Rust

JAMedia said:
I would agree that the Producers and armourer should be held responsible. The former set up the processes and running of the production, and the latter is specifically responsible for the weapons. Though, you can't blame the actor. (the blur here is the actor is also a producer) There should not have been live ammunition on the location (let alone the set) There is no way the actor could have determined if the round was live or dummy without completely unloading the gun and checking every round.
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I don't hold the actor responsible for personally checking the ammunition. But apparently it is standard practice to make sure that the armorer shows you the contents, whether or not the gun is loaded, when they hand you the weapon. And it should be the armorer, not the AD. And then you're supposed to keep the weapon pointed at the ground when not practicing with it. You're not supposed to point it at anyone. And you're not supposed to put your finger in the trigger guard. That's what John Brawley told me and that's what I've read in interviews with other seasoned production veterans like Michael Shannon.

And people with more seniority and more power on set have greater responsibility to maintain safety standards. Baldwin had the most seniority and power there. He received the weapon and used it in ways he shouldn't have.

Clearly, the armorer made the biggest error and is at greatest fault. But the reason for the safety precautions to be taken by the actor is as an additional backstop, or in case of a misfire, etc.

I think that the prosecutor brought bad charges against Baldwin and should have accused him instead of violating set safety protocols.
 
Doug Bee said:
No. Weapons should be handled like they're loaded with live rounds even when they are used as props on film sets.
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Generally agree.


Doug Bee said:
Three decades of on actual set experience working with many armorers. They all shake the dummy rounds or show you in some way that the rounds can't fire.
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I have four decades of firearms experience in military and civil situations, More off the range than on. Not all, in fact most dummy rounds I have come across do not rattle.
Also you mentioned plastic dummies... I have seen plastic rounds that are live rounds. (OK it was a special case but they exist)


Doug Bee said:
It wasn't a rehearsal. It was a line up for camera. This is different to a rehearsal.
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Completely irrelevant as regards needing rounds in the prop.


Doug Bee said:
Yes. There should not be live rounds anywhere near a film set.
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That is the crux of the matter and purely down to the armourer.

Doug Bee said:
And the producers that hired her, and the AD that took HER property without her knowledge and the actor for accepting the gun from someone other than the armorer and the actor for not checking the weapon was safe to use and for then pointing it at a person. She was told that she wasn't allowed to exclusively be an armourer any more half way through the show, she now had to help out the props department and was elsewhere doing her "other" job. The producers shouldn't have hired someone so inexperienced as to accept that change to her job and she shouldn't have left the weapons out of her control. She has responsibility sure, but she's a very young person doing her second job and then being told to only do it half the time. Producers shouldn't get to blame her for putting her in that position either.
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So the Producers and the armourer are at fault. No two ways about that.



Doug Bee said:
Any of the three people responsible could have stopped her death. The Armourer should have had control of the weapons. The AD shouldn't have picked it up. The Actor shouldn't have accepted it when handed to him. If any of those three were doing their job the way they're supposed to then any one of them could have prevented this. It's not just the armourer.
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It is the Armouer primarily. There should not be live rounds anywhere near the location. .


Doug Bee said:
I care very much about safety on set. I'm disappointed you're reading that as a persecution of an actor. We in the camera department are the most likely to be killed or injured. More than stunts.
It's up to us ALL to take individual responsibility for our own safety. If I see unsafe or unconventional use of firearms on set I say something instantly, loudly. The actors aren't absolved of being safe.
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If you are taking that route, then the camera person should have called a stop on the set-up as unsafe. I would not have stood in front of a gun like that without seeing it was empty myself. So had the cameraperson done it properly this would not have happened....


Doug Bee said:
Range knowledge isn't as relevant as the safety conventions that are followed by all. The film set isn't special. It's a workplace. It has very well established protocols and norms for the safe use of firearms. Three people didn't follow those conventions and protocols.
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Agreed. Range safety isn't relevant here. It is a different scenario and there are no live rounds.... (not to say there are no pyrotechnics and explosives though)

Doug Bee said:
I have zero experience using weapons on a range. I detest firearms. I do have 30 years of experience working with them on set though and have been present for two firearms accidents on set, one of them was with myself.
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I have little experience of firearms on a film set. I do have 40+ years experience of real firearms on ranges, and real world use in military and police type use on and off ranges. I have sen very few negligent discharges (3 I think) in all that time. Though I have been shot at a few times :-)
I do not detest firearms, they are working tools, but the gun culture in the US scares the crap out of me.

