Mistakes You've Made In Your Career

Putting my foot in my mouth. - I worked at a post house that did sound for major feature films. One director shot 110 hours of film in an attempt to reproduce the success he had on an earlier film. The editor worked on it for 13 months. It was screened for critics and they panned it. It was re-edited and it was a lot better. After the screening we all hung out for drinks. I was standing by the editor and assistant and I complemented them on how well they fixed it up with the re-edit. The editor walked away silently. The assistant told me they hired another editor to fix it.

I did that a few times there. Most of the time I kept my mouth shut, but every once in a while I really stepped in it.
 
The industry sensitivities have flummoxed me. Speaking of Godfather (in the other thread), I had lunch every day with the Godfather 3 producer while they were doing post. This went on for many weeks. He said he liked hanging out with us because of the conversation. We were talking movies and I mentioned how I didn't like the ending of Terms of Endearment. His faced dropped. He said he had no respect for me. He couldn't believe I said that. He refused to have lunch or speak to me after that. I thought I blew it again since maybe he wrote it or produced it. Nope, he just didn't like my opinion. Go figure.
 
My worst experience and in a way mistake was when I worked at a post house some 25 years ago.

This was a big online suit with plenty of monitors and a colleague of mine though it would be fun to put a porn video on one of my monitors just before the arrival of a new client. Two middle age ladies came in and I just couldn't stop the damn video playing as it was routed from another player in the house. I was really embarrassed and after some ten minutes I just had to walk up to the monitor and turn it off. I really should have turned it off before they arrived.
 
Basically driving from the ER (from being sick) to an early morning shoot where I was groggy from the medicine and a night of basically no sleep. Did the shoot just fine and instead of going straight to the office and backing up cards afterwards, ran some errands and then went to sleep because of exhaustion. Completely forgot that I never backed up the cards and then recorded over all but one of them a few days later on another gig. Literally had no recollection of the cards being backed up or not until the client asked for the footage at the end of the week......not a fun phone call later. That producer hasn't hired me since, so probably burned that bridge for a while (maybe forever).

That did lead to me completely overhauling my own back-up checks and balances and buying a lot more memory cards and hard drives to make sure this never happens again. Also, now have a friend I would call in as a back-up DP to cover for me if I was ever sick like that again.

Ps. It was totally my fault, but one thing I try to remind myself so I don't feel like the worst person ever is that the producer was at the shoot and could have taken the cards or backed them up on the spot as well and chose not to.
 
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1. Sending off footage to a foreign producer who hadn't paid me yet.

2. Not checking outlets before plugging stuff into them. Recently on a corporate shoot at a new construction build, I did so with a big bank of quasar tubes... not knowing that the outlet was incorrectly wired and sending out 220V. BZZZT, all 6 tubes.

3. Buying cheap gear, thinking I'll save a buck. NEVER go cheap on grip gear. Returning to the point above, I killed my key light... THEN, to illustrate this point, had my only viable remaining light (intellytech F165) on an inexpensive chicom light stand. Had used the stand for years, but it just took one wrong move and the cheap pot aluminum on the top clamp snapped, dumping the light to the ground leaving us without light for the remainder of the shoot. Thankfully that was the only result, as dropping that thing on someone's head could've been far more costly.

It's not the only time I've seen this... Litepanels sells an Astra kit with two severely undersized Manfrotto stands that will topple at soonest convenience. I've struggled to work with various client-provided background stands and CFL-based lighting kits. Using a cheap Fotodiox NikG-to-m43 adapter, it literally separated in half while I was attempting to focus. None of this stuff is worth the flimsy pot metal and plastic made to assemble them, and can actually be a detriment.

4. I still sometimes fall into the trap of letting some clients rush me, usually leading to poorly lit half-composed scratchy audio mediocre-at-best work on some shoots. Nobody winds up completely happy with the results; yeah, there's coverage, but nothing really engaging. When I work at my pace, almost everything is reel-worthy... and I don't think I've grasped how best to convey that to certain overbearing types.

It makes me think of a "motto" one of my seasoned DP friends uses... "We take twice as long, but at least we're twice as expensive"
 
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Great posts.

1) Not being aware of the power load on an office circuit. On a corporate shoot I plugged in a rented incandescent fixture and somebody walked up use the copy machine and the whole office went down! Not as much of an issue nowdays with LEDs...

2) Underestimating how poorly people can handle their finances. And how much they can hide or lie about it.
 
