From BBC News
A woman has died and a man has been injured after actor Alec Baldwin fired a prop gun on a New Mexico film set for the 19th Century western “Rust.”
Halyna Hutchins, 42, was shot while working on the set as director of photography. She was flown to hospital by helicopter but died of her injuries.
Halyna Hutchins previously worked on 2020 independent superhero film “Archenemy”. Archenemy director Adam Egypt Mortimer told BBC News the fact she had died on a set was “really unbelievable”. He said: “Halyna was an incredible artist who was just starting a career I think people were really starting to notice. The fact that she would be killed on a set in an accident like this is unfathomable. It just seems inconceivable.”
The man, 48-year-old director Joel Souza, was taken from the scene at Bonanza Creek Ranch by ambulance.
On Twitter, Alec Baldwin said “there are no words to convey my shock and sadness regarding the tragic accident that took the life of Halyna Hutchins, a wife, mother and deeply admired colleague of ours.”
“My heart is broken for her husband, their son, and all who knew and loved Halyna,” he added.
Dave Plowman
Anyone else been following this with a very sad sense of incredulity?
Of course guns were pretty rare in the TV progs I worked on. And perhaps things have changed. But I do remember just how carefully they were handled. The armourer keeping them under his direct control and handing it to the actor. Depending on the reporting, Alec Baldwin was handed it by a props man or AD. Others said the armourer had gone home.
Other reports say virtually the entire crew had walked out earlier, due to not being paid and concerns over safety issues. And been replaced by non-union labour.
Alec Baldwin was not only starring, but the/or a producer. So cannot just pass the buck, as must be responsible for the lack of safety enforcement on set.
If this is the direction the industry is going, I’m glad I retired when I did.
Roger Long
It’s deeply sad.
When we have filmed real guns firing blanks the armourer was always in attendance
Mostly it was Baptys and they were very professional.
On Jack Gold’s “Arturo Ui” we restaged the Valentine’s Day Massacre with real Thompson sub machine guns, what a racket they made, it was quite scary and smoky.
Any guns aimed anywhere near camera needed armoured plexiglass screens and minimum crew with goggles.
Blanks can produce spurious wadding at high velocity.
We fired Lewis Guns with wooden blanks on “Monocled Mutineer”, this was a truly splendid noise, but nobody was down range of that. The Maxim and German MG had high rates of fire but not the noise of the Lewis and its original training blanks.
When “War Walking” we fired numerous weapons in the Butts under strict supervision, but I remember at Bisley when firing an Armstrong MG with 303 rounds on their range, the Safety Officer said, even with the red flag flying and an effective range of 2 m, some dog walkers still walked downrange.
We did borrow weapons from various museums in Belgium and France, they came just with our researcher. We did one PTC with the Brigadier presenter repeatedly pulling the trigger mech during his piece and we were on a long lens looking down the barrel of the German MG. Later we discovered there was a live round jammed in the mechanism, so much for the museum and our professionalism, mistakes can be made.
We can’t really judge till all the evidence is presented.
It seemed an unhappy set, with union problems and long hours, there is a dispute on going in Hollywood.
Why they need to fire live guns now is a mystery, it’s so easy to CGI effective flash and smoke.
Peter Neill
I see that one US Cop series (“The Rookie”) has banned real guns from now on. Flashes will be added with CGI.
Pat Heigham
Having been used to firearms via a rifle club at school and later at Bisley, I was startled when filming Enemy at the Door in Jersey for LWT, the SFX people were firing live tracer machine gun rounds over the camera crew’s heads into water, instead of laying floating sequential charges.
It’s probable that the fatality in the US was caused by the wadding contained in the blank cartridge. I have witnessed said wadding penetrating a canvas rucksack.
But nothing excuses the weapon being pointed in the wrong direction.
One afternoon on the pistol ranges at Bisley, our wives and girlfriends were present to have a go. One girl had a hangfire (where the firing pin doesn’t set off the charge, but could go off at any moment). She swung round, complaining that it didn’t work, whereupon we all hit the deck, vociferously telling her to keep it pointed down the range at all times! Accidents can happen even with the most careful precautions.
Another range we shot on at Westcott in Surrey, had a fatality – a wide shot hit the metal target pulley frame and ricocheted into the squaddie who was manipulating the target. The range was shut down after that and never used again.
On another film, the SFX guy had the top of a finger missing – apparently, he’d managed to shoot it off!
But Bapty’s were always good and careful.
