Alec Baldwin was rehearsing a scene that involved pointing a revolver “towards the camera lens” when the gun — which the crew had been told did not contain live rounds — suddenly went off and killed the cinematographer, according to the film’s director, who was quoted in an affidavit released on Sunday night.

The film’s director, Joel Souza, described hearing what “sounded like a whip and then loud pop”.

The account by Souza explained why Baldwin had been pointing the gun at the cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins. But it did not answer the question of how a gun that was not supposed to contain live ammunition wound up killing her.

The director, who was wounded in the shooting, told investigators that he had believed that the gun was safe and that it had been described as a “cold gun” in firearm safety announcements. He said that guns on the film’s set were typically checked by the film’s armourer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, and then checked again by Dave Halls, the assistant director, who would hand them to the actors.

On film sets, the order of who handles a weapon typically involves a precise sequence, several armourers in the industry said. But actors had been handed guns on the set by both Halls and Gutierrez-Reed, according to a producer of Rust who asked not to be named because of the ongoing investigation.

On Thursday, after preparing for the scene in a set of a church, Souza told investigators, there was a lunch break, and the crew was taken by shuttle elsewhere for food. He said that they returned to the set after lunch but that he was “not sure if the firearm was checked again”.

New York Times News Service