(La Courneuve) They learned with horror of Alec Baldwin’s fatal shot: film gunsmiths, responsible for supplying and securing weapons of all kinds on filming, do a rare job where they are not allowed to ‘fault.
Kalashnikovs, machine guns from the First World War, state-of-the-art automatic weapons… In his vault at La Courneuve (Seine – Saint-Denis, north of Paris), behind two armored doors, Christophe Maratier stores hundreds of weapons seen in recent times decades in French and foreign films.
A treasure that he handles with care, around a preparation table where each weapon is checked: “It’s an anxiety-provoking job, we put all our energy into safety to avoid an accident”, testifies the one who says to himself. shocked and bereaved by the tragic incident in New Mexico, which left one dead.
The American actor Alec Baldwin indeed fired Thursday with a pistol and killed, probably accidentally, a director of photography and injured a director on the set of a western.
Christophe Maratier, who is currently working on the latest John Wick, shot in Paris with Keanu Reeves, and on the adaptation of Three Musketeers with Vincent Cassel, is one of the few specialists in this profession in France, and is familiar with the generally comparable practices in force in most developed countries.
In France, “only weapons which do not allow projectile firing” are authorized on filming, according to the regulations in force. The gunsmiths therefore modify them so that we cannot shoot a real bullet.
If some shots, where the weapon is part of the scenery or must, for example, be thrown into the water, are shot with plastic replicas, the shoots remain fond of real detonations, for the sake of realism.
Advice to De Niro
PHOTO THOMAS SAMSON, FRANCE-PRESS AGENCY
The cinema gunsmith must systematically be present on the set and personally take care of the loading and unloading of weapons, a delicate operation.
Directors “need real weapons that make pretty flames”, sums up Christophe Maratier. And to “give the spectator the illusion that there is a shot”, nothing better than a blank bullet, that is to say a reserve of powder which will explode, without a projectile.
As two precautions are better than one, “we never target a person,” says the fifty-year-old, and there are no shots at point blank range either.
All these rules are ensured by the gunsmith, who must always be present on the set – and personally take care of the loading and unloading of weapons, a delicate operation.
It is also up to him to explain the handling of the weapon to the actors, as he says he was able to do with Robert de Niro – eager for advice, to his surprise!
“From the fair”
The gunsmith’s fear is stupid error: the piece of stone that will have entered the weapon when an extra has left it on the ground, the ball introduced by mistake into the barrel and thrown during the firing. White…
Risk of deafness (the explosion can reach 150 decibels), eye injuries, burns or gas poisoning must be taken into account, prescribed the body responsible for filming safety, the prevention and safety committee for cinema employees ( CCHSCT).
Despite everything, many directors consider that blank bullets remain irreplaceable to “give the illusion that there is a shot”, underlines Christophe Maratier, whose weapons range from rare antiques, unearthed from collectors, to equipment from special forces.
“We put on a show,” he says, explaining that the shots, for example, are often set to make a lot more flames than they do in “real life”.
But times may be changing. At the other end of France, Michael Gojon-dit-Martin, another supplier of cinema weapons, based in Strasbourg, would like to resort more often to fake weapons, with special effects to mimic the shooting.
“Blank ammunition can be lethal at less than a meter”, with a strong heat emitted by the explosion and the possible projection of debris, he underlines.
“With current technologies, we hardly need to have functional weapons anymore”, he affirms: “We use less and less, it is dangerous and not practical”.