week we're talking about the real horror of indie
0:08
filmmaking, which is set safety, or lack thereof.
0:12
Oh, OK Chuck, what do you do if you are on set and an actual axe
0:15
is flying at your head? First you scream, then you duck,
0:19
then you block the axe with your boom pole.
0:21
If you don't have the boom pole, I don't know what you block it
0:23
with, but that's what I did. So obviously, you're speaking
0:26
from experience here, so you were going to have to come back
0:29
to that story later? Yes.
0:31
In the meantime, I'm very happy to say I've been surprisingly
0:34
lucky with the very few number of accidents that I've had on
0:38
set, but even some is still not none.
0:42
And Hollywood even, it's not uncommon to have some serious
0:45
incidents happen on set that since 2002 there have been 152
0:51
reported catastrophic injuries or fatalities on Hollywood sets.
0:55
That's just what's reported. So even with the large budget
0:58
productions, sometimes the director's vision is focused
1:02
more on the shot and not enough on the safety of their cast and
1:07
crew. Actually, that's a fun start
1:08
that I heard was that the camera department is more at risk for
1:14
catastrophic injury or fatality than any other department on a
1:17
film set, just because they're right there next to the action.
1:20
And therefore, if somebody's going to get injured, it's
1:22
probably going to be camera team.
1:24
Camera team and you actually have a story from a set, but do
1:27
you want to share the story? Poor Danny Glamorous.
1:29
Oh yeah, where my oh man, my poor camera.
1:34
Danny, who is on a few episodes of this, is an incredible
1:39
cinematographer and very patient, very kind.
1:41
We were shooting Dive, the short film that you've heard about a
1:43
lot. There was a scene filming from
1:45
behind the truck bed as it was moving and coming to a stop in
1:50
front of the dive bar that Dive is set in and you as the sound
1:55
mixer and Danny is the cinematographer.
1:59
We're both in the back of the truck and every single one of us
2:02
on set there from the person driving it, who is the gaffer
2:05
slash also actor. Thanks again, Lee.
2:08
And you, too. And then Sam and I and all of
2:14
us, yeah, we're out there saying we should do a trial run.
2:18
We should do a practice run. This isn't going to be safe.
2:20
This is essentially A stunt now. It wasn't going to be
2:22
originally. And I just want to say that the
2:25
idea was for the driver of the truck to just roll up casually
2:30
and park. Yes, it would.
2:32
The the drive was a good like maybe 50 feet at a very low
2:37
speed. So we weren't thinking, oh, this
2:40
is going to be gnarly. It's we're in a parking lot,
2:42
nobody's around. I'm in the back getting sound.
2:46
Danny's in the back getting the video of the actor through the
2:49
rear window on a pickup truck and not a big deal.
2:53
Not a big deal, especially when you and Danny have done that
2:56
exact setup in that truck before.
2:59
Not the same driver, but you've done that before, technically.
3:03
So even though every single one of us had that thought of should
3:06
we do a practice run, we were running late.
3:09
It was late at night. Last shot of the night, which
3:11
usually that's how that happens, is somebody's you're shooting
3:14
something that's a little bit tricky.
3:16
At the end of the night, it's probably best to coordinate so
3:20
that your most complicated shots are the 1st thing in the day so
3:24
that you're not feeling as rushed.
3:26
Exactly. And you're not feeling rushed
3:27
and everyone's still fresh. They're well rested hopefully
3:31
and they're showing up ready to to do their best work and get
3:34
the hard stuff out of the way first.
3:36
Unfortunately, when we're shooting in the evening and
3:39
night, and this was definitely a night shot, it couldn't be in
3:42
the evening. It wasn't going to be able to be
3:43
the first shot. And my theory was just, well,
3:47
let's do all the inside stuff first then and then move outside
3:50
because that'll be less camera setups and save time.
3:53
In hindsight, no, we should have moved the stunt earlier.
3:56
Yeah, but it became a stunt and we decided as a group, no, let's
4:01
just go for it. And this individual had not
4:03
driven this truck ever before and didn't know how delicate the
4:07
brakes were. So even though it was only 5
4:09
miles an hour ish. It came to a dead stop real
4:12
quick and Danny was then moving 5 miles an hour in with his red
4:17
camera setup into the back window.
