Horror Stories & Shoots from HELL

A couple years ago I was referred by a friend to a local production. It was a pilot shoot for a cooking and variety show, and they needed sound. The producer agreed to my rate, so... sure.

The shoot day arrives and we were supposed to be there for 6-8 hours with a morning call. We get to the location and get everything set up. After a pre-production diatribe from the producer in trying to find three camera owner/ops and how we categorically would not be using DSLR because it was absolute useless garbage, we ended up with three mismatched cameras: an HPX, and HMC, and... a 7D. I was equipped for dual-system, so at least it was not an issue for sound.

There was a distinct lack of craft services of any kind, but I thought he might be sending a PA out later in the morning.

We shot some wraps in the kitchen with the show's host, and I worked from a bag for that. Then we moved to the multi-person cooking demos, so I moved to a console mixer that gave me iso recording and feeds to two of the cameras. This is where things started to get weird.

The folks in the kitchen were told just to roll with it, talking and cooking and chatting and carrying on. There was no kind of blocking. At all. The producer said he'd cut them down in post. I cannot imagine editing these down, because each recipe would result in 30-ish minutes of non-stop recording, mostly of the peolple on-cam talking over eachother and not *really* focusing on the cooking. Still no craft services.

Several times - not once, but several times - the producer's phone rang (not on silent) while shooting the demos. He stood up each time, signalled us to keep rolling, and CROSSED CAMERA as he started to answer the call. Conversation, out loud, was audible until he was out of the room. The PA looked at me with an eye-roll and I simply mouthed the long version of WTF. Don't for a second think that there was an effort to re-enter the kitchen quietly. Nope, the door was loud and squeaky. I tried to call it but was told it wasn't an issue. The DoP just shook his head.

Lunch time rolled around, and there was no food. The question was raised. "Here," said the producer, as he put out the heroes from the last two demos (that had been sitting out for a while) with a pile of forks. "Y'all dig in!"

The next demo was tomato pie. As the people were chit-chatting and only halfway paying attention to what was going on, the host/chef sliced her finger. She turned to the sink and rinsed it off, then turned right back around (no dressing on the cut) and continued with the SAME KNIFE, CUTTING BOARD, AND TOMATOES. At the end, there were two pies: one hero that was already done, and the one she'd baked from the demo with her bloody tomatoes. And guess what the producer set out for the crew just in time for dinner hour! And guess who didn't eat.

We ran 10 hours, and that was the only food offered the entire day.

Not surprisingly, the pilot fell off the radar and nothing was ever heard of it. At least I got paid.

Bloody tomato pie.
 
Scott F said:
Ah! Forgot to put this in my post yesterday. Mitch, +2.....name of group and/or video?

Also, mcbob, I enjoyed your videos & stories. No easy task shooting in remote parts of Africa.
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Sorry to disappoint, but happily I never heard of those losers again.

In my years I have shot almost 100 music videos, a bazillion doc interview / talking head pieces, a couple dozen features, etc. The vast majority disappear into the ether, and I have no idea if they ever even air anywhere. I did have a music video by a group called Eve's Plumb. Eve Plumb was the actress who played Jan Brady in The Brady Bunch TV series ("Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!"), she had nothing to do with this band, so it was a doubly stupid pun. I saw it "air" just once on MTV, as one of the horrible videos Beavis & Butthead watch and make fun of. Nice.

So many other horror stories come to mind, especially from the indie film scene. One difficult director imploded her own shoot the day before we were supposed to roll. No one told me (hey, I'm just the DP), and I was down in the lobby of my building with a magliner full of the 14 cases that made up my Aaton kit, waiting for a truck that never arrived. That was the shoot where I learned that even after I have deposited a check to my bank account the funds can be cancelled and the money extracted. Damn.

I also shot the first feature in NYC to go into production after 9/11. There were a few jobs that completed their schedules after a week off, but pretty much all new production halted for awhile. We were the first new film to start up and got some press for it even though we were a tiny indie. Most of the press went (deservedly) to Sandra Bullock for insisting that the production of Two Weeks Notice not be shot in Toronto and instead be done entirely on location in New York, making it the first studio film to return to the city. Anyway, our vaguely insane Chinese director got her boyfriend to forever the money for her to make this indie film that she considered a grand work of art but none of us understood. It had something to do with a supermodel and a plumber on the run. She was incredibly abusive to the crew throughout the entire production and it got so bad that I went to the crew and told them that if they all wanted to quit I wouldn't hold it against them. They all said that there wasn't any other work in town so they'd stick it out, but please not to let her craziness get to me so much that I took it out on them. That's when I realized just how miserable the job was making me. On the last day of the shoot the nut job announces that she has a new scene she just wrote and we need to stay late to complete her movie. Whatever. Turns out the new scene is the "supermodel" waking up from a nap on the sofa while dailies of the plumber play on the TV. She's actually a housewife and it was all a dream -- what cinema brilliance!

