I’m curious your take on this, Bigcat.
From where I’m sitting, the police officer’s actions were appropriate. He had his gun drawn, but holstered it as soon as it was made clear they were rehearsing.
I’m sure it’s traumatic for the two students involved, but maybe don’t rehearse a violent scene in public, or at least not without some notification. I can empathize with someone having a gun drawn on them in that situation, being totally innocent. But at the same time I don’t see that the police did anything wrong either.
Glad it turned out as it did, and not in another more tragic way.
I think it is a compliment to our fine theatre student’s acting abilities.
Honestly I don’t know what I would have done if I were the cop.Not being there it’s hard to assess such a situation. Just glad no one was shot.Hate UH to be in the news with something like that happening
I wanted to assault a guy on the loading dock at the Hilton College in 1984.
And just to make myself perfectly clear:
“I ain’t no bandleader”
It is not a cop’s job to determine the difference between acting and a criminal act in the immediate contact if the criminal act was supposedly in progress already. If there wasn’t a clear immediate marker that this was an acting scene, then the cop probably initially reacted as he should have. I’m sure the cop deescalated as soon as he saw what was really going on. If not, then that is on him. Color of anyone involved is largely immaterial here in my estimation. Clear lack of awareness by the actors. You can’t “simulate” criminal acts on a random part of campus without prudent care of how it will be perceived and expect everyone not in the know to just walk on by.
Good thing they weren’t rehearsing a love scene.
Damn. This was super unfortunate.
Had something similar happen back in 2015 when a group of Film-Majoring friends & I were shooting a scene where I was to be robbed at gun-point, with the gun put to the back of my head while I held my hands up in the air.
We were shooting this scene over & over again on the METRO Rail Station in front of the Cougar Dorms facing Wheeler St.
As we were rehearsing, I noticed a student that was crossing the road a considerable distance away from us. He was on his cellphone, frantically pointing in our direction, as if explaining what he was seeing.
About 2 minutes later an ENTIRE FLEET of UHPD SUV’s rushed in & lined up alongside the METRO Rail Station, with 2 SUV’s blocking the tracks on each end. With the lights still on, all the officers exited their vehicles.
By that point all my friends had sort of huddled together, visibly scared like middle-school kids that just got caught spray-painting in the restroom.
Fortunately for us (we were all POC’s, except for 2 guys that were mixed, but still more POC-looking), no guns were drawn. But the Chief of the UHPD calmly walked up to us, asked us what we were doing, and we handed over the fake gun (that looked real-ish from afar, but was obviously plastic & hollow when you got close to it). He inspected it, handed it back over to us and told us to make sure to use a prop gun with an orange tip next time, and to have someone from UH notify UHPD about students filming these kind of scenes ahead of time (this scene was a project for one of the guy’s Film Classes).
We wrapped up filming, and they left.
Needless to say, I was really mad at my film-majoring friends for not going thru the necessary steps to shoot this kind of scene in such a public space, AT NIGHT.
I would later go on to learn that in the World of Filmmaking, there’s an unspoken Industry rule to “film first, ask questions later” when I asked an UH Audio & Film Professor whether or not what we did was okay.
I think it’s a purposely misleading headline for the thread.
Well. Good thing there wasn’t a good guy with a gun. Provably would have been shot.
Sounds like there needs to be an active push for a change in the industry, especially at the student level, for safety’s sake. If you’re going to do things with weapons or things that look like weapons safety should come first. I understand its adds to students work loads but it shouldn’t be seen as a burden but something just as important as good lighting, good equipment, good acting…good safety measures should be right up there.