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Another Shooting

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Re: Another Shooting

#176

Post by Slim Cognito »

My first thought was my crazy neighbor is probably posting that on her Facebook page right now.
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Re: Another Shooting

#177

Post by p0rtia »

OMG, the whiplash!

I have to lie down.
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Re: Another Shooting

#178

Post by RTH10260 »

Crew on Baldwin film raised prop gun concerns before fatal shooting
Text message warning of ‘super-unsafe’ conditions was later followed by a walkout by camera operators

Edward Helmore and Vanessa Thorpe
Sat 23 Oct 2021 19.39 BST

A picture of chaos and concern on the set of Alec Baldwin’s new western, Rust, has emerged from fresh accounts of the lead-up to the fatal shooting during filming on Thursday.

Only days into the three-week production schedule, new reports suggest that a worker had been so worried about weapon safety he had sent a text message to his manager warning of “super unsafe” conditions.



https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/o ... l-shooting
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Re: Another Shooting

#179

Post by noblepa »

RTH10260 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:24 pm
Crew on Baldwin film raised prop gun concerns before fatal shooting
Text message warning of ‘super-unsafe’ conditions was later followed by a walkout by camera operators

Edward Helmore and Vanessa Thorpe
Sat 23 Oct 2021 19.39 BST

A picture of chaos and concern on the set of Alec Baldwin’s new western, Rust, has emerged from fresh accounts of the lead-up to the fatal shooting during filming on Thursday.

Only days into the three-week production schedule, new reports suggest that a worker had been so worried about weapon safety he had sent a text message to his manager warning of “super unsafe” conditions.



https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/o ... l-shooting
Can someone explain to me why live rounds would EVER be used while making a movie? I've heard the argument that live rounds give more of a kick than blanks do, making the actor's shooting appear more realistic, but that seems to me to be a pretty flimsy argument.

Even blanks can be deadly.
CNN wrote: In 1984, actor John-Eric Hexum was playing around with a gun on the set of "Cover Up: Golden Opportunity" and died after putting the gun to his head and pulling the trigger.
Perhaps it is time for a federal law, if it does not ban the use of live ammo altogether, to at least require that any actors or crew handling prop guns attend a gun-safety class before filming or rehearsing begins. After this, I wouldn't be surprised if insurance companies begin insisting on something like this. You just know that there will be at least one multi-million dollar lawsuit over this.

I'm not a gun enthusiast, so I don't own any, but even I know that the first rule of firearms safety is that there is no such thing as an unloaded gun. All guns are to be treated, at all times, as if they are loaded. That would be true, even if the film's armorer told you it is a "cold gun". Check for yourself.

The second rule is that you don't aim a weapon at anything or anyone, unless you intend to shoot.
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Re: Another Shooting

#180

Post by RTH10260 »

noblepa wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:37 pm
► Show Spoiler
Can someone explain to me why live rounds would EVER be used while making a movie? I've heard the argument that live rounds give more of a kick than blanks do, making the actor's shooting appear more realistic, but that seems to me to be a pretty flimsy argument.

Even blanks can be deadly.
► Show Spoiler
Magnolia mentioned further up that "live rounds" don't necessary mean a bullet in the cartridge. I am left with the impression that the "blank" may have been improperly charged. We don't have the details, but the discharge seems to have happened near, the main part of cap of the blank hitting the camera oeprator lady, and other splinters hitting the film director. Disclaimer: guesswork on my side.
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Re: Another Shooting

#181

Post by Dave from down under »

2017
Gold Coast man Johann Ofner was fatally wounded when a prop gun “loaded with blanks” was fired during the final scene of a Bliss N Eso video involving only professional stunt actors, the hip-hop group’s management has said.
Ofner, who died from chest wounds on the Brisbane set of the video clip on Monday, had been hired by an accredited stunt company, the band’s management said. The company had engaged a licensed armourer who was on location to monitor the prop weapon, it said.
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Re: Another Shooting

#182

Post by Dave from down under »

Bliss n Eso actor death a 'wake-up call' for film and TV industry safety, union says

By Katherine Gregory
Posted Tue 24 Jan 2017

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-24/ ... ng/8205968
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Re: Another Shooting

#183

Post by tek »

IMHO, this is completely and totally f'in broken.

