Halyna Hutchins' Death by a Prop Gun

[hearthesilence]

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins is killed and director Joel Souza wounded after Alec Baldwin fires a prop gun on the set of Rust. They were either rehearsing or filming when it happened.

[domino harvey]

Horrible, what a multifaceted tragedy for both victims and survivors. Hard to imagine how anyone but especially someone as anti-gun as Baldwin is coping with this

[Toland's Mitchell]

Oh no, this is awful. I knew Halyna too. There is a long list of crew members who (or are at least supposed to) check real and fake weapons used on set to prevent these accidents. How can this happen? Shocking, tragic news.

[aox]

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins is killed and director Joel Souza wounded after Alec Baldwin fires a prop gun on the set of Rust. They were either rehearsing or filming when it happened.

Looking like there might have been live ammunition in the gun.

Maybe this should be its own thread? Could even be more broadly about on-set/production safety. I just have a feeling we'll be discussing this terrible incident more as the details float to the top.

[domino harvey]

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins is killed and director Joel Souza wounded after Alec Baldwin fires a prop gun on the set of Rust. They were either rehearsing or filming when it happened.

Looking like there might have been live ammunition in the gun.

Maybe this should be its own thread? Could even be more broadly about on-set/production safety. I just have a feeling we'll be discussing this terrible incident more as the details float to the top.

If there is sufficient discussion going forward, we’ll split it off into a dedicated thread

[swo17]

The most interesting thing I've seen out of this is those questioning why the industry is still using prop guns at all given how realistically the shooting of a gun can be portrayed through CGI

[hearthesilence]

Looking like there might have been live ammunition in the gun.

Maybe this should be its own thread? Could even be more broadly about on-set/production safety. I just have a feeling we'll be discussing this terrible incident more as the details float to the top.

I won't repeat the specifics until it's confirmed (I do no doubt the news outlets will be able to do that given the nature of the specifics), but allegedly there were labor issues including safety concerns leading up to this.

[knives]

The most interesting thing I've seen out of this is those questioning why the industry is still using prop guns at all given how realistically the shooting of a gun can be portrayed through CGI

Because they don’t want to anger Nolan. In all seriousness Robert Rodriguez makes this very point on the commentary to Once Upon a Time in Mexico basically arguing people who don’t use cgi for this as reckless idiots. I believe John Carpenter has also argued this for a few decades.

[swo17]

I can't think of a time that I've ever seen a gun shot in a movie and thought it looked fake to the point that I was no longer able to suspend my disbelief. What does bother me though is CGI fire

[senseabove]

I won't repeat the specifics until it's confirmed (I do no doubt the news outlets will be able to do that given the nature of the specifics), but allegedly there were labor issues including safety concerns leading up to this.

As reported in the LA Times now.

[knives]

I can't think of a time that I've ever seen a gun shot in a movie and thought it looked fake to the point that I was no longer able to suspend my disbelief. What does bother me though is CGI fire

You haven’t seen enough low budget Italian films my friend. As to fire, that and smoke are notoriously hard to animate to the point where they are often rotoscoped.

[hearthesilence]

I won't repeat the specifics until it's confirmed (I do no doubt the news outlets will be able to do that given the nature of the specifics), but allegedly there were labor issues including safety concerns leading up to this.

As reported in the LA Times now.

Yup, that's pretty much the gist of it.

[aox]

Lots of MAGAs online calling for Baldwin to be arrested for manslaughter

[domino harvey]

Lots of MAGAs online calling for Baldwin to be arrested for manslaughter

No, it’s dumber, they want him charged with murder because they don’t even know the difference

[MichaelB]

Although since he's one of the producers of the film, presumably the buck for alleged safety infringements on set does ultimately stop with him?

[swo17]

Lots of MAGAs online calling for Baldwin to be arrested for manslaughter

No, it’s dumber, they want him charged with murder because they don’t even know the difference

Seriously? The biggest MAGA guy I know was fervently defending gun rights the day after that Las Vegas festival shooting, claiming that this was the cost of freedom, worth it at any price. When did these people start being bothered by someone they don't know no longer breathing air? And how is it possible at this point that Alec Baldwin is having a worse year than Donald Trump?