4:20
Yes, of the pickup, yes. And he he basically stopped
4:24
himself with his knees in the pickup bed.
4:26
Not ideal. Yeah, and the camera was fine.
4:29
Thankfully though we definitely had to stop and take it apart
4:34
and re tighten a few things because some things got moved
4:37
around for sure. Ultimately, there would have
4:38
been time saved by having a rehearsal of that versus doing
4:41
it have something go wrong and then having to regroup.
4:44
Yeah, yeah. It would have just been so much
4:46
faster to just do the test run and have the truck drive and
4:51
everybody mark it while there's nobody in the bed of the truck.
4:53
And then that way we know how it drives.
4:56
We know exactly, we can mark exactly where we want it to stop
4:58
and everything. And yeah, that would have been
5:00
the better way to do it. But on the plus side, thankfully
5:02
we can laugh about it now because no body was hurt and no
5:07
gear was hurt. But still, that's just, that's a
5:12
reminder to me that it doesn't matter if we're running late,
5:14
we're running late, we're doing the practice run.
5:16
Yeah, it's good to have a rehearsal.
5:17
I was on a set where we were, it was seemed very simple where it
5:22
wasn't even an actor. He was chopping wood and so he
5:26
had an actual axe as a prop. There was a wide shot where he
5:29
was chopping wood for the setup. It was him and then this other
5:33
character that we're having a conversation and it was coming
5:36
to an apex. And so the character was
5:40
basically moving the axe to the side to embrace the other
5:44
character. And the person that was chopping
5:47
the wood was not even an actor. He literally chopped wood to
5:51
keep his house warm at all times.
5:53
So he's very experienced with this.
5:55
He's comfortable with an axe. He knows how this goes.
5:57
Yeah, and so the the thought of having a sharp axe on set didn't
6:01
even really occur to us, any of us as an issue.
6:04
So we're getting a shot, and the idea is that in order to pin
6:08
pick up the other character, he's got to get rid of the axe.
6:12
And the very first take we did with that, I was positioning
6:15
myself away from the camera because I was operating boom and
6:21
making sure I was getting good audio.
6:22
And the best place for me to do that in that situation was
6:25
directly behind him at a 90° separation from me and the
6:30
camera, like if the actor is at the midpoint.
6:32
So I was off to the side of the camera.
6:35
And what happened during the take was the very first take was
6:40
he was excited, not a practiced actor.
6:43
He ended up throwing the axe behind him, which was incredibly
6:47
sharp because you want to have a sharp axe.
6:49
It's also very heavy. I was running boom.
6:52
Obviously, I did not get any sound in that one.
6:54
I was quite a ways away too. I was a good like 10 feet away.
6:57
Didn't even think about this being an issue.
6:59
But the axe basically made it to my chest.
7:02
I used my boom pole to prevent it from hitting me and it fell
7:06
to the ground. I took a deep breath.
7:08
I checked myself out to make sure that nothing sharp hit me,
7:12
made sure I wasn't bleeding anywhere.
7:14
Because you know you're, when you have something thrown at you
7:16
suddenly that's dangerous and you're not prepared for it.
7:20
Your adrenaline kicks up pretty quickly.
7:22
So everything was fine luckily. And then obviously after that
7:26
shot, we rehearsed it and then I went to a different position and
7:32
he ended up not checking the axe as hard.
7:34
So none of us were even thinking of this as being a big deal.
7:39
And when I was getting audio, it was just something happened
7:43
suddenly. And that's what happens when you
7:45
have sharp objects on set. It's not the thing that you
7:48
anticipate. It's something that's coming out
7:51
of left field. And if you have a hazardous
7:52
object, then it could hurt somebody.
7:55
It could really hurt somebody. Actually, I was on another set.
7:58
It was a horror film and there's a scene where a gentleman, poor,
8:03
poor man, I should say, is hog tied in a basement underground
8:09
cave type thing and he is on plastic wrap because the person
8:15
is going to kill him, comes up behind him with a knife, slits
8:18
his throat. And obviously, as an indie film,
8:23
we're not going to show an actual throat getting slit
8:26
because that's a whole extra level of, you know, hair and
8:30
makeup that we just do not have the budget for.
8:32
Yeah. But so we're going to, we know
8:34
we're going to creatively shoot around it.
