Alec Baldwin shoots and kills cinematographer.

SixPapaCharlie said:
Wonder why blanks are as powerful as they are. All you're really looking for is a muzzle flash and some recoil I suppose.
Couldn't you create that with a Black-cat firework amount of gun powder?
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It takes a fair bit of powder to get muzzle flash, I suppose, though often that is added digitally instead. You won't get much recoil at all, if no projectile is fired. You can spot that in low budget movies, when each shot is followed by an impossibly-slow muzzle rise, when the actor manually jerks up the gun after each shot.

Target handgun loads use a remarkably small amount of powder. If a competition doesn't require some minimum power factor, you can load down pretty far. My competition .38 loads use less than 3 grains of smokeless powder, which is well under 7/1000's of an ounce in each cartridge.
 
Make a prop gun that flashes out the muzzle, but shoots a jet of air out the bottom of the barrel to simulate recoil?
 
steingar said:
This is really awful. This is a tragedy for him just as much as it is for the others. I can't imagine being responsible for the death of another, even if it was accidental, even if it was no fault of my own. It would be really horrible.
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Hence the irony. This clown has tweeted several times making fun of or otherwise ridiculing others who have either accidentally shot someone or did so in defense. Hopefully he sees how it’s not so funny now.
 
DaleB said:
I wonder how many accidental/negligent shootings on set there were during the heyday of the Western shoot-em-up movies and TV series.
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I'd guess that in the heyday of the Western, a large percentage of the actors and crew were ex-military, and had received some professional training on firearm use, and gained some respect for firearms.

My training was as a CAP cadet with a National Guard sergeant training our rifle team. He put the fear of God into us. To this day, I'm hyper cautious around firearms

Don't know the history of Baldwin's anti-gun stance, but suspect he's never had training. If he was horsing around, he should pay the cost. But if he just took the weapon the armorer gave him, and used it as the director told him, don't see this as being his fault.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
My training was as a CAP cadet with a National Guard sergeant training our rifle team. He put the fear of God into us. To this day, I'm hyper cautious around firearms
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I'm with you on that. I'll take a gun that I know perfectly well is unloaded, safe, recently cleaned out of the locked gun safe... and the very first thing I do is open the action and make sure it's empty. 100%, without exception, ever. I'm absolutely paranoid about it.
 
DaleB said:
I'm with you on that. I'll take a gun that I know perfectly well is unloaded, safe, recently cleaned out of the locked gun safe... and the very first thing I do is open the action and make sure it's empty. 100%, without exception, ever. I'm absolutely paranoid about it.
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Kind of like preflighting an airplane, especially sumping the tanks and getting an eye on the fuel level.
 
Zeldman said:
Something sorta like this:


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The problem is neither one of those sound right. The .50 has a deeper whump whump whump to it. I suppose that issue could be overcome with sound editing later on in the production process.
 
DaleB said:
I'm with you on that. I'll take a gun that I know perfectly well is unloaded, safe, recently cleaned out of the locked gun safe... and the very first thing I do is open the action and make sure it's empty. 100%, without exception, ever. I'm absolutely paranoid about it.
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Before I hand a gun to someone I will open the action and show that person that the gun is empty.
 
midwestpa24 said:
They need the gun to cycle, so in the scene the actor can fire multiple times as a real gun would.
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I can't believe it would be very difficult to build a prop that looks exactly like a gun, cycles the action when the trigger is pulled exactly like a gun, and has an internal mechanism that will cause a natural looking recoil without the need to ever have anything leave the barrel.

It boggles my mind that an insurance company would sign off on a production allowing live ammo anywhere near any set that isn't first configured with everyone not in the scene behind steel or ballistics glass.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
It boggles my mind that an insurance company would sign off on a production having live ammo would be allowed anywhere near any set that isn't first configured with everyone not in the scene behind steel or ballistics glass.
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I would think the insurance company would require anyone handling a firearm on a set for any reason, whether it's loaded (they're all loaded) or not to take an extensive gun training course. To not require training for those handling weapons is irresponsible.
 
Warlock said:
Sounds like negligent homicide at some level and not simply an accident…
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Certainly. I wonder who will admit to screwing up? Or maybe it was a blank, and some bits caused the damage? Like an NTSB investigation, we'll have to wait a while, and then we can second guess the verdict. Because that's what we do.
 
GaryM said:
It takes a fair bit of powder to get muzzle flash, I suppose, though often that is added digitally instead. You won't get much recoil at all, if no projectile is fired. You can spot that in low budget movies, when each shot is followed by an impossibly-slow muzzle rise, when the actor manually jerks up the gun after each shot.

Target handgun loads use a remarkably small amount of powder. If a competition doesn't require some minimum power factor, you can load down pretty far. My competition .38 loads use less than 3 grains of smokeless powder, which is well under 7/1000's of an ounce in each cartridge.
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CGI is expensive, gunpower is cheap.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Creepy to think it is likely that they have video of it actually happening.
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Unless it was a dry-run. But video is essentially free. Propmaster has a lot to answer for, unless this was a mechanical failure (had a shotgun cartridge casing exit the barrel once with the load, leaving only the brass, as an example.)
Still cannot think of why one would point even a blank gun at the camera, given just the flame ejecta. At least not a manned camera.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
Unless it was a dry-run. But video is essentially free. Propmaster has a lot to answer for, unless this was a mechanical failure (had a shotgun cartridge casing exit the barrel once with the load, leaving only the brass, as an example.)
Still cannot think of why one would point even a blank gun at the camera, given just the flame ejecta. At least not a manned camera.
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This. If you MUST do it, set the camera up on a fixed mount and get the operator away from it. You couldn't pay me enough to get me to stand downrange.
 
calling @socalflyingmonkey to check-in.... the only cinematographer I "know" Hope you were no where close this....
 
