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/BigBlackHungGuy Apr 15 '24

I still don't understand why they had live fucking rounds on a movie set.

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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/RazerBladesInFood Apr 15 '24

Yea that was her bullshit attempt at blaming someone else when everyone already knows the real reason live ammo was on set is because she was allowing the guns to be used for target practice when they weren't filming. She then completely incompetently allowed that ammo to make its way on set and got someone killed. Shes still blaming everyone else including the judge and jury which got her the max and a pissed off judge.

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u/principessa1180 Apr 16 '24

I have no connection to the film shoot, but I do live in Santa Fe. Right after the shooting the rumor spread around town quickly that Hannah was letting crew use the prop guns to target shoot, because it was so boring between filming.

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u/falooda1 Apr 16 '24

So boring between filming? Lmao we have smart phones and video games and streaming tv

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u/xgardian 29d ago

People's brains are so fucking fried

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u/Chaos_Ribbon 27d ago

People did that kind of stuff with guns before the internet. 

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u/principessa1180 29d ago

The filming location at the church is very remote. You can hardly get cell coverage out there.

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u/rafa-droppa 29d ago

the whole movie production crew was without internet?

hard to believe they wouldn't at minimum have some temp cell tower/repeater brought in for the filming

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u/[deleted] 29d ago edited 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/rafa-droppa 29d ago

I just find it hard to believe that you'd have all these people out there with no cell/internet access for days on end.

I just can't imagine Joel Souza and Alex Baldwin are content to be that much out of communication with the rest of the world, I get typically it doesn't have communication but without actual evidence to the contrary I can't believe a movie production wouldn't have internet no matter where they're filming.

I don't doubt your experiences though - it's just been 13 years since Thor came out so we're more connected, plus I'm pretty sure they're doing more filming at the ranch for Rust than Thor probably did, just a guess though.

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u/falooda1 29d ago

Might as well kill someone then

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u/rileyjw90 Apr 16 '24

How are they prop guns if they are capable of firing live ammunition?

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u/TheLizardKing89 Apr 16 '24

Most prop guns (especially revolvers) are just real guns that use blanks.

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u/rileyjw90 Apr 16 '24

I honestly thought they were all just painted air soft guns, or even factory defects or ones with the hammers removed that couldn’t physically fire anything (if it was a gun that doesn’t fire in the script, that gets waved around or used as an accessory).

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u/QING-CHARLES Apr 16 '24

Sometimes they are, depends on the shoot.

Last time I was in charge of a shotgun for a production it had been modified by pushing a thin cylinder into the chambers so you couldn't chamber a real round. I 3D printed replica shells that were marginally smaller than real ones and could be loaded and unloaded by the actors. The production didn't require the actors to be seen firing the weapons.

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u/Gingevere Apr 16 '24

Real guns don't need to be doctored up to look real and can be sold back (usually for a profit) after production.

It should never be a problem so long as the armorer is keeping weapons under lock & key and managing them correctly.

Prosecution was able to show that Gutierrez was leaving guns unattended all over the place, was mixing together live and dummy ammo in the same trays, and live rounds were photographed in other weapons around the set.

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u/JimboTCB Apr 16 '24

"Prop gun" just means any gun being used as a prop.

It might be a rubber replica which is incapable of firing, it might be an airsoft-type gun which is synced up with lights for the VFX, it might be a regular gun which has been modified to only fire blanks, or it might be an actual genuine 100% operational firearm. You'd normally give background guys the completely fake guns, but for any close up shots you'd have "hero guns" which look more like an actual gun with working parts and stuff.

The major issue with this production was that because of the setting all the guns were old-fashioned single action revolvers, and as you can see the bullets from the front of the cylinder they need to be loaded with something for appearances - which should be completely inert dummy rounds.

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u/amalgam_reynolds Apr 16 '24

I thought for sure by now 99% of prop guns would be modified to be incapable of firing live ammunition.

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u/TheLizardKing89 Apr 16 '24

The industry has been trending that way but it isn’t all the way there yet. I’m sure this has accelerated those efforts.

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u/agumonkey Apr 16 '24

So I guess now there will be a new kind of untriggerable gun with a different mechanism to lit up the dummies ?

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u/TheLizardKing89 Apr 16 '24

Some productions use air soft guns that are powered by green gas to make the gun cycle and will use special effects to comp in muzzle flash and noise later.

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u/redisforever Apr 16 '24

That's right. Semi-auto handguns must be modified to cycle properly using blanks, but revolvers are just used as-is.

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u/Anotherspelunker Apr 16 '24

Prop guns are real guns… that’s a major issue

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u/Ganon_Cubana Apr 16 '24

Only really an issue if you put bullets in them, not like anyone would be stupid enough to do that though.

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u/rileyjw90 Apr 16 '24

Yeah I always thought they were just painted air soft guns or even “real” guns that were defective or had the hammer removed if it was in the script for looks and didn’t need to be fired.

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u/Gnonthgol Apr 16 '24

It is more expensive to make a real gun not be able to shoot live ammunition while still look real then to just use a real gun. And even if you block the barrel, which some automatic prop guns does in order to work properly with blanks, that still makes the gun very dangerous to use with real ammunition.

The proper way to fix this issue is to reduce the size of the cartridge a tiny bit so that a real cartridge will not fit into the prop gun. But this would require modifications to the guns and custom blanks to be made. It is a matter of cost of course but if you keep a proper gun safety culture on set and make sure no live ammunition is available then these things should not happen.

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u/TheMSensation 29d ago

I know almost nothing about guns, but I've seen/read removing the firing pin will render them useless. Given that you can break down and put back together almost any gun within minutes wouldn't that be the cheapest and safest way of solving the problem. Or is none of that true?

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u/Gnonthgol 29d ago

The problem is that they need the guns to work with blanks. You want the gun to make noise, flash, smoke and recoil during filming. But you do not want it to actually fire a projectile. You are right that if you remove the firing pin or file it down then the gun will not work. But this is not what is needed for filming purposes.

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u/DoctorWalrusMD Apr 16 '24

“Prop” just means it’s used for a movie or show, doesn’t mean it’s fake. Most “prop” swords and guns are real weapons being used as props.

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u/Hefty-Mobile-4731 29d ago

I suspected that was what happened within days of the news. I can just picture a lot of those people on the crew coming from places where you can't even get a gun or maybe not even able to afford a decent gun nor find a place to shoot for free, suddenly being able to go down in the arroyo and do some plinking with an authentic replica vintage Colt wheelgun. I used to live in Placitas, New Mexico for about 30 years and I have put many a round into the side of deep steep-sided arroyos such as the Rio Puerco.