8:36
So you're not using by, you're not going to actual show an
8:39
actual throat getting slate, you're saying you're not going
8:40
to do the visual effects necessary.
8:43
Technically both. We're not going to murder
8:45
anybody on set. That's not our goal.
8:47
Technically, we're doing both. We're not actually killing
8:49
somebody on set because this is not a snuff film.
8:51
And we're also not going to show the actual cut because we just
8:55
aren't going to do. We aren't going to spend that
8:57
much time on on the special effects.
8:58
You'd need to. So the director and the producer
9:02
have purchased this very ornate, very gorgeous knife to use for
9:07
the scene. However, it was an actual knife
9:10
and it was very, very sharp. And and while no, the knife does
9:18
not need to be right up next to them, nonetheless, it's still an
9:24
actor walking across this plastic tarp.
9:27
So they could trip and fall holding this knife or trip and
9:30
fall onto the poor dude who's hogged actually hog tied on the
9:34
ground and can't actually move and dodge and get out of the
9:36
way. Like there were just a lot of
9:39
risk factors. So thankfully the hair makeup
9:41
person who also owned the property that we were filming at
9:45
stepped up and said no. The the actor has even voiced
9:47
that this is making them nervous.
9:49
And, and at least that actor did feel safe talking to somebody
9:52
and saying something because that pressure to not say
9:54
something when nobody else is saying something, yeah, is is
9:58
hard to overcome. So that was nice because before
10:03
then it had been a conversation of can we not use this knife?
10:06
Can we please not use this knife until the property owner came on
10:10
set was like, absolutely not, you're not using this knife.
10:12
Just hard no. Yeah.
10:14
And, and it's tricky sometimes if you have somebody that has a
10:18
specific vision in mind and you, you just want to take safety
10:23
seriously. Yeah.
10:25
And we're making entertainment. Yes.
10:28
There's no need for me to have to dodge an actual axe.
10:32
No, no there isn't. There's no need for anyone to
10:35
have to dodge an actual act. There's no need for somebody to
10:38
have to risk slamming their really expensive rig in their
10:42
knees into the. Yeah, or their body parts into
10:44
the back of a pickup truck. And it's, it's so hard because
10:48
especially in the moment and being indie and being like,
10:50
well, we're just going to run a gun and we're just going to get
10:53
this done. And we don't have much time and
10:55
we have to be off of this property before somebody notices
10:57
we're here filming or whatever your scenario is that you're
11:00
filming in. It's it's so easy to want to
11:04
start blurring those lines and take those shortcuts.
11:08
And I just don't. The juice is never worth the
11:11
squeeze, despite the fact that in this industry, it almost
11:14
feels celebrated sometimes when you do something risky.
11:18
But hey, you got the shot, you know?
11:20
Cool shot, nobody got hurt. All's well that ends well.
11:24
And it's like, but maybe you could have a post mortem meeting
11:27
where you wow, that's actually the probably the best use of
11:30
post mortem meeting that actually OK, where you discuss
11:34
like, OK, it's so great that nobody was hurt.
11:36
That's fantastic. What can we do in the future to
11:38
prevent this from even being a risk or a hazard in the first
11:42
place? Yeah, yeah.
11:43
And there's actually a situation that arose here in Boise.
11:48
Excuse me, There was a situation that arose here in Boise that
11:50
actually caused the film permit allegedly.
11:54
Well, this is. I feel like that's still sort of
11:57
kind of rumor. I think it's it, yeah,
11:59
allegedly. Allegedly.
12:01
But if you're not taking into account, you know, your
12:03
surroundings and the the impact that it has, especially if
12:08
you're doing something like running around with even a fake
12:10
gun. Yeah.
12:11
And you're doing that in public and you haven't gotten all the
12:15
notifications out there to the neighborhood and the Police
12:18
Department. It may lead to some serious
12:20
issues. Yes, yes.
12:23
It can't though, and I know we're going to talk about this a
12:27
lot more later, but I'm going to go ahead and introduce the Film
12:30
Fights with Friends podcast now just because I really want to
12:34
use one of their set safety suggestions.
12:37
Oh, absolutely. So we have reached out on
12:42
Instagram. So yeah, go ahead.
12:45
If there's somebody you admire on Instagram, just send them the
12:47
Dang message and see what happens.
