Rob Fournier, Armorer on SG-1, Atlantis and Universe, returns to Dial the Gate to share more stories from working on the franchise!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
00:24 – Opening Credits
00:52 – Welcome and Episode Outline
02:18 – Welcoming Rob
03:44 – Call to Production
07:06 – Safety and Communication On Set
14:42 – Protective Eye-wear
18:06 – Camouflage Make-Up
19:39 – Rapid-Fire Scene in “Enemies”
24:49 – Working with Martin Wood in “Small Victories”
28:40 – Rob’s On-Screen Stargate Roles
31:48 – Squibs
37:53 – “Heroes” with Adam Baldwin
45:43 – Lucian Alliance Attack in “Air”
49:21 – Developing Trust with the Crew
51:13 – Weapons and Ammunition Used
55:55 – Training, Trust and Safety
59:57 – Managing Safety in Large Battle Shots
1:05:45 – The “Carter Special” and the P-90s
1:12:12 – A M.A.L.P. and RDA Story
1:14:28 – Post-Application of Firearm Sounds
1:16:09 – Contact with Local Authorities While Filming
1:17:40 – Rocket Launchers and Other Props
1:21:36 – Andromeda and Sanctuary
1:23:26 – Rob’s Current Projects
1:27:12 – Wrapping up with Rob
1:28:23 – Post Interview Housekeeping
1:36:37 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello everyone and welcome to episode 211 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read, thank you so much for joining me for the Stargate Oral History Project. We’ve got Rob Fournier back for another episode to discuss more behind the scenes of his side of things as an armourer and military advisor on Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. Before we bring him in, if you enjoy Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, please click that like button. It makes a difference with YouTube and will continue to help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click subscribe. If you click the bell icon we will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. As this is a live show we’ve got, I believe, Tracy and Anthony and Jeremy in the chat right now to help us with any questions that you might have for Rob. If you want to get those over to them while we’re talking we can then get those over to Rob and have those questions answered for you. Rob Fournier, armourer on Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe and many other things that you’ve seen and I hope to get to a couple of them in this episode. My friend Welcome back to the show, thank you for being back with us.

Rob Fournier
Thank you. David, I just want to start by saying it’s an honor and a pleasure to be back on your show.

David Read
Oh, well that means a lot. Your side of things, you have so many good stories. I’ve been apologizing to a lot of people lately now that I’m in the two hundreds. It’s like “I should have had them on years ago.” You move through the content as best you can and reach out to people who you can. You find diamonds along the way and I’ve got a shining one with you so I really appreciate having you back.

Rob Fournier
Well, there are a lot of people that were on that show in all those years.

David Read
It’s a wild operation that they had going on to be able to do 17 seasons of television. The fact of the matter was, and I’ve mentioned this before, in three years time they did 120 hours. That is insane by today’s standard, by any standards, and they’re crazy.

Rob Fournier
It’s like a blur and then there’s little bits of memories in between all that. Some of the best memories are the ones that you remember fondly, right?

David Read
How early on would you get a call in the production cycle? I know that the production managers would have five weeks lead time to start developing sets and things like that. Would you keep your calendar open for Stargate? How did Stargate productions and you interface?

Rob Fournier
Well, the more that I got involved in Stargate, especially after doing the pilot of SG-1, I noticed I was getting more and more involved. I got to know the cast better, they started to trust me. Especially with Richard Dean Anderson, he says, “you know what, let’s have you on a little bit more.” He had so much influence…

David Read
He is a producer, executive producer.

Rob Fournier
They all talk and they go up and there are nice offices up there in the old MGM Studios at Vancouver Film Studios, or sorry, the Bridge Studio. They started talking and the next think you know I get a phone call and it was from Rick himself. He was laying in Kitsilano right down by the beach and he says, “Rob?” and I says “yeah, this is Rob, who’s this?” “Oh, it’s Rick.” I’m like [confused] and I didn’t quite recognize the voice, he goes “it’s RDA.” He said, “well we want to get you more involved, we want to bring you in at the production level…”

David Read
When would this have been?

Rob Fournier
I would say about maybe a third of the way through season one.

David Read
Okay. So early on, so 97. Okay.

Rob Fournier
Yeah. It started getting more and more. They found out I was ex-military and I was current. I had lots of friends in the military, especially in the US armed forces that were still current if I needed to do research on certain things. My brother in-law was a retired colonel in the US Air Force, lives down in San Diego right now. It became more of a trust thing, the producers, when they don’t know you they don’t say a whole lot. They want to know what you know and they want to see how they can apply it to scripts and how they can influence more with the actors. You have got to be careful when you talk about certain subjects of a script because you don’t want to hurt the writers feelings. At the same time, you want to be technically correct. You have to have that fine line, that sort of medium ground where you say, “well, that’s great, but this is what would improve it and make it sound better and make it look better.” I got to know the writers quite well because they were also producers on the show. The more influence I had, I found myself getting called more and more. Stargate wasn’t the only show in town. I was doing other productions at the same time and all of a sudden I’m getting more calls and more calls. The shop I work out of here in Vancouver, they were kind of getting sick of taking all my calls. I started giving my personal number to the producers, the production manager, two of the prop masters who are still very good friends of mine today, Kenny Gibbs, Dean Goodine, they are just fabulous people. I still work for them today and we still have a great relationship and that was built right from the old Stargate days.

David Read
When you have people that you can trust to get the job done there’s no reason to go and start from scratch if those people are available. Especially when you need technical competence for something that is legitimately one of the most dangerous things that you can be doing in this industry. Even if you’re firing off blanks, you have to have people behind you that you can trust and will have your back and will not blame someone else if something goes wrong.

Rob Fournier
That’s correct; safety was always number one. When I started training the cast we did a lot of dry training at first with all the firearms that we use. P90 wasn’t in yet, it was all MP5s and M4s, CAR-15s, your basic assault rifles. It was very slow to begin with but then as the actors got more confidence, still being extremely safe, we applied it on productions. Then all of a sudden I would start training stunt performers and I would start training in the background. I would help coordinate with the stunt coordinator, Dan Shea, we would coordinate these whole battle sequences and I would place people. There’s always two things you have got to remember when you’re dealing with blanks. Obviously, it’s the danger of the blank itself, especially at close range. You always have to worry about where you’re aiming at and where the empty casings eject. The empty casings are hot, sharp, you don’t want them going in somebody’s face or down their shirt. Dan would place his stunt performers or background performers in conjunction with the cast in a big battle sequence because we did a few on Stargate. I would adjust them so they wouldn’t get hit with brass and they would actually have a safe lane to shoot in.

David Read
They’re not wearing eye protection.

Rob Fournier
They’re not wearing eye protection and the ear protection, this is the funny thing. So with ear protection you have those little foamy ones and you skin tone them. Makeup does a great job to skin tone them but sometimes they’d stick out a little bit so they would cut them in half so now you’re losing the decibel rating of your earplugs. I ended up ordering some special earplugs that had a great decibel rating which were smaller and the makeup department fell in love with it because they were easier to skin tone with all their makeup kits. Especially with the different skin tones of our cast and background and stuff and we just stuck with that. I swear that company made a killing on that show because we fired a lot of blanks.

David Read
It’s not something that you think about unless you’re in that field, where it’s like every time that you see the weapons going off, their ears are plugged. Or at least they are supposed to be unless you’re a certain actor that one time that we mentioned. Your ears go ringing because it hurts. I fired off a weapon without covering my ears and it’s like, “lesson learned, not going to do that again.” I imagine afterwards, if they say cut or something, it’s like, “what?” I imagine if you’re gonna give notes to your actors it’s either a lot of taking them in and out or you have to find some other way. There’s a lot of lip reading, “one more take,” how do you pull that off?

