Stargate is a franchise about paramilitary units putting themselves in life and death situations to protect humanity. To make it look real, production hires people specially trained in the weapons the military uses to both teach the actors and keep everyone safe. Rob Fournier, an armorer who worked on all three series, joins us LIVE to discuss the process and take your questions!

Share This Video ► https://youtube.com/live/66ouf_FH_58

Visit DialtheGate ► http://www.dialthegate.com
on Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/dialthegate
on Instagram ► https://instagram.com/dialthegateshow
on Twitter ► https://twitter.com/dial_the_gate
Visit Wormhole X-Tremists ► https://www.youtube.com/WormholeXTremists

SUBSCRIBE!
https://youtube.com/dialthegate/

Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
00:33 – Opening Credits
01:03 – Welcome and Episode Outline
02:35 – Welcoming Rob and his Stargate story
05:47 – Rob’s background
08:56 – Safety and On-Set Training
13:17 – Roles on Stargate
15:47 – Cast Members
18:06 – “Allegiance” Munitions Scene and Peter DeLuise
22:24 – Ammunition, Effects And Filming
27:55 – A Close-Call on Set
29:18 – Carter and “The Warrior” episode
32:38 – Remembering Jason Momoa
33:57 – Introduction of the P90
42:09 – Other Weapons and the Training Involved
45:59 – Final Thoughts on Filming
49:03 – Atlantis Story
53:21 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
54:07 – End Credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

#Stargate
#DialtheGate
#TurtleTimeline

 

TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read
Welcome to Episode 198 of DialtheGate, the Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read, thank you so much for joining me. I have Rob Fournier, armorer, Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe joining us this episode so we can discuss how these amazing paramilitary teams who have wowed us over the years are brought to life, to be made just a little bit more realistic than they could be if no one was helping them out along the way. Before we get into it, if you enjoy Stargate, and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, please click that like button. It makes a difference and will help the show continue to grow. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend. If you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guests changes. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on the DialtheGate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. This is a live stream so my moderators, I think I have Tracy, Antony and I think Jeremy, in the live stream. If you have any questions for Rob Fournier as we go through the material, go ahead and submit them to them and they will set those questions aside for me to review at the end of the show. In the meantime, I am pleased to welcome to the show Rob Fournier, armorer for Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe. Is it P-51 Productions? Is that what it is sir?

Rob Fournier
That’s correct, David. Yeah.

David Read
Okay. Well, thank you so much for being here. It’s a pleasure to have you.

Rob Fournier
Oh, I’m glad to be here. It’s a beautiful day and it’s really an honor to be on your show.

David Read
Well, I appreciate having you. This franchise has been 17 seasons of television. Were you there from the first season? Did you come in a little bit later? What’s your Stargate story?

Rob Fournier
I was there since the inception of the pilot of SG-1 all the way to the very end of Universe. So, on and off, we were doing other productions but my main employment for those seasons was definitely the Stargate franchises.

David Read
Wow. What was it like being a part of that journey?

Rob Fournier
It was a long journey but lots of very good fun memories with both the cast and crew. We worked days and nights and long hours and really remote locations, in studio. I was always a fan of the Stargate movie with Kurt Russell so when that came to town, I jumped all over it. I had to be interviewed by some of the exec producers and they wanted to know more about me and how I can train the cast and how I’d apply myself to the action sequences with the cast. I was also involved on a script level too because I changed certain dialogues with the writers, with Brad Wright and Rob Cooper, and all these wonderful. I was really heavily involved right from the get go.

David Read
What kind of dialogue changes would you make?

Rob Fournier
They had problems sometimes bringing across the right military lingo. We know that SG-1 was United States Air Force, but they also intervened with Marine Corps, US Army, US Navy; so you had to have the right lingo. Aa lot of it had to do with also the dressing department, the uniforms, the actual military lifestyle that had to be embedded into our main four cast right from the get go. A lot of that came out with training. We had a small boot camp training for our four lead cast, that’s where I first met them all.

David Read
For SG-1?

Rob Fournier
For SG-1, yeah. I had to do the same with Atlantis and the same with the Universe. Universe wasn’t as heavy, it wasn’t that type of a show. I still had to train three or four to the cast, including on Universe with Robert Carlyle. SG-1 was definitely kind of the benchmark for training and implementing all my knowledge and spreading it amongst the cast.

David Read
So let’s talk about you. Well, why have you here? Do you have a military background? What is the story that led you into this industry in this specific department?

