The Off Topic Topic

[Razgovory]

Yeah, that guy was defiantly shooting blanks.

[grumbler]

Yeah, whenever I've been in shootings with guns shooting blanks the gun has always been last inspected in front of the actor. There was one time the actor was an ex-cop and he did it himself. The idea, I suppose, is besides having an extra layer of safety to also ensure the actor feels safe when handling the gun.

Wish we had Katmai around, he'll have much more experience on these matters.

Under U safety  laws, only the armorer or AD can load a gun.  So, even if Baldwin had unloaded the gun to check each round to ensure that they were duds, he'd have to have one of mthe authorized individuals reload the gun, and would still be left with their word that they had loaded the gun with the blanks he had just checked.

There have been enough accidents to convince me that the whole concept of blanks and live rounds on set is too flawed to be continued.  Yes, using CGI to replace blanks is more costly and less believable, but maybe making writers rely less on gunfire to resolve plot problems is a good thing.

[Josquius]

Yeah, whenever I've been in shootings with guns shooting blanks the gun has always been last inspected in front of the actor. There was one time the actor was an ex-cop and he did it himself. The idea, I suppose, is besides having an extra layer of safety to also ensure the actor feels safe when handling the gun.

Wish we had Katmai around, he'll have much more experience on these matters.

Under U safety  laws, only the armorer or AD can load a gun.  So, even if Baldwin had unloaded the gun to check each round to ensure that they were duds, he'd have to have one of mthe authorized individuals reload the gun, and would still be left with their word that they had loaded the gun with the blanks he had just checked.

There have been enough accidents to convince me that the whole concept of blanks and live rounds on set is too flawed to be continued.  Yes, using CGI to replace blanks is more costly and less believable, but maybe making writers rely less on gunfire to resolve plot problems is a good thing.

How's that work when they have to load a gun in a scene? Special exceptions in place?

[celedhring]

Yeah, whenever I've been in shootings with guns shooting blanks the gun has always been last inspected in front of the actor. There was one time the actor was an ex-cop and he did it himself. The idea, I suppose, is besides having an extra layer of safety to also ensure the actor feels safe when handling the gun.

Wish we had Katmai around, he'll have much more experience on these matters.

Under U safety  laws, only the armorer or AD can load a gun.  So, even if Baldwin had unloaded the gun to check each round to ensure that they were duds, he'd have to have one of mthe authorized individuals reload the gun, and would still be left with their word that they had loaded the gun with the blanks he had just checked.

There have been enough accidents to convince me that the whole concept of blanks and live rounds on set is too flawed to be continued.  Yes, using CGI to replace blanks is more costly and less believable, but maybe making writers rely less on gunfire to resolve plot problems is a good thing.

How's that work when they have to load a gun in a scene? Special exceptions in place?

You won't be using the same gun for the loading and the shooting bits.

Under U safety  laws, only the armorer or AD can load a gun.  So, even if Baldwin had unloaded the gun to check each round to ensure that they were duds, he'd have to have one of mthe authorized individuals reload the gun, and would still be left with their word that they had loaded the gun with the blanks he had just checked.

Fair enough, my shoots were mostly non-Union. And the "load gun in front of the actor" was always performed by the AD. The whole point of doing that is that the actor doesn't have to take somebody's word for it. I'm not sure whether that was a requirement but it was done in every shoot I worked on that involved firing blanks.

There's also state regulations. In the case in NY (the ones I encountered) they were quite stringent - i.e. there had to be cops onset if you fired blanks in a public place.

[OttoVonBismarck]

My only issue with the "check the gun" argument, is he's not checking it to see if it's loaded or not, right? He'd be checking that it isn't loaded with real ammunition. I think it's questionable to me that an actor knows enough about firearms to actually know when that is the case.

My understanding, and I wish Katmai was still around since he knew all this stuff, is there's like 2 different types of rounds used in filming:

1. "Blanks", that do have a gunpowder charge and do "fire", but essentially have no bullet in the round. Blanks do actually expel matter (wax, wadding etc) out of the barrel, and make a sound and put off smoke etc. An actor in the 1980s was killed due to stupidly shooting himself in the temple with a blank--while they are not really lethal at any kind of range, detonating one right on top of your skull can in fact kill you. If a blank had been in the gun on the Rust set, Hutchins was more than far enough away she would not have been killed. Blanks look visually extremely different to real ammunition.

