Your event horror stories?

Ian Slessor

Ian Slessor

Well-known member
Hey gang,

We just finished a weekend of dance recitals that ran Thursday night through to Sunday night. In total we recorded six recitals with a friend covering a seventh with a GL2 & XL1s due to a double-booking that couldn't be avoided. This spanned three different dance studios.

It went very well except for the second half of the fourth of four recitals for one studio. The studio my kids dance at.

The curtain comes up and I hit the "record" button on the varizooms and just have fun recording the show. I'm running both cams as it's a very small venue. About 9 songs into the second half I notice that my cam set for a full-stage shot is STILL ON STANDBY!!!!!

Sweet merciful CRAP! My heart falls into my stomach. I feel sick and hit the record button again and catch the rest of the second half of the show.

The weird thing was that every show I had done I was constantly checking the lcd screens on both cams to ensure all was well with exposure, focus, etc. and this time I completely missed that I hadn't started recording on one cam.

The DVX that was on standby was also connected to a TV in the green room and some of the kids had noticed that the timecode wasn't running during that part of the show. In the spirit of our current culture where it's "NEVER your fault" I will be blaming the kids for not telling me my cam wasn't running....j/k ;)

Anyway. I just needed to get that off my chest. It would appear that I'll be employing some creative editing for that 30 minute segment to cover my blunder.

So. How about you?

Any horror stories?
 
Heh. My second event shoot ever was a classic "second night blunder" I brought my gear down to the venue about three hours before actors etc started showing up. I got my tripod situated and the camera set up (white balance, volume settings etc). I was mighty proud of myself for having planned everything out so much better than the first shoot (which wound up turning out wonderfully BTW). So I get things set up. Put the camera back in the case for safe keeping, and pop out to grab a bite of dinner before the big show. . . I get back in good time for final set-up and everything but as soon as I reach my hand into the camera case I know something bad has happened. The bag is real nice and roasty toasty. . . NOT the kind of temperature a bag should be. I look underneath, hoping against hope that it had been sitting on a floor vent. Bot no. it was my camera. Which I'd left on, for a good three hours. Inside my padded (a.k.a. isolated) case. Everything had been going so well that I had opted not to bring along the charger (of course). Anyhow. Long story short, I managed to get all but the last 3 of 12 acts, but those three were by far the best of the evening, each one building on the high energies of the last. . .

People still talk about that night, and those amazing three last performances, which nobody will ever get to see again. . . But perhaps there is some whimsical justice in that, but I still feel like a plod.
 
No horror stories here, but i do have to push that Varizoom rec button way too hard to get it to go. My only complaint about my Stealth PZFI.

-GageFX
 
here is one for you. It was my first time working on a big show. 6 cameras big truck outside 3 day prep etc... I was doing a bunch of the lighting and pulling cable to each of the cameras. For 3 days i did things like that. Then when show day came around the 2nd tape op didn't show for some crazy reason, so they were looking for someone to cover for him. Thinking to my self that it was a great opportunity to show that I could do more than just pull cable I said I would love to do it. Well that night everything started well, (it was an award show that was live to tape that was brodcast later.) the call to roll tape came over the intercom, So I went red on all 7 decks and sat back to watch. Well about 7 preformacnes into this award show I heard this noise, this noise of tape machines spinning down. With horor I look at the decks and see that the tapes are not turning, But the time code is just counting away, I call over my com, This is tape and we have a big problem. Tape is not going. After a few choice words from the producer the engineer come back and sees that yes no tape had been rolling. What I didn't konw as an eager young man was that when you go red on a beta deck. you have to hit the record button twice. Once for standby where the time code runs and once again to actually get everything to move. It was one of those times that you wish you could just vanish. They had to start the show over again (the called one of the preformers to come back, he was 20 min away on the freeway,) but it turned out ok I thought that the second time around was much better, and I have worked for many more years for the very people that I thought would banish me from ever working in this town again. We all lean out lesson sometime. That was mine.
 
Makes me feel better reading about your disasters. Using the small camera that also serves as a deck for the DVX, I was doing some candid shots at a reunion my wife was attending.
I was framing some great shots & getting some meaningfull audio from some interesting people. "S^&T" I went cold all over & felt sure that every person there was inside my camera seeing what I had just discovered!!!!
What I had done, was that my camera was running when I thought it was in standby. So I had many shots of upside down people & buildings, my feet, the grass etc. & when I put the camera to my eye to shoot, I actually turned it to standby. I was so busy framing etc. I didn't look for the REC light.
Talk about creative editing!!! Every time I put the camera up, all I got was a secong or two of vision before I turned off so grabbed the best of these & made a slidr show to mix with the small amount of real stuff I had.
Everyone who saw it loved it!

Maybe it was old age, or just stupidity.
 
Once, i drove 3 hours with a producer to a shoot in his car, and when we got there and I got the camera case out of the back. Popped it open, and uh... no camera.

Looked right at the producer... and was thinking... this is the worst moment of my life.
 