Rob Fournier
I already knew I was going to join the military when I was still in high school. I always wanted to join the military, I actually wanted to be a fighter pilot. I went through aircrew selection, my marks weren’t quite high enough. It’s very, very difficult to get into that program. I enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces. I was in the infantry. I spent five years in the Army and I had a lot of qualifications. I spent three out of the five years I was stationed in Germany. I was actually there when the wall came down so you got to see quite a transition in Europe. But no regrets, I loved every minute of it. I was 18 when I joined and I was 23 years old when I got out. Sorry, I was, yeah, I was 23. I went to film school. I wanted to be an actor, like everybody else that comes to Vancouver, right? I ended up having a very good instructor over at the Vancouver Film School. I spent a year and a half taking all these acting classes and workshops and everything like that. The way I became an armorer is I was casted, I got a role on an old TV show called The Commish with Michael Chiklis. I was a SWAT team commander and there was a table full of firearms. I didn’t even know it was an actual trade in the film industry, handling firearms. At the time, it was my boss, he was training his girlfriend at the time which is now his wife. He took me under his wing. I showed a great interest in it and he says, “well, if you want to do this, it’s going to take a year, apprenticeship, you got to do 25 hours a week minimum. It’s not going to cost you anything, but you got to put these hours in. I’m not paying you or anything like that and you also have to take certain courses.” I had to get my provincial license, then Federal and then eventually my International license. It was quite a long path. I ended up doing 30 to 35 hours a week. I enjoyed every minute of it and fast forward three decades, I’m still here.

David Read
Wow. Folks, take a look at this guy’s IMDb, it is nuts. The talent that you have had a chance to work with. Every time I’ve been clicking on it, it’s like “I’d love to talk about this. Oh, I’d love to also talk about that.” I gotta focus mainly on Stargate and we’ll let the fans pick some others if they want. I can’t imagine the ride that you have been on getting to explore this facet of the industry with all these talented people. I want to get to safety, one of the first and foremost things I want to talk about. How, especially with Stargate, how do I want to phrase this? It’s such a delicate thing these days, especially with everything that happened recently in the industry. Has everyone on set always been cooperative in terms of the safety side of things? Have you ever had a situation where it was like, “okay, you’re a little too gung ho in this thing, not respecting the devices. We have the weapons, no we’re not letting you mess with it.” What’s your experience been like over these decades?

Rob Fournier
Well, as we know, in Hollywood, and around the world, you have to deal with different characters; different egos, different types of people. I would say 80% of the entire system is all about people skills. You can know everything in the world about firearms and how they’re applied in film and be great on that but if you do not have the people skills, you will not survive. It’s not for thin skinned people, that’s for sure, you have to have tough skin. I’ve had some situations, not so much on Stargate, but on other productions, where some people were questionable in their mental state. Then you have to make a decision and the decision can escalate very quickly in the wrong direction. A lot of times, with the introduction of visual effects and blue screen and green screen and all that, I would just say, “okay, I don’t feel comfortable with this, we’re gonna CGI.”

David Read
And you have the authority to make that call?

David Read
Yeah, have a clear line in the sand so everyone knows who’s responsible for what.

Rob Fournier
I have the final say when it comes to safety. Regardless of what the director or line producer or anybody says or even the cast. You have to stand your ground because you’re responsible for the safety of the cast and crew, cut and dry. There’s no way around it. I loved working on SG-1 because I got to work with all four cast in the training. Richard Dean Anderson already had some skills with it because of MacGyver and other productions. Amanda Tapping had no training, neither did Chris Judge and Michael Shanks was very new to it. Sometimes that’s better than people that have been trained or trained the wrong way and they have these bad habits. It’s better to start from scratch. I did, I started from scratch, I treated them all equally the same regardless of their skill level. We went through steps, we went through steps with their side arms, with their submachine guns and eventually the P90 which was introduced in, I think, the start of season three. That’s a whole other story itself, or season four. I really enjoyed it because I gained the trust of the cast and I also started to trust them. We were all in the same mindset, especially dealing with cameras and positions of people and brass ejecting and muzzle flash and the dangers involved with using blanks. Regardless, of it’s a quarter load or full load, you had to have a very concrete choice. The minute you started to waffle on set, “or well, you know, maybe” they see right through you, you’re incomplete at that point. It’s a very thankless industry sometimes but the pros definitely outweigh the cons. I gained all this knowledge through the years because I knew a lot about firearms when I left the military but I didn’t know about film and how to apply it in film. That’s where my boss, Tom Falcon, he’s the one that trained me right from the ground up and he would slowly introduce me into the industry. Stargate was my really big first episodic series that had a incredible amount of firepower. We would go through 80 to 100,000 rounds per season, sometimes even more. A lot of times I’d have to bring in help because you need more eyes on set and more safety. I was fortunate enough to play different roles in it and these roles were more or less given to me. I did audition for a few of them, but some of them were for stunt work. Dan Shea is a very good friend of mine, we played hockey together for many, many years nd he still gives me stunt work through the years. I had to make sure that a lot of the time my face was hidden because all of a sudden people started to say “hey, wasn’t he killed in this episode and now he’s playing this character.” Continuity was very important back then and it still is today. Sometimes they would put a scar on me or they would put a mustache or something like that. I’d get a speaking role, Martin Wood who was one of the directors and producers is a very good friend of mine, he lives here in Vancouver also. A lot of times he would just show up and say “hey, Rob, I got a role. You want to be a SWAT team commander and I’ll give you three or four lines with the cast, it’s a night shoot?” and I’m like “I’m in.” I was there as the armorer so I didn’t want the two to overlap. so I would end up bringing in armorer, one of my co-workers, to take my place as I was cast in a part and then when I finished that I would take over.