Rob Fournier
Well, you always had two types of actors on Stargate and that’s all three productions. You’d have the ones that would try and be Mr. Tough guy and said, “No, no, I don’t need them. We’re outside, the sound is going to dissipate.” I said, “look, if you see me wearing eye protection…I highly recommend it.” You can’t push them on the ground and force it in their ear, it’s their decision whether they want to wear it or not. I usually say “you’re gonna want them on the second take” and sure enough, they want them on the second take. A smarter, more seasoned actor that’s dealt with firearms and explosions in action at a high level will say “yes Rob, I want earplugs,” even if they’re a quarter load. That’s their livelihood, if they can’t hear then they can’t produce the dialogue. I was very close with the sound department to because they’re super hypersensitive, especially the boom operator and the sound mixer. They’d always ask “what type of loads are we using?” I say, “we got 1200 rounds, quarter loads in this scene, still loud. Just be careful on your board. There’s no dialogue, if you want we can just go MOS on it,” miss out sound on it. MOS just means that they’re not recording sound and then they’ll dub in the firearm effect later, like the sound of a firearm. You don’t want to destroy their livelihood, they have to be able to hear in order to have a job. I was always very close with the sound department. I would always find the boom operator and he would drop the boom to my face and whoever our sound mixer was I would say “okay, yeah, we got 800 rounds, full load on this.” The boom op would just say, “he says thanks Rob, much appreciated.” If you don’t communicate with that, you can ruin that person’s livelihood, communication is always key. What I was taught in the military, you repeat everything twice. There’s always somebody that’s going to miss it, whether they’re on a different channel, especially in the immediate vicinity of a gunfire sequence. If they’re back at the work trucks half a kilometer away it’s not a big deal. But if they’re immediately near the set, everybody needs to be aware. We always had great first ADs [assistant directors], they picked the absolute best first ADs when we did that series. I think the whole AD department was great, right down to the training assistant directors, they were all fantastic. They would always allow me to have a safety meeting on set and I would do it just before the gunfire. I would do it in the morning very briefly and then I would do it just before gunfire. I’m not shy to talk to 150, 200 people, I’m not shy. I’ll get up on a table with a loudspeaker and I’ll relay all the information. I say look “we’re firing 2000 rounds in the scene, they are full loads. Everybody should have your protection. If there’s not enough ear protection, use your fingers, put them in your ears. When they yell cut, you can let them out.” It’s the cheapest form of ear protection right there.

David Read
And it works.

Rob Fournier
Not everybody can do that especially a camera operator or a dolly grip, they have to have special ear protection. Through the years on Stargate, because I was such good friends with the props department, props is who handles ear and eye protection, I would say “look, these ear protectors are okay but there’s better ones out there and they’re gonna last longer and the camera department’s going to thank you for them and not just the camera department, any department that’s around there.” I’ve had ADs wear protection inbetween shots too, right? They were thankful of it, you spend the money, you get a quality product, right? It’s like you want a fast car, you’re gonna have to spend the money. Quality costs money, right?

David Read
Absolutely. I want to jump into a couple of fan questions really quickly here because I think they’re relevant. Dan Ben wants to know, “can you explain wearing protective goggles when firing certain weapons? I remember the SG-1 team put them on a few times. Why not more or did the show not want them in use?” There’s one specific instance that’s one of my favorite sequences in the show that I’m going to bring up after this. Was it just an aesthetic thing? Why weren’t goggles always used so they could get in as tight as they wanted? I’m curious.

Rob Fournier
A lot of times it would depend whether they’re scripted in the sequence. If they’re scripted in the scene that they’re wearing goggles, then they’re wearing goggles. Other times they would be because there’s so much debris flying in the air, whether it’s explosions from staff blasts or the Jaffa aircraft with the explosions on the ground. They prefer to wear the ear protection, now the detriment on ear, sorry, eye protection, was they would fog up. When they fog up they can’t see anything so they tried, “let’s cut holes in it, let’s do this, let’s do that.” It was just a little nightmare for the props department, they would have to get lens anti-fog stuff, they would have to get the ones with the little fans in it and then you have a battery system. There was all these different degrees of stuff. Sometimes the cast, all four of the leads would come up to me and say, “Rob, would we wear goggles in this scene?” I’m like, “as a soldier, I wouldn’t.” I said “I don’t need it because I lose my peripheral vision and I can’t see the enemy when I’m wearing goggles. Yes, it protects your eyes if you’re in a very windy or dusty or sandy environment but if you’re in a nice calm environment not expecting a combat situation you don’t need to wear goggles.” Or the goggles are up on their helmet, which we’ve seen many times right and they’d like to cover them. It’s kind of like a nylon piece, it helps protect the lens of the goggle but it also stops reflecting the camera into their lens. It’s like the landspeeder thing in Star Wars where you see the camera as the landspeeder goes by. They fix that with CGI but back then we would just cover it up and make it quite simple. I said “look, you don’t have to put this spray on stuff to keep it from reflecting, just put a cover on it. When you apply your goggles, you just slip it off, it goes on the back of the helmet, the goggles come down.” You saw a lot of times when SG-1 was travelling, when they go through the Stargate and onto another planet, 90% of the time they have the goggles up top, they were ready for any situation. We’ve done situations where all sudden goggles come down and they’re engaging the enemy. There is a million scenarios with that. I hope that answered his question.

David Read
I think so. One of the aesthetics of the early end of SG-1 was matching the film. Pretty much everyone who went through, except for Kurt on the original Abydos mission, had a set of goggles and a helmet. Those, with SG-1, went away the longer the show went on, I guess it’s just an aesthetic change. We saw them in camouflage makeup once in an episode called Rules of Engagement. Were you involved in that one?

Rob Fournier
Yes, I have a picture, I think from the last day. That was Richard with fully camouflage and I was there in makeup. They tried their pattern as a test pattern on somebody and I’m like “no, that looks like something out of Cirque du Soleil. We need proper camouflage.” That’s where I went in and helped, I was right in the cast trailers or in the makeup trailer with the cast. I was like “you need more dark here. The high features, the ear, the nose, the chin, the forehead, have to be darker” and stuff like that. That’s how I was taught in the military because it’s all about blending in with your environment, especially if it’s a bright moonlit night or a daytime shot. Technically, I was very strict with that. Sometimes the cast would be like, “Oh, geez.” I’m like, “well, do you want to be a B series or do you want to be an A series? I’m making you look great.”

David Read
You hired me, I’m right here.

Rob Fournier
Yeah. Sometimes we’d get in these little tiffs and little arguments because they didn’t have their morning coffee or something and I’m like, “just suck it up. Let’s go. You’re on a great series, we’re having fun. We’re making history so let’s carry on and get those Chevron’s engaged.”

David Read
The episode that I was referring to a minute ago with one of the few times that SG-1 wore glasses, Atlantis and Universe is a different story. The opening to season five, it was called Enemies and it was a lot of close quarters gunfire in the Goa’uld set as replicators were running at them. Martin Wood did this episode. It’s a running and gunning, down a corridor, trying to get to a ring room. It’s hands free and nothing had ever been seen like that on the show before. You’ve got these mechanical bugs that are going to be rendered in CGI later and you’ve got each of the principal cast, except for Christopher Judge, in formation going down this hall. Were you there for this? Do you remember the sequence?

Rob Fournier
Yeah I do. I think the weapon we used, we call it the stupid gun and I’ll explain what the stupid gun was. It’s a USAS-12. It’s a select fire 12 gauge with a 19 round drum.

David Read
These were P90s.

Rob Fournier
Okay, with the P90s, I know we did another episode with the replicators and that. The P90s, what happens is there’s still a lot of concussive effect on it. They’re firing P90s all over the place with these 50 round magazines. Martin is trying to explain “they’re going to come from this side, they’re going to come here, they’re going to come up the wall and come down and they’re all going to be coming at you very quickly.” I think Amanda or Chris says “where do we shoot?” and Martin just said, “shoot everywhere.”

David Read
Yeah, Amanda, Michael and Rick in this sequence.

Rob Fournier
I remember because I was helping with the camera. The camera wasn’t on a dolly because otherwise you’d see the dolly, it was on a steadicam and I think Nathaniel was our camera operator. They didn’t know how to protect him because of the gunfire. I said, “look, I know how to do this. Give me a handheld shield. Nathaniel and I are going to wear some Kevlar vest in case we come outside the shield, we’re going to wear a full face shield, ear protection.” We had earplugs and ear protection because I had all those P90s shooting in our general direction towards us as we’re coming up towards the cast. I just remember after the first take, Nathaniel put the Steadicam on its stand and he kind of leaned over the garbage can and I’m like, “are you okay?” He says “I just might throw up here.” He was fine, it was because of the concussive effect. I don’t think he was realizing, and I’m warning them, I said, “look, there’s gonna be a lot of pressure here.”

David Read
You’re in a closed space.

Rob Fournier
Very closed space, right in the set, the sound is just coming right at us. All the concussive effect, all the shockwaves are coming towards us. I was used to being ex military, I have done this a million times. I did warn Nathaniel. He had a dolly grip behind him too because I’m holding the shield in front of him while the dolly grip is guiding him in so he doesn’t tip over with a very expensive steadicam. There’s three of us moving in towards the cast and I had two extra armourers with me that day to help me reload magazines and stuff like that. I do remember that sequence very well and we ended up doing I think four takes or five takes. Then we went in for coverage and then we had to do the reverse of it. Reverse was much easier because the camera didn’t need protection. We were behind them, the brass of the P90 ejects straight down, nobody’s in any danger whatsoever. I had lockups on the very end of the set to make sure nobody wandered in. What we call a bogey; somebody that just wanders into set accidentally. I had all the angles checked and I always had constant communication with the first AD, that is the lifeline of any production.

