Celebrities Gone Wild

Started by MacGuffin, September 18, 2004, 05:48:48 PM

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Yes

Honestly shameful those pictures were so blushed but hey, gossip media

polkablues

I'm glad your reply pushed this thread to a new page, because seeing that photo pretty comprehensively ruined my day.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Rooty Poots

God, that's rough. I can't even imagine.
Hire me for your design projects ya turkeys! Lesterco

jtm

I feel bad for Alec Baldwin. He shouldn't be held accountable at all... yet there's bloggers out there labeling him a murderer.

I figured the prop person or whoever handles the guns should be responsible. And it looks like that person was way underqualified and shouldn't have been handling guns on any set.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/alec-baldwin-film-rust-hired-inexperienced-armorer-hannah-gutierrez-reed-before-halyna-hutchins-shooting

polkablues

Baldwin bears zero responsibility for what happened as the actor in that situation, but he might in his role as a producer, on a production that was clearly cutting corners with necessary protocols.

The clearest blame lies with the armorer, both for having live ammo on set and leaving it unsecured and unattended, and with the AD who apparently took the weapon and handed it to Baldwin outside the purview of the armorer. But that sequence of events would only be possible as the result of a set culture that emphasized speed and thrift over safety, and that falls squarely on the producers, and to a certain extent the director.

The moral of the story is: ban functional firearms from film sets. No live rounds, no blanks, nothing that's capable of firing a projectile or activating a combustion reaction. There are very good replica firearms that use compressed air to simulate recoil and muzzle slide, and (speaking as a VFX artist) adding muzzle flash and smoke in post-production is trivial for anyone with a modicum of experience. No one ever needs to die for the sake of making a movie. Ever.
My house, my rules, my coffee

wilberfan

Back from a vigil for Halyna Hutchins. 

wilberfan

Alec Baldwin Was Rehearsing Pointing Gun at Camera, Affidavit Says

The film's director gave the most detailed account yet of how Alec Baldwin fatally shot the cinematographer of "Rust" to a detective who included it in an application for a search warrant.

Oct. 24, 2021

ALBUQUERQUE — The director of "Rust" told investigators that he had been standing beside the film's cinematographer as the actor Alec Baldwin sat in a wooden church pew, rehearsing a scene in which he draws a gun and points it at the camera lens, according to an affidavit released Sunday night. The director, Joel Souza, said he then heard what "sounded like a whip and then loud pop."

Mr. Souza saw the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, grabbing her midsection and starting to to stumble backward before noticed he was bleeding from his shoulder. He and Ms. Hutchins had been shot by the lead actor in their film.

The new details emerged on Sunday night when the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office released an affidavit used to obtain a search warrant to seize everything from camera memory cards to bone fragments and firearm discharge residue from the production site outside Santa Fe where the shooting took place on Thursday.

The details, woven together by Detective Joel Cano, provide a chilling account of how the shooting materialized on a production set that had been beset by accidental gun discharges and labor disputes between producers and crew members.

"Upon making contact I did observe a visible injury to his right shoulder," Detective Cano said in the affidavit, describing how he had interviewed Mr. Souza on Friday afternoon, after the director had been treated for his injury. Ms. Hutchins, who sustained a gunshot wound to the chest area, had already been pronounced dead on Thursday at University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque.

Mr. Souza told the detective about the protocols for firearm safety on the set. He said the guns are typically checked by the film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, and checked again by Dave Halls, the assistant director, who would then hand the gun to an actor. Mr. Souza said no one got searched for live ammunition on their person before or after scenes were filmed.

"Joel stated there should never be live rounds whatsoever, near or around the scene," Detective Cano wrote in the affidavit. They had been working on the same scene before lunch, and after lunch, Mr. Souza said, he was unsure whether the revolver had been rechecked.

Mr. Souza was grappling with delays the day of the shooting, after about six members of the camera crew had quit over late pay and safety conditions, the affidavit said. Another crew had quickly been hired, but the production was off to a late start because of the labor problems. Mr. Souza said only one camera was available for recording before the shooting.

