KEY POINTS:
A man waving a handgun around a North Shore school and wearing nothing but a nappy sparked a major police alert yesterday.
But after armed officers and detectives converged on a house near Westlake Boys High, they found the man was shooting only a film, as part of the 48Hours competition judged in part by Peter Jackson.
"This is the kind of thing that gets innocent people killed," said Inspector Jimmy Keenan. "This has caused a wasteful use of resources for what was just a film festival stunt."
Police got the call about noon and spent almost an hour sorting it out.
It was the second false alarm for police caused by film-makers.
About 5pm on Saturday officers raced to Video Ezy on Dominion Rd after reports of a robbery.
Police said they had received several notifications from festival film-makers, warning about where and what they were filming in case there were concerns.
48Hours involves about 500 would-be film-makers shooting a movie over one weekend.
Ant Simpson, Auckland manager of the competition, said one of the strict rules was that if teams planned to use imitation firearms in public they had to let police and the city council know.