Rob Fournier
Absolutely. You didn’t want to have too many things going on because my job as an armorer is I focus on the firearms only, that’s all I do. I’m not looking at the props. I’m not looking at set dec or camera or grips or electrics. I’m focused on the fire arms with the cast. I never leave set. If there’s a firearm on set, I don’t go to craft service, I don’t go to the washroom, my attention is 100% on set. Right from the start, right to the finish of the day. There’s always questions from cast or producers. There’s been times where I was wrapped and then all of a sudden Rob Cooper would say, “you know what, I have got an issue with this next script, can you give me a hand?” and you would think it’d be a 20 minute thing and I’m there for another three hours. I enjoyed that because it really proved the worth of my qualifications on set. I really got into it and I became part of that Stargate family, which I still have very fond memories of.

David Read
Who took to the weapons like a duck to water the most? Is there anyone in particular through the productions where you were like “man, they have gotten, they’ve gotten into it and they look so believable in it, it’s second nature to them?”

Rob Fournier
I think RDA probably had the most experience, so he picked it up quite quickly. There was some tweaks that I had to do with all the cast because they all played four different characters. One was an alien, one was a doctor and then you had Rick and then Amanda too who was also a doctor, right? They had to have a certain amount of weapons training, but not too good. That wasn’t their job, they weren’t frontline infantry until the Stargate teams came to be and then they got in contact with the Jaffa and other enemies and stuff like that. I think the most firepower came, if you’re gonna say the four cast, usually Rick and Amanda did the most firing. Michael Shanks was always trying to find ways of getting out of these bad environments.

Rob Fournier
Then you always had Chris Judge who was always trying to just take the most direct route and the most physical route and stuff like that. He had to have firearms training too but you have got to remember he was from another planet so he can’t look like he’s a Navy SEAL. You had to work at certain levels. The safety was always the same, whether it was a co-star, the cast, or a person that came in for a day called roll, it all had to be the same. There was no cut in the safety whatsoever. We’ve done some incredible action scenes. I probably remember them back and forth. Sometimes I’ll be in the shower and I’m like, “oh, I remember that day, it was great, it was fantastic. We fired 30,000 rounds that day and there were massive explosions and gunfire and stuff like that and then I would get involved with the dialogue and I would change certain things. Ut was it was a great ride. I would do it all over again if I could.

David Read
I’ll dial!

David Read
I worked with Christopher Judge on a project that predates this one called Dialing Home. You have always gotta be careful because sometimes he may stretch things a little bit but he had indicated, and I’ve been curious to ask you this. There was an episode where Chris said that Rick blew through the entire season budget of weaponry in one episode. If it’s true, I’m pretty sure it’s Allegiance in season six when he does that 360 degree shot with the Ashrak. The Ashrak is invisible, he says “everybody down…pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop”, all the way round. How true is that?

Rob Fournier
Well, it’s funny because a lot of times they would budget episodically, but ammunition was different. They wanted to just order it all in one shot. Back then they didn’t know where the scripts were going at that point. They would just say “okay, well, next episode is going to be more of a bottle episode.” It’s not as action orientated, it’s more drama orientated and everything. I do remember that episode because Rick was firing. I think he had the M60 or the M249, the Saw. It was the Saw because of the 200 round belt. We just kept doing take after take after take because we had to alter the Steadicam operator with the gunfire sometimes going opposite of his turn. We had to protect the camera of course so we had lexin and stuff like that. I had to make sure the crew was safe because now we’re firing 360 degrees. We were filming up in a forested area in North Vancouver and I had the entire crew cramped in this one little section that had this little knoll that would cover them in case for some reason something came out of the barrel, whether it was a piece of brass or something like that, that everybody was safe. It was quite the setup. We were just doing take after take after take and then I’m like, “I’m out of ammo. I need to get more ammo.” I sent one of my armorers down. Luckily, we’re based in North Vancouver. I said “bring me another 5000 rounds and he brought me 10 [thousand] and we went through eight [thousand]. We did eat up a lot of ammunition. I’m not sure who was directing that episode, if you remember. I don’t think it was Martin.

David Read
I think it was Makita

Rob Fournier
Oh Andy Makita. He loved to do…

David Read
It was Peter, I apologize. It was Peter DeLuise.

