Horror Stories & Shoots from HELL

Yes it's always a tough call, what to wear on a shoot, when they shoot back. :kali:

Do I travel light with IIIA soft armor, or hinder my movability but up the protection by going to level IV plate armor?
 
103 degrees in DC, shooting at one of the Senate buildings. No parking arrangements are made, little public parking anywhere nearby. Find my own street parking five blocks away and roll lights/camera/etc in. Arrive soaking wet. Producer looks disgusted and asks "what happened to you??" After shoot, producer (who'd just talked with a Senator for hours crafting a message about 'helping the little guy') actually says '**** it's hot... sucks to be you,' laughs and hops into his luxury Uber hire alone to drive off in air conditioned comfort. Not the worst, but somewhat typical... the most 'for the people' types are generally the most inconsiderate tools. Pols generally commonly regarded as hateful, evil scum tend to be the most accommodating and helpful. I won't name names per forum regs.

There was the time in Liberia (a few of them, actually)...
- driving deep through interior bush area frequented by "highwaymen" when the 4runner's front wheel BREAKS OFF. We scrounged parts from a nearby burnt out bullethole-ridden truck to get back on the road.
- later, in the same vehicle, in the dead of night (since we were slightly delayed), a radio under the front seat CATCHES ON FIRE. Did I mention we were carrying ~30gal of gasoline on the roof? It's electrical, so our team mechanic Charlie quickly pops the hood and pulls the battery cable, then fire is smothered with dirt and doused with urine (little potable water remained with our truck after delay). Singed radio thrown by the side of the road, so no communication with forward team from that point on.
- driving back a week later... front wheel breaks off again. Hired driver does not understand plea to please, please slow down on rough roads.
- later, same trip, truck's motor putters and dies. Driver, for unknown reasons, disconnects diesel fuel line in engine compartment and starts SUCKING MOUTHFULLS OF DIESEL FUEL from the line. This mystically doesn't work. We're in rubber plantation country. Part of the group goes into the trees for bathroom break while we figure out the trouble. A number of plantation workers with machetes spot the group (largely lilly white missionary women) going into the trees and approach us more than a little upset at our intrusion. Our second driver decides now is a good time to start showing attitude. First truck is still dead as voices begin to raise, and I start looking for a tire iron or something so I can at least go down swinging. Finally we discover a blown ignition fuse (surprise, no spares), jam a chunk of metal into the socket and get started. We start off down the road and the workers have blocked the second truck from moving forward, so we quick reverse and adrenaline starts racing as the guys in our truck all find something solid to swing if necessary. Second truck manages to push past and we both blast down the road for a good hour before our next flat tire.
 
mcbob, Liberia sounds like a trip. Do you have a link to that video?

I've had a couple of horror stories, though no "shoot from hell" just yet. I'm sure that given enough time, it will happen.

Here's a training video I made back in 2009:

I shot the tip of the "spear" coming through the metal frame several times and from several angles. I would set the camera, take a couple of steps back, and then radio the operator that we were rolling. I'd get a countdown over the radio and then the operator would pull the trigger. While I was setting up for one such shot, the operator surprised me by firing the device without warning. The tip came within twelve inches of my face. It was so close that I could feel the rush of air coming off of that thing. I wish I had been rolling when it happened. It definitely got my heart going. A big focus of the video was safety while operating this equipment, and I almost became the first casualty!

Despite that little hiccup, the rest of the shoot days went well and I had a good time working on it.
 
QHR: Fortunately you missed the point (literally)!

I do have the first Liberia video... my old church (for whatever reason) removed it from their YouTube. Weird.

Still on my Vimeo though... it was my very very first doc work, I was still working as a lab rat at the time and went freelance after the rush of that job (volunteered, as it were). Shot on a PD150 and isn't exactly masterfully shot or edited, so I passworded it lest potential clients think it's my current work quality.

Here's the first mission doc (upon which all the 'interesting' things mentioned occurred). Password "liberia"
https://vimeo.com/1484997

Two years later, we went back for a medical mission... by then, I'd upgraded to the HV30 (almost miss it... such a little powerhouse):
https://vimeo.com/9839527
 
Looking at these now, I can "read between the lines" and imagine some of the difficulties that you must have encountered on these shoots!
 
