Final Verdict in Randall Allman Biopic Tradegy

            Last year a film crew was shooting in a train yard in Wayne County Georgia, and decided to film on the tracks themselves.  The trains were still running at the time and unfortunately one of them struck and killed a camera assistant, Sarah Elizabeth, and injured a few others.  Randall Miller, the director, was then brought up on accounts of involuntary manslaughter and criminal trespassing, to which he pled guilty.  The movie was a biopic on Gregg Allman who was a singer/songwriter that founded the Allman Brothers Band.   Miller now faces two years in prison, and 8 years of probation.  This prohibits Miller from directing, or supervising, anybody for the next 10 years.

            The CNN coverage of the incident explains how busy the train yard is, and shows a montage of trains and people patrolling the area where Sarah Elizabeth was struck and killed.  The video then shows a detective explaining how they didn’t have permission to be on the tracks at the time.  The voice-over explains the speculation of what scene they were shooting at the time when Sarah Elizabeth was killed, and it has yet to be released.

            CBS covered more of Randall Millers sentencing and punishment instead of what happened, and the spot was significantly shorter than CNN’s.  The anchors spoke in an almost question like tone, which I suppose is so that CBS doesn’t seem like it is taking a stand on the issue.  Even though a news channel shouldn’t necessarily take a side, more than often they do without saying it.  Many news channels take sides by content context rather than saying it outright, because than it would almost become a tabloid.

            ABC only covered the trial and not the verdict, but considering the verdict was made very recently it will probably be breaking news in the morning.  ABC has actual footage from the front of the train as it approached the film crew, and ultimately hit them.  They did not show the train hitting the crew, because it was too explicit for television, but ABC did the most thorough job with the story.  ABC interviewed other crewmembers, and even showed 3D simulations of what happened.  The story did match up with CNN’s in the fact that they both stated the film crew was denied access to the tracks yet shot there anyway.