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Alec Baldwin killed a woman on set with prop gun (1 Viewer)

On another board, one of the members of Hutchins' union branch posts about the incident. I believe it's post #210 (use scrollbar at right) -- the relevant passage begins: "This is as good a place as any to dive into this. I’m a member of IATSE Local 600- the Cinematographer Guild. We’ve all lost a Sister in this accident ... This, from a member of the Camera Department of “Rust”"

 
Alec Baldwin ‘Rust’ camera crew walked off the set in protest before the fatal shooting (Los Angeles Times, 10/22/2021)

Burying the lede a bit. Deep into the article:

As the camera crew — members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — spent about an hour assembling their gear at the Bonanza Creek Ranch, several nonunion crew members showed up to replace them, the knowledgeable person said.

A member of the producer staff then ordered the union members to leave the set. She said if they didn’t leave, the producers would call security to remove them.

“Corners were being cut — and they brought in nonunion people so they could continue shooting,” the knowledgeable person said.

There were two misfires on the prop gun on Saturday and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”
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Deadline says:

“We cited everything from lack of payment for three weeks, taking our hotels away despite asking for them in our deals, lack of Covid safety, and on top of that, poor gun safety! Poor on-set safety period!” a member of the camera crew wrote on a private Facebook page. After the walkout, “They brought in four non-union guys to replace us and tried calling the cops on us.”
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LA Times says:

There were two misfires on the prop gun on Saturday and one the previous week, the person said, adding “there was a serious lack of safety meetings on this set.”
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If a gun misfires 3 times in a week, they're not having safety meetings, and they're not practicing industry-standard safety protocols... well, it's no wonder some of the crew had already quit. 

 
Sinn Fein said:
:shrug:

So has Caitlyn Jenner, and I don't recall people being morally outraged, or "taking sides" when she killed someone.
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That's because if you say anything negative about her you get cancelled.  Lefties and Righties are still fair game.

 
Runkle said:
Deadline says:

LA Times says:

If a gun misfires 3 times in a week, they're not having safety meetings, and they're not practicing industry-standard safety protocols... well, it's no wonder some of the crew had already quit. 
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Wow, that is horrible. Well looks like a wrongful death suit is in Baldwins future or maybe manslaughter charges if this was overlooked ?

 
Prop gun sounds like a real gun. Sounds like corners were cut on staffing requirements and this was the result. Sad for everyone. I dont think Baldwin is in the clear here though. Any gun capable of firing live rounds needs to be treated as such. 

 
The Baldwin memes right now are just incredible..😂 Lawd, the internet never disappoints. 

 
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eoMMan said:
You don't feel the least bit sad for the guy?
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I don't, if he as producer was choosing pennies over people. If as producer he had unqualified people handling firearms/ammunition I feel no sympathy. 

I feel sympathy for the victims, this is a terrible accident that I hope wasn't caused by negligence.

 
Dezbelief said:
I don't, if he as producer was choosing pennies over people. If as producer he had unqualified people handling firearms/ammunition I feel no sympathy. 

I feel sympathy for the victims, this is a terrible accident that I hope wasn't caused by negligence.
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This 1000% 

If his choices to cut corners led to this, lock his ### up. 

 
dickey moe said:
Alec Baldwin is a jerk but I still feel really bad for him (worse for the family of the victim of the accident). 
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Think about it.  If it were Tom Hanks he would never be getting mocked like Baldwin is on Twitter.  

Thankfully Trump is not on Twitter.

 
I'm not a fan, and from I have read, he's had some lapses of not being excellent to others.  However, if I saw him right now, I'd offer to give him a hug as a human being.  If it came to light later that he bears some responsibility for the accident, I still would not regret the hug. 

 
Runkle said:
At least 3 people must have screwed up for this to happen on any decently run set 
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The 3 I meant are the armorer, the actor, and the assistant director. And it sounds like this assistant director is going to be under a lot of scrutiny:

https://consequence.net/2021/10/alec-baldwin-shooting-crew-walked-off-set/2/

Two people who spoke to Consequence on condition of anonymity said that Rust’s assistant director Dave Halls — the person responsible for managing the production schedule and who police say handed the weapon to Baldwin — had a troubling history of ignoring safety protocols.

