Hollywood film Rust’s tragedy raises questions on set safety

The death of Ukrainian cinematographer Halyna Hutchins due to firing from a prop gun held by actor-producer Alec Baldwin on the sets of Rust has given rise to conversations on working conditions of off-camera crew in film industries all over the world, including India. Producer and first assistant director (AD), Udayan Baijal, who has worked on Tenet (2020), The Dark Knight Rises and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), recently took to social media to shed light on set safety.

He tells us, “An Indian film set is a microcosm of our class divide. The lowest common denominator who’s lowly paid and isn’t very skilled or qualified is still exposed to manual labour at high risk. Sleep, slowing things down, adding enough time to build and allocating enough time to light add to a relatively safer set.”

Manasi Pareek, a freelance chief AD, who has recently worked on Sharmaji Ki Beti and Loop Lapeta, believes that safety often doesn’t list the priority list due to time and budget constraints. “This is a lesson learnt,” she says, adding, “Firing and flames can be created through VFX. The arms department needs a bit of an overhaul. Action directors aren’t given enough time to prep. There’s this ‘ho jaayega’ attitude. Streamlining in terms of how arms can be taken care of needs to happen. There should be someone on set to regulate at what distance the crew should be standing (from the point of action) and there should be a barrier before them. It’s our fault, as part of the production, that we don’t give action directors enough time to prep.”

Action director Sham Kaushal asserts that he has stopped firing dummy bullets since the past two years: “The working condition, including insurances, has gotten better now. Since performing stunts is a physical activity much like any sport, stuntmen suffer from are minor injuries at times. About 200 shoots take place in India everyday but an accident of a major scale hasn’t happened.”

Production designer Madhusudan N, who has worked on Tribhanga and Stree (2018), feels that erratic working hours should change. “I want to see compulsory weekly offs. 12-hour shoot days plus being on set an hour prior to call time and staying back way longer post shoot leads to extreme fatigue. It’s dangerous for workers who are involved with lighting or heavy labour work on set,” he elaborates.

Such an accident should never happen, asserts chief assistant director of Gully Boy (2019) and Raees (2017), Zoya Parvin. She explains, “When Covid-19 came in, we began reassessing the health and safety department as an important crew department. Protocols do exist but there’s always room for improvement. No crew member should ever lose their lives on a set. Technicians need to have skills and their job requires a lot of dedication and hard work. When it comes to weapons, you’ve to check them with the prop master. Risk assessment is very important.”

Pankaj Kharbanda, COO, Bayview Projects, has been working in the film industry for 45 years. He states that a lot of changes have taken place in the industry over the past few decades and currently, an ambulance, a doctor or a paramedic is always on the set of his productions. “I read that the person handling the gun on the sets of Rust wasn’t licensed and they had employed non-union crew. As far as the action team goes, it’s imperative to hire people who belong to the union. In the 70s and the 80s, the protocols were all the same as far as gun-firing goes. Earlier for a fire sequence, a fire use to be lit. But with BR Chopra’s film, The Burning Train (1980), new technologies came in because they didn’t want to damage the train. Over the years, we’ve learnt a lot from the West and adapted those,” he ends.