Doug Bee said:
The first was a weapon discharging blanks, The actor firing was meant to be shooting another actor. The angle was tricked for camera so the weapon would look like it was firing at the actor but was safely pointing elsewhere. This was adjusted in the LINE UP. In the take the actor forgot and was "acting" and shot the blank right at the actor. Luckily he was far away and all that happened was he got some wadding in his eye and a trip to hospital for washing it out.
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People unfamiliar with blanks don't realize that some blanks do fire a projectile. I.e. wadding. Also as anyone who has seen any crime/police drama, if you are close to a dischasrge from a firearm (live or blank) there is flame, blast and powder grains. blanks can blind or deafen.
BTW in this case Line-up or rehearsal is irrelevant.

Doug Bee said:
The second time I was in a take when the actor decided to discharge his weapon at a different time than rehearsed. He had 1/4 load blanks and discharged the weapon right near my face. I had the ejected shell in my eye and was lucky to not had something worse. That reasonably well known network actor was fired instantly by the way.
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I can see why you don't like actors with guns. Depending on the situation, Education (with a vengeance) might have been appropriate so he learns from the mistake. Though as I don't know the details, firing on the spot seems OK too.


Doug Bee said:
This was a tragic chain of three people not doing their jobs properly, operating safely and working against all norms and conventions. That includes the actor who was also a producer that was a part of creating the working culture on set that allowed this to happen. Actors shouldn't get a free pass because they're "acting". He was the last final safety check after a string of failures in protocol.He's not more responsible than other two. They all are equally responsible. And maybe he is a little more because he's also a producer, though it was likely a vanity credit and he wasn't meaningfully a producer.
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I take your point and understand why you are blaming the actor. For me, the primary failure was the armourer. Then the producers and then the AD then the actor. The blur is the actor was a producer. IT comes down to there should have been no live rounds at the location. The blanks should have been locked away (and treated like love rounds) and dummies should only have been in the prop when actually needed for live filming. Or rehearsal of shots where the actor is loading/unloading the prop. That comes down to procedures, and you can blame the producers and armourer.

That the armourer was young and had little experience is no mitigation for the errors that took place. Given that she came from a family of experienced armourers, she should have known better and walked when procedures were not adhered to. However, the armourer should not at all had any live rounds at the location. The reports I saw (posted in this thread) would suggest that the armourers store was generally a mess, not secured (locked) with live rounds mixed in to the dummies all over the place. (was she set up? there were a lot of unhappy people on the set)

I would have thought that a location like that, set up especially for shooting [sic] westerns, would have had a purpose built armoury as 99% of films shot there will be using firearms and weapons.
 
Nope. Should not have used real weapons, then the bullets on set would not have mattered, nor any of the other mistakes. But since they did use real weapons, and Baldwin knew this, he disregarded his responsibility and was wreckless for aiming it at Hutchins. No one else did this.
 
Your experience with live rounds in a military context doesn’t matter.

By your arguments, I can tell you have not worked much in narrative drama and you have not so worked in the US on narrative drama. You are seeing this through the optics of your own firearms experience which is not the way they do things in Hollywood. I say this because you keep honing in on the wrong issues. The issue isn’t how did live rounds get on set. It’s how did three individuals who all have a responsibility to verify a weapon is safe not do their job

My perspective comes from working in the US on narrative drama.

You are totally missing the point re live rounds.

The actor should know if his gun is safe or not. The onus is on them.

The only way they can know if the gun is safe is if they check it themselves while the armourer is present, or if the armourer shows him it is safe.

This actor is very experienced. He specifically received firearms training for this movie. He has also been on many sets with firearms. The same conventions I’m talking about here would be equally familiar to him as they are to me.

The way I’ve always seen it done is that the armorer pulls each round out and shakes it, where it makes an audible rattle. Everyone knows it is safe. If it is some other form of dummy bullet then by whatever means necessary it is demonstrated to be safe. They do this every time they hand the weapon to the actor. Depending on the staging and show, the armorer is always present when weapons are with actors and as soon as they are no longer required for camera, they are removed from the actors. Next time the actors receive their weapons the exact same process occurs again. Checking each bullet and verifying they are dummies by whatever means necessary.

If someone slipped in a live round or one of your precious plastic rounds, then this fail safe check would reveal it is a live round and a DP would not be dead.

