Interesting to read about filming T3. Let me share a story...this might give more insight into the qualifications of the 'riggers' on the set.
I googled the injured actor's name and read more details about what happened. Once again the media got some things wrong:
http://tinyurl.com/36ulbey
ttp://tinyurl.com/38hbuls
Filming for T3 was going on while the ISA conference was in Chicago. On Friday evening Tim Walsh and I were wandering along the Chicago river, zig zagging from the river level to the bridges, taking in the sights and looking for a place to eat. We were up above and saw a pile of huge weldments and 'stuff' piled up that caught our eye. We looked closer and could see that is was gear for sets. Because we stopped to look and were too close a guy wearing a yellow t-shirt came over and told us to move away and move along. Politely but firmly. We asked what was going on and he told us they were filming for T3.
Tim and I walked on and got more interested when we saw a setup for some sort of stunt. A bridge was blocked off from city traffic. On the south side of the bridge a smaller telescoping manlift was parked facing N with the boom partially extended. A rope was attached to and eye on the lift then ran up through a pulley on the boom where the basket attaches. We couldn't get close enough to see how big that block was. We went over the bridge to the N side and found a similar setup with a larger manlift. On the N side the larger lift was obviously going to be used to lift and tension some sort of zipline. The rope that was used we guessed was half inch Amsteel or equal. Scary strong stuff with NO stretch which was a good choice for the application.
As Tim and I stood there and studied the setup we became a little concerned with the choice of gear. The rope was redirected through a two inch aluminum pulley and a single aluminum screw gate biner was clipped to the lift below the basket.
The boom was extended up maybe 20-25 feet and then boomed forward, I don't know, maybe 20 degrees from vertical.
As we looked at the setup Tim and I wondered how heavy a log we would send down the zipline in this configuration. We both agreed...not very big. Because of the rope angles at the redirect and the use of small aluminum gear we had a concern that something might blow apart. If the boom were raised and tipped forward to tension the line or get the right angle we wondered if the boom could be tipped forward.
Having come forward to share concerns with tree workers and being met with hard looks and anger we both knew that it would make NO sense to even attempt to talk with the 'riggers'. There were a few guys with official looking t-shirts but crowd control was keeping us groundlings back very far.
We took some pictures but none turned out very clear because of the light and where we could get to take the pics. Without a bunch of editing the pics wouldn't be very useful here.
Crowd control shuffled every body away and we ended up on the next bridge to the west to watch the scene being filmed. The actor had on a full body harness with dorsal support. The zipline pulley had a tether and clip on it. The scene involved the actor running from N-->S and jumping from one partially raised bridge deck, across the gap and landing on the lower deck which wasn't as high. Technical error alert---> in this bridge configuration both sides of the lift bridge go up at the same angles not one lower than the other...oh..yeah, Hollywood.
We watched the scene being shot about eight times. In each shot the N manlift was boomed up and out to tension the line. Now, we were at least 2+ blocks away so we couldn't see the redi angles very well. Judging by the deflection in the rope when the actor jumped from deck to deck we could tell that the rope was tight!!! At any moment we expected to see the redi pulley break. The actor would not have likely been killed but would have been bashed up if the rigging failed. He was never far off the ground. More of a concern was tipping the manlift or what would happen if the redi rigging broke and went flying.
Now...I read this note...it confirms that the stunt director may need to brush up on some technicalities.
