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this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2026
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I was watching a movie the other day and it got me wondering... How do the movie sets prevent cell phones from actually dialing 911 when the actor needs to call them in the script.
No idea if this was used for any film, but you may make your own GSM "tower". Though it needs to be powerful enough that the phone won't decide to roam to something else, and that might be a regulatory issue.
Also could use a fake phone app. Or a fake phone...
With those resources you can get a custom SIM card for your custom tower (it's actually not super expensive for basic ass devices with some dozen meters range) and then fake absolutely everything, and it won't disrupt any real devices
Emergency calls ignore roaming settings and usually connect without checking subscription, no? Unless the SIM is so invalid the towers reject it explicitly. Or the phone is old and invalid, which is fucked up but a thing that's possible.
Almost forgot that the US doesn't have plain GSM anymore though, so there's that.
Emergency calls will go to your own carrier first, but if you have no SIM your phone will attempt to connect to any available carrier arbitrarily which offers emergency services and that carrier will accept the emergency call
That's why faking your own carrier with your own basestation and using a custom SIM to make your phone use it would prevent real emergency calls. (beware, doing it to others' phones is very illegal)
"Fire at studio, 9000 dead cause emergency services couldn't be called."
Fake phone app that looks exactly the same. Or literally just a video. Or even just visual effects, with the phone being a green screen.
This, screens are hard to capture on film, even modern smartphones, so even if actors use "real apps" during filming it's always edited in post
For 911 calls, and most calls actually, they almost never show the screen of the phone being dialled anyway. They just show the actor tapping at the phone vaguely while the camera shows them from the side or the back with an intense expression, and then suddenly they hold it up to their ear and then they act like they're talking to 911.
And if for some reason they really do have to show the screen, they will just use a non-functional phone with a fake app or graphical effects in post-production, the same way they make ghosts and dragons appear and spaceships come crashing out of the sky, etc. A phone screen is a trivial effort to fake.
I can't remember which show I was watching last night (tried a few of them and gave up on all cause everything is seemingly terrible nowadays).
But I commented because that thought specifically camemto mind since I watched them dial 911 exactly on the screen and press the green dial button and see the screen switch to "calling 911" or whatever it does which is what triggered my question.
Maybe airplane mode, if not a fake app. Doing it in effects would be the same effort of recreation with way more extra work for worse results. If it matches an actual dialers modern design, rule of least effort would say airplane mode or similar. Else, fake dialer.
Even in airplane mode most phones can dial 911 (switching the radio on)
Movie Magic
They could just not show them pushing the buttons. Just go "beep boop boop" "hello 911 what is your emergency"