I had insisted on myself and the crew being paid in cash and I had a deposit for my insurance bond on my gear. Good thing because she tried to stiff us all on the last few days so as I had planned, I used the money to pay out everyone she tried to screw. About a week later on a Sunday morning at 7am she called and left a rambling diatribe on my answering machine. She went on for a good 5 minutes or so until the thing finally cut her off. My wife tried to listen and finally understood what I'd been dealing with for the previous two months. I just erased it without bothering to listen.


Ah, that was cathartic. I may need to come back to this thread every now and then.
 
Hey one more.

Not really a shoot from hell, in fact it was kinda a bunch of fun, but it's also a wonderful piece of crap. But fun nonetheless because I was just a kid when I got to be there helping out (I was underage and it was my first time in a bar) and everyone there was just having fun. The gear sucked, the song was a joke (meant to be), and the video decidedly low rent and really stupid, and so what? The blonde in the video was nice to me and I was smitten.

The title character is based on Gene Simmons, a notorious womanizer and general creep. The guy who made it was a former bandmate and hated Simmons' guts, or something to that effect.

Here's the skeleton from my closet, the very first production young Mitch was ever a part of, even though I was only a PA-helper. I present to you Crazy Joe and the Variable Speed Band's "Eugene":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeZlXJtLhMQ
 
Years back during the housing boom I was doing a lot of travel shooting new housing developments. I had a go anywhere Range Rover with racks and platform on top so I could drive up these hillsides and shoot from on top of the Rover showing wide vistas of the new developments with the sunset, and so on. While on location I was approached by a company that produced a new product at the time. It was a Soybean based sprayable foam insulation, and of course they wanted a marketing video produced. The shoot date arrived and it was 111 degrees and very humid. I had just gotten my new Panasonic SDX900, which by the way, I still believe to be one of the best SD cameras created. But I started shooting with my Canon XL-1s mounted to a jib. I had bagged the camera, and screwed on a clear filter to protect the lens. Well the guy spraying the foam insulation did not take the temperature or humidity into consideration when adjusting his mix ratio, and you guessed it... This runny liquid like foam stuff over-spraying everywhere. The camera, jib, and myself covered with this crap. I went through every clear filter I had, and every sheet of clear protectant I had brought along. The guy finely got the ratio adjusted, and I ended up having to shoot with the lens unprotected as I had run out protection. I never did pull the SDX900 out of it's bag. Upon delivery I billed extra for camera and lens replacement, and I think the total shoot cost was around $20K. Their marketing director smiled and said... You know what the Ad Agency quoted us to shoot this? $50K. It was the very next day that I doubled my rates.
 
Possibly trip from hell, on a subject going to hell...

'89-'90 I was shooting for a nationally syndicated magazine show (semi-tab).
We flew from Miami to Salt Lake City (5 hrs) then I drove new Lincoln Continental rental with 5 miles on it 6 hrs at 80-90 mph to (I believe it was) Mesa Colorado.
Went to family of guy on death row. I start unloading car (one man band), father of inmate comes out, he sits with reporter at picnic table and they start chatting.

I think it's typical pre-interview chatter.
Dad says, "Oh, your guy (researcher/wannabe producer) said you would come by to talk with me. He didn't say nothin' bout a camera..." :shocked:

Reporter tried probably 45 minutes, says "We traveled almost 12 hours to get here", guy says "So?" and wouldn't budge.

Next stop, Nevada Death Row, where the subject was all too happy to go on camera, describe the heinous murder and say "I want to die. The sooner the better- hook me up...."

He was crazier than Charles Manson, who I shot leaping out of his chair and doing wild-man dancing in his California prison several months later. Ah... the tab days...

May not be Mitch caliber, but certainly tried one's patience nonetheless...

Mitch Gross said:
Ah, that was cathartic. I may need to come back to this thread every now and then.
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Talk to Dr. DVX, Mitch. How do you feel now???
 
whoa brah. just cause the shoot involves a serial killer doesnt make it a horror story. check your privilege. [smiley face]
 
This insanity is why I really don't like working for people. A lot of these people seem like they're insane. (Yet somehow they have all the money). LOL.