Rob Fournier
Peter DeLuise, yes, If you did a great job, he would give you a loonie. Now if you did a really good job, he would pull you aside and you always thought “what did I do now? Am I in trouble? What’s going on here? And he said, “Rob, that brought a tear to my eye. That was beautiful.” And he gave me a toonie. So he gave me a $2 piece, $2 Canadian piece. It was kind of his sort of system that he used, he was funny, just a funny guy and great. I still see him every now and then and we’ll talk to each other. I said “do you remember that episode?” I’m like, “oh my god, that was crazy what we were doing” and stuff like that. Not crazy as in safety, but just the amount of action orientated and coming all together in one. It wasn’t just one area, there were catapults in different action scenes going on all around us; the combat scenes with the Jaffa and the other enemies. It was quite a ride and I had to be on my A game every single day. I enjoyed it. I love the challenge. As the episodes went by and the years went by, there was a lot of trust there not only with the cast, with the higher ups, with the whole production department, with MGM and all that. It was it was a lot of fun and I still speak with all four cast today, which is fantastic.

David Read
Stargate has never had live rounds on set, right? It’s always blanks?

Rob Fournier
No. Live rounds are never allowed on set ever. I’ve been doing this almost 30 years. I’ve never used live ammunition. If you’re going to use live ammunition, you go to a gun range, not on a film set.

David Read
Obviously that doesn’t completely eliminate the danger because the shells can still hurt. I can speak from experience, they burn when they hit you. I’m always curious. Let’s stick with Allegiance for that example. Something is damaging all of these buildings. How is that achieved on the other side? I’m curious.

Rob Fournier
As in the shell casings?

David Read
The impacts to the targets that are being shot? The buildings are getting holes put in them and you’ve got sparks going off. On the other side of that, how was that pulled off? Can you tell me a little bit about the squibs?

Rob Fournier
Yeah. I was very close with the effects department. I was hired by the props department and we had several prop masters through the seasons but I had to work in conjunction with effects all the time. What I dealt with is a form of special effects, but it’s a very, very specialized trade that I work in. They were all friends of mine back then. I became very close with the effects and I would say “okay, this is the rate of fire on the P90, let me see what you have in the box for the squib hits.” We wanted to time it so when he pulls the trigger, it begins, when he stops, it ends. They were probably one of the best effects teams that I worked with for timing. It was just incredible. They’d have certain guys on the button and they would say “how big would the hole be Rob?” I would say “well okay, well a P90 is 5.7 millimeter or an MP5 is 9 millimeter” so you had to judge the size of the hole. What Hollywood likes to do is over accentuate and make massive holes. I’m like “okay, it’s not a 50 Cal round coming from an aircraft, it’s coming from a rifle or submachine gun so the holes wouldn’t be that big.” Sometimes you had to compromise because the hole would be so small that the camera couldn’t pick it up back then. Back then we were still using film before we did the transition to the reds and HD and all that. I would compromise basically “you can go a little bit bigger but don’t go too big.” But remember if you’re going to have an entry, you have to have an exit wound too. A lot of times the squibs are blowing outwards and stuff, I’m like, “well, the bullet didn’t go around him and come out the other side.” I tried to bring that realism. Sometimes they didn’t have time to do exit wounds and stuff like that. You can only suggest certain things. I was also the technical adviser on the show, I basically had both jobs combined in one person. It was a ton of fun because when the explosions kicked in, I said, “it’s a hand grenade, it’s not 1000 pound bomb coming from an F-18. It’s a hand grenade so the explosion wouldn’t be that massive, a massive fireball. It is very contained, whether it’s blowing up inside or outside. A lot of times I would have meetings with the effects department and then all of a sudden we would have a meeting with the director and I’d say “well, okay, I suggest this and this.” You can only suggest, I’m not the director. I can give them options, which they love, but if you paint them in a corner, they don’t like that. But you have to give them options and by doing so, you allowed that sort of freedom for camera, the type of lens to use, how close you could get, how far away you had to be, whether he had to protect the camera or if it was unmanned or if it was on a crane or what have you. There were infinite types of situations you could be put in. I loved it because I could judge something within seconds. “Okay, this is what I’m going to do, this is…” I could see it in the blocking what I had to do before we even rehearsed. The minute we were done blocking the cast would go back to hair, makeup, costumes, what have you. I would talk with the first AD, who were all friends of mine, seasons in, and say, “okay, this is what we have to do. Let’s protect A and B cameras, C is fine up on that ridge. They’re well away, they’re not being pointed at.” And I said, “let’s move this.” Video village always likes to be very close, as we know, in film, right? They always want to be right up close. I would tell the camera trainees or the third AD, I said, “look, we just need to move video village back another 20 feet.” And they would say, “okay, Rob, no problem.” But you have to let them know that ahead of time, not on the day. That’s why I was involved right from the start, the minute I picked up the firearms at our shop, to the time that I brought them back to the shop. There was no lag inbetween, I was constantly involved. That’s why they paid me as a professional. My idea of a perfect day is that everybody goes home safe. That’s it.

