Children and On-Set Gun Safety: 3 Ideas for Not Getting Evicted or Killed this Wednesday

You know those moments when you’re sure that you’ve lost everything?

I was shooting in a school setting for the ill-fated web series Homeschoolers vs. Zombies. My teenagers had very realistic-looking toy guns. Someone got distracted and left one in a hallway. A small child picked it up.

I wasn’t even there. I found out about it when a former student brought the gun to me and told me what happened. I was dizzy with horror. I was facing the loss a whole year’s project, because of one mistake.

Want this to not happen to you?

I’ve learned a lot since The Great Horrible Gun Scare of 2012. Here are the steps we take to make sure that when children and guns are mixed, all we get from the mixture is good film and cupcakes.

Not Getting Killed or Evicted Action #1: Use Fake Guns.

This is super important: When you’re filming, make sure you are using a “gun” that cannot possibly kill anybody.
Some actors are idiots, and often, you don’t know which ones till you’re actually working with them.

I buy airsoft, and then I break the airsoft, because you could put your eye out, kid.

Not Getting Killed or Evicted Action #2: Always Treat Fake Like it’s Real.

If someone who doesn’t know what’s going on sees your actor holding a weapon on your set, they need to see that weapon being held properly, with good trigger discipline, and never jokingly pointed at anyone.

Creating a realistic relationship with the prop is good for you, good for your actors, and good for your crew.

Everyone on set who doesn’t need to be committed should be treating your very fake guns like they are very real killing machines.

Not Getting Killed or Evicted Action #3: Get a Weapons Wrangler.

Your weapons wrangler should be someone with gun experience and personal authority, who takes fake-gun-safety as seriously as you do. This magical individual will:

A) Teach your kids (and/or adult actors) to treat the fake like it’s real.

B) Keep track of your gun(s) at all times and, during downtime, keep them out of the hands of the actors (and out of sight).

C) Keep an eye out for crowds of non-authorized individuals and throw him/herself between unauthorized eyes and the gun.

Choose this person well. Then, love this person. Feed them pizza. Weapons wranglers are wonderful, kind, intelligent, sensitive, attractive human beings that you want on your film set, and they’re also good at parties. I’m marrying mine.

About my disaster: I found the school board (conveniently convened), so I could personally apologize and do any fixing I could before I was sent away to film Siberia. Then, the most strange and wonderful thing happened. I was not fired or evicted or, somehow, even scolded. Thanks to one very vigorous woman on the board, I was given a lecture on the folly of being freaked out by toy guns.

A situation that could have blown up in my face was averted because there are some really, really chill people in this world, and somehow they trusted me not to get everyone killed, even when I’d messed up.

May you never need to be as lucky. May your gun-wielding children always be capable and serious. And may the odds be ever in your favor.

And next time maybe do swords. Can we do swords?

The Hardest Things (an answer)

"Hey! My friend is really interested in film making, and she was wondering, what's the hardest part about directing?"

What do you even say?

Is it letting go of the plan in your head and collaborating with the people you've chosen?

Is it getting someone really nervous to say a line and sound like a normal person, or making something fun for other people while you work so hard at so many jobs that you wonder if you remembered to smile, if the words coming out of your mouth make sense?

I've listened to the things I say when I'm directing. I make jokes that make no sense. I laugh at things that aren't funny. I take it as a badge of honor that on the last project, I only busted out crying once. I had just sharpened a pencil with my teeth so I could write the lines on post-it notes to stick them in a book for an over-burdened actor. (It's not his fault he didn't know the lines- there were too many. I knew he was hardly sleeping already, and I gave them to him at the last minute because I knew otherwise, he'd learn them instead of sleeping.) It looked like there was almost no way to finish a whole year's project within the hour we had. The actors needed to be relaxed to perform on camera, but they needed a sense of urgency to focus on their lines, and I couldn't keep being enough. I cried. My co-director hugged me. I sent everyone to their marks, glad none of the kids had been on set to see.

Hello, friend-of-a-friend. I'm going to give you a very complicated answer.

