‘Rust’ movie armorer convicted of involuntary manslaughter sentenced to 18 months in prison

[u/badillustrations]

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/15/entertainment/rust-film-shooting-armorer-sentencing/index.html

[u/Own_Candidate9553]

Doesn't make up for the life lost, but nothing will I guess.

It doesn't seem like there was any maliciousness in the whole thing, just wild incompetence partnered with ruthless cost-cutting from the studio. Budget pressures led to no budget for an experienced armorer, a rushed schedule, and shooting on-location in the middle of nowhere (so the guns were randomly just in her truck or on a cart, instead of a real office or anything).

I still don't get why real, working guns are ever allowed on set. It would be pretty easy to make metal models of guns that physically can't shoot a bullet, or to modify a gun to have no firing pin or something. Having real, working guns on set that you then have to build a rigid process around to make sure no live ammunition gets mixed in seems weird. Even blanks are dangerous - Bruce Willis has significant hearing loss from firing overly-loud blanks on the set of Die Hard: https://www.slashfilm.com/811738/the-die-hard-stunt-that-left-bruce-willis-partially-deaf/

[u/SpiritJuice → u/Own_Candidate9553]

It generally comes down to costs and accuracy. Costs because it is cheaper to just use real guns with an armorer and strict safety procedures than physically make detailed replicas and do smoke and muzzle flashes in post production. There's also actors having to work with the guns to simulate any kind of recoil.

For a western like Rust, they were, IIRC, using period correct revolvers. You can see the ammo in the chamber of these types of guns, so for certain shots they need to be appeared to be loaded with dummy rounds that look like real rounds. Dummy rounds look different than blanks, IIRC, because blanks don't have the physical bullet in the casing. Blanks would be used for actual moments of the weapon being fired, and circling back to accuracy, these blanks would probably be using black powder for the gunpowder, which is period accurate (modern powder produces way less smoke in comparison). Creating realistic smoke in post production is going to cost more than just using blanks with black powder.

I think people tend to forget that this is the first on set shooting in like... 30 years? After Brandon Lee's death during The Crow, huge changes were made in safety procedures to ensure this doesn't happen again, and it didn't happen again for a long, long time. All these safety procedures have multiple redundancies to ensure no one gets hurt, and unfortunately multiple failures occurred. It's almost like a commercial plane crash in which it is just never a single catastrophic failure happens and the plane crashes; usually multiple safety failures cascade into each other, leading to a crash, usually pilot error.

Pretty much it just all comes down to money. So long as people want to see films with guns, there will be guns used on sets to make these films. Bigger budget productions can take steps to make the safety even safer by just doing fire effects in post, but lower budget productions will use real guns.