David Read
Did you ever have a scare on Stargate in those 17 seasons?

Rob Fournier
Not on Stargate. On other productions I’ve had a couple of where I’ve had to yell “cut.” When you yell cut in a big action scene, you better have the right answer. You better have a reason why you’re doing that because as we know, film is expensive and time is expensive. There was a certain feature that I worked on and we rehearsed, rehearsed it, rehearsed it and it dealt with two A-list actors and I won’t say what production it was. One of the actors missed his mark by about three or four feet. There would have been a tragedy because the other person would have walked right into his two foot muzzle flash without the other actor seeing it. I saw what was happening ahead of time, I put my hand in front of the lens and I yelled cut and I stopped everything. The director wasn’t very pleased with that and like “what the hell’s going on and blah, blah, blah.” So then I explained it and then the actor said “thanks, Rob. Holy smokes. That’s why you’re here.” I said, “Absolutely. Nobody else could see it, but I could see it happening because I’ve done it thousands of times.” Safety is always number one on set. 100%.

David Read
You talked about squibs. One of my favorite moments from a weapon standpoint, many among the fan community will agree with me on this one. There is a badass Carter moment in a season five episode called The Warrior where she shreds a tree trunk with a P90. I always wondered how you guys pulled that off without actually shooting that tree trunk to bits. You’d have to shoot it with something. She and Jack are explain to this Jaffa dissident group how handy our weapons will come in when you’re not shooting just plasma bolts at an object that will just scar the surface of it. She cuts this tree trunk in half that’s suspended on a wire and then she switches on the P90 to single shot and she takes the wire out. How did you guys pull that off?

Rob Fournier
I remember that day because Amanda wanted some refresher training. She hadn’t fired the P90 in a while. The beautiful thing about the P90 is its bottom objection. You could have actors side by side. Nobody’s going to eat each other’s empty casings that are ejected out of the firearm, they go straight down. The caliber of the P90 is very…it’s like a little dart. It’s 5.7 by 28 millimeter. It’s like a hyper round, it is like a hyperkinetic round. It travels so fast that it’ll penetrate body armor, even level 5 body armor, level 4a, it’ll go right through it. So it has a high penetration rate for such a small round. It was designed in Belgium by Fabrique Nationale, and there’s a story behind that also, how we got the P90s. I said, “Amanda, the beauty about the P90 is the magazine sits right on top. You can see how many rounds you have left because it starts at the front and it works its way back. The actual round cantors 90 degrees and as it rotates, it’s floating in the air when it’s chambered and fired and then it’s extracted and ejected straight below that position.” So I said, “when you fire the P90, don’t be shy to blaze blaze blaze with it. You know how long it takes to burn off 50 rounds.” They’ve done it a million times. But I said, “don’t be shy to look down to see how many rounds you have left because you don’t want to run out. You want to be able to fire fire fire. The selector switch is right below the trigger just click it to R, repetition, and then just do your single shot on that.” Se did it perfect every time. Amanda was a treat to work with because she had no firearms experience. Like I said, sometimes that’s the best way to learn, right from the ground up. She did her share of firepower on that show also. There are times I would constantly ask them “do you have earplugs in. Do you have earplugs in?” There was a time, this is not on SG-1, this was on Atlantis with Jason Momoa. He was firing a G36K which is a German made assault rifle. The first take went great. The second take, I think it was Andy Makita was directing that episode, it was inside the ship and he forgot his earplugs. I didn’t ask and as he comes around the corner, his co-star unloads and he just drops the G36 and his hands go right here [covers his ears]. I thought “did he get hit by a casing or something like that?” I said, “that’s weird because it’s a P90, it ejects down, from his co-star. He whispers in my ear, he goes, “my ears are ringing Rob. I forgot to put my earplugs in. Don’t tell anyone.” I said “okay.” I said “yeah, I’m gonna change this G36, there’s a problem with the selector on it. I don’t feel comfortable with this.” So I basically covered Jason’s butt which was great because we became very good friends too. I’ll tell you the introduction of the P90.

David Read
Yeah. Jeremy Heiner wanted to know what led to the switch around season four of SG-1 and later in Atlantis. He’s got a PS90 and he loves it.

