I just can’t stop thinking about the horror of being on-site for an accident like this. Much less being the one pulling the trigger. Awful.
Holy shit, how do you have fucking live rounds on a movie set in the first place??? There is absolutely no reason to have a live round anywhere remotely near a movie set, except for an armed security guard of cop doing security duty.
The foley guys need live rounds to record the sounds, but they do it on a gun range.
Yeah this is where my head is at. There had to be multiple fuckups to get to the point of having a gun with a live round in it handed to Baldwin.
I don’t want to make light of these events but there is a Hitman level about this. You can literally switch a prop gun with a real one with live ammo to execute the assassination.
I don’t see any reason to believe the IATSE has special insight as to what was fired, especially when they confirm no one in the union was working on the shoot, and we have already seen people assuming live ammo was used without anything saying so. If they’re right, yes, that’s a colossal fuck up by someone, but I don’t think that constitutes confirmation.
Edit: actually, on rereading, it sounds like they just meant they weren’t members of Local 44, not that they weren’t union. So, I dunno.
IATSE is a big union/guild. IATSE #44 said none of their member propmasters were part of the shoot. But it’s possible that there were lots of other IATSE members serving as other crew on set who may have known if there were non-union workers on set. Especially after the fact.
“Local 44” is just the IATSE designation for prop and crafts folks. They have over 6,000 members and are based in Los Angeles.
The various Crafts we represent are: Construction Coordinator, Draper, Floorcover, Greens, Propmaster, Propmaker, Property, Sewers, Set Decorator, Special Effects, Upholsterer, Commercial Master, Commercial Propmaker, Commercial Property, and Commercial Set Decorator.
Yeah I don’t think Alex Baldwin could get away with making a movie with non-union workers.
Also just possible they’re simply the first source to the public. Production crew on set and law enforcement probably has a lot more info by now, not exclusive to IATSE, word just got out when IATSE put some of that info in their letter to their members.
I am sure IATSE would know if there were non-union folks on shoot. I am not sure they would know what was fired if it wasn’t an IATSE prop master, and the police are still investigating. But also not ruling it out.
Interestingly, Alec Baldwin will be facing some tough times ahead, and not just for being the actor that fired the gun. As a producer he’s going to be asked a lot of questions about his and the director’s knowledge and their decisions regarding the whole incident. Real bad news for Joel Souza as a fairly inexperienced director (2019’s Crown Vic and a handful of shorts to his name).
We should all be wary of definitive statements released early like the union email. It may not have been a “live round” as we think of a typical round fired from a gun, and Alec Baldwin talking into a phone about unknowingly being handed a “hot gun” may be in error too. As a non-firearms expert it’s possible he fired a blank which he thought was a regular round since it went on to hit two people.
This is exactly what I was thinking… like, why would you have any live ammo on set?
Should also be noted: Baldwin is one of 6 producers on a film project that also has 5 additional executive producers and 1 co-producer.
It may be one of those deals where he got a producer credit to allow him to take a smaller salary for acting without running afoul of SAG.
Low budget, non-union production (possibly), inexperienced director.
Smaller movies use real rounds on sets for close-ups of loading guns, close-ups of revolvers, etc. They don’t have the time/budget/knowledge to use dummies. Obviously very sketchy and not at all in compliance with modern safety rules, but it happens. Just like guerrilla filmmaking on city streets isn’t supposed to happen, but still does.
But again, it may not have been a real “live round” in this incident. I wouldn’t trust a traumatized Alec Baldwin to really know what happened. Nor the union leader that wasn’t actually there on-set and doesn’t know more than the investigators.
True, but you’d think that the union would have some idea if one of their members was on the call sheet for that shoot. Their email seems to be based off them noting that none of their members (as far as they can tell) was contracted to that project.
Even as full-on Producer with a capital P, it’s probable that he wouldn’t know the day-to-day of who the firearms prop guy was or what decisions were made regarding the ammo. Still, he’s gonna get questioned hard.
Yeah, I was more talking about the union email stating it was a “live round” as a statement of fact. That seems like something he wouldn’t know until the cops made it public especially if the union wasn’t involved as he contends.
Ah, right. Yeah, that’s entirely possible to be on-set speculation/gossip, perhaps.
I remember when I was at Tippett studio making Starship Troopers 2, they shot the rifles with light bulbs in them. I kept looking at the rushes feeling puzzled until I asked a comper when they were going to replace the bulbs with muzzle flashes, but the answer was never; if they were to add muzzle flashes, the CG shot count would have ballooned way over budget, and they couldn’t have made the movie. It was a shoestring budget, and the bulbs certainly made it look like one.
I remember that movie. Man, someday you gotta put all this together for some epic stories.
Surely the difference between a live round and a blank cartridge are fairly obvious, aren’t they? I’m trying to remember from my days in the reserves which are very hazy but i believe the 5.56 blanks were generally the same form factor except rather than having a bullet at the tip, the cartridge narrowed to a crimped tip to allow the gases escape. And of course the rifles had something physically blocking the end to force the gases back to eject the round. Pistols (i assume it was a pistol) don’t seem to use this same function for firing blanks I guess.
I think it’s pretty unlikely the two were mixed up in a direct comparison, yes. Once things have been fired the exact nature of what happened would require more examination. I doubt it was a live round but I think if it was, more likely scenarios are someone confused it with a dummy round (supposed to look like a live round but can’t fire) or it was already loaded and someone gave Baldwin the wrong gun.