12:49
You never know because despite the fact that Sambo Steve is
12:54
sometimes his nickname, I guess. But Steve who's known for things
12:59
like John Wick two and three, The Walking Dead blacklist, like
13:02
just the IMDb profile is huge. He's a he's a stunt coordinator.
13:07
Yes, in New York. Podcast is about, it's 2 stunt
13:11
coordinators chatting about what it's like to work as stunt
13:14
coordinators in Hollywood. And podcast is super cool, very
13:18
informative, very modifying for us, especially that we don't
13:22
work on on Hollywood sets, but also great people to talk to
13:26
about set safety because usually they're the spearhead of the
13:30
dangerous situations on set. They are so they're very
13:33
passionate about safety, which is awesome.
13:35
So it was really nice that when just, you know, our little Idaho
13:38
podcast for indie film makers reaches out and said, Hey, we
13:42
would love to chat safety with you.
13:43
And they say, yes, absolutely, let's hop on a call.
13:45
So that was really cool. But Steve had one really good
13:48
suggestion that I'd never even thought of before, because I do
13:51
often think about calling police departments before I film just
13:54
the non-emergency dispatch line to let them know, hey, this is
13:57
happening. Or you've warned your neighbor
13:59
or people in a neighborhood where you're filming before
14:01
about things happening. Yeah.
14:02
We had a gun waving around and we didn't want the police called
14:05
on us. Yeah.
14:05
So, I mean, that's a hack. If you wanna do something gnarly
14:08
in your neighborhood, I guess just call Police Department.
14:10
Police and let them know ahead of time but call your local
14:14
hospital too if you have a specific scenario or you have a
14:19
specific person or like his example specifically was working
14:23
with somebody who was older an octogenarian yeah I don't know
14:28
how much I'm allowed to say about we'll.
14:30
Just keep all the names. We'll keep the names out of it.
14:32
We'll keep the names out of it. And Steve, if you're watching
14:35
and you want to comment the names and drop some of that
14:37
stuff, then you go for it because that would be cool.
14:39
But call your hospital and tell them what your scenes are going
14:44
to be, what your potential emergencies are going to be.
14:46
And apparently they actually really appreciate that kind of a
14:49
heads up. So I just thought, oh, that's
14:53
really smart. So if you're going to stage a
14:55
car accident of some sort, call him and say, hey, we're faking a
15:01
car accident. We've got all this other stuff
15:03
set around it. It should be very safe.
15:05
We're taking all the necessary precautions.
15:06
But just so you know, we'll have, you know, a young child
15:10
and an old woman in a car faking a car accident.
15:13
And if we have an emergency, you are the nearest hospital.
15:15
We're coming to you. Yeah.
15:17
And I thought that was really nice.
15:18
Just give people a heads up. That was cool.
15:19
Additional safety net. Before we get into some of the
15:22
gnarly stuff, I do want to give one more example.
15:24
That happened on a 48 hour film set.
15:26
Yeah, that I was working on. I was doing sound on that one.
15:29
We were just shooting this very simple short film, 448 Hour Film
15:35
Festival, and we needed a prop, which ended up being a knife.
15:41
The idea was this robot, this murder robot was supposed to
15:43
have a lot of different tools of mayhem on this table before they
15:47
tortured this victim. And we weren't even going to use
15:51
the knife in any way that would be dangerous towards the other
15:54
actor. But we wanted the actor that was
15:57
that was on camera to basically unsheath and resheath the knife.
16:01
Yeah. And we thought no big deal.
16:04
We'll use a real knife. We'll use a real knife.
16:06
Not like all you have to do is pull it in, push it back, push
16:10
it back into the sheath, no big deal.
16:11
She almost stabbed her hand because it slipped funny and
16:16
stuff like that happens. And if she would have caught her
16:19
hand when she missed resheathing, it would have
16:21
caused some pretty gnarly cuts. It would have been painful.
16:25
Possibly stitches because it was a very sharp hunting knife.
16:29
So just be real careful out there because it is just those
16:33
little things that you don't even think of.
16:35
It's like we're basically doing nothing with this.
