User talk:Charon68

RE: Studio Weapons

(You wrote: Do studios still keep their own "arsenals"? I was given the impression that most, if not all, firearms for movies were in the private sector. )

Well, to be perfectly clear, private sector is any company that is NOT a government entity, so all movie armories throughout time have been 'private sector' ;). But onto the bulk of your question, the major studios (20th Century Fox, paramount, Warner Brothers, RKO, etc.) used to have their own props and costume departments back in the old days, but they never had their own GUN or WEAPONS department. From what I understand they were ALWAYS kept to private companies who rented to everyone or anyone who needed it. It was a much more expensive (and paperwork intensive) endeavour to keep a rack of Thompson Submachine guns rather than a rack of ball gowns for a period movie, so the Studios wouldn't bother. Private companies have rented to all of the major studios and independent films since the advent of 'talkies'.

Now there is a distinction between ARMORERS and WEAPONS RENTAL HOUSES (my terms for lack of a better description). There are famous ARMORERS or (weapons wranglers) like Rocky Galotti or Thell Reed or Rich Washburn, et. al but they are licensed individuals (i.e. they are experts in gun usage and safety who are licensed to provide and train cast and crew on the set.) The guns you may see in their films may NOT be their own personal guns, but guns they sub rented from a weapons rental house.

Now some of these big time armorers are also the owners or co-owners of their own gun rental company, and nearly all armorers (no matter how minor) have some gun inventory. But all of the Hollywood Armorers have to subrent some guns from the big companies (i.e. Stembridge, ISS, Gibbons & Assoc., etc.) when they do BIG movies with lots of guns. We sub rent to each other all the time. I have on screen credits when I was on set as an armorer or wrangler, but a lot of the bigger films, I was just a vendor, not a member of the crew who showed up every filming day. I don't get screen credit on those films, even though they used my guns in the project.

But are you asking if all guns in films are private property of individuals? Well if they are, they are the property of movie industry gun wranglers, since all semi auto or full auto guns have to be blank adapted, many times in such ways that ruin the gun from ever firing live rounds ever again. I don't think movies 'rent or borrow' from regular people's personal gun collections unless it's a super low budget independent film. Since I'm not 100% I answered your question (or if I understood it correctly), feel free to drop a line. MoviePropMaster2008

Updates

cc'd to: MT2008, Orca1 9904, Charon68 and others... :) I've been trying to get higher rez original pics to IMFDB for a little bit now. One of the major beefs I have with site like Security arms.org or Guns of the world.ru is that there are some really crappy pics, and lots of those pics are weird hybrid variations that are not good representations of the mainstream version of the firearm. Though I've had some nice comments from a few folks, I need to verify that it's kosher to try to eliminate the bad resolution 'stolen from the net' pics and replace them with original photographs. (granted permission by me the copyright holder) Don't know if I am stepping on anyone's toes or if anyone would be offended that I replaced their image (which was 'borrowed' from the net originally) with another image. If anyone thinks I should NOT be replacing pics on existing pages with new gun images, please let me know. Do the majority of IMFDB users even care? I'm fully expecting other sites to start stealing images from IMFDB when the level of pics goes up. :) hahahaha. Thanks for your comments at any rate> :)

Images

Hahahaha. Thanks for the note .... BUT (!!!) the images of guns that I am uploading are Mine. :) I am actively taking out guns from the vaults of SEVERAL motion picture rental houses and putting them on a white backdrop and photographing them myself. So I am the copyright holder. :) So I am granting IMFDB the rights to use my photos. I guess mine are the only ones (other than others who are granted rights by the copyright holders), that are really kosher. The funny thing is, since IMFDB is the only one I am shooting pictures for, the other websites can't pirate them or else I'll send them a nasty email ;) LOL! Hope you like the pics. :) And great job on the page updates. best regards MoviePropMaster2008

Jericho

OK, that'd be awesome. Any you got would help out. I'm only up to Episode 18 "One Man's Terrorist" from Season 1, so I just haven't seen as much of the show as you might have. If you want to add guns and screencaps, the more the better. Doing TV shows is always an intimidating task for one man. -MT2008 04:32, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I appreciate the extra shots. I'm probably going to add some of my own shots of Jake's Ruger P89 (now that I've finally seen the first episode in which it appears). The format also needs to be made consistent (remember, you shouldn't put the links to the gun pages in the titles, plus we need images of the guns on each entry), but I do appreciate the help. Again, as I download more episodes of this show off iTunes, I can continue to add more screencaps of my own, but I did the help.

BTW, haven't seen the episode yet, but are you sure those are Glock 18s? They look too small to me. I think they're actually G19s with 33-round mags. -MT2008 04:39, 28 November 2008 (UTC)