The prop gun police are forensically examining following the bizarre film clip death of actor Johann Ofner was loaded with blanks, according to hip-hop band Bliss N Eso.
The father of one, hailed as a "true angel" by his girlfriend, died after being shot in the chest on Monday while filming the music video at underground Brisbane CBD bar, Brooklyn Standard.
The scene, depicting a robbery at a poker game, was to be the last filmed after a week-long shoot and the only one to feature weapons.
Bliss N Eso's management say they engaged an award-winning production company to make the clip for their song Friend Like You.
That company hired a licensed and accredited stunt company, which employed the 28-year-old Gold Coast actor and stuntman, along with a licensed armourer who was on set to monitor the four firearms used.
"Johan was tragically fatally injured when a prop gun was discharged as part of filming a scene," the management group said.
"The exact cause of Johann's fatal injury is still to be confirmed but as the gun was loaded with blanks, not live ammunition, the cause was not a bullet or live round."
Police would not confirm the offending weapon was a real firearm or not, with live or blank rounds, while they conduct an investigation which they expect to take several weeks.
Forensic officers are poring over CCTV footage shot during the production of the film clip as well as that of the production itself.
The investigation will focus on whether workplace health and safety laws were followed.
Brisbane Regional Crime Coordinator Acting Detective Supterintendent Mick O'Dowd says it will be some time before ballistics tests are completed and it could also take weeks to interview everyone on set at the time.
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance says the death will spark a review of the film safety code, which is not legally binding but sits alongside enforceable workplace health and safety laws.
Theatrical armourers have also questioned whether the standards for licensing of weapons on film sets are stringent enough.
Veteran gun experts John Bowring and Gideon Marshall, who have decades of experience supplying weapons for film and TV productions, hope the tragedy sparks an overhaul.
Just a few hours before he died, Mr Ofner uploaded a video to Instagram of props for the clip, including two guns and stacks of cash, and made an apparently light-hearted reference to "faulty props".
Friends have remembered Mr Ofner - due to feature in Channel 9 reality series Australian Ninja Warrior later this year - as an adventurous hard-worker who loved his daughter and had a lust for life.
His grief-stricken girlfriend, Kati Garnett, took to Instagram to pay tribute to the man she described as "the love of my life".
"I don't know what I'm going to do without you, the best people are always taken from us, you were a true Angel," she wrote under a picture of the couple embracing.
"I love you so much forever and ever."
