"An armorer is tasked with managing all firearms used on set, ensuring they look realistic and are appropriate for the setting. More importantly, they're tasked with ensuring weapons are correctly loaded, properly kept up and safely handled." There's no formal training for the job. - MSN (The Washington Post)
"The assistant director who handed Alec Baldwin the gun that killed a cinematographer last week had been fired from a previous job after a gun went off on a set and wounded a member of the film crew, a producer said Monday." - AP
In a Facebook post, gaffer Sergey Svetnoy wrote of holding Halyna Hutchins as she died, and he blamed the 24-year-old armorer - and the producers. "To save a dime sometimes, you hire people who are not fully qualified for the complicated and dangerous job." - Los Angeles Times
Look ... its social media accounts, including one touting LGBTQI+ content, may have a personal feel, but Netflix is about profits. "What is surprising is how long Netflix managed to convince both its users and its workers that they weren’t like anybody else." - Slate
Maybe. "The Harry Potter kids were lucky to be working in the UK industry, which could never compete in scale or ferocity" with Hollywood. "They were fortunate, too, in being outliers, insulated within those same roles and that protective family-like structure for a full decade." - The Guardian (UK)
An assistant director, Dave Halls, handed actor Alec Baldwin a prop gun during rehearsal. "'Cold gun,' Halls yelled. But it was not." - The Guardian (UK)
For a certain sector of the exhibition business, things look, if not blazingly bright, at least cautiously bullish. While not immune to the forces that have affected the greater industry, independent theaters and art houses have managed to weather the challenges with startling success. - MSN
A lot is wrong with the internet, but much of it boils down to this one problem: We are all constantly talking to one another. Take that in every sense. Before online tools, we talked less frequently, and with fewer people. - The Atlantic
"Transcripts are hardly uncommon in podcasting but they're often an afterthought, littered with omissions and inaccuracies thanks to automated transcription. … For their new show More Than This, Vox Media set out to create a podcast that could also be seen and felt. - Nieman Lab
While filming a scene on location near Santa Fe for the feature Rust, which he co-wrote, is producing and stars in, Baldwin discharged a prop pistol loaded with blanks and hit director of photography Halyna Hutchins, now dead, and director Joel Souza, hospitalized. - Santa Fe New Mexican
"Facebook said Thursday that it has struck a deal with a group of French publishers to pay for links to their news stories that are shared by people on the social network. … The financial terms weren't disclosed." - AP
In HBO's 15 Minutes of Shame, Lewinsky — the prototype victim of worldwide public humiliation via the media — argues that today's Twitter-driven pile-ons could stop if the pilers simply paused and thought about their targets as actual people. Lili Loofbourow explains just why that's way too optimistic. - Slate
These are the series that are both influential and significant, that have broken new ground, that have reflected life specifically in this century, or that have changed the culture of TV in some way. - BBC