DaleB said:
This. If you MUST do it, set the camera up on a fixed mount and get the operator away from it. You couldn't pay me enough to get me to stand downrange.
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I had the same thought..... and I don't think you could pay me enough to pull the trigger with anyone standing behind the camera either....
 
Brad W said:
calling @socalflyingmonkey to check-in.... the only cinematographer I "know" Hope you were no where close this....
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I suspect you're referring to @FlyingMonkey since he is a cinematographer, and the above reference doesn't appear to work.
 
Sad story all the way around. Can't help but be interested to hear what the causes were, assuming they eventually come out.

I've been around a bit of the film industry. I think about the parallels between aviation and movie-making:

The Swiss Cheese Model: I have to assume a lot of things went wrong to end up with one person dead and one injured after what was supposed to be a normal day of filming. Just like in aviation, an accident usually isn't the result of one thing, rather a lining-up of several different disparate events.

Get there-itis: Filming a movie is a complex operation, with lots of moving pieces. And when it's in the middle of production, you're usually burning money by the truckload. People get in a hurry, corners get cut, and things still work out fine, right up until they don't.
 
Also, was reminded of this accident on Transformers 3. You'd think a production like this would be the epitome of modern movie-making, with everything done above-board and to the greatest standards of safety, given the production values and the fact that it's a huge, mega-buck franchise.

News reports quoted another extra as saying that Cedillo’s Toyota was being towed by a second vehicle and that the steel cable between the two vehicles broke, then whipped around, and sliced through the woman’s car and cut her head. Sources on the Indiana set told media outlets that extras like Cedillo were paid $25 for the use of their personal cars. I received this email from a confidential informant: “An extra doing stunts in her own car with a tow rig? Holy **** is somebody’s head gonna roll over this one. SO many things against industry standards, don’t know where to start!
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You never point a gun at another person you don't intend to shoot. That rule doesn't change because you are on a movie set. Even prop guns firing only blanks can kill (but based on the reported injuries, I am skeptical this was that). Baldwin would have heard this first at day one minute one of on-set gun-handling training, and he's surely heard it many times. If there was a camera angle that required pointing a gun at or near the camera, everyone should have been behind a ballistic barrier; there's just too many people around and behind the camera to have any safe direction to point a gun there. The bottom line is there's absolutely no excuse for this happening.

The union, which just reached an agreement to avert a widespread strike, has already said none of its members were in the props department on this production. Nevertheless, it also put out a statement that it was a real gun and ammo (by different locals). No doubt this production was happening where it was to save money and avoid the union influence in California, and this will be an example used by them of how unprofessional and dangerous these independent productions are (true, but so are many union productions).
 
DaleB said:
I'm with you on that. I'll take a gun that I know perfectly well is unloaded, safe, recently cleaned out of the locked gun safe... and the very first thing I do is open the action and make sure it's empty. 100%, without exception, ever. I'm absolutely paranoid about it.
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Same.

I did a handgun training course here in AZ. The instructor was making the point that, "the gun is always loaded". I mean that's rule number 1 of firearm safety. It's always loaded. This older lady raised her hand and asked, "ya, but what bout when it's not loaded". Some people just don't get it...
 
Holy crap, once again, unverified info in posts from a guy on a social media site who is usually ahead of the curve with info......:

Set member tells @HumanEvents the armorist for the Alec Baldwin movie had asked prop master to check gun for blanks by 'shaking it around and listening for a rattling sound' before handing to Baldwin. Magazine/chamber not checked


Set member tells @HumanEvents that Alec Baldwin was rehearsing a church scene with the cinematographer when he drew the gun and said something like 'is this what you want?' and then pulled the trigger. Director was standing behind her
 
The irony of an anti gun guy killing someone with a gun is beyond belief on so many levels and the report of a live round in a .44 discharged is incredible…I assume be period specific it was a straight wall black powder round…ball, wadcutter, or jacketed all are devastating at close range…
 
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Surprising given how much he values firearms and knows exactly what they can and cannot do.
 
PaulS said:
Holy crap, once again, unverified info in posts from a guy on a social media site who is usually ahead of the curve with info......:

Set member tells @HumanEvents the armorist for the Alec Baldwin movie had asked prop master to check gun for blanks by 'shaking it around and listening for a rattling sound' before handing to Baldwin. Magazine/chamber not checked


Set member tells @HumanEvents that Alec Baldwin was rehearsing a church scene with the cinematographer when he drew the gun and said something like 'is this what you want?' and then pulled the trigger. Director was standing behind her
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If he did that, there could be issues.
 
Grum.Man said:
Hence the irony. This clown has tweeted several times making fun of or otherwise ridiculing others who have either accidentally shot someone or did so in defense. Hopefully he sees how it’s not so funny now.
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Yeah, it seems like a pretty cut and dry accident. I'm sure it was awful for everyone involved and I'm normally against people facing charges for something that's an obvious accident. But, if we're charging other people for accidental deaths and he's a huge proponent of that... I don't see how it's fair he gets a pass.

I mean overall I think our society ought to be more forgiving than it is but... fair is fair.
 
weilke said:
Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Surprising given how much he values firearms and knows exactly what they can and cannot do.
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My sense is that he's a douche, but I wouldn't wish this on anyone. What a terrible accident/mistake/careless oversight.
 
GaryM said:
It is ironic. For someone who is so very, very anti-gun, he seems to accepts paychecks for an awful lot of roles that involve him running around pointing guns at people.
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Seems to be a common theme in Hollywood these days…..people “doing things” just to get a part then later complaining and blaming other people about doing those things….
 
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