On Thursday, October 21, cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was killed on the set of the film Rust when a prop gun held by actor and producer Alec Baldwin accidentally discharged, killing her and wounding the film’s director, Joel Souza.

The set had been plagued with problems prior to the fatal incident, as the production company, desiring to stick to its low budget and twenty-one-day shooting schedule, cut corners. Six camera crew members, who are part of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), had walked off the set after their concerns about safety and working conditions had gone unaddressed. They quit just six hours before the fatal shooting occurred, and they were replaced by nonunion crew members. A producer threatened to call security if the union crew members did not voluntarily leave the property.

As the Los Angeles Times reports, those crew members were “frustrated by the conditions surrounding the low-budget film, including complaints about long hours, long commutes and waiting for their paychecks.” Comments from Lane Luper, a camera operator on Rust, written under a Facebook post Baldwin made to express solidarity with IATSE, which is negotiating new three-year contracts that cover sixty thousand people, suggest a production that prioritized speed and low labor costs over crew members’ lives well before Thursday.