16:38
If you have something sharp on set, if you're not being
16:40
careful, somebody has like 1 clumsy moment, somebody's could
16:43
end up getting cut. And if they need stitches,
16:46
that's not cheap. That's not cheap, and I'm also
16:48
going to throw this out there. Nowadays there are so many
16:51
options and no, you probably aren't going to be able to
16:55
afford a props master that can make you a rubber replica of
16:59
your knife that looks camera foolingly perfect.
17:03
No, but you are going to have, I mean, obviously there's Amazon
17:06
that's going to have a lot of choices.
17:08
There's also Etsy is a great place to go because there are so
17:11
many creators for props and all sorts of wild stuff and very
17:16
realistic looking, especially gory stuff.
17:18
If you're into making horror films, Etsy has so many creators
17:21
on there that you can go to for that.
17:24
And if push comes to shove and you're really sold on using an
17:28
item you already have, go to your local either kitchen supply
17:31
store or knife store. If you have one in town and they
17:36
have the ability to dull that knife for you, you can at least
17:39
sand it down so that it doesn't have that live edge on it.
17:43
It's still going to be a, you know, probably a heavy and like
17:47
don't shove it into somebody's soft bits kind of weapon.
17:51
You know, it's still dangerous, but at least you were at least
17:54
you're taking some steps to lessen the risk.
17:55
So. You.
17:56
Have options. Getting those hazards reduced.
18:00
And for those of you that are out, maybe you're in videography
18:04
and you're thinking to yourself, well, I'm going to transition
18:07
into indie film, but it's mostly just going to be conversations
18:09
with people at a table. You know, maybe you're a Richard
18:12
Linklater fan or something like that.
18:14
I do want to point out there's a famous example of set safety
18:18
failure on 60 Minutes from 1992. They were interviewing the
18:23
Clintons. Sort of a big name in 92.
18:27
Yeah, yeah. Big deal, Big deal.
18:29
In 1992 and as the Clintons were being interviewed, the entire
18:35
light rack fell on the couch behind them.
18:38
And in 1992, these were not LED lights.
18:40
No, they were probably scaldingly hot and exceedingly
18:44
heavy. Did the couch catch on fire?
18:46
It did not catch on fire. OK, good.
18:48
But they were terrified for their lives and this is 60
18:51
minutes interview stuff. Obviously somebody was not
18:54
careful when they were assembling.
18:57
The light structure, yeah, something just fell through the
19:00
cracks. So make sure that you're set
19:04
safety step number one, you have your C stands or all of your
19:08
stands weighted properly, so. That sandbags.
19:10
All over. Sandbags are so important.
19:14
And tape your cords down or have them out of the way so that
19:18
they're not a tripping hazard. That's real simple stuff that
19:21
you want to pay attention to and that can catch anybody on any
19:24
set. I was working for a large tech
19:26
firm, I don't want to say the name of it, and they had a giant
19:30
jib that I was required to use for live broadcasts.
19:34
It had a Sony FX-9 on the on the one end of it.
19:38
And I want to say the counterweight was somewhere in
19:40
the neighborhood of £35 on the opposite end of this jib.
19:44
So there was a lot of weight on that, plus the tripod that it
19:48
was on and it was on wheels. I was filming a live broadcast
19:53
and there was a knob in the middle of the presentation
19:57
floor, just this small little bump that was not perfectly
20:01
even. So as I was moving in for a
20:04
close up on somebody, one of the wheels caught this uneven
20:08
surface on the floor and the entire jib went down and I saved
20:13
the camera. I don't know why I cared about
20:15
saving the camera, but like the Instinct.
20:17
Because your gut instinct is this is so much expensive gear,
20:20
I can't not let it fall. Yeah, so I'm holding that.
20:23
One of the other camera OPS rushes from his end of the area,
20:27
locks down his shot rushes. They switch cameras to that
20:29
camera and helps me get the the jib back up because I couldn't
20:33
lift it. No, that had to be.
20:35
Without dropping the actual camera onto the ground, which
20:37
would have toasted probably about at that time, like a
20:40
$20,000 FX 9 setup. So just a little tiny bump in
20:47
the floor which I didn't know was there.
20:49
I didn't realize it was a hazard.
20:51
It caught the wheel the way that the jib was set up, like the
20:54
tripod is built to kind of collapse.
20:57
Yeah. And it wasn't locked down
20:58
properly. And so it just the, the base
21:01
collapsed, the entire thing went over on its side.
