(Los Angeles) After filming stopped for months at the start of the pandemic, the demand for new films is stronger than ever and productions may be tempted to cut corners on costs and safety to “accelerate the movement.” », Deplore film professionals after the fatal accident on the set of Rust.
When actor Alec Baldwin killed the director of photography with a gun that had been presented to him as harmless, the western was thus trying to make up for the delay caused by the departure of certain employees protesting against their working conditions.
Many of the crew members of this low-budget action film (less than $ 7 million according to specialist media) were also sorely lacking in experience.
Without support from a large studio, Rust was funded by an assembly of small companies and was to be broadcast on a video-on-demand platform, according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to interviewed experts, these rushed shooting conditions are becoming the norm in Hollywood, with increasing demand to feed streaming services, which are heavy consumers of content.
“There is a lot of pressure to speed up the movement. And after COVID-19, you feel like there’s even more pressure because people are trying to release movies and have deadlines to meet, ”says Joyce Gilliard, hairstylist for Hollywood Studios, to which a shoot almost cost his life.
His arm was smashed by a train that struck a film crew in 2014 during the production of Midnight rider, killing a 27-year-old operator.
The drama that occurred on the set of Rust “awakened a huge trauma”, assures AFP Mme Gilliard.
“If productions and studios don’t even think about safety anymore, then it spills over to the rest of the team. It must come from above, ”she believes.
Producers of Rust did not respond to repeated requests from AFP regarding the shooting conditions of the film.
The ongoing investigation in New Mexico into the shooting that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins has yet to establish full responsibility and no arrests have taken place.
” Frenzy “
If it is not possible to establish a formal link between a small budget and a possible negligence, for Gregory Keating, professor of law at the University of Southern California (USC), it is well “the context of cost reduction that seems to play in this case. It is always more expensive to do things right. “
But “people have been using guns as props in movies for over 100 years,” and if safety protocols are followed to the letter, it is virtually impossible for someone to be shot and killed on set. , he observes.
“The problem always comes from a precaution which was not taken”, according to him.
“I think there was a certain carelessness on this plateau” from RustSanta Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, who is overseeing the crash investigation, said Wednesday.
“There are issues that the (film) industry and maybe the state (of New Mexico) need to address,” he added at a press conference.
Recruitment criteria on the set of Rust particularly ask questions. An experienced props manager, Neal Zoromski, declined to work there after seeing “huge negative signals” during his discussions with the film’s producers.
The latter, according to him, refused to hire both an assistant-props and a gunsmith, as Mr. Zoromski asked them, arguing that one and the same person could perform both functions.
“You never take a props assistant to be such a gunsmith”, two very demanding roles that are difficult to reconcile, he assured the Los Angeles Times.
The morning of the tragedy, several unionized operators had left the shoot, replaced at short notice by non-unionized technicians, more precarious and therefore less able to demand the application of safety rules, notes Mr. Keating.
A cinema electrician, who wished to remain anonymous, assured AFP that since the resumption of filming paralyzed by the pandemic, he has “never had so much trouble recruiting people”.
“It’s frenzy, this pressure to produce content and make up for lost time. “