Film makers with prop guns meet cops with real ones. To be clear, were were filming on private land and out of the public eye and our guns made popping sounds but were far from blanks. But at some point a good citizen saw or heard us and completely misinterpreted what was happening there. That set in motion a chain of events that ended with a squad of heavily armed police closing in around us from all sides, springing from the brush shouting “You are surrounded! Hands up!” It’s pretty creepy looking right down the barrel of an assault rife. There were very tense moments as the cops took over the set, and suddenly I envisioned myself mentioned on the 10:00 news. “He dropped his flashlight and police opened fire”. I started to wonder what it felt like to get shot. Everyone in the cast and crew were statues with hands raised high during the standoff.
After a few harrowing moments the police found there were no real guns or criminals and then the gang became very friendly and personable. They asked about the film, made some jokes about some of our costumes, and even talked firearms with some of the crew for awhile. It turns out that the neighborhood we were in had seen some real problems recently and we were near where a meth lab had just been raided and shut down. They treated everyone with respect and the crew responded in kind.

One of the highlights of the encounter was when the police spotted one of our actors in his “nude suit” (his character was naked for the scene) the cops just decided there was no point in searching him.
One things settled down we had a bunch of laughs and went back to shooting and still wrapped the day ahead of schedule.