Rob Fournier
Oh, he does. Okay. When when we did the first episodes, they wanted the same firearms that they used in the Stargate movie, which was the MP5 and back then it was the alpha two model, the A2 model. We used everything from the A2 to the A5s and it all has to do with the select lever, the type of look it has and stuff like that, all made by the same company. I’m like, “they’re traveling to all these different planets, it’s a submachine gun round, it doesn’t have a lot of range and it’s not really meant for fighting in a built up area of trees and stuff like that and big open fields.” It’s a close quarter battle weapon. It’s made for SWAT teams or SEAL teams that are very close quarter. It has a great stopping power and all that but I’m like, “it’s the wrong weapon for this team. ” I tried to push it back in season two and season three. They’re like “we’re already invested. We have all these rubbers and replicas made for all these SG teams.” And I said, “okay.” At the start of season four, we had a big production meeting, I think we were two weeks out from doing the first episode and we had the P90s. I think we purchased 10 of them. It was extremely hard to get because being French [the manufacturer], I had to speak French to Belgium, back and forth with the company. Luckily because of that, they said “look, we’ll give you the firearms, but they can’t be used in bad taste. They have to be a positive effect.” I call it the “Top Gun theory.” Finally we got the firearms in. I think we got them about a month before we went to that meeting. I’m like, “you know what, I’m going to bring this firearm, obviously clear and safe, to the production meeting. I had the case with me, and we’re going through the script and this and that and then they mentioned “Oh, Carter and O’Neill both have their MP5s and Michael Shanks who just has a sidearm and he’s always carrying a pelican case of some sort.” He always had some type of scientific equipment and stuff like that. A lot of times Teal’c would carry his staff. One of the producers, I think it was Brad Wright, goes, “Rob, just a question. What’s in the case behind you?” I’m like, “Ahah! I have a firearm here and I think it’s going to be perfect for our team.” I basically pulled out the P90. Andy Makita was sitting there, Martin Wood was there and Alex Pappas, who’s a very good friend of mine who’s retired, he was also there, all the ADs were there. I just showed them “look guys, it’s clear and safe.” They’re like, “oh, that’s incredible.” I explained to them basically everything about the P90; its stopping power, its range, its mobility, its compactness and it’s user friendly. They’re like, I can’t remember which producer it was, maybe it was Robert Cooper, he says, “that’s great, do they have real ones out there we could use?” He thought we had fabricated that out of nothing. I said, “nope, this is a real firearm. We have 10 of them ready to go.” And they’re like, “really?” I said “well yeah, it’s ready for the show. We can do a transition where they get the P90s introduced in season four.” They loved it. From then on, it’s stuck. We still used different firearms. We had MP5s, we had the Saw, the M60, we had numerous types of firearms, but the SG-1 team, that was their benchmark. They loved it because I help introduce a certain type of holster, not a holsterm a sling. Rick was always doing this right [relaxes], he would just sit there and listen. They loved it because it was always in front of them, it wasn’t long, it didn’t have sharp edges. They fell in love with it right from day one. But before we even got to that I had to train the cast again because now there’s a new weapon system. I think it was two or three days before, all the cast were in town. I said,” look, give me two hours with the cast. Give me the gate room, I’ll do it in the gate room. Give me some production assistants to lock the doors. I want full lockdown. Just me and the cast, no one else. I’m going to run them through the dry training. and then we’re going to test fire,” because we did a lot of firing in that gate room as you know. I had the four cast I said “okay, we’re going to fire some firearms here, all P90s. You’re going to load on your own, you know how to do it. I’ve just showed you for the last few hours.” They all loaded it, they chamber the round, they put it on automatic and they’re like, “well, what about the brass?” I’m like, “don’t worry about the brass, just don’t wear sandals or flip flops in here, that’s all.” They loved it. They all unloaded their magazines and they pulled the magazines out. I trained the actors on everything, how to clear misfires and jams, how to change mags. They were self sufficient. As they fired the weapon more and more and more they got more comfortable with it. They knew the effects because we used everything from full loads which is a huge muzzle flash, you’re looking at two feet out of the P90, to a quarter load which was about six inches. Sometimes we had some very noise [restricted] environments that there was bylaws where they can [only] achieve a certain decibel rating. But anytime we’re in the stage, people love the full loads. They’re more reliable, they’re cleaner burning, they look great on camera and the muzzle flash is so big that a lot of times the film would cover multiple flashes, compared to HD today, which pretty much captures all of it. A lot of times the quarter loads were so minut they would have to enhance it by CGI. They had something at least, I had options for them. Then we had these high end rubbers that were made for the actors when they weren’t firing and we had really good replicas. I actually had three of everything, three replicas for each actor, three rubber guns for each actor, because sometimes there was a stunt double, or there was a second unit filming that day and I had to match them one-to-one. There couldn’t be anything different. Amanda liked to have her weapon a little bit higher, so she could flip it into her shoulder. Rick liked his a little lower. Chris didn’t care, he was like, “okay, whatever, it fits, it’s great” and all that. Michael Shanks would be “yeah, okay, Rob, I want it just off-centered a bit.” I’m like, “no problem.” I modified a lot of their slings and everything was great and stuff like that. It was as simple as “okay, we’re doing a stunt here” and I would unhook the real P90 and put on a rubber one. They’d go to do the stunt. It was nice, we had foam rubbers, we had hard rubbers, you had all different types. We had a whole team of Prop molders that were making everything and they did such a great job. I know that a lot of those rubber firearms are in various producers offices, or down in Hollywood or with the cast because when we did finish the show, they obviously wanted a lot of it for memorabilia right?

