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

This is the best thread ever! Anyone else have anything?

This should seriously be a Sticky. I'm learning all sorts of stuff not to do on my upcoming shoot. :Drogar-Dum(DBG):
 
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One day on Babylon 5 I read the previous day's schedule, picked up a tape and walked directly into the middle of a big highly-choreographed shootout in the cargo bay. I don't know whether I was in frame or not, but a bunch of people with guns in their hands were glaring at me, so I sort of dived behind a crate and waited to hear "cut."
 
Sad Max said:
One day on Babylon 5 I read the previous day's schedule, picked up a tape and walked directly into the middle of a big highly-choreographed shootout in the cargo bay. I don't know whether I was in frame or not, but a bunch of people with guns in their hands were glaring at me, so I sort of dived behind a crate and waited to hear "cut."
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LOL - ruining someone's take is the worst feeling!
 
Went to shoot a real-time event with a new camera that I had not become intimately familiar with. Accidently hit one of the outside buttons while doing a hand-held, and stopped the recording. And I had absolutely no idea what I had done or how to undo it. Had to shut it down and re-start.

And a lot of other stupid things ...
 
Well, on my first ever organised shoot (a high school student film) I was sensible enough to let a complete twit of an AV nerd (and I knew he was a twit) handle the MiniDV camera I was shooting with. He decided to "review" the footage we'd shot so far whilst I set up our next shot. Which I proceeded to shoot when he handed me the camera back.

...unfortunately, at the end of the day - after we'd shot all of our footage, and all of my mates (actors?) had gone home I "reviewed" our footage, only to discover that I'd taped over 10 minutes and 3 vital scenes worth of footage because the tape hadn't been fast forwarded to the end of the current footage when my friendly neighbourhood idiot had "reviewed" it!
 
Grug said:
Well, on my first ever organised shoot (a high school student film) I was sensible enough to let a complete twit of an AV nerd (and I knew he was a twit) handle the MiniDV camera I was shooting with. He decided to "review" the footage we'd shot so far whilst I set up our next shot. Which I proceeded to shoot when he handed me the camera back.

...unfortunately, at the end of the day - after we'd shot all of our footage, and all of my mates (actors?) had gone home I "reviewed" our footage, only to discover that I'd taped over 10 minutes and 3 vital scenes worth of footage because the tape hadn't been fast forwarded to the end of the current footage when my friendly neighbourhood idiot had "reviewed" it!
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:shocked:

:badputer:

:kali: :violent5:
 
Grug said:
Well, on my first ever organised shoot (a high school student film) I was sensible enough to let a complete twit of an AV nerd (and I knew he was a twit) handle the MiniDV camera I was shooting with. He decided to "review" the footage we'd shot so far whilst I set up our next shot. Which I proceeded to shoot when he handed me the camera back.

...unfortunately, at the end of the day - after we'd shot all of our footage, and all of my mates (actors?) had gone home I "reviewed" our footage, only to discover that I'd taped over 10 minutes and 3 vital scenes worth of footage because the tape hadn't been fast forwarded to the end of the current footage when my friendly neighbourhood idiot had "reviewed" it!
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Yup, I've done that on one of my friend's short film while handling the cam. Taped over a fight sequence that took two hours in the hot sun to get as well as another key scene. I felt terrible.
 
Woo woo woo!!! I got one! Forgetting to clean the camera lens. A nubie mistake that happens a lot, but normally I wipe the lens down as soon as we start so I don't have to worry about it. When I first shot Wages of Sin I shot a scene in an alley, the alley itself wasn't the cleanest and was in back of a hotel with dust blowing up every from time to time. But during running and gunning I never cleaned the lens.

While most of it the dust was minimal in some parts I had to find creative ways to mask out the dusk. Ironically I decided I wanted to start the movie with a martial arts scene versus a gun battle so we re-shot the scene in a warehouse. This was mainly a martial arts film so it worked out perfectly (considering I didn't need to use the shot).

-Nate
 
On one of the first features I worked on… I thought I score some points with the director’s assistant…

He was always barking at her to get something… a Pepsi… his script…

Can’t remember what I said to her one-day… but something to the effect… Gawd, he’s a prick the way he yells at you…

Her response was… “Yeah my brother can sure be an “A” hole sometimes…

Gee thought I was fired right then and there… but it became our private joke the rest of the shoot… and it drove him crazy wondering what the joke was about...
 
shoot on the beach. sand SUCKS. my tripod legs will NEVER NEVER be the same. tide unexpectedly got my backpack. This thing saved laptop and many valueables, but my nextel probably is a total loss. now i have to go through every piece of eveything and blow out any random sand.
 
wabbit said:
Mine was very simple and stupid. Early on in my career I was talking to this guy who I thought was just a looky-loo and start to SLIGHTLY complain about the efficiency of the production. Found out later it was the producer. For some reason I have not worked for that guy again.