2. "Dummy" rounds, these look very real, essentially like a real round. They are totally inert, though, and have no powder in them whatsoever, they cannot be fired. These appear to be the standard for use in "cold" rehearsal situations where you are working on camera shots. Additionally, these are considered essential for use in revolvers for close-ups where the bullets can be seen--as most people familiar with guns know, you can actually see the bullet loaded into a revolver, if they did not have realistic appearance it would make it obvious the revolver was loaded with blanks. So a single scene they may switch out guns using dummy rounds and blanks as needed, when blanks are needed for their effect, they will take care they are not shown so they can't be easily seen as a fake round, when you need to see the bullet, the camera will capture the dummy round.

I am not really sure that an actor is trained appropriately to discern between a realistic looking dummy round and live ammunition, and making sure such things cannot be confused is a major job of the armorer who for one is supposed to insure live ammunition is never on set, never stored with prop ammunition etc.

I'm pretty sure most of the context for an actor "checking" the gun, is to just visually make sure the barrel has no obstructions in it, because if you fire a blank and there is an obstruction in the barrel, things can get dangerous fast. This is what killed Brandon Lee on "Crow." I'm not really sure the purpose of checking is to "confirm it's loaded with dummy rounds and not live ammunition", because in fact live ammunition is never supposed to be on a movie set, and you would never trust a non-firearms expert actor to safely distinguish between dummy and live ammunition. It's simply not a discernment that is supposed to be happening on set because there should never be live ammunition there.

[grumbler]

Yes, these were dummy rounds indistinguishable, visually, from real rounds.  They have to be unloaded and shaken to hear the BB rattling around in the empty case.  That's the AD's job, not the actor's.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I see the prosecutor issued this statement:

"He doesn't actually have to touch each projectile, each piece of ammunition," Mary Carmack-Altwies, the district attorney in Santa Fe County, said in an interview after the charging decision was announced. "He has an absolute duty to know that what is in the gun that is being placed in his hand is safe."

That feels like the thrust of what she is going to attempt to prove in court--that Baldwin had that "absolute duty." But I am skeptical that can be easily sustained in a court, because if that is an absolute duty it would appear to be one that is not universally recognized. I think it would be difficult to sell a jury on that argument if the defense can come up with lots of examples as to this not being the standard.

I again, don't know a lot about negligence law, but there are many industries who do, as a standard, things you would tell "ordinary people" never to do. Smokejumpers parachute into forest fires, firefighters run into burning buildings etc. So, I don't think "general" conceptions of negligence always override industry specific norms, if so, basically all dangerous professions the employers would be exposed to negligence suits related to the industry standards that, while designed to make things as safe as possible, still entail its members doing things that are intrinsically not safe to the same standard as people outside the industry. If my boss in an office building orders me to start breaking apart a burning ceiling so we can get a firehose up there, and I get injured, I probably have a good claim against him--and he may even have crossed into criminal negligence. An on-site fire squad leader would IMO not be exposed to negligence claims at all.

The way firearms appear to be made safe, primarily, is by a professional expert (armorer) and a film crew member who also has overall responsibility for set safety and props (the AD) following processes that allow a total non-firearms expert (the actor) to do their acting without putting anyone in danger.

[crazy canuck]

But if the circumstances are such that Baldwin, in his role as a producer, knew that short cuts had been taken on safety in order to save money then there actually is some reason for thinking that Baldwin should not have just taken the word of the under paid, inexperienced person, who was giving him the gun.

He wasn't handed the gun by an underpaid inexperienced person.  He was handed the gun by the experienced assistant director who explicitly told him the gun had only dummy rounds (not even blanks; these were supposed to be empty except for a BB that made a noise when shaken to show the round was a dummy).

The AD is also the one who loaded the gun that morning.  It appears, though, that the gun was not locked up at lunch as he believed, but rather taken by the armorer so other members of the cast and crew could fire some live rounds.  The AD didn't check the rounds to ensure that they were dummies in the afternoon.

That is what the defence will likely attempt to argue, but I don't find that characterization to be consistent with all the facts which have been reported thus far. 

There is no indication the assistant director had any particular expertise in the safe handling of weapons on set and the evidence is clear that the person who should have had control of the situation, the armourer, was inexperienced. 

Baldwin knew all of this.

[OttoVonBismarck]

There is no indication the assistant director had any particular expertise in the safe handling of weapons on set and the evidence is clear that the person who should have had control of the situation, the armourer, was inexperienced. 

