West alumna weighs in on tragic shooting on set of Rust
The 2021 accidental shooting on the set of the movie Rust was a tragic event which those involved will surely not forget for as long as they live, forever reminded of the fragility of life through the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. However, the questions that arose from this incident -- and the conversation about gun safety on movie sets -- did not simply wash away with the new year.
Hutchins lost her life and director Joel Souza was severely injured after a prop gun that was supposed to be cold was accidentally fired by actor Alec Baldwin. Hutchins was only 42, and is survived by her husband and son. Baldwin faced no serious charges for the murder, and he has been making a serious effort to support her family in this time of tragedy.
Hutchins’ death inspired directors across film and television to more rigorously enforce gun safety reforms on set, banning the use of real firearms or replacing them with plastic props. Filmmaker Bandar Albuliwi even proposed a permanent ban of all real guns on film sets, a petition which has been named “Halyna’s Law”.
West alumna and film professional Shannon McInnis spoke on the situation recently, and she finds it appalling that something like this is still being allowed to happen.
“It’s the kind of thing that you think we’ve moved on from,” she said.
Besides being familiar with the industry as a whole, McInnis is also a friend and co-worker of Lane Luper, a camera assistant who walked off the set of Rust along with dozens of other workers just hours before the fatal shooting in protest of the horrendous and dangerous work conditions.
“Unfortunately, you see that happen a lot on shoots with lower budgets,” she said, “because they kind of use it as an excuse that ‘we don’t have the time’ or ‘we don’t have the money to have the right people that have been trained’ or ‘we don’t have time to prep everything’ because they have limited resources. But at the same time, there’s sets with way less resources that still put safety first and don’t have this issue happen.”
It’s not exactly a well-kept secret that gun violence is a huge issue in the United States. Although accidental shootings make up just 1% of all gun deaths each year, that still adds up to hundreds of people, many of whom are children, losing their lives from something that could be easily prevented. Since 1990, at least 43 people have passed away due to accidents on movie sets in the U.S., and over 150 have been left with life-altering injuries.
McInnis thinks that with the tools afforded by modern cinema, such risks shouldn’t have to be taken with real firearms on film.
“I think the fact that there were real guns and real ammunition is another way of cutting corners as far as using ‘cinema magic’ to make things realistic,” she said. “I think it doesn’t need to be the case to make convincing cinema […] an actor’s not really writhing in pain because their leg was cut off, so if you actually have to cut an actor’s leg off for them to react that way, you’re doing something wrong.”
McInnis also agrees with Luper that a lot of things had to have gone wrong in order for this catastrophe to occur.
“First of all, someone, presumably the armorer, had to have live rounds on set,” she said. “In a really well-produced and really well-run set, the armorer will be prepared enough that they would make sure not to make that mistake. It wouldn’t be on set in the first place.”
However, she doesn’t place the blame on Baldwin for the accident, either.
“Safety meetings should be the easiest thing to have,” McInnis said. “There’s a reason they’re considered boring, because, on a set like a western, you would have to have that safety meeting every single day for every single scene in order to follow what IATSE and OSHA decide is how to do it safely […] It wasn’t the actor’s responsibility to know that. You’re supposed to have those things in place; that’s why they are in place, to prevent that kind of thing from happening.”
IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, has been in the spotlight recently for a protest among workers over the past year or so demanding living wages and reasonable hours, the largest protest of its kind in the history of film and television.
“The film industry has slowly crept into unhealthy practices, and I think it comes hand in hand with the push in the general labor industry of people pushing for living wages and livable hours”, Mcinnis said, strongly asserting that the film industry shouldn’t be kept separate from this.
“We should be able to live our lives and have a healthy relationship with work and not put ourselves in dangerous situations or be underpaid for the work that we do,” she said.
While Mcinnis is hopeful for the future, she also acknowledges that there is a difficult fight ahead if there is to be any real change made to the film industry.
“It’s already rare to have female cinematographers,” she said. “There’s a big stigma around gender and camera work because, well, that’s just how the film industry is. I really hope something comes of this that’s a permanent solution and not just an apology.”
On movie sets with large budgets and with today’s modern technology, there should be no problem enforcing proper safety protocols or finding ways to avoid dangerous situations altogether. These types of events are inexcusable, and no one should have to suffer, let alone give their life, for their art. You can watch the rest of the Index’s interview with Shannon Mcinnis on oshkoshwestindex.org, where she discusses how she got involved in the film industry and gives advice to West students looking to do the same.
By Bailey Staerkel
Oshkosh West Index Volume 118 Issue IV
January 31st, 2022