I believe that ship has sailed.
Detectives found three revolvers, spent casings and ammunition — in boxes, loose and in a fanny pack — when they searched the New Mexico film set where the actor Alec Baldwin fatally shot a cinematographer last week with a gun he had been told did not contain any live rounds, according to an inventory of the items seized that was released on Monday.
Both correct. Sigh.
While the producers were negligent in bringing a scab crew on set instead of dealing with the concerns of those who walked off, the person responsible for gun safety did not do the job and Hutchins was killed. Saying that she is being thrown under the bus is incorrect. She had the ability to do the job and supposedly the knowledge.
When two people are responsible for something but only one gets blamed, that’s not denying the one being blamed is responsible.
I don’t know if that’s what’s happening in this situation. I hope not. But it’s something to look for, if the list of guilty parties is short. From the description of the walk-out, it sounds like firearms were part of a bigger problem.
Not to mention that her father, Thell Reed, is a very experienced and well-known armorer in the industry. She certainly would have had the opportunity to be well-trained for the job.
(Assuming that her dad’s reputation is earned and that he wasn’t teaching her bad habits, that is)
Edit to add:
There’s a couple interesting quotes from a podcast she was interviewed on about a month ago:
And she also discussed her preference for using “dummy wads” which are blanks that include a tip that look like real bullets.
More here:
Well you can check out his resume.
You don’t have a credit list like that without reputation and connections. And guy’s apparently almost 80, that IMDB page just goes back to the 90’s.
Pull quotes I’ve seen from the same interview you posted have her stating that she “had to” figure out the job on her own.
And she has a very short credit list. For some one younger, practically anything you do with a credit will tend to get listed at IMDB. Even self produced web videos. I had an IMDB page for a while, with more entries than that. And I just had a couple of freelance gigs assistant editing on trashy “edutainment” and reality series.
It smells like some one did a favor here.
Disagree. Denying her a dangerous job that she was (apparently) unqualified for would have been doing her a favor.
Makes no difference. That was a serious breach of professional duty for the armorer to even let the guns out of her possession in such a way. The armorer is supposed to be the last person who handles a gun before the actor does.
Target practice means that live ammunition was on the set and used in that gun. Production equipment being abused outside of its intended use. The equivalent of taking a company car and drag racing with it.
Her only prior credit involves a near mishap. She was loading a gun on the ground near pebbles to be handed to an 11 year old actor. The crew vehemently insisted she check the gun for obstructions (to avoid a Brandon Lee type incident).
All of those quotes from her are the opposite of how other armourers and masters-at-arms speak on film sets. They talk at length about how absolutely extremely dangerous guns are and make sure nobody on set forgets that for even a split second. These quotes are really concerning- like, she should find another line of work.
It seems clear at this point there were institutional safety issues as well. The union camera crew apparently walked off largely for lack of COVID safety protocols, among other things. But even with all that, the armourer is coming out looking pretty bad here.
It also seems clear that the production company and associated wealthy suits are going to throw her under the bus for it and will themselves walk away. I wonder how much of this bad press about her is part of that. They want to convict her in the court of public opinion. If those quotes are all accurate and not misleading in some way, though, maybe she needs to be thrown under the bus, unfortunately. What a crappy situation.
This just keeps getting worse and worse in terms of how this horrible thing happened. It is sounding more and more like a really bad law school case study in who has more responsibility. 
But I will say it is looking less and less like a tragic accident and more and more like negligent homicide.
I think that the armorer is probably going to get in trouble for this, and will likely not work in the industry again; which is probably not an entirely bad thing. Whoever was out plinking should share in the responsibility. I hope the management of the movie also shares in those legal woes, for allowing this to happen. (As per Baldwin? I think a lot of his responsibility will depend on what his role was in the management of the film and set; and less on that he actually shot her.)
It wouldn’t neccisarily be a failure just on the part of the armorer. The prop master would have the top level control of the physical guns themselves for storage and what have. The prop master hands them off to the armorer for handling.
That crew of any kind had access to firearms at all. Outside the context of on set use means that person fucked up too.
Whether the armorer effectively “checked out” guns from the props department to go shooting, or either she or the prop master were unware. Or there just wasn’t that level of control to begin with. That is straight fucked up.
Well that finally answers the question of why there was live ammo on the set. I can see the value of training actors on shooting real guns for realism and familiarity. There is that semi famous video of Keanu running through a course as part of his training for John Wick (and doing a fantastic job).
BUT - I don’t think that should be done at the production site. If it needs to be due to costs or time - ok - but I would guard that live ammo with my life. Since it is revolvers, you can pull out spent cases and put them in the box as you shoot them and confirm if you had a box of 50, and you shot all 50, you have 50 cases, and not a live round floating out somewhere. If you had live ammo after the shooting, then that is placed under lock and key somewhere else so that it can not ever be accidentally grabbed.
It sounds like complacency, chaos, possibly inexperience, and bad practices (AD shouldn’t be passing out props) created the perfect storm.
