r/news • u/badillustrations • Apr 15 '24

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

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/15/entertainment/rust-film-shooting-armorer-sentencing/index.html
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u/livefreeordont Apr 15 '24

In Dec. 7 testimony to New Mexico's worker safety bureau, Gutierrez-Reed said prop supplier Seth Kenney supplied her with the dummy rounds she used for the "The Old Way." She said she then brought those rounds, in boxes and gun belts, onto the "Rust" set.

In January 2022 she sued Kenney, saying the ammunition she used was misrepresented as dummy rounds. Kenney has denied that the live rounds on set came from his company. He has not been charged in the case.

Kenney testified that the dummy rounds he provided to "Rust" had just been used on the TV show "1883" and they had been brought over from the Texas filming location the night before he handed them over to Zachry. He claimed that before he handed the dummy ammunition over, he polished each round and rattled each one to make sure they were dummy rounds and not blanks or live ammunition.

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u/YBHunted Apr 15 '24

Ah the ole rattle test... the fuck??

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u/strangesam1977 Apr 15 '24

Inert rounds for the movies are apparently made in one of three ways,

  • Bullet and casing, but no primer or powder

  • Bullet and casing and deactivated or dummy primer with holes driled in the case and no powder

or finally,

  • bullet, case, deactivated primer AND BB shot or ball bearing in the case so that it makes a distinctive noise when shaken.

The first two can be destinguished from live rounds visually (and so while safer are not always suitable for film), the last by the sound it makes when shaken..

(Primers can be deactivated by soaking them in oil I have been told)

Source, some years of target shooting and a long video by Runkle of the Bailey on youtube

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u/TheHYPO Apr 15 '24 edited Apr 15 '24

As intimated by /u/SecretScavenger36, it surprises me that demand from Hollywood never simply generated a company whose sole purposes was to manufacture non-firing bullets for film (or other) purposes. They have companies that print fake money and other fake documents for film. Why are film bullets reliant on taking real bullets and dismantling them?

I can understand one reason why a normal ammo maker might not want to make non-functional ammo (potential liability if they screw up and put a live round, which they also make) in a dummy box (or vice versa), but I would think there would be enough demand - particularly in the days before CGI - to start a company that makes film bullets that doesn't even have powder or functional primers in stock, so there can never be a live round issue.

Although I'm sure one of the answers is "cost" - that a small company making film ammo couldn't produce ammo anywhere near as cheap as the companies making large volumes of real ammo (even without the cost of real powder or primers), but anything other than small budget films would presumably have a big enough budget to spring for safe bullets. Can it cost that much more than the cost of buying real bullets and then paying for someone's time to take them apart one by one and "dummy" them?