Asked about how the employees were behaving, Mr. Souza told investigators that "everyone was getting along" and that there had been "no altercations" to his knowledge. He said that the crew broke for lunch before the shooting and had to be shuttled to a nearby area to eat. When they returned to the set, Mr. Souza said he was not sure if the firearm had been checked again.

The affidavit also includes notes from an interview with Reid Russell, a cameraman who was standing near Ms. Hutchins and Mr. Souza when the gun discharged.

Mr. Russell told the detective that after returning to the set from lunch, he had stepped outside for about five minutes; when he returned, according to the affidavit, Mr. Baldwin, Ms. Hutchins and Mr. Souza were setting up the scene and were already "in possession of the firearm." Mr. Russell said he was not sure if the firearm had been inspected because he had been absent for those five minutes.

According to the affidavit, Mr. Halls grabbed the revolver from a gray, two-tiered tray set up by Ms. Gutierrez-Reed. Mr. Halls handed the gun to Mr. Baldwin and shouted, "cold gun," which on a film set typically refers to an unloaded firearm.

While setting up the scene, the crew had to reposition the camera because there was a shadow. Mr. Russell told the detective that Mr. Baldwin was explaining how he was going to draw the gun, pulling it out from the holster, when the firearm discharged.

Mr. Russell said that Mr. Baldwin had been "very careful" with the firearm; during an earlier scene, Mr. Russell said, Mr. Baldwin had tried to ensure safety on set, making sure that a child wasn't near him when he was discharging the gun. When Mr. Russell was asking about how members of the production team were behaving as they set up the scene, he said "everyone seemed to be getting along."

Mr. Souza, the director, told the detective that because the crew had been setting up the scene when the gun discharged, the incident had not been filmed.

After the firearm was discharged, Mr. Russell told the detective he "remembered Joel having blood on his person, and Ms. Hutchins speaking and saying she couldn't feel her legs."


Drenk

QuoteThe details, woven together by Detective Joel Cano, provide a chilling account of how the shooting materialized on a production set that had been beset by accidental gun discharges and labor disputes between producers and crew members.

QuoteMr. Souza was grappling with delays the day of the shooting, after about six members of the camera crew had quit over late pay and safety conditions, the affidavit said.

QuoteAsked about how the employees were behaving, Mr. Souza told investigators that "everyone was getting along"


This is infuriating.

Ascension.

wilberfan

Veteran prop master turned down 'Rust' film: 'An accident waiting to happen'

QuoteNeal W. Zoromski has spent three decades in Hollywood, working on movies big and small, but never on a western. So he was thrilled last month when he was asked to join the crew of an Alec Baldwin film in New Mexico.

The veteran prop master immediately told "Rust" production managers that he was interested in the job that would give him responsibility for the accoutrements of the Old West. Pistols, rifles, wagons, saddles and flour sacks were needed to re-create 1880s Kansas for Baldwin, who was playing a grizzled outlaw named Harland Rust.

But during four days of informal discussions with film managers, Zoromski said he got a "bad feeling."

"There were massive red flags," he said in an interview Sunday with The Times.

He said he felt that "Rust" was too much of a slapdash production, one with an overriding focus on saving money instead of a concern for people's safety. Production managers didn't seem to value experience and were brushing off his questions, he said.

Zoromski ultimately told "Rust" production managers that he would take a pass.

"After I pressed 'send' on that last email, I felt, in the pit of my stomach: 'That is an accident waiting to happen,'" he said.

QuoteNow, Zoromski, who lives in Los Angeles, is haunted by Hutchins' death. He believes that had he accepted the "Rust" job, things would have turned out differently.

"I take my job incredibly seriously," he said. "As the prop master, you have to be concerned about safety. I'm the guy who hands the guns to the people on set."

