Juan Carlos Oganes' film-making and work blog.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Rifles check


Went today to check the cleaning and oiling of the 500 rifles I'm using for the film.
As explained before in a prior entry last year, the rifles used during the war were Remington, Peabody, Chassepot and Comblain.

The ones found here handy and ready to be used (and firing) are just Mausers which were not used back then up until the very end of the 19th century / beginning of the 20th. Those are found here in the thousands and the only ones that can be used as weapons.

Having more than 600 actors and extras on set, the number of rifles needed are huge so....it figures these are the ones I can use. For close up shots where the script calls for weapon names and use, the real models are used but here just 4 or 5 are found working in museums. The strings I had to pull to have them given to me to use it in the film.

The Mauser sections were taken apart to clean them and leave the operational for filming.
Now, the paper work need to transport them with full security measures as they asked me is almost ready.