Actors are not firearms experts, nor should they be.

:brickwallsmall:
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Re: Another Shooting

#184

Post by raison de arizona »

from the guardian article...
Sources on Rust have also told the LA Times that vital safety protocols, including regular gun inspections, were not strictly followed, and at least one camera operator working alongside Hutchins alleges there had been two accidental prop gun discharges on the set days earlier.

“There should have been an investigation into what happened,” a crew member told the newspaper. “There were no safety meetings. There was no assurance that it wouldn’t happen again. All they wanted to do was rush, rush, rush.”

The film’s head armourer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, had expressed doubts about her level of experience. On a podcast recorded a month ago she said she had almost turned down her last job “because I wasn’t sure if I was ready”.
:eek:
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Re: Another Shooting

#185

Post by Slim Cognito »

Ya think?


Expecting an actor to inspect a "prop" gun is like expecting a FedEx driver to do maintenance on her truck or a commercial pilot to inspect the plane before taking off. A couple of years ago a SW jet engine blew up and debris broke out a window, killing a passenger. I don't remember anyone blaming the pilot. In fact, she got (well-deserved) praise for bringing the plane in safely.
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Re: Another Shooting

#186

Post by Frater I*I »

Slim Cognito wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 5:59 pm a commercial pilot to inspect the plane before taking off.
I understand you probably mean heavy maintenance insp, but indeed pilots do do a walk around before every flight to look for any obvious sign of a discrepancy that would need line maintenance or affect safety of flight... :biggrin:
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Re: Another Shooting

#187

Post by bob »

Too also: Actors and technicians already are trained to inspect a firearm EVERY TIME to see if the weapon is loaded and a round is chambered. That is not a specialized skill, like being a mechanic.
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Re: Another Shooting

#188

Post by neeneko »

Slim Cognito wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 5:59 pm Expecting an actor to inspect a "prop" gun is like expecting a FedEx driver to do maintenance on her truck or a commercial pilot to inspect the plane before taking off. A couple of years ago a SW jet engine blew up and debris broke out a window, killing a passenger. I don't remember anyone blaming the pilot. In fact, she got (well-deserved) praise for bringing the plane in safely.
On the other hand, I have head of air accidents where the pilot was faulted for doing an incomplete walk around or not properly double checking things. Complacency in the preflight checklist has been linked to a number of crashes.
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Re: Another Shooting

#189

Post by Slim Cognito »

I stand corrected.
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Re: Another Shooting

#190

Post by sugar magnolia »

tek wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 5:36 pm IMHO, this is completely and totally f'in broken.

Actors are not firearms experts, nor should they be.

:brickwallsmall:
The actors don't actually do anything with the weapons except point and shoot when told to, after someone hands them the gun. Any real movie will have a prop master and an armorer, and often a civilian firearms specialist or munitions expert. The guns are literally kept in one place (cart, box, trailer, whatever) and the actors have no access to them until they are shooting the scene they are used in. Even in scenes where the guns are visible but not fired, like in a holster, those aren't the same guns that can fire the live rounds. They're handed the prop guns for exactly as long as it takes to shoot the scene. That is not to say the actor doesn't have the responsibility to check the weapon himself, just that the actors have very little to do with the weapons on set.

And "live round" on a movie set is different than live ammo. It doesn't mean there is a bullet in the gun, just that the gun is capable of being fired. Brittle bullets, dummy rounds and blanks are all "live rounds" on the set.
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Re: Another Shooting

#191

Post by tek »

not sure if sour grapes or bad apple, but...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/24/entertai ... index.html
(CNN) An assistant director on the film set of "Rust" was the subject of complaints over safety and his behavior on set during two productions in 2019, two people who worked closely with him tell CNN.
The complaints against assistant director Dave Halls include a disregard for safety protocols for weapons and pyrotechnics use, blocked fire lanes and exits, and instances of inappropriately sexual behavior in the workplace.
[...]
A crew member who also worked in the productions but requested to not be named for fear of retaliation corroborated Goll's accounts, saying that when Halls did hold safety meetings, they were short and he was dismissive, saying the guns used would be the same as the production always uses, and questioning why they'd have to hold the meetings in the first place.
The crew member also said Halls complained about having a gun "cleared" (inspected by a licensed professional on set, such as an armorer) for a scene where an actress would aim the gun to her own head and pull the trigger.
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Re: Another Shooting

