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By Iain Harrison
Chris Cheng is the self-desribed IT geek and winner of Top Shot Season 4 That self-deprecating description belies the fierce competitive streak that underpins his success on the show, despite his lack of formal training.
May 07, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
This week's finale opened with the competitors returning to the house to be welcomed by a pretty lavish spread. Up till this point, people cook for themselves or their team mates, but the final four get treated to a meal that's put together by the set caterers and a celebratory bottle of booze makes its way into the house.
May 02, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
This season of Top Shot has seen a gradual introduction of Point-of-View cameras to capture the action from the shooter’s perspective. Although not as impressive in their own right as the high speed Phantom cameras, these cameras have added another perspective to the show that illustrates what’s going on as the competitors press the trigger. One of the reasons the show is so expensive to produce is the size of the crew needed to service so many pieces of recording equipment, although it wouldn’t be anywhere near the same viewing experience without them. The footage this week of cases being ejected from the M1919 was a case in point, as was the exploding shaving cream can as it spun ribbons of white foam in a graceful arc during the elimination challenge.
April 25, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
This week’s show saw the return of Jeff Gonzales who, like Craig Sawyer in previous episodes, qualifies as the Real Deal, and if you ever get the chance to attend one of his training classes, I guarantee you’ll want to take the opportunity. The first challenge had the competitors working out of a holster, which was a novelty for Top Shot and indicative that the comfort level of the producers is improving. If nothing else, the fact that the show has introduced a number of TV creative types to guns has to count as a check mark in the positive column.
April 18, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
There is so much that goes on behind the scenes when the filming an episode of Top Shot, such as obtaining experts to train the competitors. When Kelly was first approached by History to return as an expert on long range shooting, he naturally wanted to know what would be expected of him in order to put in the necessary research. Being the good engineering student that he is, his first order of business was to get some time behind an Accuracy International rifle, which meant a trip down from Seattle to see me. I’ve occasionally mentioned the unofficial TS alumni network—this was one of those instances where it came into play.
April 11, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
When I was contacted by the producers for this episode, I have to admit I was a little apprehensive being called in as the expert. Sure, I own a couple of the guns in question and have fond memories of some of their siblings from the British martial arsenal, but expert, I ain’t. So what do you do when you need the inside scoop and historical background on a Webley revolver? Simple, you contact Phil Schreier at the National Firearms Museum, and pick his brains, long before you get anywhere near a plane bound for California.
April 04, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
After the departure of Tim Trefren, falling to several well placed atlatl darts, the red and blue teams team found themselves with an equal number of members. I must confess, I have no idea why my friend Bob Vogel was chosen as the expert for this week, other than he’s an absolute ninja with any handgun, current World IDPA champion and all-round good guy. Come to think of it, those are probably sufficient qualifications for any of the current crop of shooting shows.
March 29, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
After the departure of Tim Trefren, falling to several well placed atlatl darts, the red and blue teams team found themselves with an equal number of members. I must confess, I have no idea why my friend Bob Vogel was chosen as the expert for this week, other than he’s an absolute ninja with any handgun, current World IDPA champion and all-round good guy. Come to think of it, those are probably sufficient qualifications for any of the current crop of shooting shows.
March 29, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
I mentioned some of the ways in which the mid season blahs might be countered in previous posts and this time around, the producers of Top Shot rolled out a gorgeous (and huge) example of a Victorian machinists' art. Bear in mind that that the 3.2-inch bag gun was made one at a time, and that each individual part was hand fitted to its neighbor over the course of assembly, making the guns incredibly expensive. Also, because of the charging system, there was no effective means of containing propellant gasses inside the breach. If you watched closely, you could see a puff of smoke escaping toward the teams during the challenge.
March 23, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
This week’s edition of Top Shot proved once again that a single brilliant performance isn’t enough to ensure a win. Instead, victory goes to the team that makes the fewest mistakes, even if you make a few mistakes of your own in the process.
March 14, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
This week's show opened with Terry Vaughan employing the skills he uses in his everyday life to try and instill a little unity to the dysfunctional blue team (he's a motivational speaker, amongst other things, in case you missed his bio), which seemed to have a positive effect, at least in the short term. At the practice range, I have to fault the editing as neither of the teams appeared to hone in on the critical aspect of the challenge to come—that of cocking and loading the crossbow quickly and smoothly. The shooting aspect would have been familiar to everyone (stock, trigger, sights), but no one apart from Tim Trefren was used to getting the crossbow into action. Unfortunately for him, his acknowledgement of this fact meant he sat out the challenge.
March 09, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
This week’s episode saw the welcome return of my friend Chris Reed to the fold, and I bet he got flashbacks as he walked up to the house. The competitors are shuttled around the property in blacked-out vans so that challenges in the process of construction are hidden from view until it’s time to go to work. So any time you get to see the process from the other side of the camera, it feels a little weird. The elimination challenge coach was 3-Gun phenomenon Taran Butler, and if you’ve never seen him run a Benelli, you’re missing one of the virtuoso performances of the practical shooting scene.
February 29, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
This week’s episode saw the welcome return of my friend Chris Reed to the fold, and I bet he got flashbacks as he walked up to the house. The competitors are shuttled around the property in blacked-out vans so that challenges in the process of construction are hidden from view until it’s time to go to work. So any time you get to see the process from the other side of the camera, it feels a little weird. The elimination challenge coach was 3-Gun phenomenon Taran Butler, and if you’ve never seen him run a Benelli, you’re missing one of the virtuoso performances of the practical shooting scene.
February 29, 2012
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By Mark Keefe
If you watched “Top Shot” last night, you got a glimpse of the greatest automatic rifle—notice I did not use the words “light machine gun”—of all time. That gun is the John Moses Browning-designed Model 1918 Browning Automatic Rifle. Browning actually created gas-operated self-loading firearms. Noticing the disturbance in the grass caused by the passing of a bullet out of the muzzle, Browning hooked a “flapper” onto the barrel of a lever-action that harnessed the expanding propellant gasses through a hole drilled in the barrel. He used the force of the gas to move a lever linked to the action to cycle it. That principal, what we call gas-operation, was applied to the Colt Machine Gun Browning designed in 1889, better known as the Model 1895, and later the Model 1914 called the “Potato Digger” and before eventually reaching the Browning Automatic Rifle.
February 22, 2012
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By Iain Harrison
Has it really been almost two years since I first became involved with Top Shot? Time has flown. The cast of Season 1 had no idea what lay in store from them as they assembled in a business hotel near LAX to go through the casting process for a show that most of us thought, secretly, had no chance of getting off the ground. Sometimes, it’s great to be proved wrong.
February 16, 2012
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