QuoteHe said he felt that "Rust" production managers were being "evasive" when he asked about specific terms of his potential employment. The budget, estimated at about $7 million, seemed too small for the type of film the producers were attempting to make. He couldn't get an answer on the budget for his "kit," industry jargon for his cache of props needed to stock the set.

He said he also became alarmed because it was just two weeks before "Rust" was set to begin filming in New Mexico and the producers hadn't yet hired a prop master. Typically, those decisions are made weeks, even months, before the cameras roll.

"In the movies, the prep is everything. ...You also need time to clean, inspect and repair guns," he said. "You need time to fix old clocks. In period films, you are sometimes using antiques. But here, there was absolutely no time to prepare, and that gave me a bad feeling."

wilberfan


Rooty Poots

Quote from: wilberfan on October 31, 2021, 01:29:31 PM
Perhaps the most detailed accounting to date on what happened on the RUST set... 

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-10-31/rust-film-alec-baldwin-shooting-what-happened-that-day

In case any of you are getting a "subscriber-only" message, and have access to Apple News (it may only be accessible in News+—I'm not sure) here's a link to it in Apple News:

https://apple.news/AKbPD3_-bQVKzUh8trzyuHQ
Hire me for your design projects ya turkeys! Lesterco

wilberfan

Let's see if this will post:

The day Alec Baldwin shot Halyna Hutchins and Joel Souza
(Jim Weber / Santa Fe New Mexican via Associated Press)
SANTA FE, N.M.  —


"What the f— just happened?"

Alec Baldwin repeated the words again and again with growing urgency as the sound of the shot reverberated throughout the wooden church.

Mere seconds before, the actor had been preparing to film a scene in which he, as a grizzled 1880s Kansas outlaw, becomes involved in a shootout in a church. He was just going through the motions, giving the camera crew a chance to line up their angles.

"So," he had said, placing his hand on the Colt .45 revolver in its holster, "I guess I'm gonna take this out, pull it, and go, 'Bang!'"

No projectile was supposed to be in the firearm. Just a dummy round that contained no gunpowder. Baldwin was simply showing the director and the cinematographer of "Rust," a low-budget indie western film, what he was going to do when cameras began rolling.

Instead, he shot them.

A lead bullet flew out of the weapon Baldwin had been assured was a "cold gun." It hit cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who stumbled back, falling into the arms of the head electrician. As she was laid to the ground, she could see the blood pouring from her chest. Behind her director Joel Souza was also down, clutching his shoulder; the bullet had gone through Hutchins' body into his.

"What the f— was that? That burns!" Souza screamed.

Baldwin put the gun down on a church pew. He looked down in horror at his two injured colleagues, repeating his initial question like a mantra.

"Medic!" someone yelled, as various crew members huddled around Hutchins, trying to stanch the bleeding. A boom operator looked into her eyes. "Oh, that was no good," the sound guy said.

"No," Hutchins replied. "That was no good. That was no good at all."

Within hours, she would be pronounced dead.

On Oct. 21, at 1:49 p.m., Santa Fe County emergency crews were summoned to Bonanza Creek Ranch in response to a shooting that would leave the entertainment industry reeling. Hollywood loves nothing more than a good war story, a tale of the difficult conditions that a cast and crew face, the daring chance a director took to get the take, the film made on a shoestring budget that becomes an unexpected hit.

But this was no war story; this was every filmmaker's worst nightmare. A "one-in-a-trillion episode" is how Baldwin described it to paparazzi who'd tracked him down Saturday, a week later, in a small Vermont town.

"There are incidental accidents on film sets from time to time, but nothing like this," he told the photographers Saturday. "We were a very, very well-oiled crew shooting a film together and then this horrible event happened."

The death of Halyna Hutchins and wounding of Souza came just a few days after Hollywood's crews union had threatened to strike if producers didn't take their concerns about safety seriously, and left everyone echoing the question Baldwin had cried into the chaos.

How did this happen? What had gone wrong?

