Electrical Safety with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

I've had these photos done for a long time, but I totally forgot to post them on my blog!

In June, I spent four days in Red Deer doing some commercial shooting for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). They teamed up with the Canadian electrical utility companies to make an electrical safety training movie. This will be used to train emergency personnel across the entire country and beyond about electrical safety. I myself learned a lot about electrical safety during these four days! It was interesting!

My job was to capture the happenings on the set for a behind-the-scenes kind of look, and also to get them some high quality stills of each accident scenario that can be used in training materials, brochures, or campaigns.

There were numerous scenarios they were filming. The first scenario was a trackhoe driver who touches the overhead line with the trackhoe and electrocutes his colleague walking beside him.

They would pause filming for two minutes or less for me to get the shot they needed. Talk about stress! I had to set up all my lighting, find my angles, dial in all my settings and get the shot usually in less than 1 minute:

It was POURING RAIN the whole time, and it was SOOOO muddy that the van transporting some of the crew and actors got stuck in the mud. Good thing we had a trackhoe there to pull it out! Hahaha.

The next scenario was on a farm, where a farmer electocutes his son by backing up his auger into an overhead line.

Here is Doug from Fortis Alberta explaining to Rene (the director and production manager) and Shauna (the script writer) how a person's muscles react to this type of electocution.

Filming the scene when the farmer calls for help.

This is the official still for that scenario.

The next scenario was set after a storm where a fallen tree knocked down a power line. They actually brought out real utility workers, and they took down a REAL power line to use for the scene. This is him disconnecting the line from the pole.

Shauna the script writer explaining the scene to the actor Jesse who is playing the firefighter that arrives on scene.

Seconds before Ali, the cop actor, gets zapped.

The firefighter stops his partner from rushing in to help, preventing two casualties.

The next day was another scenario. This time it's a backhoe digging a trench hitting an underground power line. Call before you dig!!! 1-800-242-3447 Here they are digging the trench for the set.

Steve was happy to play an RCMP officer, but wasn't pleased that he had to lose his sideburns to conform to RCMP standards. Haha!

Filming the scene. And yes, it poured rain ALL WEEK!

Normally when you hit a line, you gotta stay in the machine until the electric utility workers arrive and make it safe. But if you have no choice (i.e. there's a fire) then the safe way to get out is to jump, making sure you never touch the ground and machine at the same time, and making sure your feet are together when you land, and especially, make sure you don't fall! If you fall you're in serious trouble. If you touch the ground and the machine at the same time, that is TOUCH POTENTIAL. The current will go through your body to your feet and into the ground. Very dangerous and very lethal.

This is the still they requested for the scene:

Once you have jumped off the equipment, you gotta shuffle your feet to prevent STEP POTENTIAL. Basically you keep your feet always touching each other, and never let your feet leave the ground. Otherwise, if the area is charged, you'll get a huge current up one leg and down the other.

The next scenario was young kids playing around a substation.

The ball goes over the fence, and the kid climbs into the danger zone. Still shot for this scene:

And Rene films the death.

My take on the death scene:

Then next was teenaged kids climbing an electrical tower. The guys at Fortis said there was probably around 300,000 volts held up by this tower. Not something you wanna mess with, huh?

Still photo for the scene:

The next scenario was a break-in at a power station. Apparently this is very common as copper theft is popular. Who knew?

As this video will be used across the nation for multiple utility companies, they had to use a generic label. Hahaha I had a good laugh from just how generic the sign was.

The utility worker explaining to the cop why he can't go in.

The final scenario took the entire fourth day to shoot. They saved the best for last! This involves a car accident with a power pole, causing a line to come down onto the car.

They actually installed like half a kilometre of power poles and line just for this film!

Here Rene is crashing the car into the guardrail. It took him three tries to get the kind of impact he wanted. I think he just really enjoyed crashing the car and wanted to do it over again for fun. LOL!

They then tied cable to the car...

...and ran it THROUGH one of the power poles...

... and pulled the car with a truck to ram it into the pole. Look at how much it bends the pole on impact! Wow!

Did some good damage to the car. Rene was amazed that the car still ran and drove fine after all that abuse.

It was SOOO cold and wet that week that there were FROGS on the highway! In the middle of prarieland Alberta! CRAZY!

Jody explaining to the family of actors how to simulate the impact of the crash.

The safety zone for an electrically charged area is a 10 metre radius from the grounding location of the current. So they are trying to instruct emergency personnel to stay 10m away.

How did I get this shot? I just used one of the tools I keep in my bag... a gigantic bucket crane! hahaha just kidding. It was super fun to use it to get the shot though. Not for those who are scared of heights though.

Danni the makeup artist applies the blood to the victims.

Filming the scene where Kris the actor playing a cop, gets zapped by touching the car.

Jesse the firefighter again stops the partner from rushing into the scene.

Steve and Jesse breaking into dance... Jesse said he feels like they should be dancing and stripping or something because they're wearing firefighter and police outfits. LOL.

Elissa demonstrating how to jump from an electrically-charged-car-that-is-on-fire. They used safety flares to generate the smoke.

The cast and crew for day 4 of shooting! It was a long, cold, wet day but super fun!

Hope you enjoyed viewing the different pace of photography.  I sure did!  Thanks for stopping by!