David Read
Absolutely. It’s non-functional.

Rob Fournier
It’s not functional. It’s just a piece of rubber.

David Read
You watch these shows, Westworld. The P90, you can see it everywhere now. It really caught on fire. Everyone’s recognizing the utility of that piece, they’re easy to handle. I’ve held one myself, they’re just right for the show. As we went into universe, you started expanding back out into some other pieces. I’m trying to recall if Universe even had P90s. Was there a reason for that?

Rob Fournier
I think a lot had to do with the production. The producers said, “look, we want to go a little bit different from SG-1” because they were inplanted, they already had I think, six or seven seasons in already?

David Read
Universe came when SG-1 and Atlantis were done.

Rob Fournier
When did Atlantis kick in?

David Read
Season 8 of SG-1.

Rob Fournier
Season 8, okay. When we had meetings with that, they said, “do you have anything else that’s not a P90 because it’s a benchmark for SG-1. I said “yeah, actually we do. We have thousands of firearms at our shop, why don’t you just come to us?” So I set up a meeting with all the higher ups and the directors for the first three episodes. I made a really nice display. I said, “look, these are the weapons that I think we should use, we have very good rubber versions of. They’re the latest and greatest.” They always wanted the high tech stuff. They didn’t want anything older, period peace weapon. The MP5, it came out in the 1960s. It was called Project 63. It’s been around a long time. Because they had so many replicas and rubbers that production had already purchased they didn’t want to stray away from that. But for their lead actors, they said “okay, we want an M4 with a grenade launcher on it. And we want this and we would like this, we’d like the muzzle flash out of this. But you’re gonna have to train the cast.” This is no problem. I said, “that’s why I’m here. I love training the cast.” It’s when you don’t have any time with them and they say, “okay, he’s a Navy Seal, but you got 10 minutes.” I’m like, “well, that’s a two hour, two day, two year program, and you want me to train him as a Navy SEAL in 10 minutes, you’re gonna get 10 minutes worth.” A lot of times they’ll push aside a certain training day. Sometimes we’d go to an actual gun range, but there was really no need for it. I said, “look, I just need one of the studio spaces.” Or I would take them out of town into a certain area that was private property and we’d fire blanks all day. There was really no need to fire live. What people don’t understand is blanks have virtually no recoil. It’s about one fifth of what an actual bullet does. There’s very little recoil. If you try to imitate that recoil on an automatic weapon, you actually can jam the gun. The guns are fine tuned with the gases involved, with the powder expanding and stuff like that, that if you try to imitate the recoil, you’ll actually absorb the recoil and you’ll jam the gun. I had to try and explain it to the cast, and they kind of look at you and they’re like, “well, I don’t get it.”, Some of them would try and imitate the recoil too much and they would definitely jam the gun. I said, “there’s a small extent you can do.” With the P90, it was such a powerful little firearm, that it actually gave recoil, even with the blanks. You didn’t have to do anything, you just had to point and shoot, Obviously point in a safe direction and fire but the actors didn’t have to imitate anything. All of our blanks are made down in Arizona, they’re custom made in a very controlled environment. We’ve been dealing with the same blank manufacturer since 1994, I think 94, 95. We’ve been dealing with him and now we’re the distributor for his blanks up here in Canada. It’s a fantastic company. I learned a lot on SG-1, in all the aspects of how many different…sometimes the single gunshot could be the most dangerous also, compared to firing thousands of rounds in a take. You have to be aware at all times of what’s going on. If I didn’t feel comfortable with something, I wouldn’t be rude or anything, I would say, “I would feel more comfortable if this actor was two feet this way, and we can push this actor up, so he’s not going to eat his empty casings, and no one’s gonna get hit in the face” or stuff like that. When an empty casing comes out, there’s obviously no bullet, but it it’s a casing with the primer and it has the propellant inside the powder. It gets hot. When it opens up the crimp, it can be sharp too. If you get nicked by it, it can cut you and stuff like that. There were times where I’m like, “nope, this doesn’t work” and stuff like that. I say, “I have to readjust, give me five minutes,” and they’re like, “Okay, Rob, you got five minutes.” I would readjust it. Sometimes we’d have 50, 60 firearms shooting in one sequence. My focus obviously was always the cast and I’d have other armorers handling the stunt performers or the background performers or the co-stars and stuff like that. Until I was satisfied everything was 100% we didn’t shoot, we didn’t fire any weapons. I said, “look, you want this done right and you want to get it in one take, maybe two.” The resets were quite long, especially with the squibs and reloading of ammunition and magazines. I said, just give me that five minutes. Trust me, it’ll work out great.” 100% of the time it worked out being great. Sometimes they’d want to change the camera angle and said, “we’re gonna do it again.” and there’s another hour and a half reset. Effects is hard at it, there picking up all the brass because now it’s a fresh sequence again. I’m there reloading magazines, or I have pre-loaded mags, or running bore brushes through the firearms. One thing that people don’t know, is with blanks, they are extremely dirty compared to a live round. When you fire a live round out of a weapon that’s not modified to fire blanks, 95% of the powder and everything goes out the barrel. Well, with the blank, a lot of it’s captured inside. A lot of powder, the burnt powder, the cordite smell that they have, is contained in the firearm, especially in the chamber area where all the action is happening. So people are like “Oh, it’s great. Yeah, I could do your job.” I’m like, “well, take that weapon apart. If you can take it apart and clean it and name all the parts in it right down to the spring on the bolt, and then put it together and do a function test. Then I might have you help me load mags one day.” I said “this is just the tip of the iceberg right here. There’s so much more to it than just loading a firearm and having it go bang on a film set.”

