Film producers ramp up safety on sets as Baldwin charged with shooting

Movie production and firearms experts say filmmaking probably changed forever when cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on the New Mexico set of the western Rust.

Prosecutors have said Alec Baldwin, below, and the film’s weapon supervisor will be charged with involuntary manslaughter.

“The gun safety experience on set has become more vocal. It’s a lot louder,” said Joey Dillon, an armourer who has overseen the use of firearms on TV shows like Westworld and films such as The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs.

“I make it a lot louder myself.”

Baldwin, 64, was pointing the gun with the live round that killed Ms Hutchins 14 months ago as they set up a shot.

The industry is determined to ensure such a tragedy never happens again.

That has meant the increasing use of digital and other technology that could make gunfire of any kind obsolete.

It has also meant more simple things, like shouting when using the same safety protocols long in place to make clear to everyone when a gun is present and what its status is.

Actors and others are more interested when the gun is handed over.

“Now people want to check because they are a little gun shy,” Mr Dillon said. “I’ll stop the whole process just to show them so that they feel comfortable with it.”

While checking a gun themselves may be in the best interest of actors, how much responsibility they bear for doing so remains in dispute and will be a central question for jurors should Baldwin’s case go to trial.

His union and his lawyer say the onus cannot be placed on performers.

“An actor’s job is not to be a firearms or weapons expert,” the Screen Actors Guild said in a statement.

“Firearms are provided for their use under the guidance of multiple expert professionals directly responsible for the safe and accurate operation of that firearm.” Baldwin’s defence lawyer Luke Nikas said his client did his job by relying “on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds”. Santa Fe district attorney Mary CarmackAltwies disagrees.

“It is incumbent on anybody that holds a gun to make sure that it is either not loaded or to know what it is loaded with,” she said. While Baldwin is to be charged as the man with the gun in his hand, his role as a producer and at least partial responsibility for the lax conditions that led to his having a loaded gun, were a consideration in deciding to bring the charges.

Hannah GutierrezReed, who oversaw the film’s firearms, will be charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Lawyer Jason Bowles said he will “bring the full truth to light” and she “will be exonerated”.

Halyna Hutchins was killed during filming.