Alec Baldwin [accidentally] Kills Crew Member with Prop Gun {2021-10-21}

Cafe Society
1449

It’s true that, if the gun procedures are followed, they work. But there’s an argument that you need to prepare for them not being followed. While this particular example was particularly egregious, I would like to see how well gun procedures get followed on sets, particularly the lower budget productions where there is an impetus to cut corners. Just because no one has been shot doesn’t mean that they weren’t being really unsafe. From there other ideas could be implemented.

One I wonder about is using color to help distinguish the real thing from the fakes. Color grading is pretty cheap these days. So it could look more or less accurate on screen.

I do also wonder if the realism requirements with other things are as big as with guns. I know that, as a former music major, I got used to people not really playing instruments in films, without it pulling me out. Computers often are unrealistic to better communicate the plot. It seems to me that you can get used to things not needing to be accurate as long as they convey the right idea (like the ideas above about how bad violence is).

I still think a lot of suspension of disbelief breaking is due to not being used to things and not expecting them. If you expect the level of accuracy that you get, then it’s not a problem. It’s the surprise that pulls you out of the moment unwillingly.

(That said, I do love analyzing them just for fun, too. I just do that during a lull in the story or on a second viewing.)

1450

That is already the case. This twitter thread, written by a professional film armorer, was linked earlier in this discussion, above.

She makes very clear that the protocols are designed with many layers of multiple checks. Any one check, in principle, should be sufficient. But you do all of them anyway, on the chance that one or more of the other checks might have been missed, or performed incorrectly. The Rust incident is clearly shaping up to be a perfect storm of negligence and ineptitude and carelessness and toxic mismanagement, in contrast to the decades of death-free movie gunplay prior to this, which demonstrate that even when the rules are followed sloppily, the multi-level rulebook almost always absorbs and compensates for the failures.

I think the realism tangent is a bit of a red herring. Gun violence has rarely been portrayed with any kind of realism on screen. From the 30s through the 50s, we saw a bloodless wince and a quiet crumple to the ground. Now, someone fires a Glock into a target’s chest, and the victim is blasted backward through a plate glass window like they caught a howitzer round. It’s much more violent, yes, but that does not, ipso facto, make it more realistic. (Even if you have no experience with guns, basic physics tells you that this makes no sense: a bullet transferring this kinetic energy forward would impart the same force backward on the shooter.)

An actual gunshot wound is not very interesting or dynamic on screen. Barring a shot to the heart or the base of the skull that drops the target like a rag doll, it’s more likely just a high, sharp crack, a small, surprised flinch from the victim, and then the realization that a painful hole has been poked in their body. This is rarely the way it’s shown, because, again, movies are strongly biased in favor of dynamically interesting action. As others have noted, we’ve heard many stories where eyewitnesses to some violent event will report some version of “it wasn’t like it is in the movies.”

The bottom line is that so-called realism in movies is highly selective, and arguments for “more” realism turn into a goose chase of cherry-picked facts.

What matters for this discussion is that as guns are used as props in film, for better or for worse, the style of that usage will vary according to the filmmaking fashion of the time — but whatever that might be, there are ways to do it safely, ways that have been established and proven over hundreds of incident-free productions.

1451

Thus is a good point. No one is calling to get rid of cool car stunts, or move them to CGI.

1452

However, those nearly always use professional stunt drivers. Stunt performers are specifically hired for their willingness to take risks—though they do try to make things as safe as possible with tons of safety equipment to protect them.

Granted, there are times when they use a stunt camera car to handle things, too, though they are driven by those who specialize in using them. And, of course, they also have the safety equipment.

It would be as if all the people involved were all trained gun actors and everyone wore vests and they used some sort of shield around the crew.

1453

Violent stunts endanger everyone around them to some degree. That’s why there are procedures.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised that the fatality rate for non-stunt crew members on movie sets is >1 every 20 years. There were those two people killed by the train, for example. No one called to get rid of those types of shots, just that the flagrant negligence in that particular case was criminal.