David Read
Wow, there’s so much that’s involved. It’s so easy to forget the number of people who are standing there behind the camera or on that side of production. You have to keep an eye on all of them, at least with the P90s most of them go down. I’ll never forget that sequence, that was an extraordinary scene, they really upped the game. I think that was one of the first times that a Steadicam was used in that regard. Shooting against CG enemies, numerous enemies that were just coming at them and just assume that they’re everywhere and just keep on going backwards. It was wild, absolutely amazing sequence.

Rob Fournier
It brings back another memory because that was Martin Wood, correct?

David Read
Yep.

Rob Fournier
There is another episode I did with Martin Wood and we were inside a Russian submarine. You remember that episode?

David Read
That was Small Victories, season four.

Rob Fournier
Small Victories and we’re shooting replicators inside there. I think it was Chris Judge and he had the full auto shotgun, the USAS-12. The stupid gun I named it because the concussive effect is just stupid. It’s a massive fireball and it’s a big boom, it’s actually louder than a live round going off. They built this cutaway version of a submarine, we had a half version of it inside one of the stages. Martin wanted to do this very unique shot and I hope this didn’t sidetrack you too much. He wanted to do this amazing shot. He says, “look, I want to look over the gun and I want to shoot in every direction on this submarine.” Obviously not inside the stage but seeing 180 degrees. He had this little camera that he’s holding and the gun is here and I’m wrapped around him. My body is right up against his back and I’m wrapped around, I’m basically spooning him. I’m wrapped around him with the shotgun, everything ejects to the right on the USAS-12, it has a 19 round drum. We rehearsed it him and I. I said, “where do you want me to shoot?” He goes “everywhere and everything. Replicators are going to be on…”

David Read
They’re coming.

Rob Fournier
We had light bulbs in the set because it’s a red light, right? Martin whispers in my ear just before I’m about to go hot with the shotgun and he goes, “make sure you hit the light bulbs.” I’m like, “oh great, now the lighting department is going to hate my guts because I’m going to shatter the lights.” Sure enough, there’s two light bulbs that are in my vicinity and I saved the last few rounds and I go “boom, boom.” The light bulbs shatter and the sound guys of course, they gotta kill the breaker on it, they got to disconnect the lights. There’s no bulbs so they have to unscrew it in a weird manner. Well, we did that probably seven times.

David Read
Was that live rounds?

Rob Fournier
Blanks. I had blanks, obviously.

David Read
So how do you shoot the bulbs out?

Rob Fournier
The concussion was so great, I was only about a foot away from these light bulbs. The power behind these 12 gauge blanks is incredible, at close range you can blow through cardboard like it’s nothing.

David Read
The concussive force is that strong.

Rob Fournier
It was, I was shooting up everything. At the end of each take I was just sweating, it was like a workout itself. I said “you know Martin, I’ve never done anything like this. This is a very unique shot” Since then I’ve done very similar things but that was kind of a first for me. We rehearsed the heck out of it because I wanted to make sure that myself and Martin were safe obviously. Brass is a ejecting, no one’s near the set, the camera is right in his chest and he’s in tight like this. He’s got a full face shield, I have a full face shield because of the stuff shattering, especially the light bulbs. We did that over and over and over and then on the last take he goes, and he’s breathing heavy, “I think we got that.” I said “thanks, I don’t know if I could do an eighth take on that.” I was breathing heavy and I was in shape back then, much better than I am now. But it was a lot of fun, I always loved working with Martin, I always had some great episodes with him. He’s given me some acting roles in the past too, he’s thrown these nice little parts my way. I’m forever grateful to him, I’ll go that extra mile for him any day.

David Read
I’ve got a couple of examples of those actually. I have an image here from season five’s Ascension with you, Rick, Amanda and John de Lancie and you’re a part of Colonel Simmons unit in this night shoot. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Rob Fournier
Can you show me that image? I’ll probably remember it better.

David Read
It is one of the ones that you sent to me. You’re handing Amanda some an earpiece so that she can communicate in the house?

Rob Fournier
Oh, yes. Yes. So that earpiece is a receiver transmitter. Instead of wearing throat mics or an earpiece that comes down with a microphone, it’s a receiver transmitter and they had to be molded for each cast members ear. We didn’t really need it but it played in the scene as somebody is communicating, they can be separated. It also acted as ear protection for them so was dual purpose. I remember that sequence because props had them specially made and specially molded. I think we had four pairs for each cast member in case they lost them and we did lose some. I think we were in not as Sandy environment.

David Read
It’s a residential area yeah.

Rob Fournier
It was definitely dark and sometimes they’d pop out and they would lose them and they’d find them later on. You can’t waste time, if you lose one, boom, you got another one right away. You don’t want 100 people with flashlights looking for a lost ear earpiece at two in the morning in a residential area.

David Read
The other one I have a couple of. You sent me one screenshot and I went and found the full-res version of one of you taking a squib to the chest. You are in camo gear coming out of the back of the Puddle Jumper at the end of Mobius part two in the alternate reality. You’re playing another Mansfield from SG-1 and the Jaffa are coming at you guys and you guys are trying to retreat and you’ve got staff blasts coming at you.

Rob Fournier
I remember that, I thank Dan Shea for that, he gave me that role. I was also a technical adviser that day so inbetween shots I’m setting up the cast, what they’d be doing. I had to hit my first mark and remember what my job was. At the same time it was, “okay, well, I get killed.” Dan Shea goes, “you’re kind of like that guy on Star Trek…”

David Read
The red shirts?

Rob Fournier
The red shirt. He said “we should have just given you a red shirt, you’re the token person that gets taken out right away.” I did get a few rounds off and then I get killed. There was I think a background performer behind me that ends up running into the ship and they leave the dead guy behind. I was never gonna get out of there so I was highly expendable but that’s the joy of doing stunt work.

David Read
Expendable on camera but not behind scenes.

Rob Fournier
That’s correct.

David Read
What goes into the process of suiting up for a squib and what does that impact feel like? I’m assuming that there are people standing by with fire extinguishers. What’s that process like?

Rob Fournier
Squibbing, obviously, is through the special effects department, which are all very good friends of mine. I was squibbed quite a bit, not just in that sequence, but I also played a German terrorist in an old house and I was firing an Uzi on a rooftop.

David Read
This is the Gamekeeper. East Germany season 2.

Rob Fournier
We were in a very old home that’s about an hour outside of Vancouver, in a very old farm that’s a heritage home actually. It’s covered in all green and has overgrowth on it and all that. I had to focus as being a stunt performer on there so I brought in two of my armourers to cover my position, I was still a technical advisor. For that stunt it was actually Rick that shot me. It wasn’t with a P90, I think he was using either an M16A2 or an M4. He empties a whole mag into me and I’m on a rooftop and I had seven squids in my chest. Special effects is also shooting what they call dust hits and zerks. We didn’t use zerks because it’s only good on metal, it doesn’t make sense to spark on wood. They used dust hits, well, they’re not the most accurate thing. I had three or four hit me in the leg, I really didn’t need to act so much. I went down like a bag of hammers and then I roll off the roof onto a pad which was about seven feet below the rooftop. The whole process of going through the squib, these were very big squibs with blood packs front and back so it was entry exit. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes per person to rig a person properly so the squibs go off. I was what they call a “self detonater.” I had a battery pack and I actually had the button underneath my left thumb as it’s on the force stock of the Uzi. You don’t see it because I covered it with my thumb and at the right time I have to pretend I’m going to do a mag change because I empty out the Uzi. I’m super exposed, in the reverse, Rick fires a whole mag off in burst. He just empties it, he’s like, “I’m gonna let Fournier get it.” That’s when I hit the squibs and then I basically droped to my knees after I got hit by a couple dust hits, which actually broke the skin on my legs, but that’s par for the course. It was a ton of fun and they did apologize with a grin later on.

David Read
You got a bottle of wine.

