If that’s supposed to be from the movie Cimarron I don’t think they wore plastic safety glasses in 1890.
Not to say there aren’t close up’s that might show the bullets it’s something that can be worked around with lighting.
The difference in real world gun safety and film set safety are important.
It takes discipline to shake every dummy round, listen for the rattle, and load it into the gun. It has to become ingrained. You never let yourself skip that step.
That’s one of many new safety procedures that a cop, soldier, or a target shooter would have to make themselves follow.
Hannah probably grew up target shooting at a young age. She knows the rules on a firing range. Adapting to film set rules takes experience. There’s also the hectic pace filming scenes. She needed to enforce the safety rules regardless of anything else occurring on that set.
Which may be where the problem lies. I – and most shooters I imagine – have never handled a dummy round on a gun range, which is where the “assume every gun is loaded until proven otherwise” and “even if you know the gun is empty never point the muzzle anywhere but down range” rules com into play.
Therefore, I have never gotten into the habit of shaking a round to listen for BBs inside or checked for a hole in the case, habits you need on a movie set.
Edit: Ninja’d
Based on that pic, it seems like you could just have a dummy that doesn’t look anything like an actual bullet, except on that one side facing the camera. The rest seems like it could be a different design, color, shape, etc from the real thing, so you could easily tell them apart when you empty the gun (in front of the actor) to confirm it isn’t loaded.
Unless you then show the gun from the back, or show the actor loading the gun on film, or etc. etc.
There have been a lot of proposals in this thread that could have prevented this tragedy. But following established procedures would also have prevented it, at more than one opportunity.
Aaaaand the first law suit has been filed:
Svetnoy’s lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles against various companies and individuals involved with the film, including producers and two crew members. It accuses Baldwin, assistant director David Halls, armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed and other defendants of negligence that caused him “severe emotional distress.”
Serge Svetnoy was the chief lighting technician and was hit by “discharge materials” from the shot that killed Hutchins. He’s said he held her as she lay dying and his hands were stained with her blood.
He blames the film’s producers for, among other things, failing to hire a competent and experienced armorer.
“Plaintiff is informed and believes, and on such information and belief alleges that the ammunition used on the ‘Rust’ set was never stored securely and was simply left unattended in the prop truck,” the lawsuit states.
The idea that you always assume it’s loaded is the base from where you create new safety rules. If I was the person handling it OR the person it’s aimed at I would insist on seeing:
- an empty gun
- the type of rounds going into it and an explanation of what they are.
- those rounds and ONLY those rounds set up visually for loading.
- the loading of the gun in front of me with those rounds .
You could do all of that in 30 seconds by having everything set up and ready to demonstrate.
But even if the actor and/or AD don’t ask for a demonstration, shouldn’t the armorer insist they each have one? This seems to me to be the crux of the matter. An armorer is hired to ensure safety and thus must follow specific and painstaking protocols. I view an armorer as something like a lifeguard: the people at the beach should follow safety rules, but since people are not consistently reliable in doing so, lifeguards, whose sole and constant focus is safety, are hired to ensure nobody drowns.
Expecting people whose main job is not safety to double- and triple-check the work of someone whose main job is safety seems backwards to me, somewhat akin to making beachgoers responsible for ensuring the lifeguard is doing her job.
…that it isn’t an actual gun capable of firing actual ammunition. But that’s just me.
Within 24 hours of his shooting that woman, he announced he had been on the telephone with her husband.
Since this entire thread is opinion with precious little fact, I’ll throw my opinion back in again.
This is all very calculated. He doesn’t want to lose a pile of money. He will not do a day in jail or prison, and I very much doubt he will even wind up in handcuffs.
It’s all about his money.
Your cite says the husband announced it.
Indeed it does. The question was whether or not he had talked to the family.
I answered that question. He called the Husband.
Yes,you’re absolutely right. I was speaking in the context of what you should be entitled to when things are being rushed.
Had he not called, he’d be criticized even more.
I agree that I don’t see the problem that Alec Baldwin spoke with her husband after she died. Why would he not do so?
I’m starting to think the live round was inserted into the gun deliberately by someone who believed - with good reason - that the bullet would be discovered during one of the many, many firearms safety protocols that have long been the industry standard. Maybe they wanted to shut the production down for some reason?
The fact that one crew member is now saying the gun was never even meant to be fired during the scene in question makes this theory a little easier to believe.
I also tend to think the stories about off-hours plinking session were quickly leaked by someone who wanted another, plausible reason to explain why a live round wound up in Baldwin’s prop gun.
(And no, I have absolutely no evidence to support any of this)
Why are you assuming production would be shut down?
I wonder if the market for modified weapons that can’t fire projectiles will expand into propane fired hand guns similar to the propane machine guns they have now. It wouldn’t be hard to make a pressurized magazine for semi-automatics and rifles have all kinds of space to hide a pressurized cylinder.
If you are just worried about cycling the action and can cgi the muzzle flash, there are lots of extremely detailed airsoft and pellet gun replicas that use the CO2 to cycle the action.
It gets a lot harder if you need a flash and need to show the gun being loaded and unloaded, and expending ‘spent’ cartridges.