Have kept my opinions to myself and my wife ever since (she often gets an earfull). Even saying something that could be twisted by an opportunistic PA could be career suicide.

Cheers
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This is an awesome thread... I'm reading on page 4 and there are some entertaining stories here but, so far, this is the most important post.

Learn this... always stay positive and do NOT complain about any shoot to ANYBODY... EVER... even if a production is a disaster and you have nothing to do with the failures... you will get sucked into the abyss if you project any negativity to anybody.


My biggest mistake was very recent... Heidi Klum is going to have a new line of skin treatments out soon (like cream and exfoliators)... and I was booming and running sound with another guy on this shoot.

I've got a local guy that's done some editing for me in the past. He really wants to become a partner. So for the Heidi K thing I told him to come by... stay FAR away... use the 20x zoom (on his GL2) and get a quick shot of me MCU and pan over to Heidi... I wanted this shot for my reel... I told him that on a shoot like this he would have to FLOAT through... and stay for just a couple minutes... one pan, one wide, one minute... just be one of the many tourists floating by. It's at the Arch and people are flooding through all day... no big deal right?

Float in... come through... 2 or 3 minutes. NOBODY would even care. Simple?

So dude drops in and gets excited to be around the production... he plants himself on set... for like 2+ HOURS... naturally security finally comes in on him and wrangles his tapes away... and he says he was there to shoot some BTS of me... etc. etc. Basically the guy takes a simple idea (that nobody would have even noticed or cared about)... and turns it into a nice little clusterf*ck of bad PR for me personally. He goes 100% opposite of everything I said.

The lesson? I NEVER tell any of my up and coming production friends about pro work until the gig is over now... never. Not even if the production wants extras! If somebody wants to find a way "in" you don't want them getting pushy to meet people by using YOUR name as an excuse to make contact on set... :zombie_smiley:
 
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Mattin that sucks, there's nothing worse in the world when you do someone a favour and the sh!t on you. You must have been annoyed to say the least.
 
MattinSTL said:
Learn this... always stay positive and do NOT complain about any shoot to ANYBODY... EVER... even if a production is a disaster and you have nothing to do with the failures... you will get sucked into the abyss if you project any negativity to anybody.
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I sort of agree, and sort of disagree. It's true that maintaining a professional attitude and demeanor is crucial. It's also true that bellyaching to a producer, or to someone with a producer's ear, is bad practice that can come back and bite you, hard.

On the other hand...it can actually be good for morale, sometimes, for crew mates to hang out and relax over lunch or a couple pitchers, and grouse and chuckle and gripe and laugh about the show, and at some of the people involved, especially toward the end of a long, difficult project, escpecially if the target of the gripeage and laughter are above the line. It promotes solidarity, cameraderie and a sense that, hey, everyone's sharing the boat, so pulling at your own oar really isn't so bad.

It really varies by show, and by the particular mix of people crewing it.
 
A few times while shooting, I'd forget to hit the off button after a take, and so when I hit that record button, thinking it was off already, it shut off, and the next take wasn't recorded. It's a bad feeling when after a good take, you hit that button and the camera STARTS recording. One time I captured footage to find less takes then what had been shot, and several minutes of behind the scenes footage of my feet with my voice and the actors' voices talking about the scene in the background.
 
here is a recent one, not on a shoot but 4 months later.

I shoot the Nintendo Wii launch on the west coast for my company, i also had a B camera there for extra coverage.

So we took everything off the FS4 and tapes and stuck it on our 1 TB drive for Archive, so 4 months later we go to use some of the footage in a show and find that one of the hard drives in the external drive has died...

This all happens after i keep telling my boss that we need to get a Raid 5 NAS setup, but that never happend. so we lost all the footage from that event and a few other events...

But i really dont feel bad about it since i did warn them that we need to get some better backups for all our media.
 
whe ni elave my dvx on the tripod, sometimes the handle isnt tight, and the dvx will just drop, and the hood will run into the tripod, the camera doesnt fall, cuz its screwed into the tripod, but the the tripod will tilt down and the camera will hit the body of the tripod, kinda hard to explain
 
i always have continuity problems... my character used a walking cane and had a tatoo on his right arm... not for his first scene though... shot the whole damn scene and not one person noticed... including me!! and i was the actor!! i always laugh my a** off everytime i think of it.
 
i shot a one-day documentary and I did the same as Billy. I missed a record start/stop, so the camera was recording when I thought it was stopped, and stopped when i thought it was recording. i found lots of footage of my feet, upside down footage of people hanging out and footage of girls' behinds that i'd zoomed in on for a better look
 
Good old taping over footage. Never seems to be my fault to be honest though. I'm just always around when it happens. Must be a curse.
 
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