Detectives are still investigating key questions, including who loaded live ammunition in the FD Pietta Colt .45 that Baldwin fired.

"I think there was some complacency on the set, and I think there are some safety issues that need to be addressed by the industry and possibly by the state of New Mexico," Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said last week at a news conference.

Mendoza said that New Mexico 1st Judicial Dist. Atty. Mary Carmack-Altwies would determine whether to bring charges in the case.

A Los Angeles Times reconstruction of the events leading up to Hutchins' death has uncovered new details about that Thursday, and the days leading up to the shooting in that wooden church about 13 miles south of Santa Fe. As has been previously reported by The Times, the inexperience of the armorer had raised concerns from the first day on set, as did conflicts between the production managers and the camera crew. A cascade of bad decisions appeared to create a set chaotic even by its low-budget status. A set in which, against all production regulations, live bullets were not only present but several had been loaded into a prop gun.

"The safety of our cast and crew is the top priority of Rust Productions and everyone associated with the company, " Rust Movie Productions said in a statement the day after Hutchins' death. "Though we were not made aware of any official complaints concerning weapon or prop safety on set, we will be conducting an internal review of our procedures while production is shut down."

This report is based on interviews with 14 "Rust" crew members, including nine who were at Bonanza Creek Ranch the day Hutchins was shot, records from Santa Fe County, Santa Fe film permits and emails, text messages and internal communications from the "Rust" production. It is the most comprehensive account to date of a day that ended in tragedy, and raised concerns about the decisions made regarding safety on the set. Already, there have been calls for new laws and regulations regarding the handling of firearms on sets.

Most crew members who spoke with The Times asked to remain anonymous given the sensitivity of ongoing investigations. Scenes described in this article were based on the accounts of at least two people, unless otherwise noted. Two members of the "Rust" camera crew provided on-the-record interviews.

"It always felt like the budget was more important than crew members," Lane Luper, the A-camera first assistant, said Saturday in an interview with The Times. "Every thing was about the schedule and the budget."

At 6:10 a.m. on Oct. 21, the first camera assistant operators and technicians for the film "Rust" began arriving at Bonanza Creek Ranch. It was the 12th day of the 21-day film production.

Other crew members who had parked their cars near base camp, about half a mile from the security gate, had already lined up in the catering tent. Standing in the 37-degree cold, early arrivals got their breakfast sandwiches in the dark. The crust on the bread was so hard that it broke off. But at least there was food available; it had been known to run out some days.

The camera crew skipped the meal, figuring it would be tacky to eat given their pending resignations. The camera operators went straight to the trucks near the edge of the set. After more than a week of wrangling with the film's producers over working conditions and safety, six members of the camera team were about to walk off the set.

Bonanza Creek Ranch is a 1,000-plus-acre high desert spread near the site of an old silver mining ghost town, Bonanza City, which dried up a few years after its formation in 1880.

Since the early 1950s, the privately owned site has been a popular destination for movie production. Jimmy Stewart's 1955 "The Man from Laramie" was filmed there. Paul Newman flirted with Katharine Ross near a ranch barn in 1969's "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."

Bonanza Creek Ranch was also where Hannah Gutierrez Reed, the 24-year-old armorer on "Rust," fell in love with film. Her dad, an industry-renowned gun expert, brought his daughter, then in the fifth grade, to the location when he worked on the 2007 outlaw flick "3:10 to Yuma."

In this part of New Mexico, yellow signs directing crew to productions have become as much a part of the landscape as the scrubby green sagebrush. Many members of the New Mexico-based crew for "Rust" live in Albuquerque, nearly 50 miles away.

Early on, camera operators — members of the IATSE Locals 600 and 480 — asked the film's Atlanta-based production managers for hotel rooms. They didn't want to spend an extra two hours driving to and from Albuquerque on Interstate 25, a rural four-lane highway with a 75-mph speed limit.

They had been assured hotel rooms would be provided, and during the first week of production, rooms were available to those who wanted them.