The actor did not follow very well established conventions and protocols. He just accepted a weapon handed to him was safe without checking it. Oh and he also broke another cardinal rule and pointed a weapon at a person which was not required for the line up

That is just one egregious example of not following protocols.

The AD should never have picked up the weapon and should never have declared it safe (cold gun) and should never have handed it to the actor.

The armorer should never have lost control of her weapons.

You are speculating about live rounds a lot but we do not know how those rounds got onto set. It’s a problem that they are but if they had followed established protocols it would have been picked up

She may or may not be responsible and that is a serious problem.

But if the armoured, actor and AD has followed protocol, they would have detected the live round and a DP would not be dead.

The AD should not have called for the weapon on a line up (which is also probably why the armorer was not present as it was not a rehearsal and it was not a take.

Remember this was not a take with the actor acting and being lost in the job of acting. It wasn not a rehearsal where he was focussed on performance.

It was a line up. That means they were checking the physicality of the camera / actor staging and trying to determine where he should point a weapon that would not have been firing during this set up. He had no requirement to pull the trigger.

And stepping out to see this in context.

This happened after lunch. Nothing had been shot that morning because the camera department had quit that very morning largely because of TWO instances where firearms had discharged when they should not have.

I mentioned earlier, I have been on US drama shows where that was an instant dismissal for the person responsible.

The camera department had formally complained and nothing was done. So they walked that morning. They waited for a new camera department to arrive and started after lunch. Only the Steadicam operator stayed as a favour to help Hutchins line up the shot until a replacement arrived.

So the actor would have known that the camera department quit.

I am certain he would have known why.

This set had major red flags leading up to this day and still those well established protocols were not followed and a DP was needlessly killed.

This was preventable. This was not an accident. It was lazy and reckless filmmaking.
 
Doug, pretty good summation. A few procedural corrections: you had mentioned nothing had been filmed that dayprior to the incdent, because of the camera dept. walking in the morning. The replacement crew started coming in at 7:30 a.m. and work began shortly thereafter. There were several hours of filming up to lunch, and the incident occurred after the return from lunch. B camera/Steadicam operator Reid Russell wasn't waiting for a replacement, he remained on the production independently of the other crew that left.

I myself wouldn't put much effort into distinguishing a lineup from a rehearsal in this case, as they were working on the mechanics of the gun draw and how the light was hitting it, so an actual metal gun (vs rubber replica) was preferred and likely requested. That need put it somewhere between a rehearsal and a lineup. The point of whether Baldwin was performing or not at that time is somewhat moot.

Ultimately, there is nothing that we can possibly say about the way that the film industry recognizes and implements gun safety protocol that will change the mind of individuals who have been trained that the person handling the gun is the first, last and only person responsible for it. I have yet to see anyone change their position on this, and have given up that battle.
 
Doug Bee said:
Your experience with live rounds in a military context doesnât matter.
By your arguments, I can tell you have not worked much in narrative drama, and you have not so worked in the US on narrative drama. You are seeing this through the optics of your own firearms experience, which is not the way they do things in Hollywood.
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My experience is military, civil and film making. Though not in the US.
Yes, my experience does matter because it is far wider than yours. I am not viewing it from a single standpoint.

BTW it wasn't my "precious plastic bullets" YOU brought them up and made an incorrect, possibly fatal, assumption about them.
You seem to have limited experience in one field only.
You have made several assumptions in this case that could have been fatally wrong.
 
CharlesPapert said:
Ultimately, there is nothing that we can possibly say about the way that the film industry recognizes and implements gun safety protocol that will change the mind of individuals who have been trained that the person handling the gun is the first, last and only person responsible for it. I have yet to see anyone change their position on this, and have given up that battle.
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I disagree that the actor shares no responsibility. I don't say he is the only person responsible.
 
Thank you Charles. I might be misremembering from what I read. I was under the impression that although they had an early call, nothing could be done because they did not really have a camera department till near lunchtime when the replacement crew started arriving. I thought had read that the Stedicam op hung around as a favour to Hutchins but was intending to leave when a replacement arrived. I though I had read that in the ops own words.

I haven’t read it since it was published but you can read all 551 pages of the actual police report. It’s pretty detailed. It also includes the FBI testing.

https://deadline.com/wp-content/uplo...d_Redacted.pdf

There is a lot of contradictory information. For example the A dolly grip says he saw the armorer hand the weapon to the AD, which is not what is the accepted version of events. You also get all the text messages, the emails from the camera crew in the lead up.

