What are they shooting at? Human silhouette targets? A pistol target? Cans on a fence? Watermelons?
What is a “miss?” Completely miss the paper target altogether?
What is a “hit?” A bullseye or head shot only?
One shot every 10 seconds? Rapid fire empty the gun?
A .22 or a .45?
Definitions probably matter here.
Lots of people miss at 20’ range. This remains true regardless of whatever you’ve witnessed.
This is not a question that is specifically directed at @flurb; it is triggered more by the fact that their post was latest one I saw that used this specific language.
I have to ask: why are so many people describing Halyna Hutchins, in order, as a “wife, mother, and rising star”. When Kobe Bryant died, was he described as “husband, father, and retired basketball star”? Why do the news stories feel it necessary to identify women in terms of their family relationships first but rarely, if ever, include those same relationships for men even within the first few paragraphs?
When I was in the navy on Okinawa I was part of the pistol team. The range we used was run by the army, outdoors, and had targets at 25 and 50 yards. One afternoon when we arrived there was a tape 10 yards out from the stands on the 25 yard part. The rangemasters said that some army group had their qualifications yesterday and that morning and apparently the qualification is at 15 yards.
As we walked out to put up the targets we noticed scars in the grass made by bullets starting about 10 feet from the tape. Being Okinawa they were almost certainly REMFs, not combat troops, but sheesh. I could see them missing the target entirely, not just the silhouette at that distance. This was at the end of the 1911A1 era but .38s might have been used as well.
I just saw this on Reddit. Don’t work as an actor in Russia. It seems they have different notions about gun safety on the set.
Throughout the filming of Come and See, real bullets were used. At times, they flew just above the heads of actors, making their terrified looks genuine. And the scene where machine gun fire takes down a cow – that really happened.
Dude, I was in the goddamed ARMY, and a live round inexplicably showing up somewhere live rounds were not supposed to be would have stopped everything and resulted in the military police being summoned.
I used a lot of weapons. I am legitimately frightened of them. No step in gun safety must ever be skipped, ever; to do so is unforgivably irresponsible. This level of negligence is just beyond the pale. Someone must go to prison.
John Landis was a thousand times more negligent, openly broke the law and a zillion safety rules, and killed three people. His career carried on. He didn’t spend a day in prison.
This is openly hostile and inappropriate in Cafe Society. Please be careful about this sort of thing. No warning.
RickJay
Moderator
I’ve been following this thread and am learning a lot about guns and the movie industry. Thanks to all. I have some questions.
The LA Times article Sam_Stone posted said
A colleague was so alarmed by the prop gun misfires [that occurred with Baldwin’s stunt double] that he sent a text message to the unit production manager. “We’ve now had 3 accidental discharges. This is super unsafe,” according to a copy of the message reviewed by The Times.
What is a production manager? Does the head armorer report to that person? Is the production manager usually on set?
Also, in addition to the head armorer, are there assistant armorers? I hope that’s not a dumb question. I know all the stories say the AD handed Baldwin the gun, but the title “head armorer” seems to mean there are underlings who’d take over if the HA is elsewhere. No?
It also says the filmmaking team was not at the “video village,” which I guess is more distant, but that the camera operator was “on a dolly with a monitor, checking out the potential shots,” that Hutchins was looking over his shoulder, and the director was crouching just behind her. Baldwin apparently pulled the gun from the holster once without incident, but the second time, ammunition flew toward the camera operator, Hutchins, and the director. Hutchins was hit near the shoulder. Apparently it was a through-and-through, and the projectile then hit the director. The crew tried to stop Hutchins’ bleeding. I had no idea a shoulder wound could be fatal. It just gets more and more horrific.
No matter who’s at fault, what an awful, awful experience for everyone.
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I haven’t checked, but I assume they are Airsoft guns, which look and behave realistically but are not able to hold live rounds. Close ups might require weapons that are more detailed, but I’m not even certain of that. It’s a very darkly lit movie with rapid motion, so maybe they can get away with it.
Lots of folk out there who have trouble with that, too.
Is this a direct quote from that article? There are parts that sound odd to me. Are they saying the gun discharged when Baldwin drew it from his holster (the second time, not the first)? That means he never aimed or pulled the trigger? What does it mean for ammunition to fly? Does that mean the bullet or the whole cartridge?
I also was not aware there was a camera operator. I had thought perhaps the DP was operating the camera? (I dunno)
There is no need to have the prop guns fire pellets, BBs, paintballs or anything else. They just need to look as real as possible. Or one could just use real guns with adequate safety precautions. I doubt anyone uses Airsoft guns for this unless somehow they look more realistic than real firearms do.
Maybe it’s just a failure of my imagination: I can’t imagine in my own little brain why an Airsoft gun would be used, but I do not know.
That was my point. Airsoft look identical to real guns in their actions, but are 100% safe. All they need to do on-camera is operate accurately, but not fire real bullets. The rest is done with VFX. That means for the long takes and wide shots in the movies, showing the shot and death multiple times in each angle, it’s faster if they don’t need to keep stopping and starting all day, and they wouldn’t if they had a fake gun that still behaves realistically - hence Airsoft.
But they could use real guns also, just with their ability to fire permanently disabled. Maybe it’s a bit of both, especially for background characters.
We don’t actually know that. Multiple people could still go to jail over this.
My objections were the people who seemed to want to hang Baldwin because he’s an abrasive asshole. Being such does not automatically mean a person is guilty of a crime. Clearly, anyone left holding a literally smoking gun is on the hook and a target of the ensuing investigation but if Baldwin goes to jail I want it to be because of his actions (or lack of) rather than his personality.
I actually listened to the audio from that interview. I heard it as she was discussing making blanks, where one is said to “load” the powder charge into them. I expect that is a finicky business where you want to use enough powder to have the desired effect but too much and someone might get hurt. Another example of why going to the original source is helpful in getting the facts right.
Any time a bullet severs a major blood vessel you have the potential to bleed out. As to the exact location of Hutchins’ wound - I’ve heard “stomach”, “chest” and “shoulder”. For the director I’ve heard “head” and “shoulder”. Methinks there is some sloppy reporting afoot.
This video is short and has a little more detail on what happened (although I have no idea if this guy actually knows what happened).
He claims they were using revolvers and the shot was a close-up on Alec Baldwin’s revolver (so he would be pointing the gun at the camera). Video says they use dummy rounds which have BBs where the propellant usually is. On set, they shake each shell in the presence of the actor so they can hear the BBs rattle around. Then that shell is loaded. Rinse and repeat for all the shells.
But that did not happen here.
Quick question: when the armorer gives a gun (containing blanks) to an actor, is it standard procedure for the actor to perform a final check to make user the gun contains blanks? Or is the actor supposed to trust the armorer and not check the weapon?
An excellent question that unfortunately is really a rhetorical question, because I think the answer is obvious to us all.
I respect your opinion, but I thought Martin Hyde’s post was helpful. It underscored how bad luck was a big part of this, too, at several junctures. (As with the 1977 Tenerife airline disaster I’d alluded to — the “Swiss cheese” idea, that many little (and a couple big) things had to go wrong for something to have happened despite the industry’s safeguards).
There’s so much in movies that is patently not in accord with reality. Why do the guns have to look identical to real guns? Could one institute a rule that any prop weapon must have obvious differences from real guns? In addition to ruling that no gun-looking thing on a movie set be capable of injuring someone?
This is particularly an apt point for John Wick, because it conveniently has no Law Enforcement system interfering with the story at all. If you’re going to stylise to that degree, why not have fantasy weapons too?
This is very off-topic.
