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I don't think it is cool. Just think about the recent news about actors getting shot dead. It is a damn movie. Why risk the lives of actual real humans. People

I don't think it is cool. Just think about the recent news about actors getting shot dead. It is a damn movie. Why risk the lives of actual real humans. People have no problems getting people killed for shooting movies but we can't even seem to take the slightest risk when creating new vaccines or drugs. Our sense of risk & probability and different reactions to human deaths in different situations are messed up

ano88888 5y ago
so many downvotes. I guess it only make sense to only make comments when you're sure the perspective is the most popular ones among the HN audience.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > it only make sense to only make comments when you're sure the perspective is the most popular ones among the HN audience Or just don't worry about it. I have many unpopular opinions and posts :-)
  - schlupa 5y ago
    You also have the best programming language in the world and a lot of people dispense only negativity about it.
- EpicEng 5y ago
  Do you comment only for upvotes? Who cares?
rvnx 5y ago
The War Lover had inflation-adjusted production budget of 23M USD, so this had to be used somewhere too. Beyond that, there can be many reasons; for example, in a similar situation with Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afS5ks54tms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afS5ks54tms 1) It's fun 2) Interesting to work on for the director and the crew. If this was shot with a digital screen and a fan, that'd super be boring to produce. 3) Brings good marketing 4) Can justify paying expensive advisors / raising more production money (these stunts are difficult to financially evaluate so they can funnel out budget easily) 5) It looks more realistic (though it's not necessary a quality, as the story-telling is sometimes more important than realism).
EpicEng 5y ago
It is cool. We're all adults and can make our own choices. Few things in life are free of risk (you drive a car I imagine). If I want to do a damn stunt I'll do it. Should we also ban most sports? Those are dangerous too. How about we stop building tall buildings? Lots of construction accidents there. Also, the kind of accident that happened recently on set is vanishingly rare. There are a ton of safguards in place to ensure things like that don't happen and, in this case, at least one person was severely negligent.
WalterBright 5y ago
> People have no problems getting people killed for shooting movies They did indeed have problems with people getting killed. That's why the stunt was to be done with models until it was shown it could be done safely.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  BTW, a few years later when my family lived in Germany, sometimes you could see the Luftwaffe hedgehopping across the countryside. It was awesome to watch. The cold war was at its height, and flying low was how one evaded enemy radar. The Luftwaffe wanted to be well trained and ready, and the hedgehopping also let the Soviets know they were ready and able.
  - flohofwoe 5y ago
    Your comment just reminded me of this catchy BO-105 demo from the early 80's :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8BhdcOjO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8BhdcOjO0
shaklee3 5y ago
Alec Baldwin was practice shooting at someone who wasn't even an actress. why? why even aim at anyone at that point? he's as much to blame as anyone else.
tapland 5y ago
Did you compare deaths on movie sets to deaths during medical trials recently? It's the exact opposite situation from what you describe, which is why it has been newsworthy. But I don't understand how your takeaway became the opposite of the described reality.
hoseja 5y ago
Propaganda was and is vitally important to the western power bloc.
- simonh 5y ago
  Yes, absolutely true as it is for all power blocs. At least we can say so openly though, and question it and even argue against it in public. I think those are freedoms worth protecting and promoting.
  - hoseja 5y ago
    Have you seen Chinese or Soviet propaganda? It's terrible and amateurish compared to the subtle, brilliant, cool and therefore exponentially more efficient and dangerous western one.
    - simonh 5y ago
      I think that's based on a misunderstanding of what these two approaches to propaganda are trying to do. They are both highly effective, but at different things. The primary means western propaganda uses is to persuade. It has to be persuasive because the targets can choose whether they believe it or not. Nobody has to comply, and dissenting voices and alternative narratives are available. Also it competes in a market for ideas and so there's a degree of selective pressure to improve so you're quite right it has become quite sophisticated whereas authoritarian propaganda can rely on excluding dissenting voices. Soviet and Chinese propaganda, at least the types you're taking about, persuade by projecting power. It's about psychological domination, with heroic poses and strong simple messages emphasising the inevitability and necessity of party control. It's blunt design is part of the point. Thousands of gymnasts and marchers in perfect lockstep. Zero individuality. It doesn't matter if you are persuaded, as long as you get the message that you have no choice but to comply, and look, everyone else is complying! Take the poisoning of Navalny. They don't need to persuade anybody in Russia that the state didn't do it. Everybody knows the state did it, even those that are pro-state. The point is to send the message, this is what will happen to you if you push us too far.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
Movie stunts and Drug development are apples and oranges. I would be interested in seeing the numbers on prop guns fired in filming vs injuries. I expect it is enormous. The risks are simple, understood, easy to prevent. Many of the risks in drug development are largely unknowable before human testing and we still use human subjects.
- officeplant 5y ago
  >I would be interested in seeing the numbers on prop guns fired in filming vs injuries. I had a boss try to bring this up at lunch last week. "I was watching an old western and they have prop guns everywhere, how come no one died back then?" Pulling up a Wikipedia[0] listing on movie accidents brought up quite a lot of old western and war movie accidents. Although it seems vastly more animals got hurt on set than people. A lot of early war/western movies seemed to be extremely detrimental to horses used on set. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_and_television_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_and_television_ac...
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    >I had a boss try to bring this up at lunch last week. What is the difference between bringing something up and trying to bring something up? NPr states the last prop gun death was Brandon Lee in 1993, so ~30 years ago. I still wonder how many movie blanks are fired a year. 1 million? 10 million? https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048295916/props-gun-death-injuries-rust-movie-set-rare https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048295916/props-gun-death-in...

ano88888 5y ago

so many downvotes. I guess it only make sense to only make comments when you're sure the perspective is the most popular ones among the HN audience.