My producer and i pitched a behind the scenes doc for the third season dvd box set of that show about people stranded on an island to the parent company at the studio where it was made. Their response to the pitch "great! we love it! it's like nothing we've ever seen before."

we shoot it with teams in hawaii following production and in los angeles covering the writers room, we cut it, and the response is "no! we hate it! this is like nothing we've ever seen before!"

not to toot my own horn, but just to state that i've delivered countless behind the scenes docs for the studios on everything from huge titles like transformers, to smaller titles like end of watch. in this instance, we were so mystified by the response that after trying to address their notes for weeks, this was the first time my producer and I agreed to walk away and let someone else take over. oddly, enough. i saw the piece a couple years ago and it seems they eventually went back to our original concept, but just added a bunch of VO.
 
Zak Forsman said:
not to toot my own horn, but just to state that i've delivered countless behind the scenes docs for the studios on everything from huge titles like transformers, to smaller titles like end of watch. in this instance, we were so mystified by the response that after trying to address their notes for weeks, this was the first time my producer and I agreed to walk away and let someone else take over. oddly, enough. i saw the piece a couple years ago and it seems they eventually went back to our original concept, but just added a bunch of VO.
Click to expand...

I knew you had done some BTS work, but I didn't realize it was that extensive. A question-- did you learn much about filmmaking from the big-budget films that you could apply to your own shoots?
 
wait was that the piece about a day in the life of the crew/writers, talking about the writing/shooting process, the multiple crews, how each ep is 10 days of work compressed into 8 days with two crews? i saw that!
 
yeah, that's it. our first cut didn't rely on VO to tell the story of the events of the day. i also was one of the shooters in the writer's room. pretty amazing group of writers on the show during that season.
 
Here's my shoot from hell. It was from a film made by a bunch of very talented DVXusers whose names I won't mention, for obvious reasons. It was a great learning experience, so I think of it fondly, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hell.

I was 16 years old and was contacted by the filmmakers asking if I could be the sound guy for a short film. The pay was $100/day. I'd be using their equipment.

"I've read a bunch of books on sound," I told them, "but I've never done it before. I have no experience."
"That's fine. We'll teach you how to use the equipment at the start of our first shooting day."

The film had three main actors. The director wanted all of them wearing lavs, plus I'd be operating the boom. So we had four channels of audio. The filmmakers were using a bunch of brand new equipment that none of them had used before. Two of the audio channels would be going to the brand new GH1 + Beachtek XLR adapter (lol), and the other two would be going to a Zoom H4 (also just released).

The Beachtek adapter was supposed to have a setting that canceled the GH1's auto-levels, but nobody could get it working. We couldn't even tell if it was recording anything. The Zoom H4 was missing its AC adapter, so it required batteries. The only spare batteries on set were 5+ year old rechargeables that only lasted for 10 minutes. As soon as I put in a fresh pair, the H4 already indicated that I needed to change the batteries. I had to switch batteries between every single take, because it could have shut off at any time, and I didn't want to ruin a take. It took 1-2 minutes to do this between every take--remove batteries, put them back on charger, grab "fully charged" batteries, put them in H4, and reposition the boom pole.

I could only monitor two of the audio channels, so I monitored the H4. The other two lavs, I guess nobody cared about. We didn't have the equipment to hear what they were recording. Since I was both the boom operator and the sound mixer, but I didn't have one of those sound mixer bags, I had to keep the H4 on the floor, turn it on at the start of each take, then pick up the boom pole and get it in place. This was a routine part of the protocol for every single take, for all four days of shooting. Change batteries, start rolling the H4 as it sits on the ground, position boom pole, say "sound ready." The AD still yelled out, "Waiting on sound!" every time. Eventually he became more and more sarcastic with his "waiting on sound!", suggesting that I was incompetent and was the one slowing the shoot down. This was extremely embarrassing at the time, and nobody in charge ever spoke up to defend me.

------

Let me jump ahead to the main points. On day two, there was no boom pole. Somebody forgot it. I had to use a baby stand as the boom pole, and the weight of the thing damn near killed me. As I'm struggling to hold the boom (my face shows my pain but I'm still holding the thing perfectly well) during a take, the director says Cut! and screams, "Would somebody show that kid how to hold a goddamn boom!?" With everyone watching, the gaffer runs over and shows me an incorrect way to hold a boom. Everyone knew his way was completely incorrect (he demonstrated booming from below with the mic out of frame by the actor's knees), but nobody had my back. I shrugged and held it his way from then on. It sounded like sh*t but it was what the director wanted apparently. (Actually, it definitely was not what the director wanted, but it was apparently more important that I get scolded than that I get good sound.)

Still this "waiting on sound!" thing was going on. I realize that's a normal thing for an AD to say, but there was such an insulting tone to it each time, like "here we go again!" Everybody was getting in on it-- it wasn't my imagination. Nobody told me this directly, but I could tell I was the scapegoat for everything that was going wrong on the shoot. I'm a team player, and I'm happy to play the scapegoat when necessary. But they need my permission first. If someone had said, "Hey this shoot is going horribly wrong, and I need to blame sound department. Is that ok?" I'd be entirely ok with it. But no, the people who were passing blame to me seemed to really believe it. I still believe that I did the best job that anybody possibly could have with what I was given.

These were also 16 hour days, plus 2 hours of driving for me. It was not production's fault, but I was also dealing with my parents and their rule that I wasn't allowed to drive after midnight. When I was in high school and a shoot ran over schedule, I'd have to deal with my crying mother on the phone (again, nobody's fault, but worth mentioning so you understand my psychological state).

----

Third act.

Near the end of the shoot, the AD approaches me to have me sign a contract. I discover that my pay is actually $25/day, plus $75/day deferred. I was not confident enough as a 16 year old to say that that's bullsh*t, so I sign. I find out later that I was the lowest paid person on set. Everyone else is getting their actual money, but 3/4 of my money is "deferred." Of course I was never paid that money. The contract didn't even explain the terms of the deferred pay, which of course means that whoever drew up the contracts had no intention of ever paying it, and they assumed I was a complete moron (which was, admittedly, accurate.)

In the end I think they ADR'd the entire movie. No surprise there. It still managed to get into a prestigious festival and actually came out very good. Who'd have imagined...
 
Last edited:
Drew Ott said:
I knew you had done some BTS work, but I didn't realize it was that extensive. A question-- did you learn much about filmmaking from the big-budget films that you could apply to your own shoots?
Click to expand...

absolutely! having access to raw behind the scenes footage of so many different directors running their sets has been an amazing education over the years. clooney runs a pretty loose ship. micheal bay's sets can be pretty tense. once watched him yell commands at the camera dept with a megaphone while they were standing ten feet away from him. but his core team is loyal. they've been with him since the Dr. Pepper days. i think joe carnahan is one of the best guy's i've seen at work. he is great at inspiring everyone to do their best work with endless authentic enthusiasm. i've learned a lot watching him.
 
Drew Ott said:
Here's my shoot from hell. It was from a film made by a bunch of very talented DVXusers whose names I won't mention, for obvious reasons. It was a great learning experience, so I think of it fondly, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hell.

I was 16 years old and was contacted by the filmmakers asking if I could be the sound guy for a short film. The pay was $100/day. I'd be using their equipment.

"I've read a bunch of books on sound," I told them, "but I've never done it before. I have no experience."
"That's fine. We'll teach you how to use the equipment at the start of our first shooting day."

The film had three main actors. The director wanted all of them wearing lavs, plus I'd be operating the boom. So we had four channels of audio. The filmmakers were using a bunch of brand new equipment that none of them had used before. Two of the audio channels would be going to the brand new GH1 + Beachtek XLR adapter (lol), and the other two would be going to a Zoom H4 (also just released).

The Beachtek adapter was supposed to have a setting that canceled the GH1's auto-levels, but nobody could get it working. We couldn't even tell if it was recording anything. The Zoom H4 was missing its AC adapter, so it required batteries. The only spare batteries on set were 5+ year old rechargeables that only lasted for 10 minutes. As soon as I put in a fresh pair, the H4 already indicated that I needed to change the batteries. I had to switch batteries between every single take, because it could have shut off at any time, and I didn't want to ruin a take. It took 1-2 minutes to do this between every take--remove batteries, put them back on charger, grab "fully charged" batteries, put them in H4, and reposition the boom pole.

I could only monitor two of the audio channels, so I monitored the H4. The other two lavs, I guess nobody cared about. We didn't have the equipment to hear what they were recording. Since I was both the boom operator and the sound mixer, but I didn't have one of those sound mixer bags, I had to keep the H4 on the floor, turn it on at the start of each take, then pick up the boom pole and get it in place. This was a routine part of the protocol for every single take, for all four days of shooting. Change batteries, start rolling the H4 as it sits on the ground, position boom pole, say "sound ready." The AD still yelled out, "Waiting on sound!" every time. Eventually he became more and more sarcastic with his "waiting on sound!", suggesting that I was incompetent and was the one slowing the shoot down. This was extremely embarrassing at the time, and nobody in charge ever spoke up to defend me.

------

Let me jump ahead to the main points. On day two, there was no boom pole. Somebody forgot it. I had to use a baby stand as the boom pole, and the weight of the thing damn near killed me. As I'm struggling to hold the boom (my face shows my pain but I'm still holding the thing perfectly well) during a take, the director says Cut! and screams, "Would somebody show that kid how to hold a goddamn boom!?" With everyone watching, the gaffer runs over and shows me an incorrect way to hold a boom. Everyone knew his way was completely incorrect (he demonstrated booming from below with the mic out of frame by the actor's knees), but nobody had my back. I shrugged and held it his way from then on. It sounded like sh*t but it was what the director wanted apparently. (Actually, it definitely was not what the director wanted, but it was apparently more important that I get scolded than that I get good sound.)

Still this "waiting on sound!" thing was going on. I realize that's a normal thing for an AD to say, but there was such an insulting tone to it each time, like "here we go again!" Everybody was getting in on it-- it wasn't my imagination. Nobody told me this directly, but I could tell I was the scapegoat for everything that was going wrong on the shoot. I'm a team player, and I'm happy to play the scapegoat when necessary. But they need my permission first. If someone had said, "Hey this shoot is going horribly wrong, and I need to blame sound department. Is that ok?" I'd be entirely ok with it. But no, the people who were passing blame to me seemed to really believe it. I still believe that I did the best job that anybody possibly could have with what I was given.

These were also 16 hour days, plus 2 hours of driving for me. It was not production's fault, but I was also dealing with my parents and their rule that I wasn't allowed to drive after midnight. When I was in high school and a shoot ran over schedule, I'd have to deal with my crying mother on the phone (again, nobody's fault, but worth mentioning so you understand my psychological state).

----

Third act.

Near the end of the shoot, the AD approaches me to have me sign a contract. I discover that my pay is actually $25/day, plus $75/day deferred. I was not confident enough as a 16 year old to say that that's bullsh*t, so I sign. I find out later that I was the lowest paid person on set. Everyone else is getting their actual money, but 3/4 of my money is "deferred." Of course I was never paid that money. The contract didn't even explain the terms of the deferred pay, which of course means that whoever drew up the contracts had no intention of ever paying it, and they assumed I was a complete moron (which was, admittedly, accurate.)

In the end I think they ADR'd the entire movie. No surprise there. It still managed to get into a prestigious festival and actually came out very good. Who'd have imagined...
Click to expand...

Holy FOOK!

You got screwed!

I was once on a 5-day short film shoot where things went wrong and they tried to pin it on me in much the same way..
Until the morning of the third day when I took the director and DP aside and reamed them on every single detail THEY screwed up themselves or by not having the proper equipment and by having crew members with ZERO experience.
I bent over backwards and worked myself half to death to make up for as many of their shortcomings as possible...but in the end their huge egos had them so totally sure they knew exactly what they were doing that they blew the whole thing.
So many of their shots ended up unusable or horrid...and they had a big enough cast that they couldn't afford any re-shoots...the $8,000 shoot ultimately never even became a finished film. So, total loss for everyone involved.

Your experience is similar to mine in one KEY way - it taught me to never work on a short film or feature if I have not actually in-person been able to watch the director and key crew members work PRIOR to agreeing to the job.
 
drew--

NOT okay. the whole scapegoat attitude. EFF ALL THOSE PEOPLE, whoever they might be! seriously. that is some hardcore bs. i am pissed just reading about it. i would only accept blame for something i actually DID, otherwise i have a pale, somewhat toned, hairy heiny they can put their lips to.

and i am not a sound guy, but sometimes you gotta go in from other angles than above (i.e below, like you did), if situation demands. though maybe your objection was to how far from the mouth-al area they had you holding it.
 
Don't forget about that shoot you did in Alaska. :D



Drew Ott said:
Here's my shoot from hell. It was from a film made by a bunch of very talented DVXusers whose names I won't mention, for obvious reasons. It was a great learning experience, so I think of it fondly, but that doesn't mean it wasn't hell.

I was 16 years old and was contacted by the filmmakers asking if I could be the sound guy for a short film. The pay was $100/day. I'd be using their equipment.

"I've read a bunch of books on sound," I told them, "but I've never done it before. I have no experience."
"That's fine. We'll teach you how to use the equipment at the start of our first shooting day."

The film had three main actors. The director wanted all of them wearing lavs, plus I'd be operating the boom. So we had four channels of audio. The filmmakers were using a bunch of brand new equipment that none of them had used before. Two of the audio channels would be going to the brand new GH1 + Beachtek XLR adapter (lol), and the other two would be going to a Zoom H4 (also just released).

The Beachtek adapter was supposed to have a setting that canceled the GH1's auto-levels, but nobody could get it working. We couldn't even tell if it was recording anything. The Zoom H4 was missing its AC adapter, so it required batteries. The only spare batteries on set were 5+ year old rechargeables that only lasted for 10 minutes. As soon as I put in a fresh pair, the H4 already indicated that I needed to change the batteries. I had to switch batteries between every single take, because it could have shut off at any time, and I didn't want to ruin a take. It took 1-2 minutes to do this between every take--remove batteries, put them back on charger, grab "fully charged" batteries, put them in H4, and reposition the boom pole.

I could only monitor two of the audio channels, so I monitored the H4. The other two lavs, I guess nobody cared about. We didn't have the equipment to hear what they were recording. Since I was both the boom operator and the sound mixer, but I didn't have one of those sound mixer bags, I had to keep the H4 on the floor, turn it on at the start of each take, then pick up the boom pole and get it in place. This was a routine part of the protocol for every single take, for all four days of shooting. Change batteries, start rolling the H4 as it sits on the ground, position boom pole, say "sound ready." The AD still yelled out, "Waiting on sound!" every time. Eventually he became more and more sarcastic with his "waiting on sound!", suggesting that I was incompetent and was the one slowing the shoot down. This was extremely embarrassing at the time, and nobody in charge ever spoke up to defend me.

------

Let me jump ahead to the main points. On day two, there was no boom pole. Somebody forgot it. I had to use a baby stand as the boom pole, and the weight of the thing damn near killed me. As I'm struggling to hold the boom (my face shows my pain but I'm still holding the thing perfectly well) during a take, the director says Cut! and screams, "Would somebody show that kid how to hold a goddamn boom!?" With everyone watching, the gaffer runs over and shows me an incorrect way to hold a boom. Everyone knew his way was completely incorrect (he demonstrated booming from below with the mic out of frame by the actor's knees), but nobody had my back. I shrugged and held it his way from then on. It sounded like sh*t but it was what the director wanted apparently. (Actually, it definitely was not what the director wanted, but it was apparently more important that I get scolded than that I get good sound.)

Still this "waiting on sound!" thing was going on. I realize that's a normal thing for an AD to say, but there was such an insulting tone to it each time, like "here we go again!" Everybody was getting in on it-- it wasn't my imagination. Nobody told me this directly, but I could tell I was the scapegoat for everything that was going wrong on the shoot. I'm a team player, and I'm happy to play the scapegoat when necessary. But they need my permission first. If someone had said, "Hey this shoot is going horribly wrong, and I need to blame sound department. Is that ok?" I'd be entirely ok with it. But no, the people who were passing blame to me seemed to really believe it. I still believe that I did the best job that anybody possibly could have with what I was given.

These were also 16 hour days, plus 2 hours of driving for me. It was not production's fault, but I was also dealing with my parents and their rule that I wasn't allowed to drive after midnight. When I was in high school and a shoot ran over schedule, I'd have to deal with my crying mother on the phone (again, nobody's fault, but worth mentioning so you understand my psychological state).

----

Third act.

Near the end of the shoot, the AD approaches me to have me sign a contract. I discover that my pay is actually $25/day, plus $75/day deferred. I was not confident enough as a 16 year old to say that that's bullsh*t, so I sign. I find out later that I was the lowest paid person on set. Everyone else is getting their actual money, but 3/4 of my money is "deferred." Of course I was never paid that money. The contract didn't even explain the terms of the deferred pay, which of course means that whoever drew up the contracts had no intention of ever paying it, and they assumed I was a complete moron (which was, admittedly, accurate.)

In the end I think they ADR'd the entire movie. No surprise there. It still managed to get into a prestigious festival and actually came out very good. Who'd have imagined...
Click to expand...
 
As many shoots from hell that I have been on, I'll have to admit that I have been a dumb-ass myself on more that one occasion. Like the time I was morning drive DJ and production director at a radio station and had just finished producing a boatload of spots, but had yet to master then to stereo tape before transferring them to cart. In walks the front desk girl telling me there is some random hot girl that wants to meet me. Happens all the time in radio. At any rate I'm carrying on a conversation with her, and pull the 8 track reel from the tape deck and proceed to bulk erase it. An entire shift of radio commercials gone! I've got plenty more where that came from.

Who's next? :violent5:
 
Well, since David raised the topic of self-imposed hell on a shoot... my very first EFP shoot was memorable.

Early in my career, I had been working for a broadcast station that had a long-running interstitial short-form with its own dedicated crew in-house, but their recordist was out sick. My boss asked if I'd like to go out in his stead, and I jumped at the chance to get out of the production control room (I had just recently purchased my own bag-based kit and had been learning how to work from it). The actual audio part of the shoot wasn't an issue. It was the strain of the shoot.

I was not so experienced with my field kit and had only the shoulder strap that came with my PortaBrace organizer. This shoot had us out in the mountains on trails, crossing heavy streams and rivers, and following a man who was making a 14-mile journey taken by his grandfather long ago from the logging company to the family homestead. While the crew didn't hike the entire way (we leap-frogged the trail at various access points, driving between each, and the producer carried my DAT recorder to get sound-only interviews as she took the entire hike with the subject), we did take quite a bit of it. I hadn't learned of the benefits of a harness for the audio bag, so my left shoulder carried the weight of the kit for the entire day. To complicate things, I didn't hydrate myself well enough through the day and didn't think to throw some granola or protien bars into the bag. It was a 14-hour shoot day, and we had to hike out from our last stop (the site of the old homestead) on a trail that was mostly uphill. I remember my vision starting to cross at that point, which was scary. I had never experienced that level of exhaustion/dehydration before.

The next day, I could not raise my left arm at all.

Lessons learned:
1) Use a harness.
2) Drink LOTS of water.
3) Keep sustainable nutrition in your kit.
 
I stumbled on this thread when I came here for advice on a particular incident, so perhaps my experience yesterday would qualify:

I was hired by a west coast company to film a testimonial video for them at their client's location in my city. They were great to work with, exactly what I want in a client, great communication, professional, contract, deposit, all good. They get me in touch with their client, and I run down the plan and my expectations for the shoot, which he seemed slightly resistant to, insisting that they do videos all the time and my schedule recommendations didn't seem right to him (because I don't do videos all the time?!). So it was a weird vibe, but overall positive communication.

On the day of the shoot, we're about 90% set up: audio, lights, multiple cameras almost ready to go when the guy comes out and tells us that we can't shoot. I stood there waiting for a punch line. Surely he's joking? He went on about legal assurances he needs not being in place and on and on about acquisitions and lawyers, and we will need to reschedule.

We pack up and go home, and I contact my client and let them know what happened. I told her that he made it appear that he was open to rescheduling, but I had a feeling that he was going to change his mind about doing the testimonial altogether. When she got back to me after speaking with him, she said that he "had some concerns" and "was uncomfortable" shooting with me and that they were using a company he had pre-approved instead.

Complete shock. This was several weeks in the making, so he had plenty of time to say "yes, I'll shoot a testimonial video, but I want to use such and such company that we've worked with previously". But it wasn't until my company (who, perhaps not incidentally, is all women) were in his office setting up audio, lighting, multiple cameras that he decided he had to pre-approve somebody?!

I've never had anything like this happen. In 10 years, out of all the shoots that have gone less-than-optimally, never have I been fired...while on a shoot...by somebody who isn't even my client! The worst part was, as we were leaving he wished us a "productive day".
 
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