Nirimba said:
Makes me feel better reading about your disasters. Using the small camera that also serves as a deck for the DVX, I was doing some candid shots at a reunion my wife was attending.
I was framing some great shots & getting some meaningfull audio from some interesting people. "S^&T" I went cold all over & felt sure that every person there was inside my camera seeing what I had just discovered!!!!
What I had done, was that my camera was running when I thought it was in standby. So I had many shots of upside down people & buildings, my feet, the grass etc. & when I put the camera to my eye to shoot, I actually turned it to standby. I was so busy framing etc. I didn't look for the REC light.
Talk about creative editing!!! Every time I put the camera up, all I got was a secong or two of vision before I turned off so grabbed the best of these & made a slidr show to mix with the small amount of real stuff I had.
Everyone who saw it loved it!

Maybe it was old age, or just stupidity.
Click to expand...

I had a similar experience one, also the "Camera on in the bag", and, to add to that, the "Brought the camera but forgot tape and/ or battery" situation. After all these, I believe the only thing that can happen to me left is the camera actually stoping working on a live event. (Knock on wood :) )

Oh, another bad thing happened once. I was going to film this historic moment live . The day before, After checking the camera, I felt confident everything was all set to go, so I didn't bother to check again on the day of the shoot. I shot the whole thing, with spectacular and memorable angles, and was thinking- the guys will really love this. What I didn't know was that my camera lens had a huge hair- about 1,5 cm- that wasn't perceivable on the LCD and viewfinder. After going back to the studio and seeing the footage with that fantastic hair on it, I just completely froze. Sufice to say, there were some unnusable shots, but, fortunately, close ups were fine, and some wide shots were the black area of the shot merged with the hair. Suffice to say, I always check the lens constantly before ANY shoot. :)
 
Thanks people,

You have no idea the peace that I feel knowing I'm not the only person to have one of "those" moments when your heart falls like a cold, hard stone into your gut.

Seriously.

It means a lot.

I KNOW that this happens to many people but when it happens to you there's that feeling that you are the only bone-headed "knobulous erectus" (as my brother and I used to call each other as kids) in the entire world and your failure is unique... and complete.

Thanks again.

sincerely,


ian
 
A doozie I pulled a few years ago, that has continued to bug me to this day, was on a 4-camera live shoot.

It was a Quaterly Financial announcement from a major company. I was on teh crew that was webcastign it to investors in remote locations.

Our normal gear (multicam truck) was elsewere, so we did it with ENG camereas hooked up with composite to a little mixer. We had no camera Tally, and no Program Return. (If you are used to working with these, you know how important they are on complex shoots).

I was runing camera 2, one of the 2 main cameras at the back of the room facing the stage. There was a complicated introduction in which I was on teh air with a wideshot, then we'd cut to cam 3 for just a moment for one introduction (long enoguh to read one name) and then back to me who would have used that moment to shuttle zoom (manual on the ring, *that* fast) to a closeup of teh other guest. We rehearsed this part beacuse we knwo it woudl be tough, especially as we had no way of seeing who was on the air outselves withotu tally or program feed.

Well right before the show ran, there was some major commotion on com due to another problem that upped everyone's stress levels and left everyone distracted and confused.

We started the show and preped for the intoductions. I was holding my wideshot, with my camera unlocked and my hand on the zoom rig. "Ready 3 ... Take 3! ..." For some strange reason I got it into my head that I (cam 2) was allready on the air, "Ready 2..." I mentally prepared myself to do this fast re-frame the instant the mixer cut to the other camera. "Take 2!" - And *snap* as I ditch the nice wide and do the fastest ugliest re-frame to the next (well framed) shot, perfectly, right within my timelimit. - About half way though this process that was running on muscle memory, I realize to my horror that they just cut to Cam 2, me, not cam 3. :eek: :nads: :crybaby:

Well the shot was blown. It looked like poo poo. It was just like getting record and standby modes mixed up as told above, exept I did it on air. :violent5:
Well the shoot wasn't that crucial, and we cut away to the other camera (as soon as it was done with it's re-frame) and the shoot went on. I'll doubt anyone rememberd the whole thing a week later. However it still bugs me.:kali:

- Mikko
 
these are hilarious lol, I've got one too.
I was filming some function for somebody and half way through I took a little rest to eat and decided It would be smart to turn my rode videomic off to save battery (even though you get like 100 hours off one battery on them) anyway just as i was about to finish eating something was happening so I got up and started filming . after this i kept filiming forgeting that I had turned the mike of and was filming on mute after the half way point of the function.
During the speeches I noticed that the audio levels were not going up and almost vommited from shock when i saw the mike was off.
that is my sad story.
 
I shot a wedding once for a friend. Nothing out of the ordinary happened, but shooting a wedding is horror enough on its own. I hate going to weddings.
 
In norway they had a computer games show called nerd and they had a competition about making a funny movie about computer games, so me and some friends made a 10 minute tv-show called Geek and sent it in... it was like the eighties version of the real show.. anyway we recorded the show and when i started to edit i noticed that something had caused a really bad feedback noise on the audio. We managed to get some of the sound away, but it was'nt good at all... This was long before i bought my dvx100 so i didnt think about using headphones.. it was no biggie, but i learned my lesson.
 
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