David Newbitt
Like Pat, I became familiar with standard British Army firearms through training in my school’s CCF – Lee Enfield .303 rifle, Bren and Sten guns. On a field day in the mid-1950s with us all carrying 303s and issued blanks, we merrily spread out across the woods and moorland firing at the “enemy”. One of the lads spotted a live round in the container of blanks and received not a little gratitude for his acute observation. One never knows how these things happen – the school armoury was pretty much Fort Knox as we had a firing range where of course live rounds were used and tight security measures were strictly enforced.
I remember the Mk 1 & Mk 11 versions of the Sten – the sprung loaded action had no lock on the early version and a loaded weapon could be made to fire into the sky simply by sharply banging the butt against the ground. Another less than edifying memory is of the firing range at Chickerell in Dorset where weapons were fired towards the sea.
A thick-walled concrete hut behind the butts with a flagpole beside it had a seaward facing open entry where a lookout was stationed with a view across the Littlesea Channel to the Chesil Bank and open sea. Out on the Chesil Bank were two flagpoles to left and right and the presence of any vessel between them was indicated by red flags being run up. On seeing these the lookout behind said butts would emerge from his concrete lifesaver and run a further red flag up his flagpole, visible from the firing lines who would cease firing until the all clear. Snag was if any rounds were fired too high they could skim over the rim of ground behind the shelter and make life interesting for the poor old lookout. My school contingent was at the RE Bridging camp at Wyke Regis, so we had sessions at Chickerell where I once got the short straw for the lookout job.
I do not mean to trivialise the recent tragedy with sick humour but as with much in life, everything seems fine until it all goes wrong.
Alan Taylor
One armourer I spoke to explained that he regarded it as a red flag if another armourer was too interested in the guns. He felt that the job was 10% knowing about guns and 90% knowing about film production and safety procedures so that he can supervise and facilitate guns being used on the set without wasting time for the production team, or presenting a danger to the people on the set.
Sara Newman
Well before joining the BBC I worked in the film industry.
On one film, we had a major fight scene. As we were outside London, we could hire people as extras who had no previous training or were members of Equity, saving quite a lot of money. So we had some blokes off the street being stunt men. They spent a week in “training” and were told not to have any alcohol during the lunch break. One chap ignored this and had just one pint. In the afternoon we had another rehearsal, and this bloke missed his Q and basically wiped the stuntman’s nose off his face. I was tasked with getting him into A&E and making sure he was OK – not! It was horrific.
Later there was a huge insurance claim.
The stuntman’s next contract was with Disney. Knowing what I know now he was lucky to be alive.
When I joined the BBC their safety ethos was a million miles from the film industry’s. I have other less horrific stories of my attachments to film units trying to get a union card. Safety is still a major concern 40 years later!
Pat Heigham
While I did not work on the following productions, I knew crew members involved:
A stunt driver was tasked with driving close to camera. He said that it was a close as possible to remain safe. The Director’s chauffeur volunteered to do it, if the stunt driver wouldn’t.
The Director unwisely gave him the go-ahead, and he lost control on a gravel surface, skidded, and ploughed into the camera and pinned the focus puller against a wall. Later, I saw that the guy’s chest was a mass of stitching scars, some 14 operations, I believe.
On another film, there was a shot required of the stunt guy, doubling for the hero, to climb along the side of a train carriage at speed. In order to beat the failing light, the train was backed up further than the stunt guy had recced it, in order to try for two takes in one go. No-one told the stunt man. A concrete trackside post wiped him off, with pretty severe injuries.
I knew the guy well having worked with him previously.
Perhaps someone will be able to name the films? (I’ll tell you if you are right).
David Brunt
The train one is “Octopussy”. Martin Grace was the stunt arranger.
Silent Witness
Series 25 Episode 1 TX 23rd May 2022
And finally …
The Sister Boniface Mysteries
Sister Boniface of St Vincent’s Convent – nun, moped rider, wine maker and part-time forensic scientist.
Episode 2 “Lights, Camera, Murder!”
First TX: 8 Feb. 2022 (United States)
Production: BBC Studios
Distributor: Britbox
Available in the UK on Drama
Sister Boniface investigates when a live gun is fired instead of a replica on a film set: A TV crew has arrived to use St Vincent’s Convent as a location for a spy thriller. The filming becomes all too real when a live gun is fired instead of a replica. Sister Boniface deduces that the bullet was meant for the producer.