Rob Fournier
They took me out for beers that night after wrap, it was a lot of fun. Getting squibbed is basically a mini explosion on you so you have to be protected from the rear end, from behind the squib. When it expands, it expands in all directions, so you have to protect your skin. We use a thick neoprene underneath or sometimes we go as much as an aluminum plate that’s shaped to your torso. We put that underneath and then we wrap it with tape. I had quite a few squibs so I had this very thin aluminum sheet and then some neoprene over it and then the squibs on top and then the shirt went over the top of that. They had little markers to see where the squibs were and just before we went to camera they’d take the little pieces of tape off because you don’t want to see that on camera. I also had to open myself up so when the squibs went off they didn’t hit towards my forearm. They hurt, they do hurt. When I did the mag change I made sure that my arms were away but I didn’t want to make it look like I was to open. I basically pull the magazine out of the back of the bottom of the full Uzi and as I’m doing so that’s when I hit the squibs; the chest just explodes, I drop down on both knees. I didn’t do the old 80 foot shot in the back because that’s not what happens when you get shot. I wanted to make it as accurate as possible for production quality and I basically rolled on to a pad that Dan Shea and other stunt people had. They also have safety down there in case you rolled the wrong way. They pull another pad and at least stop you from hitting the ground seven feet below the actual rooftop. There’s a lot of hands that are involved, a lot of people involved. It’s all about safety whether it’s firearms, explosion, stunts. It’s always got to be at that high level, right?

David Read
You’ve got to have plans for things to go wrong. You have to be prepared for something to happen. I’m sure every once in a while someone was sent to the emergency room over something. It’s a part of doing things so dangerous and it’s why you have professionals in there to handle the situation for when something goes awry. You can plan and plan as much as you can but eventually something wonky is going to happen.

Rob Fournier
That’s right. I’ve had injuries in the past, I’ve had some minor fractures, I’ve been caught going through play glass windows. It doesn’t matter if it’s tempered or candy glass, you’re eventually gonna get cut. I’ve had stitches before and stuff like that and that’s why stunt performers earn their keep. There’s that high risk level and they earn every cent that they work on.

David Read
Heroes. I have a photo of you, Adam Baldwin and is it Ryan Steacy?

Rob Fournier
Yeah. Ryan, the last movie he worked with me on because he’s a sharpshooter. He worked for a company that builds sniper rifles so he basically has a new career. His last movie with me was when I did Deadpool 2 with him, he was my second in command. Ryan was always very, very reliable with me and I’d always bring him in on all the shows. He has a great personality, knows firearms, I don’t have to tell him anything; we were always thinking on the same level. I’m a massive Stanley Kubrick fan and I was a fan of Full Metal Jacket. Adam Baldwin plays Colonel Dixon.

David Read
He does, Colonel Dave Dixon.

Rob Fournier
He did two episodes kind of back to back so we had him for quite a few days and I got to know him well. He knew that I was a big fan of Full Metal Jacket. His character, actually I have to correct myself. It’s not an M16, it was an M4 and I connected a grenade launcher, an M203 40 mm grenade launcher underneath. He wanted to stand out being a commander of his unit with a different weapon and with a little bit more firepower. But we also have the M60A1 which is a weapon that he carried, Adam carried, in Full Metal Jacket.

David Read
Is that what this picture is?

Rob Fournier
That’s right, they called him Animal or Mother, right? They had these nicknames in it. He fires that thing like crazy, I remember they did that whole sequence in Pinewood Studios in London. I had one of the stunt guys carry that and fire that in that big battle sequence we had with the Jaffa. I think that day I had six armourers with me, it was just a full on day. First of all, I went to the stunt performer. We were inbetween scenes, they were doing some camera adjustments. I knew the stunt performer, I said “I need to borrow your M60 for a sec.” He goes, “okay, are you bringing it back?” I said “don’t worry, you’ll get it back. I’m not taking it away from you, I just need it for a couple of minutes.” I went up to Adam and showed him I said, “Adam, check it out!” He goes “ah Old Faithful!” I said, “it would be a pleasure and an honor if I could get a photo of you carrying this thing.” We were just gonna get a photo of him with that M60 and he says, “no, no, you guys got to get in here.” and of course we got in there. That was a really hot day and everybody is sweating like crazy and stuff like that. We snapped that photo, it was great, it was a fun day. He’s a really gifted actor, he’s got a unique look and he really brought out his character. I wish he would have done more episodes.

David Read
He’s back in several of the novels. He resonated that much with the fan base that Colonel Dixon is all over the books, in many respects. Heroes was a huge shoot. Andy Makita, I believe, directed that one. He said that a lot of that episode was shot over three months where it was like, “okay, we’re gonna get this shot here, we’re gonna get this shot there, because it was being extended to two hours when it was originally one.” That master of the boot going into the puddle and then it pulls back and pans across the field. You’ve got Al’kesh flying over and plasma bombs and the SG units just trying to avoid this strafe. It’s one of the coolest shots of the show.

Rob Fournier
I remember that because they had six or seven cameras that day. That shot you’re talking about is a really long dolly track shot. It starts with a boot and then it widens out and stuff like that. I think the dolly itself was 120 yards long, it was crazy, it just kept going forever and ever. They had two dolly grips on the dolly because they had to hit the brakes. As we know, dollies are not light and they’re heavy and when you get them on those silky smooth tracks they don’t stop on a dime. You don’t want to see that jerking effect of the camera.

David Read
It’s not supposed to be there.

Rob Fournier
We had all sections there. I had six armourers, we had Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot sections. I was with the with Alpha unit which was always our cast. I was always attached to the cast, that was my forte. I would say “Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, sound in, go hot.” They’d go, “Bravo’s hot, Charlie’s hot, Delta’s hot, Foxtrot’s is hot.” I would look at the director and the first AD and say “all guns are hot, good to go.” They’d say “okay, all guns are hot and roll sound.” Basically, that’s the moment of truth; everybody’s finger’s off the trigger, everybody’s pointing in the same direction. They have to slate and you never want to freak out the old camera trainees. The worst thing you could do is be aiming at the camera and then a slate comes across it, it makes them nervous. I always tell my co-workers and I’ll tell the cast, I say “look, just point the weapon down, let them slate and when they clear you bring it up. It only takes a nanosecond for them on the focus puller to refocus on either the weapon or the person behind the weapon.” I still do that today, 30 years later. I said, “look, you don’t need to point it in the shot right now. Just let them slate and get away because it makes people nervous.” I want people to feel comfortable but always attentive at the same time. I’m always there, I’m right in there, I’m very verbal when it comes to stuff like that. If somebody goes where they’re not supposed to be I’ll yell “cut.” I’ve done it in the past and I’ve upset some people because they don’t understand what’s going on until I explain it. I said “safety’s number one, I override anybody on set. If I yell cut there’s obviously a reason for it.” Sometimes a camera shifted, I notice it last second and said, “wait a minute, this is going to affect this person, who’s going to affect this person that I just locked up on.” I I had to be very communicative with the camera department. I said, “look, if you’re going to change something I need to know.” When the ball is rolling, sometimes you can’t stop the machine because it’s so loud that you could sit there and hit a horn all day and no one’s gonna hear it over the gunfire. I’d have a director that was quite new sometimes. We’d get these very new directors and they’re semi challenged when it comes to action. He or she would say, “well, I yelled, cut, how come they…?” I said, “look, it’s better to just let the firearms empty out and then cut at that point because they can’t hear you unless we have some type of lighting cue if it’s a night sequence where everybody can see a light or a laser of some sort that’s off camera.” A lot of times, it’s really, really hard to hear, especially using full loads. I wouldn’t go hot on anything until I’m absolutely 110% sure that everything is very good. I remember firing a 50 caliber inside a soundstage, I think it was stage two at Bridge Studios. We had a 50 Cal that’s shooting out, I think it’s at one of the Jaffa aircraft. It had to fire on an angle, the stunt performer had to cock it and it emptied out a 125 round belt or 150 round belt. But the camera had to counter it so they go like this and then they aim and they go back and forth across it.

David Read
I think that’s the pilot to Universe. I think that’s Air when the Death Gliders are coming in hot on on the planet.