But, at the start of the second week, camera crew members were told they would no longer receive hotel rooms, according to Luper, who was the camera crew department head. Others from production were moved to the Coyote South, a former Super 8 motel, where rooms go for about $55 a night. Luper and another crew member were each given a night's stay at another hotel during the second week of production, he said.

Late Saturday, a spokeswoman for the producers said hotel rooms were provided to camera operators and other crew members. But, she said, IATSE's contract requires producers provide rooms only if workers spent more than 13 hours a day on the job — or if an individual crew member lived more than 60 miles away. The Albuquerque crew members lived 49 to 54 miles from set.

During the second week of production, producers consulted with the IATSE Local 600 shop steward, who wrote in an Oct. 13 email that the accommodations being offered seemed "fair," said a person close to the production.

Luper discussed the hotel situation with Hutchins over dinner Oct. 15; she treated Luper and others to sushi. She said the issue had been resolved; Hutchins had forfeited a day's rental of a technocrane, which enables photographers to get aerial shots, to expand the budget for lodging.

Other concerns plagued "Rust" from its inception. Crew members were not being paid, Luper said, and many described an overly rushed mentality on the set. Even production managers expressed concern about the capabilities of the set's sole armorer, Gutierrez Reed.

She was responsible for all the guns on set and had worked as head armorer on only one film previously. Unit production manager Katherine "Row" Walters felt that "apparently props and armor require handholding," according to a screenshot of an internal Oct. 8 Slack message.

Before Hutchins was killed, crew members say, there were three accidental discharges of weapons on set. Baldwin's stunt double had accidentally fired a blank after being told that his gun was "cold." A young woman from the props department "actually shot herself in the foot," Luper said, adding that the round was a blank.

According to her attorneys, Gutierrez Reed "fought for training, days to maintain weapons and proper time to prepare for gunfire, but ultimately was overruled by production and her department... The whole production set became unsafe due to various factors, including lack of safety meetings."

There had been other red flags. There was no medic on-site during pre-production; a medic's presence is standard practice in the film industry when crew members are constructing sets. A spokesman for 3rd Shift Media, which was running the unit production, declined to comment.

"Somebody dropped a countersink bit and it stabbed me in the hand. I had to take care of it myself and I'm still healing from it," one person said, describing an accident that occurred while constructing the hanging gallows on set.

Once filming began, Luper and other crew noted that safety bulletins were not sent out with call sheets, despite that also being standard practice in Hollywood. The producers' spokeswoman said there were notations on the "call sheet" that referenced the guns to be used that day.

Tensions continued to build. The Sunday before the fatal shooting, the schedule had run from noon to midnight. The film permit dictated that there be "no significant disturbance of terrain and/or vegetation" on the chaparral-covered arroyo, so the crew had to haul heavy equipment — one piece weighing 140 pounds — through a tight area where vehicles were not allowed. The afternoon sun was punishing. Gusts of wind pelted their gear with fine powdery dirt.

The camera crew stayed until 1:30 a.m. gathering their equipment, which was scattered around the site. Then they had an hour-long drive home. One camera assistant spent part of the night in his car in the parking lot, Luper said.

On Wednesday, that camera assistant, who lives in Albuquerque, requested a hotel room. The issue is a sensitive one for camera operators because they typically have to spend 30 minutes to an hour after "wrap time," gathering and cleaning the cameras. During a separate film project in 2018, Luper said he had fallen asleep behind the wheel.

When he was told no, the tension hit a breaking point.

"We said: 'OK, they really don't care about us,'" Jonas Huerta, a digital utility technician, said.

In fact, within the "Rust" production office, the request for hotel rooms for crew members had been treated as a joke. So much so that someone on the production staff had ordered custom black long-sleeve T-shirts, with "Error 404: Housing Not Found" and "ABQ is an hour away" printed on them. A photo of the shirts, which someone with knowledge of the situation said arrived at the production office Thursday morning, was shared with The Times.

