Props and Costume Preparation

During the Christmas Holidays, Alex and I met at his house to begin organising the props we will be introducing in the interrogation scene and car escape scene which we have organised with the rest of the class to be in February and March. For these scenes, we are intending on using smoke grenades and realistic looking BB guns which are unloaded. Prior to the film days, we have clearly informed our cast members as well as putting this warning on our new risk assessment that we will be using dangerous props that may cause significant harm to others if they are not used correctly. If any damage was caused to any members of the public, anyone else on set or even the environment around us, we would be the ones held responsible for any damage that is caused; so we have to be very careful!

In order for our short film to be following the prop conventions of an action/adventure film, we intend on using BB guns which have been spray painted black to remove the orange paint on these guns. The orange paint by UK law is there to visually distinguish the differences between a prop gun and a real firearm. Carrying firearms as we know is complete illegal and the fact that we chose to spray paint a BB gun black increases the risk of public pedestrians confusing our prop guns with real firearms. In order to prevent this risk, we will be paneling on small sign posts on set with warning signs that there are prop guns on set being used. Despite this being an over exaggeration on informing the public about our film props, Alex and I thought it was best to inform any oncoming pedestrians first what is happening rather than running the risk of being accused of carrying illegal weapons.

This sign post is a similar notice we will place alongside the sign post we have previously used which notifies audience members that there is filming in progress. We will reword the use of firearms to make this less obvious to them that we are carrying illegal weapons.

With this in mind, we were also thinking of the same thing with the smoke grenades we will be using since these could become hazardous for the people on set and off set. Such risks include:

• Choking
• Fire hazards
• Blindness
• Irritation Burn

We will be very careful when using these smoke grenades and to only use these at the appropriate time. 

Aside from the risks we both discussed, we were working very hard in his workshop on making the props we needed for the next approaching film dates. The images below show me making the prop guns and adjusting the mask for our character Crimson.