Rob Fournier
That’s right. Actually Kenny Gibbs, there’s a video out there somewhere that you can see how I explain it. They were all worried about lexan and the concussive effect and how it would shake the camera. We had excellent key grips on the show, they were some of the best in town. We took these eight foot long pieces of lexan, lexan is a polycarbonate that’s half an inch to three quarter inch thick. It’s basically bullet resistant, it’s really tough stuff. The US military uses it inside their vehicles to protect from shrapnel from rocket propelled grenades and so on. I said, “look, I want to keep the cameras safe. They’re going to be down, low, looking up at the shooter on the 50 Cal. As the 50’s shooting this way, they’re going to be coming across like this and then we’re going to be going back and forth until he empties out the entire weapon. The best way to do that is not to go flat with the lexan because you’re just getting a full concussive effect. Let’s angle the lexan over the camera so the camera’s here and we angle it over him and then we have lexan underneath.” They had a clear lane to go back and forth and so the shock wave was actually deflected off the lexan. They said it was like night and day. I had to work with the grips but because I know firearms so well I had to work with “okay, this is an incredible shockwave, this is a weapon you’re not really supposed to shoot indoors.” We were shooting it indoors with full loads with the six foot flame coming out of the front of it. We ended up setting that shot up, I think we did probably close to 10 takes with different lenses and they wanted different angles and stuff like that. It worked out great on Atlantis.

David Read
It’s a great sequence in Universe with defending the Icarus space. It’s just wild, the production value on Universe was just amazing. I’m not surprised you did 10 takes for that sequence.

Rob Fournier
It’s funny because after the first take more people just started leaving the building. I said, “look, the concussion of this is going to make you feel uncomfortable.” You could wear all the ear protection in the world.

David Read
It’s going through your body.

Rob Fournier
It’s going through your body, it’s like a jackhammer right next to you. I said, “if you feel uncomfortable, I highly suggest that when we go hot, just leave.” The stage door was literally about 35 feet away and they had exits on both sides. It was a very small stage we were doing that in, we called it one of the baby stages. After the first take all of a sudden there’s less crew and less crew and less then all of a sudden it’s just the ADs.

David Read
We’re really not needed for this. We’ve had enough fun, you have a good time, we’ll come back.

Rob Fournier
Yeah, it was a lot of fun. It went well and I’m glad that I got to be a big influence. That’s how I became so assimilated with the crew because a lot of different departments had to trust me and I had to trust them. There was this very good working and friendly relationship that we had, there was no arguments whatsoever. It was after, I would say season two of SG-1, it was like a well oiled machine and then it was simple. Then Atlantis came along, we had a new crew, sometimes we had a crossover crew because we had a prop master that was doing both shows until another one came in. It was almost like showing people again, showing them what you’ve learned from this production that you have to send over here. You have people that have never done action movies and action TV series so now I’m constantly teaching. At the same time, I’m always learning to because I’m learning new technology and cameras. It only matters what this sees because anything outside of that lens doesn’t matter. Sometimes as a technical adviser, you have to as they say, “bite the bullet.” You have to basically allow a certain amount of flexibility and cheat so instead of having the guys all spread out so they don’t all get shot with one burst of a machine gun, we have to cheat them in words so the camera sees all of them instead of only three of them, right? There’s always that happy balance that you have to find and stuff like that. Any technical advisor around the world will tell you it can be a challenge. You want it done right but you also have to think, “what does the camera see?” Everything else is irrelevant, if it’s not in frame, it’s not needed, right?

David Read
Yeah, you’re not going to capture it. I have the last photo here of you standing next to, it looks like a 50 Cal to me. It looks like the same size as what was in the gate room. It’s on a tripod and it’s as tall as you are. What is this?

Rob Fournier
That is a 50 Cal, that’s an M2 Browning heavy machine gun. They used to mount those in aircraft in World War Two, they’d have six or eight of them in these fighter aircraft. Still used today, obviously updated versions of it but still in use today.

David Read
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Rob Fournier
It works great. That was on season five, episode one. Dan Percival was very good friend of mine, he was the showrunner and director on that episode, that was on the Man in the High Castle. We fired thousands and thousands of rounds because they’re taking out Nazis in their rabbit holes. It was basically a very similar sequence to the boot in the ground and then the big battle sequence. We kind of did that in reverse; we went from left to right and it started on feet, going through mud and then coming up and seeing this whole battle sequence. One of our leads jumping over a sandpit and engaging with the Nazis. Different show, but same kind of scenario, you have to be extremely safe. I had a special vehicle just to carry the ammunition that day because ammunition is quite heavy. We fired a lot of rounds that day. Through SG-1, Atlantis, Universe, especially SG-1 and Atlantis, we fired tens of thousands of rounds. I can’t give you a ballpark number but I know it’s in the hundreds of thousands through all those seasons. All of a sudden, a sequence would either grow or diminish whether it’s an action scene. It all depended on the budget because budgets are budgets and episodic budgets are episodic budgets. They tried to stay true to it, if they take away from one production or one department and give it to another then other departments can suffer from it. You had to be on on the ball, right? Every time I did a breakdown of a script for SG-1, Atlantis and sometimes Universe, I would say, “look, I think we’re going to use about 14,000 rounds in this, give or take 1000.” The next one would be “look, this is an easy one. This is a couple of thousand rounds, this is not anything difficult. It’s only two different sequences and eight people shooting” or whatever. You also had to implement training ammunition, blank ammunition, you used it also for training purposes. If you had an SG member that was not trained and had to do a big battle sequence, guess what? You’re taking those people and you’re having to spend a whole day with them doing first dry training, getting used to the firearm itself, learning the stoppages and immediate actions and the reloading and stuff like that and how to hold it right, how to how to conduct yourself safely with it and then implement blanks with it. You had to always think about that. I did the A-Team movie, we went through 220,000 rounds of blanks and 60 of that was just for training. Obviously a big budget feature, I had to train the four lead cast and we went through lots of ammunition. They wanted it throughout the entire production, not just at the start. That’s the same with SG-1 sometimes. Rick, Amanda or Chris or Michael, if they have an episode coming up where there just…Chris Judge would sometimes have two P90s blowing away at the same time or he’d have the squad automatic weapon, big M249 with a 200 round belt. He says, “Rob, is there any way I can get a little refresher training? It’s been a while since I fired blanks.” I’m like, “absolutely.” I’d bring it up to the prop master, prop master would bring it up to the production manager, production manager would bring it up to the line producer and then you get the yay or nay. 99.9% of the time they said yes but if there’s a time constraint sometimes I was training them on the day. I’d get them in the morning, do some shooting with them at a distance so as not to disturb the crew itself and then just carry on with that. There was many, many different types of scenarios you had to go through and you had to be able to make decisions at a moment’s notice. The minute you hesitate, they see right through you.

David Read
Juxtaposed to that, is there any time in your time during any production where you’ve taken a person aside or you’ve been in that situation “okay, I’ve got to train this person.” You had a few moments with them, you saw what they can do and it’s just like, “no, I don’t trust this person, I don’t feel safe around this person.” “Yeah [sprays bullets]. “I’m sorry, no. No!”

Rob Fournier
Not on Stargate.

David Read
I wouldn’t think so, but in any production that you’ve worked on.

Rob Fournier
That’s happened to me and I obviously won’t name the actor or the production. That’s happened to me probably about half a dozen times with certain actors and some of them are A-list actors where you would think that they would have a little bit more common sense.

David Read
They’re full of shit.

Rob Fournier
Yeah. They’re just basically, “well, I learned this on this show” or “I learned this off this TV show.” I’m like, “well, that’s a bad TV show.”

David Read
You learned wrong.

Rob Fournier
You learned wrong. You have to be very diplomatic because you’re hired to do a job, they’re going to do the sequence so you have to find a way. I’ve had times in the past where I’ve had an actor who was under the influence with alcohol and about to do a gunfire sequence. I said, “nope, you’re gonna CGI this whole sequence. I’m gonna give him a plastic gun, a plastic replica and he’s just gonna dry fire it and we’re not firing any blanks in this.” “Why, Rob? Why?” “Let me tell you why…”

David Read
Smell his breath.

Rob Fournier
I could smell the whiskey 10 feet away. You have to make that decision because if you went along with it then obviously, mistakes happen and it could be fatal at that point so you have to be very strict. People say, “well, what if you get fired?” I say “well, then I get fired. I get fired for being the safe guy.” I’ve been in that situation and thankfully not on Stargate or Atlantis or Universe. I’ve never had to deal with that, the cast was all very professional. Some were more knowledgeable than others, obviously, and some were more finicky than others. The creme of my job was to mold that character into a believable soldier, believable enough for the camera that they can sell it and be extremely safe at the same time. It’s creating that illusion. I’ve been on shows where all of a sudden they say, “oh, we don’t have time. He’s a Navy SEAL but you got 20 minutes to train him.” I’m like, “that’s a two year program to just get that badge on your chest” and stuff like that. I said, “you’re gonna get 20 minutes of quality there.”