None of this was known to the camera crew, five of whom composed emails to Walters late Wednesday night saying they intended to resign.

Walters did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

"I have to wake up early and commute to set, my job is very physically demanding and I am beyond exhausted by the time I wrap," Huerta wrote in his email to Walters. "I've found myself nodding off or having to take micro naps on the roadside just to get home safe."

His safety concerns also extended to the weapons on set.

"I also feel anxious on set, I've seen firsthand our [assistant director] rush to get shots and he skips over important protocols," Huerta wrote in his email. " He often rushes to shoot, I've had more than a few occasions where I have been close to the weapons being fired with no regards to my hearing. Sometimes he rushes so quickly that props [department] hasn't even had the chance to bring earplugs and he rolls and the actors fire anyway."

Huerta's email was sent Wednesday at 9:15 p.m.

"If it wasn't for the hotel, we would have stuck it out," he told The Times.

At 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, having skipped their breakfast, the "Rust" camera crew hopped into the 10-ton truck that contained all the camera equipment, separating their personal equipment from the gear that had been rented by the production managers. They worked more than an hour to disassemble cameras, monitors and carts.

Hutchins, the cinematographer, and Dave Halls, the first assistant director, arrived.

Hutchins seemed confused that her camera crew was packing up. She was under the impression the hotel room issue had been resolved.

"We felt bad leaving because of Halyna," one of the camera technicians recalled. "I was torn. We all really liked her."

Hutchins tearfully gave Luper a big bearhug. "I feel like I'm losing my best friends," she told him.

But they were not moving quickly enough for Gabrielle Pickle, the line producer in charge of production. She was the last to join producers who were standing in a semi-circle behind the truck, arms folded, watching the technicians pack up their gear.

Sometime around 7:50 a.m., Pickle ordered the camera crew "to work faster," Huerta said. She pointed at Luper and said: "You need to get out this property immediately, or I will call security," Luper recalled.

The sun was now up, and four replacement camera operators, including three non-union ones, had been trickling in. At least two looked like "they were fresh out of high school," Luper said.

Halls ushered Hutchins away, saying they needed to go prepare for the first morning shot.

The Ukrainian-born cinematographer had forged an unlikely path to Hollywood, working as an investigative journalist on British documentary productions before turning to film. She graduated from the prestigious American Film Institute Conservatory in 2015 and was named as one of American Cinematographer's Rising Stars four years later. At 42, she appeared on the cusp of a breakout career.

"Did you hear camera walked?" someone whispered to a friend as people clustered around heaters in the cold. The group's actual exit had happened quietly, with no public scene, and some crew members didn't realize anything had happened. The only difference some of the actors noticed was that just one camera was being used to film them.

The first setup of the day required only a single camera. But the staging was complicated, with all the main cast, save for Baldwin, riding horses together into the old western town. Setting it up took longer than expected.

Around 8 a.m., everyone gathered in the middle of the faux western town for a safety meeting.

"It was no different from any other safety meeting, and no different from a safety meeting I'd expect to have on a film like this," an attendee recalled.

When filming began, Hutchins was positioned right in the middle of the road, her eyes glued to the monitor.

"I can't imagine what it was like for Halyna to have to continue with what she did and keep a positive attitude," a crew member said of that morning.

Baldwin's call time was 7:54 a.m.

He liked to drive himself to set with his assistant in the passenger seat. The actor was a feared-but-respected presence on set, and crew members said the energy shifted whenever he arrived. Everyone tried to stay out of his eye line, lest they be a distraction.

Filming moved into the wooden church in the late morning for a handful of setups. After the last establishing shot of Baldwin was in the can, lunch was called.

Actors remained in costume in the giant catering tent, taking great care not to spill any of the Thai noodles on their frontier-style clothes as they ate. (Though the good thing about a western, one said, was that if you did get some food on your pants, you could always just rub it in and hope it passed for dirt.)

The meat of the day's filming, including a shootout that would require pyrotechnics and smoke, was scheduled after the meal break.

