Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever

[Ganymede]

@betternow

Yeah, once'll do it for me.

But that was not what I was really getting at. You were talking about credibility. Based on the person at issue and other things I know about the emo music scene, yeah, I believe 'em.

Also I tend to believe allegations from sexual assault survivors.

[Ominous]

So all this Rust stuff lead me to read about Midnight Rider and the death of a crewmember in it's failed production. We only hear about this stuff when it really goes wrong, so it makes me wonder just how common unsafe practices are in filming. How often do production companies shrug and go "The amount we will have to pay out in a lawsuit on the off-chance that things go wrong is the cost of doing business?"

[Derp]

@ominous

points at The Crow

[Too Old For This]

@ominous Well... apparently between 1996 and 2016, 43 people have died due to accidents on set. This does NOT include Brandon Lee, who died in 1993. Orrrrrrrrrr the three people the died filming Twilight Zone: The Movie when a helicopter crashed ON them instead of behind them.

I knew about literally none of these 43 deaths.

[Ominous]

@derp

That was a while ago. I was shocked at those two accidents being not even a decade apart. However, @Too-Old-For-This has pointed out that apparently it's freaking common, so nevermind.

[GreenFlashlight]

@ominous From what is currently known, which is almost certainly not a complete picture, this particular set has been so dangerous several people walked off it. The crew has been operating on five hours of sleep per day because lodgings that were promised to be close to where the movie was filming ended up being an hour or more away. While on a set with any guns, the weapon handed to an actor is supposed to be inspected by two licensed professionals to make sure it only have blanks in it, somehow a gun loaded with three live bullets (I don't know it there were three because the revolver had been fired previously in the movie or if it's because the gun had been used earlier in the day for live round target practice on some tin cans, which is reported to have happened) got into Baldwin's hands as he fired at a spot where neither the director nor the person filming were meant to be but nevertheless were because they were examining footage.

It sounds to me like a huge cock-up that required a lot of different things to go wrong at once, with exhaustion very likely playing a part in bad decision-making.

[Ominous]

@greenflashlight

Right, but my question is "Is this business as usual, and normally production companies get away with it, because most of the time nothing bad happens. When something bad does happen, they pay the settlements and continue with the bad behavior, taking it in stride as the cost of doing business?"

[GreenFlashlight]

@ominous Sorry, I thought the unusual steps of people walking off the set implied it's unusually dangerous. I didn't make that part explicit.

[Ominous]

@greenflashlight

Is that an unusual step? I don't work in the industry, and have no baseline to work with. Maybe turn around is kind of high amongst non-movie stars on movie sets? Hell, we lost four people out of my graduating academy class in the first three weeks at the jail.

[Roz]

@ominous The state of the Rust set sounds like it was very much outside the norm. SL Huang, an author and movie armorer, has written several really insightful Twitter threads about what happened, including the perspective of how weapons are handled on movie sets the vast majority of the time, and the huge numbers of safety failures that had to have happened for this incident.

[Too Old For This]

@ominous Most sets are NOT as dangerous as Rust's was purported to be. And it's generally only when those corners are cut that deadly mistakes end up happening. In 2014 a camerawoman was killed on the set of Midnight Rider. She was hit by a train. Dead serious. Hit by a motherfucking train. Why? The head honchos neglected to secure the railroad tracks for filming, that was a live train that went through there, just doing a normal run.

The family of the deceased filed suit and it went to court. It took time, but in the end it was declared the fault of the people charged (negligence was the end result, I believe), and a settlement was determined out of court.

So I would say that while 43 deaths in 20 years sounds bad (and is bad), the actual percentage is pretty small. Which is frankly a miracle given some of the situations these people are put into. Also, without doing deep digging for facts and figures, and based off of various interview remarks... there's actually a fairly low turnover rate in the movie industry. It's why it's so damn hard to get into, from any side. People that do those jobs want to be doing those jobs. Or they want their bosses job and are doing this one until the opportunity arises to take their place. The one area this isn't true is stuntpeople. They have an extraordinarily high turnover rate just due to the hazards of the job. One bad fall/leap/fight/whatever can end a career.

[GreenFlashlight]

@ominous said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

Is that an unusual step? I don't work in the industry, and have no baseline to work with.

I don't work in the industry either. I'm an enthusiastic amateur who's read some stuff here and there. The main thing I know about Hollywood is it's an extremely litigious environment to work in, running entirely on contracts that evoke images of devils or faerie lords. Consider this: if crew accounts are to be believed, the fatal shooting was the third misfire on the set of this movie; the first two just didn't hit anyone. That means two guns went off when they weren't supposed to before any crew members said "fuck our contracts" and left the movie. That strongly implies to me that this level of irresponsibility is outright remarkable.

[faraday]

@ominous said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

@Too-Old-For-This has pointed out that apparently it's freaking common, so nevermind.

43 deaths across 10 years and thousands of movie and TV productions is really not all that common, thankfully. Especially when you consider that the industry routinely employs explosives, firearms, low-flying helicopters, fight scenes, vehicle chases, and countless other dangerous stunts.

Don't get me wrong, 43 is still 43 too many. As Brandon Lee's sister said, “No one should ever be killed by a gun on a film set. Period.” More broadly, nobody should ever be killed making pretendy fun time entertainment.

But until everything is CGI, there's always going to be an element of risk inherent to Hollywood productions. That's why it's critical for people to follow the safety procedures, which early reports suggest was not the case on Rust. I suspect a negligence lawsuit is inevitable, maybe even endangerment charges over the dangerous set.

[BetterNow]

@faraday said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

@ominous said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

@Too-Old-For-This has pointed out that apparently it's freaking common, so nevermind.