WalterBright 5y ago
> it only make sense to only make comments when you're sure the perspective is the most popular ones among the HN audience Or just don't worry about it. I have many unpopular opinions and posts :-)
- schlupa 5y ago
  You also have the best programming language in the world and a lot of people dispense only negativity about it.
EpicEng 5y ago
Do you comment only for upvotes? Who cares?

rvnx 5y ago

The War Lover had inflation-adjusted production budget of 23M USD, so this had to be used somewhere too. Beyond that, there can be many reasons; for example, in a similar situation with Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afS5ks54tms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afS5ks54tms 1) It's fun 2) Interesting to work on for the director and the crew. If this was shot with a digital screen and a fan, that'd super be boring to produce. 3) Brings good marketing 4) Can justify paying expensive advisors / raising more production money (these stunts are difficult to financially evaluate so they can funnel out budget easily) 5) It looks more realistic (though it's not necessary a quality, as the story-telling is sometimes more important than realism).

EpicEng 5y ago

It is cool. We're all adults and can make our own choices. Few things in life are free of risk (you drive a car I imagine). If I want to do a damn stunt I'll do it. Should we also ban most sports? Those are dangerous too. How about we stop building tall buildings? Lots of construction accidents there. Also, the kind of accident that happened recently on set is vanishingly rare. There are a ton of safguards in place to ensure things like that don't happen and, in this case, at least one person was severely negligent.

WalterBright 5y ago

> People have no problems getting people killed for shooting movies They did indeed have problems with people getting killed. That's why the stunt was to be done with models until it was shown it could be done safely.

WalterBright 5y ago
BTW, a few years later when my family lived in Germany, sometimes you could see the Luftwaffe hedgehopping across the countryside. It was awesome to watch. The cold war was at its height, and flying low was how one evaded enemy radar. The Luftwaffe wanted to be well trained and ready, and the hedgehopping also let the Soviets know they were ready and able.
- flohofwoe 5y ago
  Your comment just reminded me of this catchy BO-105 demo from the early 80's :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8BhdcOjO0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa8BhdcOjO0

shaklee3 5y ago

Alec Baldwin was practice shooting at someone who wasn't even an actress. why? why even aim at anyone at that point? he's as much to blame as anyone else.

tapland 5y ago

Did you compare deaths on movie sets to deaths during medical trials recently? It's the exact opposite situation from what you describe, which is why it has been newsworthy. But I don't understand how your takeaway became the opposite of the described reality.

hoseja 5y ago

Propaganda was and is vitally important to the western power bloc.

simonh 5y ago
Yes, absolutely true as it is for all power blocs. At least we can say so openly though, and question it and even argue against it in public. I think those are freedoms worth protecting and promoting.
- hoseja 5y ago
  Have you seen Chinese or Soviet propaganda? It's terrible and amateurish compared to the subtle, brilliant, cool and therefore exponentially more efficient and dangerous western one.
  - simonh 5y ago
    I think that's based on a misunderstanding of what these two approaches to propaganda are trying to do. They are both highly effective, but at different things. The primary means western propaganda uses is to persuade. It has to be persuasive because the targets can choose whether they believe it or not. Nobody has to comply, and dissenting voices and alternative narratives are available. Also it competes in a market for ideas and so there's a degree of selective pressure to improve so you're quite right it has become quite sophisticated whereas authoritarian propaganda can rely on excluding dissenting voices. Soviet and Chinese propaganda, at least the types you're taking about, persuade by projecting power. It's about psychological domination, with heroic poses and strong simple messages emphasising the inevitability and necessity of party control. It's blunt design is part of the point. Thousands of gymnasts and marchers in perfect lockstep. Zero individuality. It doesn't matter if you are persuaded, as long as you get the message that you have no choice but to comply, and look, everyone else is complying! Take the poisoning of Navalny. They don't need to persuade anybody in Russia that the state didn't do it. Everybody knows the state did it, even those that are pro-state. The point is to send the message, this is what will happen to you if you push us too far.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

Movie stunts and Drug development are apples and oranges. I would be interested in seeing the numbers on prop guns fired in filming vs injuries. I expect it is enormous. The risks are simple, understood, easy to prevent. Many of the risks in drug development are largely unknowable before human testing and we still use human subjects.

officeplant 5y ago
>I would be interested in seeing the numbers on prop guns fired in filming vs injuries. I had a boss try to bring this up at lunch last week. "I was watching an old western and they have prop guns everywhere, how come no one died back then?" Pulling up a Wikipedia[0] listing on movie accidents brought up quite a lot of old western and war movie accidents. Although it seems vastly more animals got hurt on set than people. A lot of early war/western movies seemed to be extremely detrimental to horses used on set. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_and_television_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_and_television_ac...
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  >I had a boss try to bring this up at lunch last week. What is the difference between bringing something up and trying to bring something up? NPr states the last prop gun death was Brandon Lee in 1993, so ~30 years ago. I still wonder how many movie blanks are fired a year. 1 million? 10 million? https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048295916/props-gun-death-injuries-rust-movie-set-rare https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1048295916/props-gun-death-in...