1454

If there was a live round in that gun this is an unprecedented event in North American film production. Why there would be a live round on a film set is unfathomable. It sounds as though some of the crew had been firing live rounds with the guns from set during off hours for fun. I am speculating based on the fact that multiple shell casings from live rounds were apparently found on and around set. No professional armorer would allow that. The fact that the camera crew walked should tell anyone what was going on here. Corners cut, shoot the schedule, safety third if at all. Tragic.

1455

Thank you for bringing it back around to this. One thing I will highlight, not being a lawyer or anything, but just as a way of framing this discussion, is to note that while industry standards will be given much weight when it comes to the question of negligence (particularly as it relates to the element of reasonable care, at least in the sense of civil liability), industry standards need not be taken as definitive. So while I can appreciate that film industry standards contemplate the use of real, functional guns as “props” within a layered protection scheme to allow such uses to be safe far far more often than not, that alone does not settle the legal question (being a matter for legislators, judges, lawyers, and god forbid jurors to decide independent of the film industry).

It is conceivable that industry practice re: firearms, in its current form, is on the whole negligent. In deciding how much safety is “enough”, the mere presence of a layered protection system creating a very low probability of death (once every 25 to 30 years?) does not mean that the risk is necessarily low enough to justify the residual risk, which must include the risk that those measures will not be followed as we are dealing with people, and sometimes people suck, particularly when there appears to be little or no “quality control” in place when selecting those people.

1456

Safety protocols within the industry may have some general ground rules to start with but each picture poses different hazards and as such should have guidelines drawn up specific to that picture. This goes beyond guns as hazards.

At the end of the day it may be cheaper and safer to remove functioning guns altogether and replace them with modified guns incapable of firing projectiles.

1457

I wonder how long it would take audiences to stop expecting realistic guns/gunshots. Maybe not that long. Or maybe it’d never work. No matter how often I see it, movies that have college classes ending with a bell ringing annoy me and inevitably pull me out of the action. Like phone numbers that begin with “555,” that bell is a sudden reminder that it’s only a movie.

I do think, however, that if prop guns were required by law to be nonfunctioning facsimiles, CGI would be budgeted into all movies in which guns are used, even those shows done on the cheap.

1458

Easier still and much less noticeable would be color coding bullets.

ETA: or maybe that is what you meant.

1459

The extra cost in CGI might be offset by a reduction in insurance.

1460

What’s the rationale? To eliminate a risk that A) happens maybe once every couple of decades, and B) is almost certainly going to be self-correcting in the sense that for a long time to come there will be a lot less comllacency on sets anout gun safety?

As movie set risks go, firearms were already way down the list. Movie actors and workers have been injured or killed in car stunts, aerial stunts, from animals, falls from rigging, having heavy equipment fall on them, etc.

I watch a Youtube series called ‘Stuntmen React’, where stuntmen watch other stunts in movies and comment on them. The discussiin often revolves around pain and injury. These guys know that some of the stunts they do are almost certaimlyngoing to result in injury, but they do them anyway.

In John Wick, there’s a scene where Keanu Reeves is in a car that has no door, and he gets hit by another car in a way that throws him out of the vehicle. The stuntmen gave him kudos for doing it, and pointed out that he came within inches of being run over by the other car when he fell out. Many ‘action’ actors have had seriius injuries on sets that had nothing to do with guns. To Cruise broke an ankle on Mission Impossible doing a jump where he easily could have crippled or killed himself.

Aviation in movies is also very dangerous. Paul Mantz was killed in a crash makjng ‘Flight of the Phoenix’ Art Scholl was killed during the making of ‘Top Gun’. Two pilots died making Cruise’s ‘American Made’.

You can’t, and shouldn’t attempt to remove all risk. Given the thousands of gun scenes in movies, one fatality every couple of decades tells us that it’s actually extremely safe, We don’t need to do anything but remind people that guns are dangerous and procedures need to be followed. And they iust got that lesson.

