Alec Baldwin Rust movie set shooting: Do armourers have a future in film?

Still of Alec Baldwin from footage taken by Halyna Hutchins before she was shot and killed on the set of Rust. Image / Sante Fe County Sheriff

From pistols at dawn to high-noon stand-offs, via Mob hits, World War II battles and Midsomer Murders galore, Rob Partridge has seen at all. In 30 years as a film industry armourer, he has staged gunfights everywhere from the mean streets of Gangs of London to Inspector Morse’s genteel Oxford – keeping scenes realistic, and actors safe.

Like many of the crew on a set, his contribution often goes unapplauded, save for a mention in the credits. Not so, though, on the set of the forthcoming Netflix crime thriller Havoc, starring Tom Hardy and Forest Whitaker. When filming ended in South Wales in late 2021, the movie’s assistant first director made a point of thanking Partridge’s four-strong team.

“He said that given recent events, it had now become apparent just how important the armourers’ job was, and that they had perhaps just taken them for granted in the past,” says Partridge, 64.

The “recent events” had unfolded the day before in New Mexico, when cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed and director Joel Souza wounded by a gun fired by Alec Baldwin on the set of the movie Rust. The tragedy, which happened as Baldwin practised pulling a pistol from his holster, was a stark reminder to take gun safety seriously.

“A lot of film crew people were left in a state of shock by what happened – they’d seen a member of their own profession killed and another wounded,” Partridge recalls. “Armourers aren’t always seen as much more important than junior lavatory assistants on set, but suddenly it was clear that our work wasn’t that simple.”

The fall-out from the Rust tragedy continues. Last week, both Baldwin and Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film’s armourer, were charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter by New Mexico prosecutors. They said Baldwin “had a duty” to ensure the gun and bullets were properly checked, and that he should never have pointed it at anyone. The actor has vowed to fight the charges, which carry up to five years’ jail, saying he’d been assured the pistol had blanks rather than live rounds.

The tragedy also brought into question the very practice of using real guns on sets, something armourers like Partridge have turned into a fine – and normally safe – art. Photo / Getty Images

While it is Baldwin who now faces court, Hutchins’s death put Hollywood itself in the dock too. At the time, US film crews were already threatening strikes over low pay and 12-hour working days – issues that some claim contributed to the Rust fatality. The tragedy also brought into question the very practice of using real guns on sets, something armourers like Partridge have turned into a fine – and normally safe – art.

Armourers have been part of the movie the world ever since the dawn of motion pictures, when an extra on the set of The Captive, a silent movie directed by Cecil B. DeMille in 1915, was shot in the head by a rifle loaded with live rounds for a previous scene. As well as handling gun safety, they often advise on other weapons too, such as swords, clubs and explosives: Harold Lloyd lost the thumb and finger of his right hand from an exploding prop-bomb. Modern film sets are generally much safer, although accidents have happened over the years: in 1993, Brandon Lee, son of martial arts star Bruce Lee, was killed on the set of The Crow by a bullet allegedly fired from a prop weapon loaded with blanks.

Many movie insiders insist the Rust shooting was a freak one-off, as live rounds, in the UK at least, are only ever used in the controlled conditions of a sound lab – and never on a live set, as in the Rust shooting. In fact, part of the Rust legal inquiry has been into how one found its way into Gutierrez-Reed’s stock of blanks, which she says came from an outside supplier.

But as Partridge points out, even blanks can be dangerous, discharging gunpowder blast that can burn, blind and maim. Following the outcry over Hutchins’s death, many movie studios have switched to alternatives like “airsoft” weapons – pellet-firing guns similar to those used in paintballing.

Such techniques may lack the realism of proper gunpowder, with its muzzle-flash, loud noise and recoil. But thanks to ever-more sophisticated digital effects techniques, studios can quite literally fill in the blanks. Besides, for every film purist who says it’s not quite the same, there are litigation-conscious movie execs whose only mantra now is “safety first”.