43 deaths across 10 years and thousands of movie and TV productions is really not all that common, thankfully.

But remember also that this statistic is strictly DEATHS. It doesn't even begin to go into injuries, which I am sure are much more plentiful, even outside of stunt cast.

[faraday]

@betternow said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

But remember also that this statistic is strictly DEATHS. It doesn't even begin to go into injuries, which I am sure are much more plentiful, even outside of stunt cast.

Of course, I'm by no means trying to downplay the tragedy here, just trying to put it in perspective that filmmaking is an inherently risky endeavor. Most films will have some form of stunts, pyrotechnics, gunplay, or vehicles. Accidents are inevitable no matter the level of preparation. The best they can do is try to minimize them, and from a statistical perspective the incidence is pretty low.

Now, Midnight Rider (the train incident) was proved to be not an accident but negligence. The studio was held accountable in the form of a civil settlement, and the assistant director (the one most directly responsible) pled guilty to criminal charges. Based on initial repots (granted not all the facts are in) it seems that something similar will probably happen on Rust. If it is indeed negligence, I hope that the right people are held accountable and that the penalties are stiff enough to encourage better safety on more sets.

[Arkandel]

@betternow said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

@faraday said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

@ominous said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

@Too-Old-For-This has pointed out that apparently it's freaking common, so nevermind.

43 deaths across 10 years and thousands of movie and TV productions is really not all that common, thankfully.

But remember also that this statistic is strictly DEATHS. It doesn't even begin to go into injuries, which I am sure are much more plentiful, even outside of stunt cast.

It seems likely the percentage of personal injuries on sets if we just include stunts-people would be higher than just about any other industry.

There are only so many ways you can jump out of high places, moving cars, get hit by baseball bats or set on fire without getting hurt at all, and if anything goes wrong...

[Aria]

I realize that this doesn't quite apply to movie sets, where prop guns are used to portray the act of firing a weapon at someone, but....

I am -- as my gun-toting, NRA-loving, second amendment-quoting, 'Molon Labe' bumper sticker-having father likes to call me -- a bleeding-heart liberal. But I grew up in his house and was taught basic gun safety from a very young age.

You treat every weapon as if it's loaded with a live round. Period. If someone hands you a weapon, you check it yourself. It doesn't matter if they say it isn't loaded. It doesn't matter if they're your shooting range supervisor or your shooting instructor. You check it yourself. Period. And then you still treat it as if it's loaded with a live round. You do not point the barrel in the direction of anyone or anything you don't want to drop dead.

Ironically, my father now gets irritated that I check things he hands me because apparently it means I don't trust him, but fuck that. You check. You behave as if you're holding a weapon. Because you are.

Every time I hear something else about "safety measures" on that set, I cringe just a little bit more. I feel bad for Alec Baldwin, but as far as I'm concerned, everyone else with even a modicum of authority on that set or even a semblance of responsibility for the safety of the cast and crew should absolutely have their asses handed to them atop a platter of lawsuits and any criminal charge that might stick.

[Arkandel]

@aria said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

You treat every weapon as if it's loaded with a live round. Period. If someone hands you a weapon, you check it yourself. It doesn't matter if they say it isn't loaded. It doesn't matter if they're your shooting range supervisor or your shooting instructor. You check it yourself. Period. And then you still treat it as if it's loaded with a live round. You do not point the barrel in the direction of anyone or anything you don't want to drop dead.

Real story. An old Master Sergeant (or the equivalent in the Air Force I served in) told me once that when he was younger he took apart a G3A3 rifle. Unlike how basic drafted grunts do it where we disassemble only the bigger parts, actual officers practiced actually dismantling them to their very basic elements.

So he did that, cleaned it meticulously, put it back together and - completely out of drilled habit - pulled the trigger while pointing the rifle into a sandbox.

It fired.

Where did the bullet come from? How was it possible he hadn't seen it? He just shrugged. No idea.

[GreenFlashlight]

@aria I forget if someone else already said this, but the argument against actors being responsible for gun safety is they're not trained professionals. Every movie set has, or at least is supposed to have, two trained, licensed professionals who check every firearm to be used in a scene prior to the cameras rolling, to check that it's loaded with blanks and to announce loudly to the whole set that the gun is either live or not. Adding that responsibility to the actor, who almost certainly is not accredited, just creates another way for the system to break by adding an amateur to a system designed for professionals. I tend to support this position, from my own anecdotal experience with systems that have lots of redundancy.

[faraday]

@greenflashlight said in Movie / TV / Streaming Peeves or Whatever:

@aria I forget if someone else already said this, but the argument against actors being responsible for gun safety is they're not trained professionals. Every movie set has, or at least is supposed to have, two trained, licensed professionals who check every firearm to be used in a scene prior to the cameras rolling, to check that it's loaded with blanks and to announce loudly to the whole set that the gun is either live or not. Adding that responsibility to the actor, who almost certainly is not accredited, just creates another way for the system to break by adding an amateur to a system designed for professionals. I tend to support this position, from my own anecdotal experience with systems that have lots of redundancy.

Exactly. It would be like a novice skydiver taking apart their parachute to try and make sure it's been packed properly. You don't want that; you want them to rely on the expert whose literal job it is to make sure the equipment is safe.

An actor isn't going to understand the subtle differences between dummy rounds (which can't shoot and just look like real bullets), blanks (which have dangerous gunpowder but no bullet) and real live bullets.

I have no experience with the film business myself, but many pro armorers have spoken out in interviews about their own on-set safety procedures since the incident. The gulf between what they describe and the stories coming out of the Rust set can only be summarized as: "OMG WTF was going on in that set??"