21:04
And yeah, it was almost real expensive.
21:07
Didn't pull my back, throw my back.
21:08
Out. I'm glad that you were OK and
21:09
the person that came over too, like, at least it didn't fall
21:13
onto either of you because I feel like that also would have
21:16
been really painful. Oh yeah, yeah.
21:17
Well, yeah, you got to be careful with that.
21:19
I mean, that's one of those things to do in a lot of boom
21:21
operation. You always want to know where
21:23
the other end of your boom pole is.
21:24
Yeah, keep an eye on it, because sometimes you can get real eye
21:27
out. You get real wild with it.
21:29
I almost knocked over a camera one time that was that would
21:31
have been pretty, pretty bad. That would have been a little
21:34
rough. Yeah, that would have been a
21:35
little rough. Watch out where the other end of
21:36
your boom pole is. Watch out where the other end of
21:38
the jib is. Make sure you're aware of it.
21:40
No, 9 times out of 10, still I I because I'm allowing that one
21:43
just in case it's somebody I don't like.
21:45
I would rather hit a camera than a person.
21:48
True. No, 10 times that is done.
21:50
Always hit the gear. Never a person.
21:52
Good call. Good call.
21:53
OK, so the theme of this episode specifically is taking
21:57
inspiration from horror films. Yes, and I do want to mention 2
22:03
horror films, OK, that had a lot of misconception or scandal or
22:09
things about them. OK, so the first one is from 78
22:13
Faces of Death. Oh, I've heard of that one.
22:15
You said you'd seen that one, is that right?
22:17
I believe so. Is that the clip show or is
22:19
that? Yeah, that's a clip show.
22:21
I haven't actually seen it, but supposedly it's been banned in
22:24
several countries. Not in the US, but it has been
22:25
banned in several countries because it does show actual
22:29
depictions of death. Yeah.
22:31
And then some of them are staged and some of them are not.
22:34
But it is actual people dying. And so it's kind of like, that's
22:37
a little rough. I don't know how I feel about
22:39
that. Yeah, we had.
22:40
High school that came out on DVD when I was in high school and so
22:43
somebody rented it because they got a copy in our small town
22:47
like DVD rental place and so. Blockbuster knockoff.
22:51
A group of us in high school had to had to watch it and just to
22:54
see what it was all about. And a lot of them were fake, but
22:57
I had to look up later on that some of the actual deaths were
23:01
real. They were real.
23:02
There's a. Famous politician that committed
23:04
suicide on camera on a live broadcast.
23:08
And I guess that would have been early 70s, I imagine.
23:10
So that yeah, it's it's pretty gnarly.
23:12
It's definitely a snuff film. Yeah, I don't need to watch
23:14
that. But on the subject of snuff
23:16
films, since we're going that direction with this, apparently
23:20
that's what safety brings up. Cannibal Holocaust from 1980 was
23:25
banned because it had such realistic depictions of animal
23:31
cruelty as well as deaths that it and it's found footage style.
23:37
So that makes it even more believable that people are were
23:41
positive. It was a snuff film.
23:42
So much so that the director, Ruggero Deodato, Italian, when
23:50
returning to Italy after filming, was actually charged
23:53
with murder for his actors because these death deaths were
23:58
so believable. Thankfully, he was, you know,
24:01
those charges were dropped when he was able to, you know, bring
24:03
the still living actors back. But I think it's kind of wild
24:07
that, you know, on sets like Django Unchained, you'll hear
24:12
about somebody like Leonardo DiCaprio.
24:15
DiCaprio. I can't pronounce any name.
24:18
I can't pronounce any names. What do I know?
24:21
Squeezing the glass and, and cutting his hand and sort of
24:24
that, that sort of thing being like, oh, wow, look at the look
24:29
at the impressive way that he powered through that scene,
24:31
which to be fair, yes, is very impressive that you can power
24:34
through a scene because I would have freaked out.
24:36
My hand is bleeding. But then when you fake the
24:41
injury so well, you're charged with murder.
24:44
Yeah. And I feel like that's just a
24:46
weird, that's a weird dichotomy. I don't know if I love it.
24:48
That's. Kind of a wild one.
24:50
Obviously 2 very extreme examples there, but.