After the meal, property master Sarah Zachry retrieved the guns that would be needed for the scene from a truck, where the weapons were stored inside a locked safe. The ammunition was also in the truck, but had been left unsecured on a cart during the break, according to a search warrant affidavit filed by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office on Oct. 27.

Baldwin had taken pains to make his gun work look realistic. A few days earlier, he'd gone into the church to walk through what it would be like to use the weapon in the scene. The live rounds he fired contained blanks, but still made enough noise that crew members were startled.

"Alec was pretty concerned about safety on set," said another camera technician.

"He wanted to know where I would be standing when he drew his gun," this person said. "I told him I was going to be standing in a different place, and he said, 'Good.'"

That Thursday, the crew began preparing for the scene before Baldwin had returned from his lunch break. Gutierrez Reed entered the church with the firearms, performing a safety check with the Colt .45 in front of Halls. He thought he saw three rounds inside the gun, but he did not check them before taking the weapon in his hand.

He told investigators that "he should have checked all of them, but didn't, and couldn't recall if she spun the drum," according to the affidavit.

The armorer left the church.

No stand-in performers were on site, so the first assistant director ran through Baldwin's blocking himself, pulling the gun three times. Russell, a B-Cam operator, watched the action unfold from a monitor on his dolly. Hutchins stood over his shoulder, flanked by Souza.

Because of the walkout, the team was working with fewer monitors than usual. The 10-inch screen in video village wasn't great quality, so the filmmakers opted to review the optics on the dolly's monitor, which was seven inches but had higher resolution.

During the scene, Baldwin's character was supposed to fast-draw his weapon and shoot at a rival. Halls had not pulled the gun's trigger during the run-throughs he performed.

But when Baldwin entered the church to do a quick rehearsal, he apparently did.

The bullet barely missed Russell before hitting the DP and the director. The trio was about two feet from the muzzle of the weapon.

A dummy round, which contains no gunpowder and doesn't fire, would look nearly identical to a bullet when the camera peered down the barrel of the revolver Baldwin was holding, with none of the lethal capabilities.

If the rounds had been checked as they went into the gun, Halls would have seen that at least one lacked the small hole or indent that visually differentiates dummies from bullets. He would have also noticed that it didn't make the signature rattling that proves there's only a BB — and no gunpowder — in the dummy round.

Shock rippled through the church. Sixteen crew members were stationed among the church pews. No one was wearing any protective gear — the noise-canceling headphones, safety goggles or furniture moving blankets often offered for scenes involving guns.

It was just supposed to be a dummy round.

Someone screamed and Hutchins fell to the ground instantly, as did Souza, though it was not immediately obvious that he had been hit.

"I was looking right at her, I could see an exit wound that immediately started pouring blood and that's when [people screamed] 'She's shot!' and everything went crazy," a crew member said.

"Let's clear everyone who doesn't need to be here out of here," Halls urged the crew.

Mamie Mitchell, the film's script supervisor, ran outside and called 911 from her cellphone. It was 1:46.

"Bonanza Creek Ranch. Two people accidentally shot on a movie set by a prop gun. We need help immediately," Mitchell said.

Less than 13 minutes after she hung up, the first Santa Fe County Fire Department emergency responders arrived on scene.

Crew members were shrieking. Sobbing. Shell-shocked. Production assistants, some in their early twenties, were busy guarding the church in an attempt to keep unnecessary parties out. Other young staffers were told to clear the road of crew vehicles, electrical wires and errant church pews so that the ambulances could drive directly up to the church when they arrived.

Down at base camp, a handful of actors were preparing for their scenes that afternoon. Through the window of his trailer, one performer heard a crew member receive an urgent-sounding message over the walkie-talkie: "There's been an incident. We called 911."

Still, the actor wasn't especially concerned. There was typically an overabundance of caution on movie sets. A production assistant asked the talent to remain in their trailers. "Don't take any photos. Don't text your friends. Let's keep this contained," the staffer advised.

