Ry’s Blog

Thanks to this thread I’ve learned that some departments require carrying rifles in “cruiser ready”:

‘Cruiser Ready’ – no round in chamber, hammer forward, magazine inserted.

Learn something every day.

There have been two incidents with ALS uppers in the last year; they are both referenced in this thread. Both resulted in serious injuries; needless to say, an out-of-battery event in a 50 BMG rifle is a very serious safety hazard.

I was at the FCSA World Match this past weekend at the NRA Whittington Center in Raton, New Mexico. On Friday, 3 July 2009 an ALS rifle fired out of battery (the bolt was not fully locked). The shooter was seriously injured.

As soon as the incident occurred, the line was called cold for an emergency cease fire. After the shooter was rendered first aid and evacuated, the FCSA and NRA Whittington Center issued a stand-down on all ALS rifles at the match. No ALS rifles were allowed to continue in the competition.

Pending further investigation, ALS rifles will not be allowed to compete in FCSA competitions or be fired at the NRA Whittington Center.

As an ALS owner, I have decided not to fire my ALS rifle until the cause of this incident is known.

FCSA representatives and the manufacturer are working to determine the cause of the incident.

-David
Edgewood, NM

from the first incident:

Alleged incident!
Bull Shit.
I’m just trying to survive. I was trying to be a good guy and not cause trouble for Darrin, he told me he didn’t have insurance and I didn’t want to put him out of business. When I called him and told him what I thought the defect was with his upper he hung up on me and never checked back to see how I was doing.
I’ve got $150k in medical bills. I also lost an eye and permanently fucked up my right hand. I still have 25 pieces of shrapnel in my hand. and because my right pectoral muscle was cut through I have limited strength on my right side. I suffered nightmares every night for months, and still have them occasionally.
I wish I hadn’t of been a good guy. If I had been an asshole another person wouldn’t have been hurt.
I’m sorry for the language, this idiotic statement just pissed me off.

If you watched any of these individually, you might think they are real; in fact, when I saw the first one, I was pretty sure it was.
Ricochet takes off guy’s hat
However, watching this other video, you begin to wonder if they might be very [un]lucky:
Shot in arm with 270 caliber
The third video, though, is just… well, it could be true, it could not be.
Guy loses bet, stands in front of 30-06

I enjoy making videos, but I don’t enjoy the end product; I have never been happy with where all the work leads. To attempt to understand what roadblocks I’m facing, I picked up two books: Making Documentary Films and Videos: A Practical Guide to Planning, Filming, and Editing Documentaries by Hampe and The Shut Up and Shoot Documentary Guide: A Down & Dirty DV Production by Artis. I picked these up not because I’m planning on shooting documentaries, but because I figured the process of producing in that style was closest to what I want to do. First, Hampe: this is truly a ground-up course on filmmaking, with an emphasis on documentaries. I quickly saw why I was unhappy with my products: all of the planning that Hampe covers in great detail was missing. Hampe states the first 80% of the work he does is planning and pre-production; I had thought for something like the Boomershoot the truth would, as Hampe says, leap into the camera, and I just had to blast it back out into the viewer’s mind. Hampe lays out plenty of obvious faults with this approach, and how to get around it; basically, everything has a story, so tell the story.

I would be remiss if I didn’t discuss Hampe’s emphasis on truth, reality, and ethics. Many pages are spent discussing what is and isn’t a documentary and what Hampe posits are and are not ethical situations; he uses An American Family many times to highlight issues of truth and ethics. I found a lot of this obvious, but much not tedious; Hampe illustrates his points with decisions he has made. Hampe claims to be a libertarian, and his objectivist leanings are clear throughout the text; as a fellow traveler, I’m OK with it. If you aren’t, though, I think there is enough here on the process of film-making to make the purchase worth your while.

Artis takes a completely different approach to the same material; what’s interesting to me is how close in content and how far apart in presentation the books are. Artis dispenses with the direct ethics and truth discussion, but he provides more information on how to shoot video of drug dealers and gang members in the natural environment. How does one do this? By treating them ethically. Artis says to act as if you’re shooting in someone’s home when you shoot on the street, because you are; Hampe makes the same point about being polite and deferential to your talent. One of the large departures in Artis’ book is the direct discussion of technology selections; Hampe says that he won’t cover technology because it changes too quickly and dates the material. In the beginning, I was in agreement with Hampe; Artis argues, however, that one should embrace specific media like podcasting and technologies like the list of cameras he gives. The value in Artis’ approach is that he gives you a starting point; along the lines of “if these are the types of forums you want to play to, these cameras and formats are the minimum.”

Both Artis and Hampe have many points in common; some of these are:

1. Get the shot; don’t let technology get in your way of shooting footage when an event is happening. It might not happen again.
2. Preproduction is everything. If you don’t know what you’re going to shoot, you’re not going to shoot much.
3. Travel with the appropriate amount of gear and spend your money on stuff that shows up on screen. Expensive, unused rental equipment dragged around for a week will cost you weeks in the edit bay.
4. Both think “b roll” is lame.
5. Craft services make or break a production – feed your crew well.
6. You may be good at only one of the multitude of things that need to happen to produce a video. Delegate.

This last point was a key lesson for me; what I viewed as the reality hose that I needed to point at the eyeball isn’t. My previous take was shoot footage, splice it together, and roll. Both Hampe and Artis hammer on the skill it takes to use a camera well, capture sound correctly, light a scene, and so on. The chance that you’re an excellent (or even worthy) director, director of photography, camerman, soundman, editor, voice talent, music editor, tape cataloger or critic is slim to none. Delegate the tasks you either aren’t good at or don’t enjoy.

While I have no doubt grabbing Shut Up would get you to shooting more quickly, the framing and history provided by Hampe is more interesting to me. I already know the basics of camera function, lighting, and the like; Hampe doesn’t cover much of this at all. If you just have an idea and a burning desire to get it on video, get Artis and know there is more out there to consider. If you want a framework to understand filmmaking as a developmental process, get Hampe and know you need to do more study before you hit the road.

Two AR15 KB threads. In the first one, our hero was using a PMAG; the downside is the PMAG turned into fragments when the gun exploded. I hadn’t thought of the failure mode for polymer magazines when I bought my PMAGs; I won’t stop buying them, but it will be in the back of my mind. Apparently HSM ammo was the cause of this unplanned excursion into “parts raining down on us land”.

The second KB is the most impressive KB I’ve ever seen in an AR15; it looks like a grenade went off in the upper. Our hero was shooting S&B ammo; looks like he’s OK, thankfully. Of note is both of these guns were essentially brand new.

Interesting thread. Video here; the theory is that the bullet was compromised by re-sizing, causing the explosion.