24:53
Speaking of snuff films, yes, I was looking up examples of
24:57
famous Hollywood actors being injured on set for this podcast
25:01
specifically and Passion of the Christ, which is kind of
25:06
probably in the vein of that horror film.
25:09
You just. Cannibal Holocaust.
25:11
It was probably in the vein of that snuff style film, at least
25:14
in my opinion. But apparently, Jim Caviezel, he
25:19
was struck by lightning, he claims twice on that film set.
25:24
Oh my God. And you can see an interview of
25:26
him online, he suffered, he got hit by one of the whips,
25:31
actually caught him on one of the takes.
25:33
He was suffering shoulder injuries while he was carrying
25:36
the cross. If you look at the interview
25:39
that he, that he had after that filming, he was actually kind of
25:45
a little bit like I, I guess I would call it like he was, he
25:50
was having a religious experience on set.
25:53
So definitely felt like he was communicating with God.
25:56
It's a pretty good one. And I don't know if the
25:57
lightning strike caused some of that damage to his brain to
26:00
where he felt like he he was communicating.
26:02
With God on the set. But I don't, I don't know.
26:04
You know what? That's between him and his God.
26:06
Yeah, that's that's between. Was excited about the suffering
26:10
that he had in this interview on the set and I'm thinking to
26:13
myself, I maybe Mel Gibson should have just been a little
26:17
bit. More careful.
26:18
Careful. Yeah, because if you see the
26:20
lightning, if I see lightning and Thunder and I have my boom
26:24
pole out, I'm hiding. Like I'm setting the boom pole
26:27
down, yes, preferably in my truck with rubber tires and I'm
26:31
walking away. No, I'm not going to do any of
26:33
that stuff. And he claims that he got struck
26:35
by lightning twice. I don't know.
26:37
I can't imagine the human body surviving that it.
26:40
Does a lot of damage I. Can't imagine getting struck by
26:43
lightning twice and then thinking God likes you.
26:46
Yeah, where that came from? God bless you with a lethal
26:51
amount of electrons. So covering the accidents is
26:57
always when people live and are OK Covering the accidents is
27:02
always, is always sort of entertaining you, your, your war
27:04
stories, so to speak, that you get to tell.
27:07
But in the effort of preventing some accidents, yeah, Steve also
27:14
specifically mentioned the hierarchy of controls.
27:17
Yeah, which is a really cool way to approach it.
27:21
And you can Google that. It's a pyramid shape.
27:24
And at the very top you start with eliminate.
27:27
So let's say the scene is a car crash.
27:30
Perfect. Do you actually need the car
27:32
crash? Are you sure this is vital to
27:35
your story? Is there any way to eliminate
27:36
this? If no, perfect, you go to your
27:38
next step substitute. Wonderful.
27:41
Let's cut away and show a reaction shot and throw some
27:43
great sound Foley over the top of a car accident happening.
27:47
But we only see the reaction on the person's face.
27:49
We don't have to actually do it. We don't have to actually film
27:51
it. If that won't work, OK, three
27:54
engineer. So we're going to set up a roll
27:56
cage and we're going to get this to be the most precise car
28:02
accident that has ever existed in the history of car accidents,
28:06
so we know exactly what's going to happen.
28:08
Yeah, do the math, calculate the speed that they're going to
28:10
impact and the possible ramifications, which I have no
28:14
nothing about. So if you're going to be doing
28:16
this, make sure you have an expert on your set.
28:18
Get an actual engineer or hire OK go because they are very
28:22
precise in their music videos. The next step would be policy.
28:27
So train your team and make sure everybody understands exactly,
28:29
exactly what's happening, all the details that you need to go
28:32
through and and make sure that everyone is on the same page and
28:35
very clear about things. And then of course PPE is your
28:38
last step, which is. Personal protective equipment.
28:42
Yeah, grab your helmet, but it's your last ditch effort because
28:47
you've tried to mitigate this risk in every other way
28:51
possible. You shouldn't be going to a
28:53
helmet first when you have somebody jumping off a building.
28:56
Yes, that's a good point. Yeah.
28:59
And that's how people get injured.
29:00
Yeah. I mean, there's actually famous,
29:02
you can look it up. I don't want to talk too much
29:03
about it because it's really sad, but you can look up famous
29:06
stunt people and actors who have died because they're they're
29:09
completing these stunts and they don't have the mat set up
29:11
correctly. Or they just miss it by an inch
29:13
or something changes. Even Steve had an example of of
29:16
doing one of those dead man where they they just stop
29:20
suddenly by getting pulled backward.
