: When Mike Tristano is working on a film or television production, his guns never leave his line of sight. The armorer, who has lent his decades of weapons expertise to “The Purge” and hundreds of other productions, follows strict safety protocols on sets to ensure that the guns being used cannot harm the cast or crew he works with.
Wednesday, November 03, 2021
Hollywood Armorers Speak Out on ‘Rust’ Safety Issues, Guns on Sets
IndieWire
: When Mike Tristano is working on a film or television production, his guns never leave his line of sight. The armorer, who has lent his decades of weapons expertise to “The Purge” and hundreds of other productions, follows strict safety protocols on sets to ensure that the guns being used cannot harm the cast or crew he works with.
: When Mike Tristano is working on a film or television production, his guns never leave his line of sight. The armorer, who has lent his decades of weapons expertise to “The Purge” and hundreds of other productions, follows strict safety protocols on sets to ensure that the guns being used cannot harm the cast or crew he works with.
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I completely agreed with what Mike Tristano had to say about gun use on set and the tragedy that happened with the film “Rust” that ended in the death of Helena Hutchins. I always thought that it was absolutely ridiculous and idiotic that there where even live rounds on set for the production of “Rust” as that is such a risky and unnecessary danger. Mike Tristano backed this by emphasizing that he personally would never allow live rounds to be on set unless there being used in a demonstrative way for per say the History Channel, and in that case that makes perfect sense. I also think that it is ridiculous to replace real guns with CGI, because while I think that modern CGI is very good it is still not good enough to convince an audience that a gun fired. Along with this an actor needs to understand how to handle a gun and how much the gun with cock back, and when using a prop or CGI there simply isn’t that level of realism and mild fear that comes with handling a real gun. Mike Tristano also emphasized that even with implementing CGI he would still need to be hired to teach the actors how to in theory handle a gun, which is why I believe real guns should still be used on set.
The use of actual explosive shells for guns in film is extremely important to add to the reality and vividness of a film shoot. Because of their deadly potential, historically guns on set have been handled with extremely rigorous safety protocols and precise methodology to make sure that no one gets hurt. That’s why this death is so astonishing to Hollywood armorers: they take their job extremely seriously, and the armorer on this shoot didn’t. In this article a Hollywood armorer discusses how unusual all these compiled mistakes are and why guns are used on set instead of editing shots in post production. There’s a general rule that live rounds aren’t used on set unless they are absolutely necessary in a non-fiction film, which this clearly wasn’t. There is usually a firing point out of the way of crew and actors, which didn’t seem to exist apparently for this shoot. And finally, the gun was handled by more than just the armorer and actor assigned, which is not standard when dealing with real guns like this. Lots of broken norms here.
I've said in so many comments at this point that I understand why we are rounds with explosive charges in them because we as storytellers should do anything that allows to get the extra weight out of our props (and let's be honest, it's trivially easier to just use a blank than try and fake the use of a firearm). But that said, we need to be sure we are taking the proper care to be sure we are using these tools responsibly. It's the classic "with great power comes great responsibility" philosophy. If we can't be responsible with the tools at our disposal, be they power tools or cars or firearms, then we shouldn't be allowed to have them. Offenses such as these should be one and done kinds of occurrences. If it is your job to safely handle firearms on set so that we can have these nice things, and your actions fly in the face of that, then you are out and others lives shouldn't rely on you doing your job correctly again.
It is honestly amazing to see that there are truly responsible professional armorers in Hollywood like Mike Tristano. This article reminded me that the tragedy that happened on the set of Rust seems to be the exception more so than the rule; but again, I suppose its always hard to be sure about this. I know absolutely nothing when it comes to guns and ammo, so it was very interesting to read that the difference between blanks and live rounds is really visible. It really just makes you think of how many hands the prop weapon went through before it got to Alec Baldwin on set where nobody checked the ammo. It was also interesting to hear that a firing point is always given so that the blanks are never aimed at anyone, which makes me curious as to why Baldwin wasn’t given a firing point? I don’t think this is the first time that Baldwin has fired a fake weapon and assuming that he has had firing points given to him in the past, I wonder why he didn’t ask for them on set if none were given to him?
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