Whether its film or television, the process is extremely difficult and one of the most time consuming jobs out there. I work on a one hour drama, and while I don't have the most demanding job, its a guaranteed 14-16 hours a day 5 days a week. The current show I am working on had an episode about firearms not too long ago. As I recall, the writers (who are lesbian and very liberal by the way) got all the details correct and made good choices in firearms selection. Who F'd up ? Why the people who supplied the guns thats who ! Its supposed to be a family at the range before they go deer hunting. so, what choices in guns did we get ? A fake sigma, S&W .44 with a 3 inch barrel, and a .410 shotgun. Not what we asked for. But see, this this is Hollywood. Details like this are minor and left to the props department. Guys who usually have a collective I.Q. of 80. Is it the execproducers fault? No, is it the writers ? No, The director ? No,... The AD's, post production, associate producer, line producer....NO. These people have much much more worry about than some gun, which appears for all of two seconds, has a safety or not. It almost always a case of "Whats available?"
Trevor, be honest. Ok, so you spoke with one of those guys dressed up as a Clingon at Universal Studios Florida. Doesn't count pal.
RikWriter, your post couldn't be further from the truth. All three projects that I worked on as a Writers assitant were researched to death. How do I know ? Because I did the research. I can tell you anything you could possibly want too know about a 67 Shelby GT 350, Macrobiology, John Austin's Rule of Laws. All sorts of useless crap that I spent nights and days making sure to be exact and truthful. And no, it's more often a technical issue than a dramatical one. We would of loved to of used an original GT 350 when shooting on location in Hawai, but see, there just happened to be none around. You can't always get what you want.