-Nate
 
Had just gotten my HVX around 2007 when I got a gig with a dog magazine to shoot an interview with an unnamed celebrity. At the time had never shot anyone of note so fell for it, even though the rate was almost nothing. Got there and met the female magazine rep from NYC, young female PA and young male still photog. Got the impression they were both "interns". Started the job and realized I and the rest of the crew were going to be treated like something on the bottom of the magazine rep's shoe for the next several hours. Nearly walked off the job, had to decide whether meeting the celeb might be worth it. Turns out she is a household word and it was worth it as she is still on my reel to this day- but I'll never forget the abuse from the rep ( who was perfectly nice to the celeb and nicer to us when the celeb was watching).and it serves as a frame of reference for future jobs- still have not been treated worse 8 years later.
 
Accountant here. I'm really glad I pay my rent is paid with accounting and not my filmmaking skills after reading some of these. :laugh:
 
An actor took 19 takes to get a one-word line of dialogue right.

Worst part was -- the line wasn't even in the script. It was something the actor himself decided to ad-lib.

Similar story, on another shoot several years ago. Setting the scene -- the actor is being released from the hospital. Doctor comes in and asks if he's ready to go home. ANY affirmative answer would've been just fine. Took 12 takes to get it right.
 
This is more of a job from hell than shoot from hell - but here goes: my daughter is 21, a colorist just getting started out as a freelancer (she's worked several years on our projects). A filmmaker agreed to pay her $200 up front and $1000 after the film is released to grade his feature length indy film. They drew up a contract about a month ago with the agreement that she could use the footage in her reel, the main thing she wanted. She put in close to 100 hours. The film consisted of about 5 different DSLR angles stacked on the timeline, which confused Resolve. She developed a workaround, struggled with it, but ultimately got the film looking 1000% better, especially considering not one scene was properly white balanced. Her final product now looks mostly like well shot Canon footage (both a C100 and a 5D were used). She did have trouble with shot matching but got them very close. She sent a file to him and he sent back a mile long list of changes to make, which she dutifully tackled and worked long and hard on. She worked until she simply could not improve the footage anymore. The before and after screenshots are some of the most dramatically improved I've ever seen. She sent the new file and he send back another long list of changes. He did say he was 90% satisfied with the color and that she had done good work, but the film was not finished, and he wanted to enter it in a festival with a deadline the following day. At the end of her rope and wanting to maintain her sanity and marriage, she told him that was all she could do. He then told her that the film was unfinished and she had voided her contract. He said that the shot matching was "jarring" in places and that he would rather enter it in the festival with no color work at all. She pointed out that his own language in the contract said that if they were unable to agree on the color but the end of 21 days, she would at least get paid a pro rated amount of the $200 for the days out of the 21 she had worked (all of them). He then offered the grand sum of $50 for her work and to return his hard drive (of course shipping would come out of the $50). Finding that insulting, she said no way, pay the $200 as the contract says. He of course wrote back saying his interpretation of the contract was different and favorable to him, threatening legal action if his hard drive wasn't sent back immediately. The bottom line is, she worked over 100 hours for zero pay and this guy has a nicely colored film for free.
 
Even if she had gotten paid, there are people working at McDonalds that get paid more per hour, now.

Thats when something "happens" to the hard drive during shipping... "Hope you had a back-up, bro." There's definetly no way in hell I would have returned the drive with even a single corrected, graded frame on it.
 
She didn't. He's only getting his original footage back. He knows it and the understanding is no pay, no corrected footage. His stance was the corrected footage was "unusable" anyway. And at the same time saying he was 90% satisfied!
 
mainstreetprod said:
The bottom line is, she worked over 100 hours for zero pay and this guy has a nicely colored film for free.
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mainstreetprod said:
She didn't. He's only getting his original footage back. He knows it and the understanding is no pay, no corrected footage. His stance was the corrected footage was "unusable" anyway. And at the same time saying he was 90% satisfied!
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Ok. But you can see my confusion from your original post.

He sounds like one of those guys that would have complained no matter what just to get something for free or highly discounted.
 
Guess in the future she needs to see sample clips to decide if the job is worth doing, and to try and feel out the client to see if they are an idiot. If the samples come in with incorrect white balance, the job is probably not worth doing.

As an aside, one of our former students just finished his 4 year degree in the TV, radio, film program at Syracuse University. He worked with a few different crews for their final projects, and he was amazed at the number of groups that wanted him to save their project because of white balance and way off exposure errors! You can lead the horse to water, but sometimes you need to drowned it to make it drink! But that's OK with most of them, they will all be the next Spielberg and never need to touch equipment again.
 
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