INDUSTRY SAFETY ON SET
Armed & Safe
the wardrobe and makeup department can get a break. One of my pet hates is when someone turns around and says ‘we’re just shooting your schedule’! I do this job because I love the end result, film and TV. I’m not here to shoot a schedule. Someone may want to start the day with a hundred backgrounds because we ended with them last night – without thinking about the wardrobe and makeup department, who are only getting three hours’ sleep.” For Arthur, a common issue across productions is ‘scripts not being ready at the start of a shoot’. He adds: “They have the funding, they’ve built the sets. But then you’re not given the time to schedule it. That’s when mistakes occur. You don’t get time to talk to your director. It costs the production money. A happy crew is a fast crew. We’re going to get tired, but tiredness to the point it becomes dangerous slows everything down.” In the end, the problem is often one of communication. “As an assistant director, you’re there to help . Having the crew not talk to you, not be open with you, not feel they will be treated as a human being, is a flaw among ADs. We should be the person everyone can confide in.”
The MD of Bare Arms, providing weapons and firearms safety on set, looks at the Rust tragedy and safety in the film industry
It’s hard to consider film set safety in 2024 without also considering the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on Rust . As a military advisor and armourer, Ben Simmons followed the incident with professional interest – and his analysis tells us something about accidents in general. “I was in the army for ten years,” Simmons begins. “With my business partner, I set up Bare Arms while we were both still serving, and after 18 months or so, we left to run it full-time. We provide advice, personnel and equipment to the film industry, theatre and games. And one of the key things we work on is safety around firearms.” At the time of writing, Rust armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed faces 18 months in prison, though Simmons’ conclusions go beyond simply apportioning blame. “My personal view is that there are people who are responsible for setting the conditions for allowing her to fail at her job,” he says. “While I think she is right to bear a proportion of the responsibility, it’s difficult for someone at the start of their career to stop the machine without being very, very confident that people
will be on their side. While I think she is right to do some time, she was put in that situation by people higher up the chain.” Simmons bases his view on what’s been called the Swiss-cheese model of hazard prevention, where a series of individually less catastrophic problems – holes – must align to allow a serious problem to arise. “If you look at all the examples where people have died on set, it’s very rarely a single mistake.” That’s exacerbated because a film production must inevitably break certain firearms rules. “One of the key safety principles is to never point a firearm at someone you’re not trying to shoot. That’s drilled into you on day one but on film sets, you sometimes have to break that rule. When on-set, you get so used to pointing guns at people that it’s less of a warning sign. Therefore, we need to triple-check everything else is in place,” says Simmons. “In general, the industry needs to slow down and try to do less in a day. That starts with the producers, budget and schedule having some leeway, so when things do go wrong for whatever reason you have some capacity.”
RISK MITIGATION The Swiss-cheese model suggests that a series of smaller problems must align for a major catastrophe to occur
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