Thats also how Brandon Lee died. Iirc there was a squib malfunction that they didn't notice so when they shot a blank, the round was pushed out and killed him.

We could get around this by having specific calibers that only come in blanks.

if Baldwin wasn't waiving a gun around like a moron, a negligent armorer wouldn't have been a problem, either.

the armorer being negligent (and she was), doesn't mean that Baldwin wasn't also being negligent. and lets be perfectly clear: the reason Gutierrez-Reed was hired over other more professional armorers is precisely because she was "less professional"- or more bluntly, because she was willing to not insist on proper safety protocols that caused delays in shooting.

HGR definitely didn't do right here but a lot more went wrong. This was a perfect storm of negligence. Multiple people could have taken minor stands to have prevented this tragic tale. So many people spoke out and zero action was taken to address their concerns.

A layered safety approach is a great idea. But it only works when at least one person in a position to do so does what's right.

Wasn't Baldwin at some level responsible for the armorer though too? Was he the producer or something?

Man, I am a cinema buff and I just really don't think I care if the smoke is there at all, much less just right. Obviously botched attempts at realism are another matter entirely but this just seems like an area ripe for creativity and artistic reinterpretation.

Point is, we cede ground to the theater of the mind all the time, I don't know why realistic gunfire can't be treated similarly, and I think the lack of verisimilitude itself could be approached many different ways and that's even kind of exciting.

Smoke is easy to add in post. Muzzle flash is a little bit harder but also of course very possible.

It was a blank that was fired, but there was a bullet lodged in the barrel from a previous firing they had done using improperly handled prop rounds.

The force from the blank ejected the round into him. :(

Here's the background on the only other two deaths that occured on-set: Brandon Lee and Jon-Erik Hexum.

https://www.looper.com/640645/every-tragic-movie-set-death-caused-by-prop-guns/

Like Brandon Lee

At that point one should should buy the gas blowback replica that the manufacturer licensed for airsoft. It'll have identical wright and balance, the trigger can usually be tuned to match, and it'll dry fire with about half recoil. It'll plink on target at 40' once the hop-up is calibrated. Should be a modest $150-250 for common Glock, Sig, etc.

Good points. The gun would have to cycle with CO2 or magnets and feed from a magazine empty casings so that the ejector continues to do its job.

Yet so many movies just add the sound of casings hitting the ground so I wonder if the hassle is worth it except for some specific shots. I enjoy the realism but I'd rather people not put their lives needlessly at risk.

And an ejection of hot gas from the muzzle. That has mass.