David Read
You have to be prepared to shoulder the responsibility and sometimes that’s saying no. I have to have a brief aside for my family. My dad was an emergency medical helicopter pilot years after he flew Huey’s and his chief responsibility was the safety of the passengers, his crew and his patients. He would look at the weather sometimes after getting a call and would say, “no, we can’tn we can’t go out there and fly” so it would go to another company. I think there was more than one occasion where they lost the helicopter, they lost the crew and the patient. You have to make the best call for your team and sometimes that means saying, for the greater good, even though there’s someone out there who needs your help or you need to be helped with a task, “I can’t do this. Not under these conditions. I won’t put my my team in jeopardy.”

Rob Fournier
No, it makes 100% sense. You don’t want to jeopardize your team when you don’t have to.

David Read
We’ve kind of covered this but General Maximus asks, maybe you can fill in some details if this applies in this specific question. “In your first interview you talked about how dedicated time would be set aside with the main cast to train them on the weapons they were using. How does that scale on set to large battle scenes like in Heroes where multiple SG teams and base personnel are involved and 10 plus people are in a scene spraying bullets everywhere. How do you manage the safety aspect of the shoot on the day with so many actors being involved.” Does Alpha, Bravo, Delta, do they all have Captains who are responsible for cascading information? How does that work?

Rob Fournier
Well, the ratio that we use up here is seven to one, so seven shooters for every armourer. I’d bring in multiple armourers and those multiple armourers would be responsible for their group. Years ago while I was doing Stargate I also owned a talent agency at the time, it no longer exists. It was called Def Con 5 Talent and it dealt with trained background in SWAT and military. I remember we interviewed 400 people, we hired 36 out of that. I would say 10 were women to the rest were men. We handpicked them, my old business partner and I who is no longer in the industry, we handpicked them, we trained them. These people got a lot of work, they were those special ability extras that were always called because they were excellent with firearms. We trained them from the ground up, a lot of them had never fired a weapon before, especially on a film set. That was at a certain level but if you had the budget you would also train the background in it if you had the time. Sometimes there was more background than we had firearms so you had to give them replicas and they had to mime it and then they had CGI and visual effects. Those were the people in the deep background, not the ones in the foreground. Sometimes we’d have 100 soldiers and have 60 firearms and we’d have to handle the rest with replicas and rubber guns. I would show them how to mime it to sell it for recall of the firearm as if they’re firing, not to the point where it’s overkill where it looks stupid.

David Read
You’re this big on the screen [one inch] but don’t be stupid.

Rob Fournier
Yeah, well, we wouldn’t say stupid, “just don’t be less smart.” In today’s age you have to say that. It can be challenging at times. I had to deal with some actors even on Stargate, some people that were brought in as day calls or co-stars, that just came in for an episode that were extremely afraid of firearms and their character is part of an SG team. It gets to the point where you can’t force somebody to fire a firearm. If they don’t want to fire it, they’re not going to fire. You have options, you can have them CG it, you can go with an Airsoft gas gun where the slide moves, you have all of these options if they don’t want to actually fire blanks. Most actors did, 95%. There was that 5% that felt a little uncomfortable and this and that. I said, “okay, I’m not gonna force you because I don’t want to force you to do something that you’re not comfortable with.”

David Read
You did come on a military show!

Rob Fournier
Well, yeah, but sometimes they were cast for different reasons.

David Read
That’s fair.

Rob Fournier
It wasn’t strictly because they looked the part but because they had a grasp of a certain dialogue that was really good.

David Read
Ah, fair point.

Rob Fournier
They’re not experts in the military so you had to give them options and you had to communicate with production on that. I was kind of like the middleman with that all the time. I would say, “look, this person does not want to fire firearms. Our option is CGI, I know it’s an increase in the visual effects budget.” Back then it wasn’t cheap as it is now. It was far more expensive, especially in the late 90s and early 2000s. They would say, “okay, Rob, we’ll add it to the budget. It’ll be in post production.” Post production always has a separate budget anyways. They seem to have an unlimited budget sometimes on certain shows, but it’s not true, they do have a budget. They would say, “is that your professional opinion?” I said, “yeah, absolutely.” There’d be some actors that were just seamless. I worked with Matt Damon several times and it was seamless. I’d have a whole day with him and after three hours I’d put the firearms back into our shop and we’d play pool the rest of the day because…

David Read
You got it.

Rob Fournier
I said “you got it, I can’t teach you anymore. You’re handling the firearm as good as I can and and on camera.” It was more of a refresher training for him, they’ve allotted the time and stuff like that. But then sometimes actors would be the opposite, I would say “I need another day with this person” or “I need another two days with this group” or something like that. You had to read your actor and you had to read your stunt performer in the background. You had to make sure that they were confident with the weapon but not less smart and that they were also very safe with it. Safety being the priority, that’s always paramount in any production, whether it’s television or feature film. You have always had to be on the ball all the time.

David Read
You ready to get esoteric on something?

Rob Fournier
Sure.

David Read
455eley – I know that Carter’s special Micro 16 carbine was used in season seven because of issues getting P90 5.7×28 mm blanks. So that translates for you? Okay, good. Was there ever an in-universe explanation and how you went about deciding how to configure it? Okay. Can you please translate for us?

Rob Fournier
Yes. So the weapon she had was obviously not a P90. I’ll explain about the P90 ammunition. The brass itself came from Belgium, then it was shipped to the US where we got our blanks made and then it’s shipped from the US to us. Well, if they don’t have the brass from the actual company, Fabrique Nationale, that makes the P 90 itself…The brass is controlled because it’s one of a kind caliber. They were using the brass more for war efforts, for real life stuff and they weren’t sending it anymore. Eventually we would run out so we had to give options. We had lots of the .223 caliber or 5.56 millimeter brass, there was millions of rounds in the world of that because it’s been around much longer. We had to make a decision with production and what I did is I brought a series of different firearms for a show and tell for the director and the producers that had to make this final decision. We’re talking like two episodes away, it’s not like the next day. They would know this because we had warned them and said, “look, we’re running out of P90 ammo, we’re down to like 10,000 rounds” and we’d blow that in a day sometimes. They would say, “okay, can you bring us some options?” The key to bringing options is if you bring too many, it’s too much eye candy. But if you bring too little…I always found the perfect number was three or four. You also have to remember the character itself. Is it going to be too heavy for the character? Is it going to be make the character look stupid? Or is it going to be too small on that character? Chris Judge is a bigger person than Amanda Tapping was so you’re not going to give Chris a little Derringer pistol from the Western days and Amanda a Barrett 50 Cal sniper rifle to sling over, it just doesn’t make sense. That’s why we had to make that decision. I brought the show and tell, we had all the weapons, I had them in different configurations, different models and makes. They picked that one [Olympic Arm K23B “stubby” carbine] and we ended up using it quite a bit and waiting until we had access to the brass. I think in one of the episodes, now correct me if I’m wrong, she does the transition back to the P90.

David Read
I’m trying to remember the episode in season seven that you guys are referring to. There was an episode where she was being pursued by a super soldier, that was Death Knell. maybe that was it? I’m not familiar with the specific episode. If 455eley is still in there I’d like to know because…you had Heroes. I don’t recall the Carter Special specifically so…

Rob Fournier
It may have been just reintroduced for the next episode she just had. I know that and I know this because of all the four cast have told me they loved the P90. It was obviously a favorite for them, it was a fan favorite. It was a very unique weapon, it still is to this day and it’s quite old in firearm terms. It is extremely reliable and is easy to mold for rubbers, lots of replicas. It didn’t have a lot of sharp edges like today’s modern assault rifles do where they have longer barrels, edgy stuff, magazines are edgy. This was a very smooth, film friendly firearm when it comes to that and the cast loved it. Like you said, “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.”.

David Read
Right, exactly. And they get to do this [lean on it pointing downards].

Rob Fournier
Rick always did the old lean over. Sometimes Michael Shanks would do the same thing if he had a P90 but I think Michael fired more his pistol than anything. You always carried the M9 Beretta, they all did, but he tended to use that more than anything. He always had some type of an artifact or some serious technology in one hand and didn’t want to do the P90 with one hand like Chris Judge would do effortlessly.

David Read
Chris is so big and Daniel is the archaeologist so it makes sense that they would have certain weapons to suit their needs. But like the premiere of season five and Enemies, if he needed to fire that thing and be in coordination with the others as they’re trying to exit that ship, they can do it and look good doing it.

