HUTCHINS
Halyna

• 1. Career

Halyna Anatoliivna Hutchins was a Ukrainian cinematographer. She worked on more than 30 feature-length films, short films, and TV miniseries, including the films Archenemy, Darlin', and Blindfire. On October 21, 2021, during production on the set of the film Rust, she was accidentally shot and killed by a bullet from a real gun being used as a movie prop. The gun was under the care of Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the set armorer who did not properly check the gun, and discharged by actor Alec Baldwin.

Career

Hutchins moved to Los Angeles to focus on filmmaking, taking on roles in production and fashion photography. She was an associate producer for World's Tallest Man, a 2006 film about Leonid Stadnyk by Wild Pictures; the film was premiered on the Discovery Channel. In 2010, she graduated from UCLA TFT Professional Program in Producing. In Los Angeles, she met Bob Primes, a cinematographer. He encouraged Hutchins to apply to the American Film Institute Conservatory, where he was a teacher. She was accepted and began studying there in 2013 for a two-year master's program, which she graduated from in 2015. Stephen Lighthill mentored her there. Her thesis project, Hidden, made with director Rayan Farzad, was screened at the LA Shorts Fest, Camerimage International Film Festival, AFI Fest and the Austin Film Festival.

In 2018, she was one of the first eight female cinematographers participating in the Fox DP Lab program, which was established to provide greater opportunities for women cinematographers. In 2019, she was named one of the "10 up-and-coming directors of photography who are making their mark" by American Cinematographer.

She was director of photography on Adam Egypt Mortimer's 2020 film Archenemy. Mortimer had said of her, that her "tastes and sensibility of what is cinematic were a huge asset for executing our style" and that "her AFI training and her skill with the math of LUT settings gave us the best texture I've found yet in shooting digital".

She is also credited for work on the films Darlin' (2019), Blindfire (2020) and The Mad Hatter (2021). She was credited for her cinematographic work on Darlin' by Hollywood.com, where the film was highlighted after its feature at the March 2019 South by Southwest film festival, in the Narrative Feature Competition.