All reporting I have ever seen on this indicate it is, factually, the role of the AD to call a gun cold or not when it is passed onto the set. I do not believe in that role they have to be gun experts, their job is basically the "boss" of the props department which includes the armorer, they are responsible for checking with the armorer (their specialist employee) that the gun is safe, and then communicating that to the set.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The most recent on set death from firearms mishandling occurred in 2017, and from that time this was reported as the norm:

Safety on set is the responsibility of the producer, the director and the first assistant director (First AD). The First AD is the producer's voice on set: responsible for on set safety calls with input from the safety supervisor and armourer. He or she will have been briefed by the producer, who provides a risk assessment and an industry standard safety report.

And a New Mexico film professor also indicated it is usually the assistant director as well:

https://www.koat.com/article/new-mexico-movie-professionals-talk-about-the-people-in-charge-of-guns-on-film-sets/38041121

[crazy canuck]

There is no indication the assistant director had any particular expertise in the safe handling of weapons on set and the evidence is clear that the person who should have had control of the situation, the armourer, was inexperienced. 

All reporting I have ever seen on this indicate it is, factually, the role of the AD to call a gun cold or not when it is passed onto the set. I do not believe in that role they have to be gun experts, their job is basically the "boss" of the props department which includes the armorer, they are responsible for checking with the armorer (their specialist employee) that the gun is safe, and then communicating that to the set.

Yes, we are saying the same thing.  Baldwin had no reasonable basis to conclude the AD had any particular experience or knowledge in declaring the gun safe.  What he did know is that the person who had the responsibility (and on whom the AD would be relying) lacked experience.

[grumbler]

That is what the defence will likely attempt to argue, but I don't find that characterization to be consistent with all the facts which have been reported thus far. 

There is no indication the assistant director had any particular expertise in the safe handling of weapons on set and the evidence is clear that the person who should have had control of the situation, the armourer, was inexperienced. 

Baldwin knew all of this.

Dave Halls has more than forty movie/TV episode credits as an Assistant Director/First Assistant Director.  Many of those involved firearms.  Your argument that Baldwin, the actor, was criminally negligent for assuming that Halls was incompetent enough to hand him a live gun and tell him it was cold seems to lack merit.

Gutierrez-Reed was relatively inexperienced (it was only her second time as head armorer) but supervising her was not Baldwin's job.  The AD was required to check the gun before it was handed to Baldwin, and Baldwin had been explicitly told that the weapon was inert. 

The idea that Baldwin was in charge of weapons safety isn't consistent with the facts of the case as so far reported.

[grumbler]

Yes, we are saying the same thing.  Baldwin had no reasonable basis to conclude the AD had any particular experience or knowledge in declaring the gun safe.  What he did know is that the person who had the responsibility (and on whom the AD would be relying) lacked experience.

Of course he had a reasonable basis for concluding that a very experienced AD was very experienced.  We have no evidence whatsoever that Baldwin knew anything about the background of Gutierrez-Reed, nor should he have. He was performing as an actor, not a director.

[crazy canuck]

That is what the defence will likely attempt to argue, but I don't find that characterization to be consistent with all the facts which have been reported thus far. 

There is no indication the assistant director had any particular expertise in the safe handling of weapons on set and the evidence is clear that the person who should have had control of the situation, the armourer, was inexperienced. 

Baldwin knew all of this.

Dave Halls has more than forty movie/TV episode credits as an Assistant Director/First Assistant Director.  Many of those involved firearms.  Your argument that Baldwin, the actor, was criminally negligent for assuming that Halls was incompetent enough to hand him a live gun and tell him it was cold seems to lack merit.

Gutierrez-Reed was relatively inexperienced (it was only her second time as head armorer) but supervising her was not Baldwin's job.  The AD was required to check the gun before it was handed to Baldwin, and Baldwin had been explicitly told that the weapon was inert. 

The idea that Baldwin was in charge of weapons safety isn't consistent with the facts of the case as so far reported.

I invite you to re-read my posts with a bit more care, my argument is that Balwin cannot separate his brain into Balwin the actor and Balwin the producer as you appear to be doing.  Instead, the evidence seems to indicate the Balwin, the individual who pulled the trigger, knew for certain that the armourer was inexperienced and so he had every reason to be more cautious.

Remember, your comment was that he had no reason for such concern.  That position is not consistent with what has been reported. 

[crazy canuck]

Yes, we are saying the same thing.  Baldwin had no reasonable basis to conclude the AD had any particular experience or knowledge in declaring the gun safe.  What he did know is that the person who had the responsibility (and on whom the AD would be relying) lacked experience.

Of course he had a reasonable basis for concluding that a very experienced AD was very experienced.  We have no evidence whatsoever that Baldwin knew anything about the background of Gutierrez-Reed, nor should he have. He was performing as an actor, not a director.

He was also a producer - you know, the guy who hired the folks working on the project and who made the decision to go cheap.