Rob Fournier
And you remember Teal’c, he could never smile. It had to be like this [straight faced]. After the take he would give me both P90s and he’d start laughing, he goes, “damn, I love shooting those things.” I said, “don’t smile, don’t smile. You’re not having fun. You’re just an alien that’s killing bad guys.” They all loved it. I would say the people that fired it the most were probably Rick and Amanda, especially Amanda, she got very skilled with that weapon. Sometimes Rick and Amanda would have a competition to see who could do reloads the fastest. While we’re setting up for a shot I’d have clear and safe magazines and I would time them and stuff like that so we had fun with it. There was a lot of times where I’d spend a lot of off-camera time with them. I’ve gone out for for dinner with them, I’ve been to Rick’s house several times for dinner. We became this really tight sort of trustworthy family and that’s something rare in film. It’s really hard to achieve that, it takes many seasons and a lot of trust. To this day, I can still say they’re all very good friends of mine still, which is great.

David Read
The episode was Avenger 2.0 with Felger and they’re at the DHD fixing a problem. That’s what it was. Thank you chat, I appreciate you guys. You can always rely on your fellow fans, most of the time.

Rob Fournier
Well, I want to add something. Remember the M.A.L.P? Do you know what the M.A.L.P is?

David Read
The M.A.L.P? Mobile Analytic Laboratory Probe?

Rob Fournier
Yes. The special effects department hated that thing because it broke down a lot of times.

David Read
I’m sure it did.

Rob Fournier
There was one time I was doing stunt work, I get shot in the chest by a staff blast, I’m on the M.A.L.P firing in the 50 Cal in a very sandy environment. Rick takes over…

David Read
That was you in Forever in a Day where the Jaffa are coming over the hill?

Rob Fournier
Well they had to try and hide my face because like “didn’t we see you get killed as a different character like an episode ago?” So what happened was I showed Rick, I said “if you have a misfire on the 50 Cal you just reach underneath the cocking handle underhand and cock it and it gets rid of the bad round and chambers the next good round.” The problem was when I got shot off the back I was on a cable. I get a staff blast, as we know it ignites; it’s fire coming through you. I get yanked off but when I hit the ground one of my earplugs fall out.

David Read
Oh no.

Rob Fournier
I’m dead, I’m not suppose to move because I’m in the shot, I’m dead at that point. The 50 Cal’s going, it’s literally about seven feet from me, seven feet away. All I just hear is my left ear going [banging], it’s like I went to a Motley Crue concert and I was three feet away from the speaker. At the end of the take my left ear was just ringing, there was obviously a little bit of damage there. What happened was the earplug wasn’t in deep enough and it just popped out. I hit the ground so hard and my helmet hit back that it popped the earplug out. That wasn’t so much fun.

David Read
I just showed the shot and you look awesome.

Rob Fournier
I only told that to Dan Shea, I didn’t tell anybody else. “If I go like this [turn ear towards you] it’s because I can’t hear in this ear” and he’s like, “okay, no problem Rob. I’m glad we got that shot. He says “you don’t have to yell Rob.” I’m like “sorry.”

David Read
“I’m doing the best I can,” that’s funny. Jeremy Heiner – Rob, how many of the sounds of the firearms do you think were faked or applied in post? He says “I noticed that many had the same sound regardless of what was being fired.”

Rob Fournier
You know what? When we were indoors it’s all dubbed. It’s all different firearms because there’s too much reverberation for the sound department off the walls and this and that. When we were exterior I would say they kept 90% of the actual sound of the weapon. A lot of times the blanks can be louder than the actual live round like a ball ammunition. Where the blank is and the ball ammunition, ball ammunition actually takes space inside the casing, whereas a blank, you can fill it right to the top almost. So you can actually put, in theory, more powder inside of a blank than you can in a live round. That’s not for all calibers, but certain calibers, yes, so now you’re dealing with a bigger bang. When we were exterior scenes, whether it was day or night, whether we’re filming residential or using quarter loads or full loads, a lot of times they just use the actual sound. They would have certain microphones that were set in different areas so they would get a nice echo and stuff like that and then they would mix it in post. I know that most of it indoors was all just…we did record the sound of certain weapons and they just kept that as their catalog.

David Read
I see, they already had those on file. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Jeremy also wanted to know, “did you ever have to inform the authorities that you’re shooting on a set or on location so that they don’t think there’s a shooting happening?” What’s the procedure there, especially when you’re going into neighborhoods?

Rob Fournier
Well, 100% of the time it’s up to the location department. Your location manager with location scouts will scout that area well in advance. We’re talking sometimes a month or two months in advance and say, “look, we know there’s residential there. It’s a daytime scene, we’re doing massive amounts of gunfire, it’s going to sound like World War 3 out there.” They basically go house to house and tell people this and if people are uncomfortable with it sometimes they would get them a hotel room just for the night if it bothered them. Especially if we’re doing a late night shot.

David Read
People have jobs.

Rob Fournier
They have jobs, they don’t want to be woken up by the reverb of 20 guns firing blanks. That’s exactly up to location department and communication, obviously, with the armourer to say in advance, “look, we’re going to be using these loads in this area on these dates. Can you let the people in that area know this?” They had excellent location managers, and several of them, because they had to overlap episodes. Some would be on set, some would be scouting, some would be in production and production meetings. It was quite a big machine to make everything work but that was 100% up to the location department.

David Read
Dan Ben wants to know about the few times that rocket launchers were fired.

Rob Fournier
That’s all CGI.

David Read
Oh, never filmed rocket launchers? You can’t simulate a rocket launcher?

Rob Fournier
No, no, we never use live ammunition on set. I’ve been doing this 30 years and never used live ammo and never will. What they do with an RPG or Stinger missile system, special effects would put in a little, almost like a powdery exploding substance in the back end of the rocket launcher. When they hit a switch it would actually blow out and give a puff of smoke.

David Read
So you have something visualized.

Rob Fournier
You have something that visual effects can tail off of and then the rest would be all CG like they did with the Jaffa aircraft. Those are all CG so that as long as he was pointed in generally the right direction and not the opposite direction, they could generalize and say “okay, it’s going to come over those trees, it’s going to strike down here with the plasma bombs and then it’s going to curve off to the left” or whatever. I would be there with an RPG with a fake warhead, just a piece of plastic, or sometimes an old warhead that they would CGI. I would go to special effects and they’d put in this little, it was like a little ziploc bag almost, painted black so you didn’t see it. It would have a hard wire that went all the way down the weapon, we tape it along and I would work with special effects on this because we didn’t want to see the wire. The more you have got to paint out with visual effects the more expensive obviously. It would go all the way down to the shooter, through his arm, down his chest, down his leg pan, out his pants and then buried in the dirt or the sand. There would be a guy there basically on an ignition. He would sit there and just wait until the perfect angle, hit it and it would blow the smoke. Sometimes it was self-detonate to, the actual shooter would hit the right mark, hit the button on it as I did when I was squibbed. You had different variations. The hardwire was always more reliable because when you self-detonate on a battery it can sometimes have the wrong signal or it doesn’t connect properly or the wire’s cut or something like that. Radio signals, well everybody has a radio on set and if you turn off the radio then you don’t hear what’s going on. It’s kind of a double edged sword, most of the time they were all hardline.

Rob Fournier
A lot of the devices, I sold a lot of the Stargate stuff through Propworx for a couple of years, had little radio controllers to change the lighting effects on the device. You had stuff running everywhere, all kinds of juice flowing through everything.

Rob Fournier
The props department at the time was one of the biggest. They sourced out a lot of the prop builds to different companies but it got to the point where Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis were sharing the same prop makers in house. They couldn’t build this stuff quick enough. It was like, “oh, it looked great on camera but it’s shattered, it’s in 20 pieces now. We need four more.” They’re like “ahhhh, but we only budgeted for two.” It was always give and take. It was massive, I was only a small part of it. I always hired by the prop master first and foremost and I still am very good friends with the former prop masters and stuff. I was only one little piece of the pie, there was so much more than what you see here.

David Read
Absolutely. Dwayne Haskett – did you work on Andromeda? and Shantel Leo – do you have any memories from Sanctuary?

Rob Fournier
Oh, yeah, yeah, I’ve done some episodes of Andromeda. It wasn’t so much battle sequences on that, it’s a lot of CG. Sorry, what was the second production you said?

David Read
Sanctuary. Amanda, Martin Wood.

