What's the dumbest thing you ever did on a shoot?!

bustak

bustak

Well-known member
A couple of weeks ago I was shooting a lot of footage on a tripod, so I turned the OIS off. When I went to do the handheld shots I forgot to turn it back on! To say the least my close-up handheld shots look like I have the DT's!

Misery loves company, please share your blunders!

Not only can we learn from our own mistakes, but from the mistakes of others too! :)
 
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Well. During the Smuggler's Ransom shoot on the third day, I made a BIG mistake.

We had finished shooting some dialogue stuff, and everyone broke for dinner, but I went and grabbed a few shots we didn't need sound on. Anyway, I figured why not just get sound from the camera mic, it never hurts, right? Well, I switched it over to camera mic. and shot the stuff. Then I went and had dinner. We came back after the break to do the most emotionally intense scene of the film, and I FORGOT TO SWITCH IT BACK OVER TO THE EXTERNAL MIC!!!!! I realized as we were setting up for the next scene what had happened. I knew we were running behind and if we wanted to finish that night we could have any interuptions, so I chose not to let my co-director, Daniel know what had happened. That having been said, I felt terrible the rest of the night, and finally the next morning I called Daniel and let him know what had happened. He was not happy, nor was the actor. Well, it all turned out ok, because we went back the next shoot and redid the scene, and it turned out BETTER than the night before...

But, that's my biggest blunder as of late....
 
1982 US music festival- dropped a new panasonic MII camera ...
picked it up and it sounded like one of those glass bottle thermos that you dropped back in 1st grade !!

1st and last time shot with video camera until 2000 ...

hummmmm i wonder if that's why still today i refuse/will not use a shoulder size video camera - only shoot FILM or hand size dv camera's !!! they want shoulder size video camera = find another camera person ...
 
I went to move a pepper and (stupidly) pulled on the cord. The cord came unsheathed and exposed the wire, which basically blew up three inches away from my hand. Damn, glad nothing happened (didn't even blow the bulb!)

In a rush (on the same day as above) I switched my scene files to a 30p one, and shot a whole bunch of stuff that we then re-did.
 
Shouldn't this thread be in the cafe?

Oh, and I've had too many blunders to list. Even if I double check things, I still end up forgetting something (i.e. GAIN was cranked up a notch on accident, focus ring gets moved, etc.
 
Day 1 of a 4 day shoot this summer. I was directing AND shooting, so didn't need any added issues. Since it was an HVX/M2 shoot we obviously had a LOT of light. One of the speed rings or whatever fell off an HMI that had been on for a few hours. The gaffer immediately yelled for everyone not to touch the metal ring as it hit the floor, but my instincts had already kicked in so I grabbed the ring. Needless to say, reflexes had me flinging it across the room within a split second, but not before welts were forming on all five fingers.

Makeup brought burn cream and the off duty officer wrapped my fingers for me, but it made operating very tedious the rest of the night. Very painful!
 
On one of my first paying jobs doing a college recruitment video, I was working as an assistant to the main videographer. He told me to move a light in a little closer and I walked that sucker right into a ceiling fan on high speed. Thankfully, nothing was damaged but it made a terrible sound that I'll never forget.

P.S. Photoflex softboxes are tough.:thumbsup:
 
i've made so many errors i can't even count them all...

but the biggest of all was when i was shooting a music video for a country artist.
I forgot to push "stop" on the record button, and I kept that sucker running for about a good 15 minutes while i was changing the set up and bs'ing with the talent.
 
Nothing huge, but lots of little things.

Ex: camera shadow in shot, accidently turning on auto-exposure (ouch), arriving at shoot with absolutely no power left in batteries (luckilly it was a very small shoot and nobody cared).

Never remade the same mistake though.
 
I once tried to coil a stinger the same way that you could a mic cable/video cable....mistake. But that's not the dumbest thing......dumbest thing would probably be when I used to think duct tape was the same as gaff tape......
 
Made quite alot of mistakes - the one that started this thread - i've made it.
Forgot to white balance, yeap.
Forgot to turn off gain, yeap.
Forgot to clean lens, yeap.
Didnt see some guy in the shot who wasn't supposed to be there, yeap.
the list goes on...
 
I once killed my entire crew...

After getting out of prison, I went to shoot a very important morning segment of The CBS Early Show, that was suppose to be sent to CBS to use for their Big Brother promos. Needless to say, I accidently left my camera on over night, draining the battery. I got about 3 minutes of footage in from what was suppose to be a good 2 hours.

I was able to play it off though. I shot the other three days of footage and when the guy asked me why there was only a few tapes, I just told him I made a melt reel and put the best footage on the two tapes (was suppose to be originally like 5), so that way, he didn't have to sift through hours of stuff.

He beleived me and thanked me...I just hope he isn't on this forum! :D
 
Forgot to lock the tilt on tripod head and cam took a slow nose dive to record the floor.

Not sure who was at fault - but during a break shooting a TV pilot for a home building show the unmanned cam fell to the ground while on sticks - we blamed the construction crew(I was a PA and the cam was a rental)

Of course recording without hitting the record button is a favor of mine.
 
I'm fairly new and the most common mistake I have been making is not properly cueing the actors to start action. In a rush, I will hit the record button while saying action and I miss the first few seconds.

Last week I taped a short video for my church - I would look at the screen, hit the record button, step back to cue the "actors". After the first scene, all of them quickly zoned in on this and as soon as I moved my hand away after hitting record, they went into action. I know better now to let it record a couple of seconds before yelling action.
 
PixelWrangler said:
Forgot to lock the tilt on tripod head and cam took a slow nose dive to record the floor..
Click to expand...

Now this is gonna drive me crazy... I've seen that, done on purpose. A TV show? A film? Maybe Monty Python? The camera starts nose-diving, and the actor follows it down to stay in frame.

So. Where did I see it? :(
 
This story comes to mind:

This story comes to mind:

I was the shooter and producer, so I'll take credit for this one:
We were doing a low budget commercial shoot at a home that was for sale. The owners were out of town, but I was working with a realtor who let us in.
I needed light in the foyer (which was in the background of the shot), so I had the production assistant set up a 1K. To keep it out of the shot, we placed it behind a grandfather clock. I didn't realise how close it was, though.
Well, unbeknownst to us, the 1K was hot enough to "bubble" the finish off the grandfather clock. (Looked like it had melted) Not to mention a strong burning smell coming from the foyer.
At the end of the shoot, the PA and I knew we were screwed.
Fortunately, the company I worked for paid for a clock repair company to come in, remove the clock, and fix it before the owner of the house ever found out. (The realtor took care of letting the repairman in and out)
 
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