Film Director Shot by Alec Baldwin Says it Felt Like Being Hit by Baseball Bat

A still from a video clip played in court shows actor Alec Baldwin during a trial at the First Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February, 29, 2024. (Photo by Gabriela CAMPOS / POOL / AFP)
A still from a video clip played in court shows actor Alec Baldwin during a trial at the First Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February, 29, 2024. (Photo by Gabriela CAMPOS / POOL / AFP)
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Film Director Shot by Alec Baldwin Says it Felt Like Being Hit by Baseball Bat

A still from a video clip played in court shows actor Alec Baldwin during a trial at the First Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February, 29, 2024. (Photo by Gabriela CAMPOS / POOL / AFP)
A still from a video clip played in court shows actor Alec Baldwin during a trial at the First Judicial District Courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February, 29, 2024. (Photo by Gabriela CAMPOS / POOL / AFP)

A movie director who was shot by Alec Baldwin during a movie rehearsal — and survived — testified Friday at trial that he was approaching the cinematographer when he heard a loud bang and felt the bullet's impact.
“It felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my shoulder,” said Joel Souza, who was wounded by the same bullet that killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the New Mexico set for the upcoming Western movie “Rust” on Oct. 21, 2021.
Souza never filed a complaint but was called to testify as prosecutors pursue charges of involuntary manslaughter and tampering with evidence against movie weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who maintains her innocence. Baldwin, the lead actor and co-producer on “Rust,” was separately indicted by a grand jury last month. He has pleaded not guilty, and a trial is scheduled for July.
Prosecutors are reconstructing a complex chain of events that culminated in gunfire on a film set where live ammunition is expressly prohibited.
According to The Associated Press, Souza said his workday began before dawn with the realization that six camera-crew members had walked off set. Hutchins put out urgent calls for replacements, and filming was back underway by late-morning in an outdoor scene involving horses and wagons.
Work after lunch started with positioning a camera in preparation for an extreme close-up take of Baldwin drawing a gun from a holster inside a makeshift church. Souza said he moved in behind Hutchins for a closer look at the camera angle but never saw the gun that shot him.
“I got up behind her just to try to see on the monitor, and there was an incredibly loud bang,” Souza said. “This was deafening.”
Baldwin and his handling of firearms on set are coming under special scrutiny in questioning by prosecutor and defense attorneys.
On Thursday, prosecutors played video footage of Baldwin pressuring the movie armorer to hurry up as she reloads guns between scenes.
“One more, let's reload right away,” Baldwin says at the close of a scene. “Here we go, come on. We should have had two guns and both were reloading.”
Gutierrez-Reed can be seen quickly loading a revolver.
Expert witness Bryan Carpenter, a Mississippi-based specialist in firearms safety on film sets, said Baldwin's commands infringed on basic industry safety protocols and responsibilities of the armorer.
“He's basically instructing the armorer on how to do their job ... ‘Hurry up, give it to me fast,’" Carpenter said. “Rushing with firearms and telling someone to rush with firearms is not — not normal or accepted.”
On Friday, defense attorney Jason Bowles pressed Souza to remember whether the script explicitly called for Baldwin to point the gun toward the camera, where he and Hutchins were standing.
“And do you know whether, from the script, whether that firearm was supposed to be pointed towards the camera?” Bowles inquired.
“It’s not a matter of the script, really. For that specific shot, it was literally supposed to be the gun being pulled out sideways,” Souza said.
Prosecutors say Gutierrez-Reed is to blame for unwittingly bringing live ammunition on set and that she flouted basic safety protocols for weapons — partly by leaving the church rehearsal while a gun still was in use. Defense attorneys say it wasn't Gutierrez-Reed's decision to leave.
Souza said he only recalled seeing Gutierrez-Reed inside the church after he was shot.



Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)

Hollywood's video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.

The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.

SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the two sides remained split over the regulation of generative AI. A spokesperson for the video game producers, Audrey Cooling, said the studios offered AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said that the studios’ definition of who constitutes a "performer" is key to understanding the issue of who would be protected.

"The industry has told us point blank that they do not necessarily consider everyone who is rendering movement performance to be a performer that is covered by the collective bargaining agreement," SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. He said some physical performances are being treated as "data."

Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

"We strike as a matter of last resort. We have given this process absolutely as much time as we responsibly can," Rodriguez told reporters. "We have exhausted the other possibilities, and that is why we’re doing it now."

Cooling said the companies' offer "extends meaningful AI protections."

"We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations," she said.

Andi Norris, an actor and member of the union's negotiating committee, said that those who do stunt work or creature performances would still be at risk under the game companies' offer.

"The performers who bring their body of work to these games create a whole variety of characters, and all of that work must be covered. Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me as I sit here, when, in truth, on any given week I am a zombie, I am a soldier, I am a zombie soldier," Norris said. "We cannot and will not accept that a stunt or movement performer giving a full performance on stage next to a voice actor isn’t a performer."

The global video game industry generates well over $100 billion dollars in profit annually, according to game market forecaster Newzoo. The people who design and bring those games to life are the driving force behind that success, SAG-AFTRA said.

Members voted overwhelmingly last year to give leadership the authority to strike. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s film and television strikes by the union, which lasted four months.

The last interactive contract, which expired in November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but secured a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. That work stoppage marked the first major labor action from SAG-AFTRA following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012.

The video game agreement covers more than 2,500 "off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers," according to the union.

Amid the tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February that covered independent and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry titans have rejected. Games signed to an interim interactive media agreement, tiered-budget independent interactive agreement or interim interactive localization agreement are not part of the strike, the union said.