Gun Prop

A second prop needed for our production is a murder weapon which, to conform with our storyline, must be a gun. Due to the fact we needed to use a realistic looking firearm, it was necessary for us to read up on UK law regarding imitation and toy firearms. The legislation we regarded can be found here:

Code of Practice for Toy Firearms (v1.0)

"The Violent Crime Reduction Act, amongst other things, amends firearms legislation to ban the 

manufacture, import and sale of realistic imitations and prohibits the sale of any imitation firearm 

(whether or not it is realistic) to persons under the age of 18 years.  Longer sentences have been 

introduced for the possession of an imitation firearm in a public place without reasonable excuse. "

This small excerpt details that we, both, could not obtain a realistic looking firearm ourselves, but also, that we would find it difficult locating one as cheap as they once cost. Once we have a realistic prop, also, we have to go to certain measures to ensure when we use it in public, any people in the vicinity are aware that it is not real and that we only had it for filming purposes. 

What we resided to do was to buy a child's toy that followed UK Law and to alter it ourselves. The gun we used was a blue, plastic gun from Poundworld. To alter it, we dissembled it so that we could remove the orange plug that all toy firearms must contain and to paint it with black plastikote paint. The end result is below:

Only one scene in our film requires we film in public with the gun so when filming these shots we will ensure that we assure any members of the public in the vicinity are aware that we are filming with a fake firearm. In addition, we will need to film as quickly as possible.

The gun also needs to feature in a photograph of an evidence bag containing the fire arm; this picture is below. We used a sandwich bag to double as an evidence bag and then edited it to look more convincing: