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

Sad Max said:
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.
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i think thats true within the crew of the current project, but it must cease immediatly, after productions.
 
TimurCivan said:
i think thats true within the crew of the current project, but it must cease immediatly, after productions.
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i could agree with this. I was gaffer on a music video for a rap artist in oakland, and we were supposed to be doing the video from 2-9pm. However, the director was an hour late, kept making up new shots and kept having me change lighting setups. By the time 3am rolled around, he was asking me to set up 2 1ks, 2 650's and 2 omnis in the parking lot for a gunshot scene and the rapper, when the director wasn't around, would even confide about how annoyed he was, as he and his entourage were supposed to be at a party. Us connecting about that helped him (and me) get through til the end of it.

That said, however, there was a night that my band played at a cheap bar in San Jose, and after our set, the guitarist and I went to chill outside and cool down. The next band started and we conversed about what we thought of them, and concluded that while they had potential, needed to come together more as a sound and generally were four separate musicians as opposed to a unified band. The singer told us at our next practice that a label agent had been at the show, heard us "talking smack" about the other band and decided that we were too negative to pursue for the label. Now, I never talked sh*t, but the fact that she concluded that we were cost us possible representation.
 
last night i was in the control center talking to this guy boris. he was a dorky looking guy wearing a hawaiian shirt and was running his mouth about how he was invincible and all. long story short...i ended up shooting him in he back as he ran away. worst of all, natalya wouldn't activate the computer because i killed him.

rookie shooting mistake.
 
I once had a 650 or 1k (dont remember) raised all the way into the air on a kstand with no sand bags. The light was probably 10 feet off the ground. Meanwhile, I put my shot list and light meter on the ground to go help out one of my crew members....

While away, the light falls over, but worse is that the EXACT spot which the fixture hit the ground was where I had laid the light meter. You can imagine the coincidence. Not only did a light come crashing down but it had to precisely land ontop of the light meter. Lucky for me the light still worked (go arri!) and the lightmeter although smashed pretty bad, continued to work.

This is the only time I have ever come close to breaking anything. Thank god it turned out the best it probably could have.
 
About 6 years ago I was shooting some skateboarding footage with a friend. It was my high school's GL1. We were skating for a couple of hours, then headed back to my car. I had broken one of my trucks (skateboard wheel part) into several pieces, and was
trying to carry the bits along with the camera. I get to my car and drop most of the bits while tring to open my door. I sit the camera on the top of the car. I bend down to pick up all the pieces and get them into the back fo my car. I then get in the car and drive 30 minutes home. As soon as I pull out of the parking spot, I hear a thud, but shake it off, thinking that it's my friend's skateboard rolling around in the trunk. I realized what I had done when I got home and had an empty camera bag in the backseat. I went back and it was of course gone.

I FELT HORRIBLE. At the time the GL1 was a $2500 new camera.

To this day I give equipment, setup shoots, and lecture for the students at that school, as some kind of payback.
 
Alright - top this one....
(god I'm embarassed to even post this)

Back in college I was shooting a short on Super 8 - we just thought it would be cool to shoot on film instead of Hi8 at the time (yes, this was before DV existed).

Well, having been used to shooting on tape...I wasn't too used to the 3min long rolls.

Long story short - after shooting for a while I think, "wow, this roll sure is lasting a long time" - I look at the side of the cmera and realize that when I took the last roll out, I forgot to reload the camera.

We had been shooting for the last 2 hours without any film in the camera!

I pulled my directing partner aside and told him - we went back and told the cast we had to redo some shots because we didn't think it was going to cut together the way we shot it.

No one on set ever found out what an idiot I was.
:)
 
Luis Caffesse said:
Alright - top this one....
(god I'm embarassed to even post this)

Back in college I was shooting a short on Super 8 - we just thought it would be cool to shoot on film instead of Hi8 at the time (yes, this was before DV existed).

