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Alec Baldwin

At the very least you’d expect to be shown it’s empty. It’s not just the military, civilian shooting clubs have these rules too.
In the film industry the thing is a prop - no-one would expect it has a live round any more then they'd expect families to be living in the false front sets they are working in, or that a TARDIS will actually take you to another place or time. Something terrible happened here that went way outside the normal safety processes.
 
Well, if you don’t carry out basic safety checks, eventually someone gets shot, it really is as simple as that.
Guns and explosives work as advertised, and there’s no dodging them, no second chance.
I hear reports there were concerns about safety corners being cut on set, so perhaps not all protocols were followed. But having said that, and not knowing anything about how these things work, I wonder whether actors, on a live set, would be expected to check for themselves. I presume they are ‘in character’ and distracting them from the role might be a no-no. So I’d not be surprised to learn that normal practice on set is for the prop person to do the checks, and be relied on for that.
 
I’ve some recent experience in film production and there are strict rules about using licensed Armourers in the industry when prop weapons are used. I imagine someone has seriously messed up here or it’s a criminal matter…most of the effects are achieved in post production quite easily.
I can’t see AB recovering from something like this, regardless of where the fault lies
 
In Ireland anyway if you’re filming with any kind of firearms you need a firearms expert on set. I gather there’d been complaints during the shoot about corner cutting, maybe this was one of them. Since Baldwin was producing as well as starring it’s not looking good for him.
 
Surely it would not be up to the actor to check.Many would t know how. There are teams around actors whose job it is to check and double check these issues according to strict guidelines I presume. That’s what they are paid to do.you couldn’t expect an actor to check a semi automatic etc. Unless they were experts in firearms and carried appropriate safety certs or qualifications. You would not blame Vic Morrow for not checking the helicopter etc.on that infamous Twighlight Zone shot? There are people and protocols who look after such matters. And there’s always cost cutting on films but it’s unusual for Thais to happen around safety issues.
 
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Surely it would yet be up to the actor to check.Many would t know how. There are teams around actors whose job it is to check and double check these issues according to strict guidelines I presume. That’s what they are paid to do.you couldn’t expect an actor to check a semi automatic etc. Unless they were experts in firearms and carried appropriate safety certs or qualifications.
Did you mean ‘would not’ instead of ‘would yet’?
 
It is the job of the Armourer to check all weapons. Something like a Colt revolver is easy to verify as nothing is chambered, a Winchester is a lot harder. The snag is that a real close up of a revolver would show the blanks. When you see a revolver being emptied or loaded in a film, you often see complete bullets, are these dummies?
 
It is the job of the Armourer to check all weapons. Something like a Colt revolver is easy to verify as nothing is chambered, a Winchester is a lot harder. The snag is that a real close up of a revolver would show the blanks. When you see a revolver being emptied or loaded in a film, you often see complete bullets, are these dummies?
You'd bloody hope they were dummies.
 
You never, ever point a gun at anyone unless you intend to kill them.
Hollywood has lots of tricks up its sleeve with camera angles etc, so it seems that Alec Baldwin messed up.

Hopefully the film makers will use cgi from now on.

It's basically just a chain of errors - a 'live fire capable' gun shouldn't have been there in the first place, the props man should have checked that it wasn't live rather than just hand it on, Baldwin should have checked it, and as you say he should never have pointed it at someone even if he believed it to be only a prop.
 
If the script calls for a shot with the gun pointed at the viewer, then the gun has to be pointed at the camera and therefore also at the camera operators.

We’ve covered reasons why Baldwin (the actor) might not have been expected/required to check it himself. Which is not to excuse Baldwin (the producer) if safety provisions were short-circuited.
 
It's basically just a chain of errors - a 'live fire capable' gun shouldn't have been there in the first place, the props man should have checked that it wasn't live rather than just hand it on, Baldwin should have checked it, and as you say he should never have pointed it at someone even if he believed it to be only a prop.
Yep. Always a chain of events, and any one person in the chain could have stopped it.

That is a core part of Human Factors training in aviation. Training courses often use the iceberg diagram to show that the one incident that results in a crash was preceded by dozens of near misses. That seems to be emerging here too.
 
According to the Daily Mail ..

“Unionised workers had walked off the set hours before the fatal shooting, after they complained about long hours, shoddy conditions and another safety incident days earlier involving 'two misfires' of a prop weapon. A source said an as-yet unnamed prop master who oversaw the gun had 'just been brought in' to replace the workers who had left. ”
 
It's basically just a chain of errors - a 'live fire capable' gun shouldn't have been there in the first place...
A gun that can fire blanks is a real gun and can also fire live rounds. In this day and age there is no reason why the camera operator really had to be in the way, just that nobody has bothered to make suitable remote control cinema cameras.
 


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