Sources tell Consequence that this is part of a pattern for Halls, a veteran assistant director who has worked on projects including Reno 911, Bones, and The Matrix Reloaded. One person who asked to remain anonymous said that she had twice filed formal safety complaints against Halls. Another person, who asked to be identified as ‘Jay,’ recounted several times that he said Halls ignored safety protocols.

In one instance when, “We did have a gun on set,” Jay said Halls consistently tried to either skip or hurry through the safety run-throughs. “I would want to have these safety meetings. I can show them [actors] that the chamber is empty, the magazine is empty, so they can be comfortable on set. I’m the only person who holds it, or maybe an armorer if you wanted a flashbang effect. The AD is supposed to check it each time, they are supposed to be the last line of defense. He would always roll his eyes. ‘Do we need to do a safety meeting?’ He would do it and he would be flippant. ‘Well guys, we’ve got a gun on set, same as always.'”

Most troubling to Jay, “There was one day the actress was aiming it at her head. He didn’t want to do safety meeting! It took a person from another department demanding the meeting to finally hold it. It shouldn’t be like that. It should be first and foremost safety.”

In another distressing example, Halls wanted to film a scene with pyrotechnics while the person authorized to set it alight was suffering from a medical emergency. “We had to do a fire effect, but you have to do a fire safety card that allows you to work with pyrotechnics. That person was having a medical emergency in the parking lot. [Halls] said, ‘Yes, it’s very tragic, we hope he gets better, can you just light this pyrotechnic?’ Looking at me in props. No, I’m not trained in that. A man is outside in an unknown condition having seizures. Finally, the fire safety officer said, ‘No, absolutely not, we will be waiting until we get a person that’s licensed to do this.'”

Jay added that Halls was responding to outside demands. “He’s feeling a pressure from a schedule that is unachievable. Trying to make people move faster than they should, especially for safety… There’s a joke on set, hurry up and wait. But we should not hurry up. We’re not curing cancer here. People should not be dying.”

The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s department is still investigating the shooting, but according to a search warrant obtained by the Associated Press on Friday, Halls was the last person to handle the gun before handing it to Baldwin. According to detectives, the gun was one of three that the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez, had brought to set. Halls took one of guns and brought it to Baldwin, unaware that it was loaded. Hutchins was shot in the chest and director Joel Souza, who was standing behind her, was wounded in the shoulder.
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Deadline adds:

Even before Rust went into production, a number of armorers turned down the gig citing concerns about the budget of the film and the sheer amount of firearms to be utilized, we hear.
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The detailed affidavit claims Baldwin was handed one of a trio of prop guns on a nearby cart by an assistant director and told the prop was a “cold gun” that did not have any live rounds in it. Baldwin fired the prop gun, hitting Hutchins at close range and then Souza with the blast. Indicating that all three prop guns were prepped by the on-set armorer, the AD “did not know live rounds were in the prop gun,” says the document from Cano.
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A video depicting Rust costar Jensen Ackles talking about gun training on the set of the film Rust has surfaced.

The clip was made between Oct. 15-17 during Ackles’ appearance at a fan event in Denver for his long-running CW show Supernatural.

In the video, Ackles allegedly says, “I’ve got a 6 a.m. call tomorrow to have a big shootout. They had me pick my gun, they were like, ‘Alright, what gun would you like?’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know.’ and the armorer was like, ‘Do you have gun experience?’ I was like, ‘A little.’ And she’s like, ‘Okay, well, this is how you load it, this is how we check it and make sure it’s safe.'”

Ackles added that he was told by the armorer that she was “going to put some blanks” into the gun. He was then instructed to “fire off a couple rounds” at a distant piece of land.

“I walk out and she’s like, ‘Just make sure you pull the hammer all the way back and aim at your target,’ I was like ‘All right, I got it.’”

There is no evidence that Jensen was part of the scene that involved the fatal shooting. The actor has yet to comment publicly on the accident or the video of his gun training comments, which may factor into future legal determinations on whether proper instruction was given to the cast members on the safe use of firearms.
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CNN story now saying crew member told him it was a "cold gun" before Baldwin took it. Sounds like some serious #### ups going on by people on the set is where the problem will lay.