But after about 10 minutes, the actors started getting restless. Some walked to the doors of their trailers to confer with one another. "Two people got shot? How? What the f— ?"

Back in Santa Fe, "Rust" production staff working out of a peach-colored office park plodded forward with payroll and travel logistics, not yet aware that anything was wrong.

On Slack, an internal messaging system used in the office, a production secretary pinged her bosses at 2:03 to say she had a quote ready from a vendor, but still needed to know about sending a truck to get the equipment. That same minute, the fire battalion chief radioed dispatchers to request a medical transport helicopter.

Two ambulances arrived around 2:08 p.m. After passing through the rusting white ranch gates onto unpaved dirt and gravel roads, the emergency vehicles all slowed to about 20 miles per hour.

Even when the helicopter began hovering over the ranch at 2:15. p.m. — just as Souza's ambulance prepared to depart for St. Vincent Regional Medical Center in Santa Fe — the gravity of the situation was difficult to absorb.

A crew member who'd left to run an errand was stopped at the front gate as she tried to drive back onto the ranch.

"Nobody's allowed to go up there except the police officers and ambulances," someone from the transportation department told her. They had to be joking, she thought.

"No," they said. "Someone has been shot."

As the first responders worked, police officers requested that all of the crew members who had witnessed the shooting sit for an interview.

"Starting crime scene logs," was noted in the dispatch record at 2:35 p.m. Everyone else was sent home, and detectives tied off the church area with yellow caution tape.

The aircraft remained on the ground until 2:50 p.m. It seemed like a long time to the actor. How bad could the injury really be if the helicopter stayed on the ground for over half an hour?

Hutchins would ultimately be pronounced dead at the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, to which she had been airlifted.

Back at Bonanza Creek Ranch, Baldwin and about a dozen others sat on the back of a 5-ton truck, awaiting their interviews with police who were inside a faux saloon.

Down at base camp, people were spooked but attempting to remain calm. Trained to comfort with food, a craft services assistant began to pass out homemade trail mix.

Around 3:30, Baldwin returned to base camp. He had changed out of his costume and was wearing his street clothes. "I've never been handed a live weapon — ever," he told his peers, who circled around him. No one there tried to console him because no one there knew just how bad the accident had been.

By late afternoon, news that someone had been shot on a Santa Fe film set was ricocheting through New Mexico's tight-knit film community. People scrambled to text family and friends on other nearby sets, trying to confirm that they were safe.

Russell, the B-Cam operator who'd nearly been hit by the bullet, drove down to UMN Hospital to try to check on Hutchins.

Luper, the A-camera first assistant who'd quit that morning, picked him up. They were together at Luper's house when they learned of Hutchins' death from the news.

At roughly 5:30 p.m., production asked the remaining crew members who had driven themselves to set to form a long line with their cars and exit the ranch en masse.

A few local newspaper reporters had gathered on the street, and driving out altogether would make it more difficult for the media to reach anyone.

International media would descend on Santa Fe in the days that followed, with television crews perpetually stationed outside the sheriff's office and the entrance to the ranch.

Production crew gathered for a private memorial for Hutchins on Friday night in Santa Fe. At much larger vigils in Albuquerque on Saturday and Los Angeles on Sunday, remembrances conjoined with a broader reckoning around safety on sets.

Producers officially announced their decision "to wrap the set at least until the investigations are complete" in an email to crew members on Sunday night.

They were quietly trying to wrap production as the investigation unfolded. There was travel to book, rental equipment to return and a seemingly endless tally of things to be scanned, shipped or donated.

To-do lists were written and shared in Slack, where Pickle, the line producer, chimed in: "Any remaining alcohol donated to row and gabby!" Someone responded with a thumbs up emoji.

In another message, the line producer's assistant tasked a PA with donating the office lamps to Goodwill.

"No name or production," she wrote, "just [d]rop it and run."


Drenk

But...there was a real bullet on set, why?
Ascension.