So I read that article, really interesting. These dummy “wad” rounds should either be a real bullet with no primer (or spent primer) and no powder, or a solid one piece bullet.
And to clarify, the dummy wads aren’t “blanks”, they won’t go bang. A blank is a case with a powder charge, but no projectile (bullet) at the end to shoot. A dummy is completely inert.
It is possible with the chaos on the set, someone other than the armorer loaded this gun and used real bullets vs dummy ones, or got one mixed up. But it would still be an armorer fail for having live rounds anywhere near production.
And as an aside, she said:
“There’s no way that he would have kept that same gun over 20 years,” she said while noting that gun technology advanced significantly during the period in which the film was set.
Actually there are several cases of old gunslingers and sheriffs keeping outdated revolvers like percussion cap vs cased ammo, because that is what they were most familiar with.
I would say that if the quotes are accurate and not taken out of context it’s strong evidence that she needs to be held accountable for apparent irresponsible professional conduct and a poor safety attitude that contributed to a fatal accident, but the term to “throw someone under the bus” is usually used to describe betrayal or disavowal of an ally for the purpose of self-preservation. It’s likely that others involved in the production share some of the responsibility so assigning all the blame to her in order to save themselves is not something that “needs” to be done.
One thing I don’t understand here is why Baldwin doesn’t automatically share in the responsibility here?
Maybe it’s just my experience (and local/range regulations) but any time I have been handed a firearm I was taught to treat it as loaded unless proven otherwise. If a gun is described as unloaded the person handing it to me has always thoroughly demonstrated that it is in fact unloaded and the barel is clear. I understood it to be my responsibility to watch and confirm this. From descriptions of how film armourers work on various news shows, this sounds similar to the accepted general process. Baldwin is senior enough that I would be surprised if he hasn’t ever been taught safe handling. Although in a country without firearm licenses perhaps that may be possible? (I honestly don’t know)
I can also think of no industrial safety situation where the responsibility for safety is not shared at all levels. If liability for this ends up falling on just one person I don’t see how justice is served or change can happen.
John Wick films use CGI muzzle blasts which means presumably non-firing guns
Zack Snyder uses Airsoft replicas.
There is so much carelessness added to the corner cutting with this production. Basically it would have been cheaper and less of a hassle to do things more safely.
This entire line of argument is both scripted and misses a shit ton of details about a movie set and use of prop guns.
It isn’t. And it isn’t typically production staff who do it. They send people to a class.
The risk with dummies is the bullet can separate from the casing, and get lodged in a cylinder or chamber. Loading a blank in behind it then creates a weak, but dangerous live round. A variation of this is what happened to Brandon Lee. Cheap dummies with active primers, caused the bullet from a dummy to lodge in the barrel, which was not checked properly.
This is a particular risk with self loading fire arms, any shot where a dummy is loaded into the chamber can potentially leave a bullet behind.
Lee’s death is the most famous thing to result from this sort of mistake. But those risks were known at the time, and many less high profile and less tragic accidents have happened. A lot of safety checks are involved with the use of dummies. Best practice is to only use them when it’s necessary, and will be clearly visible on camera.
Using them whenever possible for a sense of realism is bad juju.
They use them pretty frequently, but there’s plenty of shots where it’s likely that blanks are used. It’s not particularly practical to CG casings flying around, at least not all the time.
If you watch some clips it’s pretty clear that they use the CG where ever possible. And either obscure the lack of brass flying around, skip it, or toss it in where they can. I’m pretty sure one of the clips I just watched they literally had some one tossing casings in from off camera. It’s incredibly clever.
For color. A major reason it can be cheaper is regular prop staff can handle it, so you’re not paying for additional specialized staff. Fake guns is massively cheaper than either buying or renting real ones as well.
Thing is CG, at least good CG is not neccisarily cheaper than those things. That’s going to depend on how much and what circumstance.
To keep up with John Wick, I’m frequently impressed by how well they pull it off. And they are operating on really tight budgets. This is a thing where the costs and practicality are rapidly shifting towards the fake guns.
I don’t quite understand the scripted dig?
Thank you for the details on film set handling of firearms.
I will have to look up how this works in countries/jurisdictions with firearm licenses 
. I am generally of the opinion that real guns should have very limited roles in film.
Edit - Although I am not a fan of PostMedia. It looks like Canada may have different regulations based on the details in this article which suggest the need for training and a business firearms license for everyone who handles a firearm. Working in a medical field I am not a fan of structures where responsibility for safety falls on one (or few) person.
There have been fatalities on film sets in B.C. but no gun prop deaths | Vancouver Sun I don’t have the energy to find the relevant sections of the actual law so I am open to corrections.
It might be that there’s a large group of people repeating this line of thinking because they disagree with Baldwin’s politics and that he was mean to Trump.
Actors sometimes use guns that have dummy rounds that are intended to look real. They need to rely on the other professionals on set that the gun they’re given doesn’t have real bullets in it.