Well, having been used to shooting on tape...I wasn't too used to the 3min long rolls.

Long story short - after shooting for a while I think, "wow, this roll sure is lasting a long time" - I look at the side of the cmera and realize that when I took the last roll out, I forgot to reload the camera.

We had been shooting for the last 2 hours without any film in the camera!

I pulled my directing partner aside and told him - we went back and told the cast we had to redo some shots because we didn't think it was going to cut together the way we shot it.

No one on set ever found out what an idiot I was.
:)
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Wow, that's awesome... :grin:
 
I was a green videographer for my friend and all my horror stories come from working with him.

1) Didn't tighten the base plate for a DVX on a tripod and it fell.... several inches before I caught it from smashing into the cement during a wedding. That had my heart pumping for a while.

2) We were shooting an interview in a home with a crew of 3. I decided to move the shotgun a little closer. A few minutes into the shoot the shotgun swings down right on top of the talent since the cheap legs weren't locked, we didn't have a sandbag, and I was a noob.

and the most shameful...
3) I was hired to go shoot miss oregon 05 at the oregon coast. I had two cameras going. One up high in the back with someone else switching tapes, and one in the middle on the side. The last show went long and camera two up top didn't have an extra tape. So now my camera was going solo at the last 15 minutes of the show. To my horror the audience stands during the crowning. Ouch. The apex of the show and half of the frame is filled with the back of peoples heads.

...and then I started my own business and I have been smooth sailing ever since.
 
Daniel J said:
So now my camera was going solo at the last 15 minutes of the show. To my horror the audience stands during the crowning. Ouch. The apex of the show and half of the frame is filled with the back of peoples heads.
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OUCH is right!
The worst thing about those situations is the time between when you realize what happened and when the clients find out what happened.
That'll keep you up at night.
:cry:
 
Billy Pilgrim said:
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.
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Haha!
I've done this more times than I care to remember. My favourite one was on a series of location interviews with 3 nice female students...

We had packed up from one location, and walked off to the next. It wasn't far, so I kept the camera in my hand. Walking along, I turned the camera off.
Then we saw a really nice, relavant cutaway of a group of police tackling a rather violent shoplifter - perfect angle, clear shot. I flipped the camera on and hit record, and ran (so I thought) a couple of minutes to tape, until they had got the shoplifter into the van. I buttoned off (on), and held the camera, as it my normal habit, pointing backwards.
We carried on, and setting up for the next interview, I noticed that the camera was still running. At that point, I didn't think anything significant of it - I'd obviously not switched off.
Cut to the edit suite.
We are all sat there watching the footage as it digitises. Then, to my horror, no fight scene, and about 3 minutes of Ellie's skirt and legs. On a very clear 19" monitor. And the source VTR monitor. And the vision mixer preview and output monitors. And on the edit VTR monitor. Talk about embarrased!
It's times like that when I swear I will never set foot out of the control room without setting both channels on the mixer to colour bars.:undecided


It all came out well in the end though - After that, the edit went really well and they got good marks, so they bought me some chocolate:Drogar-Happy(DBG):
 
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post shoot:
Somebody loaded my crane into the back of a cab that I didn't actually get in because I haled a cab down the street.

The first cab was waved on before getting my crane out of it.

during a shoot
 probably would be attempting the HVX flip hack which partially broke my LCD. It works fine except when you face it forward pointing the same way as the lens for self shoot mode, then it goes black
 
post shoot:
Somebody loaded my crane into the back of a cab that I didn't actually get in because I haled a cab down the street.

The first cab was waved on before getting my crane out of it.
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I assume you later found it on eBay?
 
haha, no.

We called the lost and found department of the police where cabbies are supposed to bring lost stuff, but never got it.

"yeah I am looking for two aluminum 2X4's about 4' long each"

If it got turned in, finding it was probably hindered by the fact that they didn't know what it was and couldn't list it under an easy category like "purse" or "hat" or "radio".
 
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