#192

Post by Sam the Centipede »

Rather off-topic: it depresses me how much of Hollywood's output focuses on firearms, explosions, car chases and man-hunts or, more generally, violence. Most of our lives don't include any of those (well, do we want to watch ourselves on screen?). But it does help to normalize the notion that life should be violent and destructive.
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Re: Another Shooting

#193

Post by pipistrelle »

Sam the Centipede wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 8:07 am Rather off-topic: it depresses me how much of Hollywood's output focuses on firearms, explosions, car chases and man-hunts or, more generally, violence. Most of our lives don't include any of those (well, do we want to watch ourselves on screen?). But it does help to normalize the notion that life should be violent and destructive.
Amen. This was a western, but that’s been in my head. What happened to storytelling?

Also, how many accidents were there on the sets of shows like Bonanza, Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, etc., where production was over a few days and guns were used many, many times?
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Re: Another Shooting

#194

Post by andersweinstein »

RTH10260 wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:54 pm
noblepa wrote: Sat Oct 23, 2021 4:37 pm
► Show Spoiler
Can someone explain to me why live rounds would EVER be used while making a movie? I've heard the argument that live rounds give more of a kick than blanks do, making the actor's shooting appear more realistic, but that seems to me to be a pretty flimsy argument.

Even blanks can be deadly.
► Show Spoiler
Magnolia mentioned further up that "live rounds" don't necessary mean a bullet in the cartridge. I am left with the impression that the "blank" may have been improperly charged. We don't have the details, but the discharge seems to have happened near, the main part of cap of the blank hitting the camera oeprator lady, and other splinters hitting the film director. Disclaimer: guesswork on my side.
This is still basically rumor, but provides one theory about how real ammo might have gotten into the on-set weapon:

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Re: Another Shooting

#195

Post by Slim Cognito »

I'm sure many actors are gun owners, but how would an actor check to see if the appropriate materials were in the prop gun? Are they supposed to know that? I sure as heck wouldn't have a clue?
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Re: Another Shooting

#196

Post by andersweinstein »

tek wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 8:04 am not sure if sour grapes or bad apple, but...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/24/entertai ... index.html
(CNN) An assistant director on the film set of "Rust" was the subject of complaints over safety and his behavior on set during two productions in 2019, two people who worked closely with him tell CNN.
The complaints against assistant director Dave Halls include a disregard for safety protocols for weapons and pyrotechnics use, blocked fire lanes and exits, and instances of inappropriately sexual behavior in the workplace.
[...]
A crew member who also worked in the productions but requested to not be named for fear of retaliation corroborated Goll's accounts, saying that when Halls did hold safety meetings, they were short and he was dismissive, saying the guns used would be the same as the production always uses, and questioning why they'd have to hold the meetings in the first place.
The crew member also said Halls complained about having a gun "cleared" (inspected by a licensed professional on set, such as an armorer) for a scene where an actress would aim the gun to her own head and pull the trigger.
Interesting. A lot of folks online are pointing fingers at the young (24) inexperienced armorer on the production, but I've seen others suggest she's being made a scapegoat. We don't know what happened, but whatever mistakes the armorer may have made that allowed a weapon in that state to wind up unattended on the set, it has sounded to me like the AD grabbing the weapon without involving the armorer and rashly announcing it a "cold gun" without checking is the one who should bear most of the blame for recklessly bypassing the normal safety protocols. I have zero specialist knowledge here, but I gather an AD is never supposed to be the one to hand the actor the weapon at all, and S.O.P includes redundant checks precisely to catch any earlier mistake and would have prevented the tragedy. Reports show the 911 caller vented about the "[expletive]" AD who hassled her about rewrites and was supposed to be responsible for weapons safety. I can well imagine a lot of pressure on that young female armorer to go along on this set.
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Re: Another Shooting

#197

Post by Slim Cognito »

Just my arrogant opinion but I see no reason why all movie/tv prop guns shouldn't be replicas with working triggers, with CGI and audio added later. If an actor can recoil from a deceptively thrown punch or staged gunshot, they can recoil from shooting the weapon. They can bring someone on the set to teach newbies. Heck, sometimes they wire the actor so they can yank them backwards to give them a little extra oomph.