 
Runkle said:
"Live" in this context means anything that goes bang. Blanks are live ammo. 
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I read a speculative post from someone claiming to have experience in the Hollywood prop industry.  

The basic claim was that using real guns with blanks increases the liability insurance for a production company substantially vs using fake guns. Studios and production teams rarely go this route as it's way more expensive and no real payoff vs cgi.

For a small budget production to use real guns with blanks, not have a certified crew member present and have live rounds on set is a series of ####ups that may be criminal. 

 
Runkle said:
The 3 I meant are the armorer, the actor, and the assistant director. And it sounds like this assistant director is going to be under a lot of scrutiny:

https://consequence.net/2021/10/alec-baldwin-shooting-crew-walked-off-set/2/
Click to expand...


Definitely trending toward AD being the culprit if all early reporting is accurate. Still hard for me to feel much empathy for Baldwin given his ####bag past and his persistent condescending ####posting on the topic. Empathy hits zero if he had any hand in the reportedly crappy corner-cutting culture on this set.  

Will be interesting to see things shake out. 

 
Cowboysfan8 said:
Ugh

Why would there be actual live ammo (casings that had primers powder and real bullets put in them) be anywhere near a movie set ? 

Jesus 
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Not a movie making guy, but cgi cost significant money from what I understand.  There are always going to be low budget films out there that have to do things the old, less expensive way.  That means they have to have stricter safety precautions though, and it sounds like they didn't here.

 
Cowboysfan8 said:
Allow me to rephrase 

Is there any reason a movie such as this one being filmed would have actual rds with primers, powder and lead bullets in them on set?
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We don't know what they had on set. It could have been a blank, those are used on some sets. A blank is easily lethal.

 
Foosball God said:
Not a movie making guy, but cgi cost significant money from what I understand.  There are always going to be low budget films out there that have to do things the old, less expensive way.  That means they have to have stricter safety precautions though, and it sounds like they didn't here.
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I would have guessed the insurance involved in having a real gun on set would offset CGI costs. 

 
Cowboysfan8 said:
:lol:

all I’m asking is, would it be common for there to be actual bullets on a movie set

I don’t know how to ask it any differently 
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A real bullet should never be on a movie set.

From what I’ve read on Reddit posted by several people claiming to be involved with movie making, a blank would be referred to as a “live round”. So calling it a live round does not mean it had an actual bullet in it.

What‘s hard to fathom is how paper wadding/and or a wax cap would be enough to go through her body and hit the guy as well. What would make the most sense to me, would be if it was exactly the same thing that happened with Brandon Lee. A homemade squib was used that still had a primer charge in it and an actual bullet was discharged out of the casing and stuck in the gun. Subsequently, a blank (which had a much larger powder load in it) was fired without anyone verifying the barrel was cleared and the blank fired the bullet out of the gun.

Reports are that the armorer is only 24 years old but is the daughter of some legendary Hollywood armorer.

 
Summer Wheat said:
Wow, that is horrible. Well looks like a wrongful death suit is in Baldwins future or maybe manslaughter charges if this was overlooked ?
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This seems totally unlikely. 

 
Max Power said:
Let's be realistic. A blank doesn't kill one and injure a second at distance. 
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I'm saying we don't know the situation yet. We don't even know the distance, this was a rehearsal and they may have only been a few feet away looking at the setup.

Could have been a previous obstruction in the barrel that a normal blank forced out. (squib load)

Could have been a homemade blank with too much powder that they were told was safe but wasn't. 

Could have been a flash explosive charge to look like muzzle fire on camera, but had something too solid got in the mix.

Could have been a normal blank fired at too close a range to a piece of equipment or a plexiglass screen, and that's what broke, went through her and lodged in him.

Could have been intended to be a prop round inserted into the revolver so it looked like the cylinder was full in closeups, but someone screwed up and left some or all of the powder in the prop. Someone might have bought a box of real rounds, removed the powder from them to make them props, but got the mixed up in process and one slipped through. 

We don't know yet. 

 
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The gun misfired what did it say upthread?  3 times in the last week?  Seems not at all unlikely that it was a blank that discharged a previously lodged obstruction.

 
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