There’s a few valid explanations for why there might have been live rounds on set. There’s also contradictory statements from the props master and the armorer as well as a history of tension between them leading up to the incident. The armorer was asked to do more to help props with props stuff and do less gun supervising for example and she had asked for more time to do her primary job. Her secondary job of helping props meant she was junior to the props master and yet was meant to be senior when it came to weapons.

It sounds like she was the props master ordered the dummy bullets that the armorer was loading and when the props master went and checked after the incident she found five live rounds in the case of dummies.

The director also gives some contradictory statements as well but he also talks about how the actor was taught to not point at anyone.

None of this would have happened if those three people responsible had done their jobs. The armorer, the AD and the actor.

Also I would love to understand why my posts have garbage characters sometimes. Is that a feature of this forum?
 
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Some good news. Hollywood has the good sense and grace to let this rest so the family an get on with their lives. Oh, wait. Who am I kidding? "Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy is working on a documentary about Baldwin and the “Rust” movie accident, Variety has confirmed."
 
Doug Bee said:
Thank you Charles. I might be misremembering from what I read. I was under the impression that although they had an early call, nothing could be done because they did not really have a camera department till near lunchtime when the replacement crew started arriving. I thought had read that the Stedicam op hung around as a favour to Hutchins but was intending to leave when a replacement arrived. I though I had read that in the ops own words.

I haven't read it since it was published but you can read all 551 pages of the actual police report. It's pretty detailed. It also includes the FBI testing.

https://deadline.com/wp-content/uplo...d_Redacted.pdf
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Thank you for posting that, Doug. I did spin through it a bit. From pg 132 to 135, director Souza and operator Russell's testimonies, it seems to jive with those notes I posted. They aren't particularly relevant to the case overall, of course.
 
Paul F said:
Some good news. Hollywood has the good sense and grace to let this rest so the family an get on with their lives. Oh, wait. Who am I kidding? "Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Rory Kennedy is working on a documentary about Baldwin and the “Rust” movie accident, Variety has confirmed."
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Netflix used the real names and biographical details of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims in its series about him. And they didn't need to get permission because it's a matter of public record. There is no shame in Hollywood.
 
ahalpert said:
Netflix used the real names and biographical details of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims in its series about him. And they didn't need to get permission because it's a matter of public record. There is no shame in Hollywood.
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The names are a matter of record. The problem comes in the depiction of the factual person. Mell Gibson ran in to problems with this in several of his films. The Patriot for one. I think he lost a defamation case over it.
 
JAMedia said:
The names are a matter of record. The problem comes in the depiction of the factual person. Mell Gibson ran in to problems with this in several of his films. The Patriot for one. I think he lost a defamation case over it.
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What troubles me is that someone whose son was eaten has to live with a vivid reenactment of his last moments played out for the entertainment of millions of people. There is virtually nothing added to the drama by using the real victims' identities. It would have been so easy to use fake names and vaguely similar biographies. It's also appalling that these men lost control of their names and identities because they were brutally murdered, adding insult to injury.
 
ahalpert said:
What troubles me is that someone whose son was eaten has to live with a vivid re-enactment of his last moments, played out for the entertainment of millions of people. There is virtually nothing added to the drama by using the real victims' identities. It would have been so easy to use fake names and vaguely similar biographies. It's also appalling that these men lost control of their names and identities because they were brutally murdered, adding insult to injury.
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Agreed. Mel Gibson ran into problems depicting characters that died 200 years ago. Then again, Hollywood (and others) were depicting the exploits and deaths of named people (on all sides) in WW2 only a year or two later. The problem to my mind is when they are "based on real events" using the real names but "adjusting" events for the film. So what people see as the story is not the factual story despite the names, places and dates being accurate. Is that a greater dis-service? Though, as people have said, "Hollywood" (and others) have no morals.
 
It was an accidental death that was preventable. He was derelict about safety, reckless in handling a firearm, unremorseful over the loss of human life and is a narcissistic, finger pointing blamer. The question about the charges, is why now?
 
At least part of the reason is due to maneuvers by Mr. Baldwin's attorneys in regards to the qualifications of the district attorney to take the case. The DA recused herself and appointed a pair of special prosecutors to take her place. They apparently got the case back on the docket.
 
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