Harrison Ford Could Have Died In Star Wars Set Incident, Court Hears (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader writes: While filming Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Harrison Ford almost died when he was crushed by a hydraulic door on the set of the Millennium Falcon. He was reportedly knocked to the ground and crushed beneath the heavy door when he walked on to the set not believing it to be live. The 71-year-old actor suffered a broken left leg. Prosecutor Andrew Marshall said the door "could have killed somebody. The fact that it didn't was because an emergency stop was activated," he said. The company responsible, Foodles Production, pleaded guilty to two breaches under health and safety legislation, one count under section two of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, which related to a breach of duty in relation to employees, and a second under section three, a breach over people not employed by the company. The lawyer for Foodles Production, which is owned by Disney, said the company would contest the level of risk involved on August 22nd at Aylesbury crown court.

Comments

Lockouts have you heard of them?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume Mr. Ford has not been around enough heavy equipment to that you consider it live unless you can see the lockout.

Re:Lockouts have you heard of them?

[lgw]

I assume Mr. Ford has not been around enough heavy equipment to that you consider it live unless you can see the lockout.

This was a movie set. There's basically 2 overriding rules about safety on a movie set:
* Don't depend on the actors to be smart enough, or paying enough attention, to get anything right.
* There's no excuse for injuring an actor. That's just about the worst thing you can be responsible for.

Everything potentially dangerous on a big-budget movie set is supposed to have a minder - both because the actors' full attention should be on their roles, and because it's a movie set, and dangerous-looking things are often props.

From the (one-sided) summary, this was a massive fuckup, on the order of having a real gun mixed in with prop guns, or carelessness with pyro.