I heard from some American Revolution re-enactors that, during the filming of "Last of the Mohicans" (the movie came out in 1993), there was an idiot sound techie who wanted to place the microphone right on the edge of a cannon's mouth. There were plenty of re-enactors working as extras on the film, and they advised him to move the mike some distance away, but, no, *he* was the Sound Man and he therefore knew more about cannons than they ever would. When it was time for this particular shot, the extras contrived to call him over to deal with a non-existant problem, so that when the cannon went off, he wasn't wearing the headphones. His equipment was kind of ruined, but at least he wasn't rendered deaf by his foolishness.