Alec Baldwin speaks on the phone in the parking lot outside the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office after he was questioned about a shooting on the set of the film "Rust". Photo / AP

As evidence of how much things have changed, Partridge cites his team’s previous work on Havoc, which is scheduled for release in coming months. The movie is directed by The Raid’s Gareth Evans, with whom Partridge also worked on Gangs of London, and whom he describes as “The Welsh Tarantino”. Of around 30,000 gunshots fired during Havoc’s filming, Partridge says, around half were blanks. “The Rust incident has changed our world,” he adds. “Since then, I have fired just one proper blank round on set.”

The chances are that few of the viewing public will notice the difference – especially in Britain, where strict gun laws mean that most people have never seen a real weapon fired. But armourers like Partridge, an ex-British Army reservist who served in Iraq, will still have a role. Making gun scenes look genuine still requires knowledge of how real guns work: how they handle, how they’re carried, and – crucially – what gun suits what movie.

To that end, Partridge’s firm, Perdix Firearms, offers a “script breakdown” service, where staff advise on genre-appropriate weapons, and how to avoid bloopers.

“For example, if you’re doing a 21st century gangster movie in Britain, you’ll maybe choose a pistol that has come in from the Balkans,” Partridge says. “Likewise, if you’ve got a gangster holding that gun in scene eight, how do you explain that in scene seven, he was wearing a tight Armani suit with no bulge where he was carrying it?”

This is particularly important in firearms-illiterate Britain, where script writers’ technical input may go little beyond: “Cockney John pulls a shooter.”

A good armourer will ensure, for example, that when an East End gangster does a robbery, the shotgun he uses is a cheap sawn-off, not a £20,000 (NZ$38,000) number from Purdey & Sons of Mayfair. Likewise, they will ensure that mini-Uzis won’t crop up in World War I dramas, or in the hands of cravat-wearing Miss Marple rogues. The skill, as Partridge puts it, “is avoid the gun world’s equivalent of Henry VIII travelling in a Ford Capri”.

The 1967 movie "Bonnie & Clyde" with Gene Hackman as Buck Barrow, Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow, and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker. Photo / Supplied

Also, while many Britons may not know their Walther PPKs from their Glocks, there are plenty of ex-soldiers among the viewing public who do. If an SAS rogue hero opens fire without his gun even cocked, they’ll notice. And most directors, even those not obsessed with realism, don’t want comments online saying they know nothing about the world they’re depicting.

“Viewers are more likely to spot these mistakes now too, because they can freeze-frame movies to check for small details,” Partridge adds.

Even scenes where guns aren’t actually fired carry risks. Real weapons are heavy, which means that a stuntman somersaulting out of a window can hurt himself if his Kalashnikov accidentally wacks him on the head. Often, an armourer will substitute in lightweight guns made of rubber and foam – especially, say, for pistol-whipping scenes, where they must be rigid enough to make the actor flinch, but not too hard to cause injury. Partridge often brings multiple different guns for one scene, like a golf caddy providing different clubs.

He also supervises the weapons at all times, with every actor – even experienced A-listers – getting the safety pep-talk first. They are reminded that every weapon, be it a blank-firer, Airsoft or foam-rubber imitation, looks like a real gun from a distance. If anyone wanders around with one off-set, which he does not allow, armed police could be on the scene very soon.

Still, the move away from blank-firers post-Rust has not been great news for armourers, who put years into perfecting their techniques. Just acquiring the weapons themselves is expensive and time-consuming. Machine guns, pistols and sawn-offs are all banned in the UK – even ones that can only fire blanks – so armourers require a special Home Office licence for “theatrical purposes”. They must also be stored and transported securely; Partridge and his colleagues always travel in pairs.

“If one of us keeled over from a heart attack, say, you want someone else there to keep an eye on the weapons and explain why we have them,” he says.

Happily, gun accidents on sets remain vanishingly rare. During his career, Partridge cannot recall a single serious one in the UK. Indeed, he believes there has been a “knee-jerk” reaction to the Rust tragedy, which may distract from other more pressing safety concerns. For while the threatened film crew strike in the US did lead to better conditions, film crews on both sides of the Atlantic still often work very long days and very late nights.

“Gun safety is a very emotive issue, and it will be a shame if some of our craft is lost,” he says. “But to me, the most dangerous thing is the risk of people falling asleep as they drive home.”