Behind the façade, filming for Hollywood movies is notoriously dangerous. This was brought into sharp focus by the tragic shooting of 42-year-old Halyna Hutchins, the photography director, by a prop gun fired by actor Alec Baldwin on a set in New Mexico.
The tragedy has grim echoes of the dummy round that killed actor Brandon Lee. A rising star and son of Bruce Lee, he was shot dead during filming for The Crow.
Often it is the stunt doubles who are most at risk: the plane crashes, explosions, falling structures and high speed chases all responsible for cutting short their lives, reports Daily Mail.
But film sets, involving explosives and destructive sets, are perilous for all. Brandon Lee was killed on the set of the 1994 film The Crow, when a fragment of bullet lodged inside the gun was discharged when a blank was fired. It struck his abdomen with the same force as a l In the scene, Lee's character walks into his apartment and discovers his fiancée being beaten and raped, before a thug fires a Smith & Wesson Model 629 .44 Magnum revolver at Lee's character. In the shooting of an earlier scene, the prop gun - which was a real Smith & Wesson revolver - had been loaded with improperly crafted dummy rounds, cartridges which have the powder charges removed so that in close-ups the revolver appears loaded with normal ammunition. The crew failed to remove the primer from the cartridges and at some point, prior to the fatal incident, one of the rounds was fired. After six hours of unsuccessful emergency surgery, Lee succumbed to his injuries, when he was just 28.
In the Twilight Zone: The Movie, 1982, Vic Morrow and a child actor were decapitated by a helicopter's rotor blades, and a second child crushed by the aircraft. The scene was supposed to feature Morrow's character being transported back to Vietnam, where he was supposed to protect two Vietnamese children. However, the chopper was sent crashing to the ground by an ill-timed explosion during filming of a chase scene.
Likewise, aerial photographer John Jordan was killed while capturing footage from a C32 Lockheed Freighter over the Gulf of Mexico. Jordan was an experienced cameraman and renowned for his fearless ability to achieve aerial shots that nobody else could, leaning out of helicopters with a harness securing him. He even lost a foot while filming for James Bond film You Only Live Twice when he got too close to a Bell 47 helicopter.
Lee Brendon’s name began trending on Twitter after members of the online community noted the similarities in the circumstances surrounding his death and that of Hutchins. In a post on Lee's official Twitter page, his relatives expressed their condolences to Hutchins' family and insisted that such tragedies should never happen.
"Our hearts go out to the family of Halyna Hutchins and to Joel Souza and all involved in the incident on Rust," read the message from the account, which is run by his sister, Shannon Lee.
"No one should ever be killed by a gun on a film set. Period."