Or will the NRA scream about armorers losing their gig? *

*don't care if they do. I was a transcriptionist for about 30 years, until voice recognition software pushed me out of a good paying job.
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Re: Another Shooting

#198

Post by chancery »

About an actor's responsibility with respect to firearm safety. Several apparently knowledgable people have made comments along these lines:


When I am using a cold gun or a cold gun with dummies in it, I am VERY clear with the cast and crew about it. I physically open and show that the weapon is cold to the actors, the crew.
So it's not so much that the actor has primary responsibility for checking, but that the actor has a secondary, collaborative responsibility for not treating a weapon as "cold" unless the armorer has contemporaneously demonstrated that it is cold.

SL Huang's whole thread is worth reading.



Also worth reading is Tom Levenson's post on Balloon Juice, based on his experience as the director and producer of a documentary with an opening scene involving firearms and pyros.*
As we worked through our shot list, the procedure on the set never varied. The only person to handle the weapons was the armorer, who handed them to the actors. The first setup was a series of walking shots. The guns were not loaded. Each weapon was checked before it was passed to an actor. We did our repeats for angles in a continuous series of takes, so the armorer left the weapons in the hands of the actors, but stayed next to me and the DP to keep his eye on his responsibility throughout.

When that morning work was done, we broke. He took the guns and locked them in his vehicle.

After lunch, we set up for the pyro shoot, when the actors would pull triggers and discharge blanks, while the pyro guys would (in sync!) blow up fire-cracker sized charges to simulate a bullet’s impact. That was fiddly, precise shooting, the kind of time-consuming work that puts pressure on the schedule. Our crew was tiny by feature standards, but huge for a documentary, somewhere around eight to ten people on hourly wages, all of whom would kick up to time and a half at ten hours and double time at twelve. I wasn’t just the director on that shoot; I was the producer as well, so that was on my mind. Part of my associate producer’s job was to keep me aware of the schedule and to try keep us below ten hours if at all possible.

It took us hours. I think we came in just under the start of overtime, but it was a near thing. (We were racing the light too, so that was extra fun.)

But this was the rule: the armorer loaded a single blank per gun per shot. He was the only person to handle those guns besides the actors. Me, the A.P., our P.A.s–none of us could act as runners. He would clear the fired guns, reload–a single blank–and hand each gun back to the actor, for each shot as we worked our way through our inventory of thirty or so pyro charges.But that’s the way you do it. Everyone on the set has to know, to a certainty, what the state of any weapons may be, and they have to be safe. Only the people who actually, truly know what they’re doing can deal with the weapons and the chain of custody, as it were, can’t be broken. The shots have to be understood, and at no time can a weapon, unloaded, or carrying blanks, threaten a person. If any of that slips, the armorer (and others, as Huang’s thread makes clear) have to have the authority and personal strength of character to shut the whole thing down.
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2021/10/2 ... pitalisms/
________________
* I'm not referring to the portion of Levenson's post in which he makes an assessment of Baldwin's likely culpability for any breakdown in safety culture and the role of "predatory capitalism." I'm generally sympathetic with Levenson's points, but these are issues that deserve more careful discussion.

Edit: deleted word "primary"
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Re: Another Shooting

#199

Post by andersweinstein »

chancery wrote: Sun Oct 24, 2021 1:38 pm About an actor's responsibility with respect to firearm safety....
I found this video educational on all the elements of standard protocol that appear to have been violated in this case:



I noticed he does not include the actor checking the weapon himself.
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Re: Another Shooting

#200

Post by PaulG »

I was thinking last night about the USS Iowa turret explosion and wondering if there are any similarities. It shows how dangerous the whole business with "blanks" can be (screwing with different loads, different powders). Also how people attempt to cover up what was actually happening. It sounds like the AD (back on Rust now) was pretty toxic and might have had the Armorer cowed into letting him handle the guns "his way".

I'm also curious whether a badly made "blank" could set off rounds in the adjacent chambers of a six shooter, or have debris fly out of the barrel at an angle. Not that that seems relevant.
Off Topic
In the "Trolley Problem" I wonder if the lone guy was standing off to one side because he realized the risk the other five guys were in.
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