David Read
What would you do with all the brass? Would it get recycled?

Rob Fournier
Yes, we recycled it. It has to be cleaned, because they won’t take dirty brass. As we know, there’s black powder all over it and gunpowder, so we’d have to clean it all. There would be days on Stargate where I would feel like a garbage can, like a rubber made garbage can, to the top, before lunchtime. My boss loved it. He’s like, “well, that’s a good chunk of money right there.” But you had to read the scene and that’s where a good armorer would say, “okay, well, this is a big action scene. You have all these stunt players, you have all these cast.” I’m very good at judging, budgeting ammunition. It’s always a money thing in today’s world and even back then, but more so now. I would say “you know what, this whole sequence, I need 20,000 rounds” and they’re like “oh my god, 20,000 rounds” and I’m like “yeah, it’s in that garbage can filled to the rim right now. And luckily, I brought another 10 [thousand] just in case as a backup, and chances are, you’re going to use that 10 [thousand].” Sure enough, they’re like, “oh, we have 10.” I said “well, you got to go through the chain of command with the production manager, get the approval and say, ‘look, we want to use more ammunition. The sequences are going well, and the directors modified something or like that’.” I’ve only run out of ammo once and I had to send somebody down. It was on Atlantis. I’m like “oh there won’t be much fire in this” and then we had, I think it was Mario Azzopardi?

David Read
Okay. Season one?

Rob Fournier
Season one.

David Read
Childhoods End I think he did.

Rob Fournier
Well he came with a heavy Italian accent. By lunchtime, I was out of ammo and I sent for more and he goes “Rob, after lunch, ten times more than this. It will be much more firepower okay?” I went, “no problem Mario, coming in.” I brought in two more armorers, I brought in another 15,000 rounds. I got the approval with production. I said “look, Mario wants this and we’re humming.” I said “I missjudged this day for blank ammunition. I thought we were going to do maybe two or three takes and here we are in take seven and they’re still shooting out the Jaffa aircraft.” I’m like, “I need a lot more ammo” and stuff like that. I would never know with his facial expressions, with Mario, whether he was upset or happy. He kind of had one facial expression. At the end of the day, everything was safe. I think it was like an 18,000 round day. Strictly P90, very expensive ammunition, very different caliber. He comes up, he goes “Rob come here.” Everybody’s packing up and stuff like that, we’re wrapped, and I go by the video village and he goes, “you are a wonderful man.” He gives me a big hug and a big Italian kiss on the forehead and he goes, “that was a fantastic day.” I’m like, “I guess I did good. I guess he likes me.” It was tons of fun, right? You had to try and please people but at the same time, you had to be safety. Right? I wasn’t there to be friends with every single person, I was there to do a job. To this date, that’s still how I do it. Job first, safety first. Friends come second, third, fourth, whatever. Right?

David Read
Wow. Thank you so much for sharing these stories. It’s wild to hear how much is involved with it. It’s just not pointing and shooting a weapon, there’s all kinds of layers that have to be involved. I really appreciate you coming on to share those stories.

Rob Fournier
It’s my pleasure. I enjoy every minute of it.

David Read
Thank you, sir. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show on this end and I’ll be in touch all right.

Rob Fournier
Absolutely. Thank you David and have yourself a great day. And remember, Jaffa Kree!

David Read
Yes, that’s right. Be well.

Rob Fournier
Take care.

David Read
Rob Fournier everyone. Armorer on Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe. Really appreciate you tuning in, hope you’re enjoying the show. We have coming up, let me see here. I appreciate everyone who submitted questions, Rick Doner, Dan Ben, chrp90, we got to most of those. In the next couple of minutes here, we’re getting ready for Gary Jones. He’s going to host episode 199 with the entire DialtheGate team. We’re going to gear up for that. I appreciate you tuning in, hope you’re gonna stick around for that. My name is David Read for DialtheGate and we will see you on the other side.