When you first start directing, the hardest thing will be keeping your friends on task, instead of letting them goof off. Your impulse will be to be fun, and joke with them, and you can't. You can't just be focused, you have to be the focus. Everyone else on set can laugh and joke. You can't. If they get off track, they're relaxed to do their jobs. If you get off track, the project is dead, and you killed it.

You'll need to learn how to ask for respect and attention. You'll need to learn to see yourself as worthy of the respect and the effort that you're asking for. It'll help to remember that it isn't about you; it's about the job you're doing. It's about the product that you've promised them. You are the custodian of the dream and as such, sometimes you have to be the one who stops people from having fun and makes them work.

When you get a little further, the hardest thing will be forgiving yourself.

You are going to make mistakes.

You are going to suffer for your mistakes.

You are going to feel like a horrible failure.

You are going to ask if you can or should ever direct again.

If you're like me, you're going to end up on your knees with tears streaming down your face and yell at the ceiling, "God, can you even use me anymore?"

And the answer is going to be, "Do you THINK you can screw up enough that He can't?"

Treat yourself like an actor. Treat yourself like you're more important than your mistakes. TELL YOURSELF that you are. Forgive you.

You are no good to anyone while you're crippled by fear and guilt. And you're a director. You have to be good to lots of people.

Conquered that? Great. The next hardest thing is going to be multi-tasking.

"But I already multi-task."

You can't afford the kind of help you need.

Do you know why there are hundreds of people on a Hollywood set? It's because lots of them are actually needed. What you are doing trying to make a movie without them is something akin to trying to run a hospital solo. You are trying to build a skyscraper with only untrained volunteers. You are singing opera while performing brain surgery on the world's smallest mammal.

You will need to learn to color-code.

You will need to learn to make plans for the dozens of things that can and will ruin your plans.

You will need to learn to snap between creative mode arranging shots and interpersonal mode helping your actor not freak out.

You will need to learn to be so centered and peaceful that when everything looks hopeless and the project looks dead, you are the person cheerfully keeping your team moving forward.

And you will need to prepare ahead of time, make plans ahead of time, because you are going to lose those plans, and when you do, you need to understand them so well that your new plans that you make up on no sleep and not enough coffee still work.

Don't overdo the coffee. If you're blitzed, you can't be calm.

Don't under-do the coffee. If you're not on alert, no one else is doing this for you.

The next hardest thing will be explaining to people why the project is still. Not. Finished.

Most people don't spend hours and hours editing film. They don't understand why it takes hours and hours, why you still don't know what all the buttons are for, why a single scene has an hour of footage to wade through and then once you've chosen the shots the trimming still takes time.

All that everyone outside this secret world will understand is that you're still. Not. Done.

I hope you're not alone. It's harder when you're alone.

I don't know what the next hardest thing is going to be. This is where I am. I am working and working at a task that looks impossibly huge and hoping that my people maintain faith while they wait. I am grateful to be less alone. And I want so, so badly to be done so I can finally say, "Do you see this thing? It is messy and small and I made it. I made it."

Stay on task. Respect yourself. Forgive yourself. Multitask. And keep the faith.

I'll be rooting for you. Someday, maybe, we'll meet in a crowded theater and fleetingly meet each others eyes, and I'll know that you understand, because you've done all the hard things.

Good luck.

The Making Of

Sometimes following a dream doesn't feel like following a dream. It feels like doing something small and hard and not giving up, over and over and over.

Film editing feels like that. Hours poured into a task so massive that every day feels like attacking a mountain with a spoon, it feels like that. Small, and hard, and hard to see as worth it.

But the nice thing about dreams, the nice thing about LIFE, is this belief that someday all the hard things, all the painful things, all the stuff that seems pointless and painful and awful, is going to come together, and we'll get to look back and instead of seeing wreckage, see The Making Of.

I know that's a shameless title-drop. I burst into tears and started scribbling a song at a red light today, and the title of this movie finally had meaning. And I wanted to share it.