1461

I’ve actually been more on the side of having guns on sets than not. I’m not sure the “other things/practices on movie sets are way more dangerous” argument is compelling. To me, the issue is realism and the expense of CGI, as well as the safety protocols, which clearly work when they’re adhered to religiously. But if CGI were cheaper, or the expense was expected and/or offset by lower insurance rates, my main arguments would be considerably weakened, and I’d have no answer for “Why SHOULD there be real guns on movie sets?”

Note: I’m even less knowledgeable about CGI than I’ve been about guns on sets.

1462

I know @nelliebly already answered, but I do have a more general answer, one I arrived at by asking myself the same questions you posed.

The rationale is that this once in 20 years is still one time ideally that shouldn’t happen. The idea that we need to have people die to remind people of how bad things can be is absolutely awful. That’s not at all the ideal. The ideal is no deaths, not that every so often that we have a death to remind people, no matter how far apart those deaths are.

I would say that eliminating risk is in fact the ideal. Sure, it’s not entirely obtainable. Risk is a part of life. But that’s the case of a lot of ideals. You still strive for what you can’t obtain—that is also life. It’s why we keep trying to live even though death is an inevitability.

Now, sure, maybe there is nothing we can do that would not have more than a negligible effect. Maybe no amount of new rules would prevent the types of situations where the current ones get ignored. But I’m not going to sit back and not come up with possible alternative choices. The only way things get better is if people keep challenging the status quo.

I’ve seen the videos you talk about—the ones by Corridor Crew, correct? I watch all of their series, including the stuntmen react series. And, sure, they do show some reverence to those who were willing to take risks. But they also make it very clear all of safety involved, and never recommend taking unnecessary risks. They’ll tolerate pain, but not debilitation or death. They aren’t daredevils.

But my point above is that they actually sign on for that risk. That is not the same thing here. There is no way that Hutchins signed on thinking she was putting her life at risk. I think the goal of “no deaths that weren’t a well-known risk in advance” is a good goal. If there are additional changes that can help achieve this, I would argue they are a good thing.

Finally, depending on how they died, I might not watch a film where people died. Sure, if they were taking all reasonable security precautions and something went wrong, and the people involved knew the risk, I’m okay with it. But I’m not going to want my money to subsidize bad safety practices or unnecessary deaths. If they were to continue the Baldwin movie, I would not pay for it, and would want it to lose money.

Oh, and I don’t expect that this single incident will inspire better adherence to gun safety for a long time to come. It’ll be a short term fix until they get complacent again. Sure, that may be years down the line, but it’ll happen. Hence the idea of reducing the number of times actual guns are used at all.

1463

I think actors and crew are going to decide the future of real firearms on the set. The use of only props incapable of firing real ammo will be a condition in thousands of contracts.

1464

Given that it’s the actors and crew who would be at risk they should be the ones to make that decision.

1465

There is more misfortune at the Rust set. I’m sending best thoughts to Jason Miller.

I remember reading the ranch is a popular film location. This must be a known risk.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/offbeat/rust-crew-worker-bit-by-spider-shutting-down-set-could-lose-arm-report/ar-AAQqRGT

1466

As soon as I saw “could lose arm from spider bite” I wondered if it was a brown recluse. Yep. That is truly unfortunate. I hope for maximum possible recovery for this guy.

1467

If producers saved enough on insurance to more than offset the cost of CGI and if the creative result were equal or better, they would already be using CGI.

1468

I’ve read, I think all of this thread, but something is bugging me re: identification of dummy rounds.

So, for a revolver, that is pointed at the camera, you need to be able to see the bullets in the cylinder. I get that. I own a revolver.

But for a dummy round, why have a primer in it AT ALL. I guess you could still put bb’s in it too. But no primer, no bang. That would be an easy check for the armorer and actors that it’s not a live round.

The armorer has to build or buy these. But why the primer? Or a ‘dimpled’ (I assume a used primer) makes no sense.