[beamish14]

Although since he's one of the producers of the film, presumably the buck for alleged safety infringements on set does ultimately stop with him?

Ah, but this is when you absolve yourself of any blame and pass it onto the line/co-producer, the person who ostensibly does much of the work to ensure that sets are running smoothly.

[swo17]

I can't think of a time that I've ever seen a gun shot in a movie and thought it looked fake to the point that I was no longer able to suspend my disbelief. What does bother me though is CGI fire

You haven’t seen enough low budget Italian films my friend. As to fire, that and smoke are notoriously hard to animate to the point where they are often rotoscoped.

I've seen plenty, and I'm still not sure I agree. Yes, someone getting hit with a bullet can often look fake, but as long as one guy points a gun at someone else and there is a bang sound, the depiction of the gun being fired passes muster for me. If I wanted to see a completely accurate presentation of gunfire, I could just go hang out at a high school

[Brian C]

Although since he's one of the producers of the film, presumably the buck for alleged safety infringements on set does ultimately stop with him?

I mean, we could just wait for the full facts to come out and then decide. No reason to have an opinion regarding blame at the moment.

[domino harvey]

Warrant says Baldwin was handed a loaded weapon by an assistant director who said it was safe to use

[RIP Film]

I can't think of a time that I've ever seen a gun shot in a movie and thought it looked fake to the point that I was no longer able to suspend my disbelief.

I can, John Wick 3. Granted the whole movie is shooting.

Maybe a simpleton response to this, but how does live ammunition end up on set? I’d like to imagine the blanks are painted pink or something and given proper oversight. Absent of foul play it just seems avoidable.

[Thornycroft]

The details of this are absolutely horrifying. A single prop gun misfire should at minimum lead to an immediate review and tightening of the safety guidelines around their use on set. For the production to blithely soldier on after THREE accidental discharges is astonishingly negligent. This wasn't some freak accident, it was a production ignoring repeated, obvious warnings and red flags in order to finish the shoot within a 21-day schedule. There's no way to claim this was unforseeable when almost an entire department saw it coming and walked off the set.

There's been an unnerving uptick in reports of severe accidents and deaths on film sets in the last decade, a number of which should have already acted as a wake-up call for the industry to focus on production safety. It's galling that it should take an incident as high-profile and obviously preventable as this to finally provoke some form of reckoning.

Maybe a simpleton response to this, but how does live ammunition end up on set? I’d like to imagine the blanks are painted pink or something and given proper oversight. Absent of foul play it just seems avoidable.

According to the AP report an AD retrieved the prop gun from the armoury cart and brought it on set under the belief it was unloaded. That leaves a lot of questions (was the armourer present at the time? was the AD making assumptions he shouldn't have? what are the normal procedures and chain of custody for bringing prop guns onto that set?) but this is clearly the result of a rushed production where safety procedures were being ignored in order to stay on schedule.

[Lemmy Caution]

Maybe a simpleton response to this, but how does live ammunition end up on set? I’d like to imagine the blanks are painted pink or something and given proper oversight. Absent of foul play it just seems avoidable.

That's pretty much what I was thinking. Why would there be live ammo on set?
Really for safety, prop guns shouldn't even take live ammunition. Should be rigged so they take special smaller sized blanks, so real bullets cannot even be inserted. Further, any time a prop gun is being fired there should be no one in the sight-line in front of the gun. Even a fake gun or one with blanks shouldn't be pointed at anyone and fired on a movie set. The CGI-gun issue is interesting, but a full switch to that will take time, if it ever fully occurs.

[The Narrator Returns]

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

In the case of The Crow there was a projectile tip from a live round that had become stuck in the barrel weeks earlier and was ejected by the blank. That said, there's some ambiguity about the IATSE statement because "live" as used on sets can apparently refer to blanks.

I vaguely recall a Kitano movie that had some fake-looking CG gunfire, but I can't find anything through Google, and given that firearms enthusiasts will complain about any inaccuracy in a movie, that means my memory is probably playing tricks on me. Actual firearms are so heavily restricted in Japan that they can't even be used for movies, so a lot of effort has been put into creating cap-based modelguns that look convincing when used but are incapable of actually firing anything. In the past the caps used flash paper instead of actual gunpowder, which resulted in a lot of older Japanese films having very distinctive pink muzzle flashes.