Rob Fournier
Amanda directed a lot, Martin directed and they were producers on the show. It was a lower budget and a lot of it was CG and you had some pretty pretty unique characters on including Bigfoot and all that. Sanctuary wasn’t as busy as SG-1 and Atlantis were in their heyday. But nonetheless, they’re friends of mine and if I had a choice whether it was one production or another, I would take them. I wasn’t full time on Sanctuary as much as I was on SG-1 or Atlantis, but nonetheless, I still had a blast. It was almost like a little family reunion every time I saw them. There was already that trust, that friendship there, it made it so simple on set. You had to deal obviously sometimes with new crew and stuff, they didn’t know you from a hole in the ground. You can have the best resume in the world but if it’s the first time they meet you they don’t know who you are right? Once they check out IMDb or IMDB Pro, but even then do they really know you?

David Read
That’s the thing, your resume says only to a point. Sanctuary, there would have been no Sanctuary without Stargate. That came out of a lot of that shared DNA and you were automatically going to be an extension of that if you came on and had fun with them.

Rob Fournier
Absolutely. Yeah.

David Read
That’s wild. Are you working right now? What’s going on through these strikes? How is that changing things for you?

Rob Fournier
The last three months have been very challenging. I’m working on these non-union productions. Some of them are Canadian productions that are not through SAG, they’re through UBCP/ACTRA, very low budget. I’m working on one right now where they actually want me a little bit of a day a week type thing. I’m dealing with the lead actress and she has no firearms experience. She’s supposed to be an ex-detective and then becomes a shooter and stuff so I’m spending more and more time with her. It’s always a budget constraint because it’s an extremely low budget so you have to work with it. I still work on them because I want to stay sharp. If you sit around and just stare at the phone all day nothing’s going to help there; you’ve got to stay active. My ear’s obviously to the grindstone like everyone else. We’re just waiting to see what’s happening with the Writers Guild and with the Screen Actors Guild and hopefully they can come to some type of an agreement in the next three to six weeks if possible. There’s some big productions including, I can’t say what it is but it’s in town here, that basically went dormant until possibly next spring which is unheard of. You’re going to lose a lot of that A-list crew and I was slated to work on it also. Now basically everybody’s laid off and they’ve already spent tens of millions of dollars just sitting there, the sound stages…

David Read
The rent has to be paid.

Rob Fournier
It has to be paid and these stages are not cheap. I was at Bridge Studios last week, I could count how many vehicles were there on one hand, that’s unheard of. I’ve never seen that, I’ve never seen it this quiet and that’s just in Vancouver. I can’t imagine Los Angeles, Atlanta, New York City, London is slow. I have connections in London, in Rome. I have connections in Madrid where I’ve worked several times. They’re slow there too. SAG is affecting the entire planet at this point.

David Read
Wow. It spirals into hundreds of different industries.

Rob Fournier
Rental houses also right? Catering companies all that. I’m hoping that there is some type of an agreement. I do stunt work still, not as much as I used to, but I’m part of UBCP/ACTRA. If I’m not working as an armourer I’m also with IATSE 891 because I do props on the side. It’s very rare but I know every prop master in this city, they’ve hired me as an armourer. It’s a very easy integration to do props with them. It’s unfortunate because I have a lot of friends that I haven’t seen in a long time and if it goes on too long they’re going to start losing a lot of quality technicians that are just going to find new careers.

David Read
They are going to move on.

David Read
Or they’ll retire, yeah, that’s true too. Rob, what does Stargate mean to you, after all of this, years of working on it? You’ve practically had your pick of all kinds of different projects, you’ve worked with the best. What does Stargate mean to you in the scheme of that?

Rob Fournier
Or they’ll retire.

Rob Fournier
It was a happy place. I could say that. Honestly, it was a happy place. Obviously every production has its challenges but I was excited to go on set, I was excited to do an episode, I was excited at the end of the day because I knew everybody went home safe. To me, it was a very special place in my heart and it meant a lot and it still does.

David Read
I appreciate you coming on to talk again. I appreciate you sharing all these stories. The fact that I can tee you up on something and it’s like winding up and letting you go. You remember that scene? Martin Wood is good at that, a couple of the others. Thank you for sharing these memories.

Rob Fournier
Well the pleasure is all mine, David. Absolutely.

David Read
I appreciate you sir and I will be in touch with you soon.

Rob Fournier
All right, let’s keep those Chevron’s engaged.

David Read
Absolutely, you take care of yourself sir, be well.

Rob Fournier
Thank you very much.

David Read
Rob Fournier, armourer Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe. What a guy, I love having him on. The enthusiasm from so many of these people who worked on these productions for years continues to amaze me even after 20 years later for some of them. It means so much to me to have him on and to have these people continue to be a part of the process. Rjr wanted to know “has David done any videos about his time working on SG-1? I bet it would be fascinating.” I didn’t work on Stargate, I was a reporter. I was there filming, not filming video, but recording audio content for GateWorld for the most part. I was on set from, what would this have been? My first year was season nine of SG-1 and season two of Atlantis so I visited the set at least once a year from 2003 until the end of the series. My content is primarily GateWorld interviews so if you go over to GateWorld.net and click on the interviews link, most of those are mine. Some of them were with Darren on set, most of them were over the phone. A couple of them were texts, but that was mostly what I did. I was a reporter, I never worked directly for Stargate productions. I have since worked directly for MGM on a couple of different projects but that’s a long story. I wanted to share something, we had on Bryan Harris a few weeks ago and he has created custom Stargate props from various different metals. He’s a dye maker and he’s manufacturing some of these beautiful pieces and I’m going to recommend that you guys go and check it out. It’s a 15, 20 minute interview from Vancouver from last year. Just go and look it up, it’s a gold replicator block is the image of the thumbnail and custom Stargate items from Bryan Harris. He sent me this [framed portrait of the Stargate] and I am overwhelmed by his kindness and his generosity, this thing is so heavy. His craftsmanship is just extraordinary. This is something that I will treasure for a very long time. Let me read what’s on the back here “for my fellow Stargate enthusiast David, this is my original CNC’d machine Stargate ring. This was made before I built the reverse side on my CAD program. I machined the gate in 2014, produced from a quarter inch engravers brass, after which I added the patina. I haven’t made any other ring like this one, it’s something I’m very proud of. The background art has been laser engraved with a goa’uld pattern for the borders, plus the SG-1 insignia, all supported by the main cast photo. Sincerely yours, Bryan Harris.” I told him at the time over email when I told him that I was going to be sharing this on this episode that I had no words, I still don’t. I can’t wait to make it a part of the set here. I’m gonna have to figure out how to slide it in, slanted, so that everyone can get to see it every episode because it’s a beautiful gift. Thank you so much Bryan for this wonderful piece and for sharing your remarkable talent with all of the Stargate community on Dial the Gate, I appreciate you. We have coming up tomorrow, three shows. One is pre-recorded, it’s going to be Colin Bowman of Hollywood Collectibles. Hollywood Collectibles is beginning to produce Stargate related merchandise, there’s one piece available right now, you can visit them at hollywood-collectibles.com and there’ll be a link in the description of that episode. We’re going to have him on to discuss the the merchandise that his company is going to be creating for the Stargate franchise, they’ve got several pieces in development. Followed by Bill Nikolai, Vern Alberts in Stargate SG-1, he was one of the technicians and he was also Rick’s photo double so we got a lot of photos to share from his time on SG-1 and a couple from Atlantis as well. Then Eric Avari is joining us tomorrow at 12 noon pacific time to discuss more memories from Stargate and really, I love Eric as a person. We had him on at the start of the season for Gatecon but I haven’t actually sat down with him, in front of him, like we normally do for this show. The first episode was at a convention so this is really going to give you an opportunity to ask him questions. He’s at 12 noon Pacific Time tomorrow, Bill is at 11am Pacific Time and Colin Bowman of Hollywood Collectibles is at 10am. So three shows tomorrow, all starting one hour after the other and that’s what we’ve got going on there. I really hope you enjoyed this episode with Rob, I learned a lot. There’s so many things that you just assume are practical on set, like the rocket launcher. “Oh, you know, they just fire off this…” “No, no, no, it’s all CG.” It’s like “no, there are no real rounds.” “Okay, understood. I did not realize, I apologize.” You notice he had to clarify a couple of times, “there were no real rounds on the show.” Now I understand what is real and what isn’t in some of these cases because it looks so photorealistic. You just assume that it’s what it is. So that’s what we’ve got. My thanks to my production team for continuing to support me while I produce this content; Linda “GateGabber” Furey, my moderators Tracy, Jeremy, Antony, Sommer, Rhys, thank you for continuing to support me. My web developer Frederick Marcoux, he keeps dialthegate.com up to date and continuing to run. I can’t do the show without any of you. My thanks again to Rob Fournier for bringing so much more information and color and characters to so much of these stories, so many of these stories that we know and love. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate and I will see you on the other side.