29:22
Oh, he was being. Lifted into a spaceship, which
29:25
was the scene I believe. Right.
29:27
No, he was jumping off a Cliff. Oh, that's right.
29:28
And he would stopped in all the takes that they had done as a
29:31
test run. And then they were like,
29:33
actually, no, don't stop. It doesn't make sense for you to
29:35
stop. You should keep running and
29:37
we'll just pull you back while you're running.
29:40
And he missed. And suddenly that changed the
29:41
entire force of it. And he completely missed the
29:44
pads. Yeah.
29:45
So scary. It is.
29:46
That's terrifying. But I think, I think those are
29:51
the really big things. So I will say one other thing
29:53
Steve mentioned that I was really excited about.
29:55
Was there finally going to be new standards for weapons on
30:00
set? The first time we've ever had a
30:02
national standard set to it, which means that if there's an
30:05
OSHA investigation, they have a national standard to look to.
30:09
But it's probably not going to be in SAG contracts.
30:12
It's probably not going to change a lot of the things that
30:14
you do on a day-to-day basis, but at least it's a step in the
30:19
right direction. It says that there is something
30:21
that needs to be called attention to, and it's something
30:24
that, you know, everyone can look towards as guidelines and
30:27
has a lot of cool options for. Like if you need a breakaway
30:31
brick, maybe it should be made of like, gypsum instead of
30:35
concrete. Yeah, little things like that.
30:38
And those will be coming out hopefully soon.
30:40
Hopefully in the next year or so it can get ratified and go into
30:43
effect. It's going to take a while, so
30:45
in the meantime try to be safe. Keep an eye out for those though
30:48
because you do want to take extra care to make sure that
30:51
nobody gets hurt on set. Another thing we forgot to
30:53
mention is just try not to do such long shoot days because how
30:56
many people get exhausted and if it's a long drive home they end
30:59
up falling asleep at the wheel. They do.
31:01
And it's you need to let people rest.
31:04
You do, you have to. And there's 14 hour days
31:07
back-to-back to back. It's rough.
31:09
Yeah, we're just plain pretend here, folks.
31:11
That's what filmmaking is all about.
31:14
You're making entertainment, so a good day is when everybody has
31:16
fun, when you make the art you want to make, and everyone makes
31:21
it home to their loved ones safely.
31:23
Good. That's a good filming day.
31:27
I guess there was one other little tidbit as far as student
31:30
film makers go, and if anybody knows the details on this one
31:33
specifically, they can. They can correct me here, but if
31:39
you are applying for a SAG contract as a student filmmaker,
31:43
you have the ability to not necessarily pay some stunt
31:46
coordinators their full rate. Not that you should not pay
31:49
them, but you can coordinate with a stunt coordinator.
31:52
Whoops, that wasn't great word choice, but you can coordinate
31:54
with them to find a price that works for all of you.
31:57
And then you can apply for a waiver through SAG to say, hey,
32:00
this is the stunt coordinator that's agreed to come on.
32:03
They're really good at their stuff.
32:04
They've agreed to do it for this pay.
32:05
Is that OK? And, and SAG is saying yes to
32:08
that now. So I would say if they're doing
32:10
that for student film makers and you're an indie film maker, but
32:13
you're looking to get that SAG logo and and status on your
32:16
film, just give it a shot and try.
32:19
Don't say, oh, we're not going to do a stunt coordinator
32:21
because we can't afford it. So we'll just make it work
32:24
without one. No, at least try, at least try
32:28
and apply for the waiver and see what happens because I.
32:30
Have a friend who is a black belt and yadda yadda yadda.
32:34
But do they know how to fake a fight scene?
32:36
Yeah, and an onset medic maybe isn't somebody that was a
32:39
lifeguard for a summer, so they know CPR and that's enough.
32:43
Yeah, maybe that's not enough. Yeah, be careful out there.
32:46
Anything else that you want to add?
32:48
I think. I think those are the big ones.
32:49
Just stay safe, have fun, make cool movies, don't die.
32:53
I think on that we should have a succinct farewell.
32:55
Sounds great. Bye bye.