as stuntman Johann Ofner found to his great cost on Monday. The strongman and budding reality TV star, who features prominently in early promotional clips for Nine's Australia's Ninja Warrior, died after a stunt involving guns went horribly wrong on the set of a clip for hip-hop duo Bliss N Eso in Brisbane.
Film sets are dangerous places,As Zoe Angus, director of the actors' union the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, put it: "This tragedy is a stark reminder that the screen industry is inherently dangerous, and of the need for total vigilance about workplace safety at all times on set."
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Man shot during filming in Brisbane CBD
A man is fatally shot in the chest during filming at Eagle Lane in Brisbane's CBD. Vision courtesy ABC News 24.
When actors die on set, it is usually big news. In 1982, Vic Morrow was decapitated by a rotor blade when a helicopter stunt on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie went wrong. Two child actors, Myca Dinh Le (aged 7) and Renee Shin-Yi Chen (aged 6), also died in the incident, which saw director John Landis face court, charged with manslaughter (he was acquitted).
In 1989, English actor Roy Kinnear fell from a horse while shooting The Return of the Musketeers for A Hard Day's Night director Richard Lester. He broke his pelvis in the accident, and died the following day, in hospital, of a heart attack.
![Johann Ofner died after he was shot in the chest during the filming in Brisbane.](/web/20170126233709im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/x/9/r/h/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtxci4.png/1485329026251.jpg)
Most famously, Brandon Lee, the son of 1970s kung fu legend Bruce Lee, died in 1993 after being shot by a gun containing a real (though modified) bullet while shooting The Crow for Australian director Alex Proyas.
Tragic as such incidents are, they are exceptions. Actors are such valuable commodities that they are rarely put in actual harm's way; their agents, their sense of self-preservation, and the cost of insuring them make sure of that.
No, it's the stuntmen and women and, especially, the crew members who are usually on the frontline.
Film and TV sets necessarily involve lots of heavy equipment, rapid turnaround and constant movement. Those are potentially recipes for tragedy.
![Actor Vic Morrow and two children were killed in a helicopter crash during the filming of <i>Twilight Zone: The ...](/web/20170126233709im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/x/c/j/w/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtxci4.png/1485246303345.jpg)
Last year, an investigation by the Associated Press concluded that "Internationally, at least 37 people have died in filming accidents since 2000".
That number included a worker killed on the Budapest set of the Blade Runner sequel in August 2016, and two stuntmen who drowned in India in November 2016. In addition, "many more have been seriously injured". Because there is no centralised database on international filming accidents, the AP report "relied on news accounts and lawsuits", suggesting the actual number could be higher.
![Brandon Lee was killed during the filming of <i>The Crow</i>.](/web/20170126233709im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/x/7/m/d/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtxci4.png/1485246303345.jpg)
Perhaps the most visible of the crew-related incidents was the death of a young camera operator, Sarah Jones, on the set of the film Midnight Rider in February 2014.
Jones was killed when she was hit by a freight train as it crossed a narrow bridge; the scene was being set up so that actor William Hurt, who played musician Gregg Allman in the biopic, could be filmed lying on a hospital bed on the bridge.
![Assistant camera operator Sarah Jones was killed by a freight train in February 2014 while shooting the Gregg Allman ...](/web/20170126233709im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/x/c/k/0/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtxci4.png/1485246303345.jpg)
Following the incident, Hurt pulled out of the project, Allman sued to prevent it continuing, and a major campaign to improve crew safety was mounted.
It would be tempting to imagine that the most at-risk on a film set are the stuntmen and women; they are, after all, the ones being hit, shot at, and dropped; they are the ones in the cars as they roll or get crushed, the ones flying through windows, the ones trapped underwater. The more the appetite for action and mayhem grows, the more these people are put at risk to satisfy our craving for spectacle.
![On the set of <i>The Expendables 3</i>. Not all the danger was make-believe.](/web/20170126233709im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/1/0/0/4/c/3/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtxci4.png/1485246303345.jpg)
A few years ago I had lunch with the Australian director Patrick Hughes, who had just finished filming The Expendables 3 with Sylvester Stallone. Two stuntmen died on the set of the second film in that series; Hughes was luckier, but early in the shoot, he confessed, things could so easily have gone the other way.
While filming a scene in which a truck careens through a dock loaded with explosive materials, "We had a close call," said Hughes.
![Andrew Wight (right) with James Cameron in 2011.](/web/20170126233709im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/t/x/c/k/d/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtxci4.png/1485246303345.jpg)
"We did a test run with the stuntman driving and it was all good, and then we did a test run with Jason [Statham] driving. And for whatever reason the brakes failed."
The truck "went in the water, which wasn't meant to happen," he continued. "Not only did the three-tonne truck disappear in about two seconds, over the edge, he ploughed through a five-man camera crew and they all went in the water with a [camera] dolly and everything. For a moment there were six people gone.
"And I thought, 'OK, there goes my Hollywood career on day three'. Jesus, that's the thing, it can go the other way."
Australian writer-producer, cave diver and pilot Andrew Wight wasn't so lucky. Wight died in 2012 – alongside American cameraman Mike de Gruy – when their helicopter crashed shortly after taking off to shoot footage for an upcoming documentary. Wight, who had worked repeatedly with James Cameron on a series of dive films, had the previous year produced his first feature film, Sanctum – about a cave diving adventure that goes horribly wrong (based on his own experience many years earlier).
But as Deadline pointed out in the wake of the Sarah Jones death, it is in fact crew members who are most at risk. They die, Deadline claimed, at four times the rate of stuntmen and women – mostly because they are not so obviously at risk.
"Stunt drivers have helmets, roll bars, air bags and five-point safety harnesses to help keep them safe," Deadline's David Robb wrote. "All that a cameraman has between him and an oncoming speeding stunt car is his camera."
This isn't about ranking deaths on film and TV – and, yes, music video and commercial – shoots by order of importance. Any workplace injury is a tragedy, whether we recognise the name of the deceased or not.
It's just that there's something especially shocking about it all when the death comes in service of our entertainment.
Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin
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