1) At an event: Pressing the wrong button so that 400 people hear folk music instead of a hymn.
The manager took it easy. But I heard at all future events: Do not play the folk music.

2) I need a cinema camera with RAW recording because it looks sooooo cinematic and you are soooo flexible in post. And then spending hours to get the image halfway usable in mixed light situations.

3) Blackmagic Micro-Cinema-Camera and checkered jackets.

4) To hide the microphone under the shirt: Lavalier microphones, tape and breast hair.

5) Old lenses without coating, because it is soooo cinematic and a backlight-situation ... Looked as if it was foggy. Unfortunately, I noticed the error when cutting the footage.


6) Drinking alcohol the night before and prepare for the camera gig the very next day. I have just left the tripods for the headlights in the office. I had another 30 minutes drive to the office and another 30 minutes back to the client. This happened to a new client. But I still have that client. :–))
 
Being adamant about filming in a particular spot for video interviews. While filming the first interview, the sun was starting to shine really harshly through the trees, which overexposed the couple. I had to tell the couple and the Manager that a reshoot was necessary. So we moved to a garden and re-shot the interview.

On that same day, I'd forgotten to turn the microphone on for the other couple and had to resort to using audio recorded on my camera (onboard microphone). In post-production, I did what I could to make the audio sound acceptable at least.
 
Oh man, i got a few bad ones
Shooting an interview and in playback, noticing the interviewee had lipstick on one of her teeth - had to reshoot the entire thing.
To be honest, I preferred dealing with an unhappy interviewee than having to remove - frame by frame - the lipstick.

Shooting a wedding, the couple came onto the dancefloor to do a few laps while the crowd cheered, I stepped forward to get a closer angle, stepped on the brides flowing head dress and it whipped her head back and the whole head dress was pulled out of her hair - that one i think - is the worst experience I ever had :D stopped doing weddings after that!

Recently - I didn't bring the SDXC cards for the EVA on a shoot, only had a standard class 10 SD that wouldn't work! Fortunately my cam assist guy had a motorbike, he had to race back to the studio from central London to East London to get the cards while I set up the first interview lighting etc - he made it back in time for the shoot starting - thank christ!!
 
TubEfingers said:
I didn't bring the SDXC cards for the EVA on a shoot, only had a standard class 10 SD that wouldn't work!
Click to expand...

The first thing I did when I bought V60 SD cards was to give away all my slower SD cards to prevent that situation from ever happening to me. V60 cards are so cheap now, there is no reason to still have the old cards around.
 
First day on my new job as a full time assistant when I was about 20 to a very busy very experienced cinematographer.

Shooting a tennis promo for the Australian Open. We had the world number 1 mens player for 20 mins to shoot some material for promos.

About 10 mins into the shoot I noticed the footage counter on the magazine hadn't changed (400 mags last 10 mins 40 seconds @ 25 fps)

I realise I had only loaded the film, but not laced it through to the take up. I had to tap the DP on the shoulder and tell him he didn't have any of the footage he'd just been shooting for the last 10 mins.

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Drove all the way from Sydney to the Australian Institute of Sports in canberra for a swimming promo with Michael Klim for the 2000 Olympics for the same DP as above.

Again, he was in training and the Olympics were only a couple of months away so we only had him for 15 mins. I go out to load the camera and realise I'd left the change bag back in Sydney, about a 3 hour drive away. We had start shooting in a short amount of time so I had to improvise.

I used the DP's suitcase to make a kind of black bag and then proceeded to load the magazine amongst his smalls. Came in just in time and confessed to him what I'd done as I loaded the camera. Worked out fine.

----

Shooting the AFL Grand Final on super 16 used to be a regular gig of mine. This is the Aussie Rules version of the Superbowl, 100 000 fans in one stadium. Like NFL films, it was pretty common that we'd typically shoot about 30-40 rolls of high speed super 16 film during a game for review and promos. (Pre slow motion video and pre HD)

When the final siren went at the end of the game, I would run onto the filed and shoot the winning players, breaking down with tears of joy, hastily holding up their winners trophy and doing an impromptu lap of honour at the ground. UNloading that final mag, that had been rolling non-stop since the final siren, I realised I hadn't closed the door on the SR mag properly. Pretty hard to get a second take on that. Luckily it was mostly fine and had a bit of weird edge foggin for the last 30 seconds. (as the film gets larger on the take up side it gets closer to the gap in the door where the light comes in.)


Dante Spinotti once told me he always asked his new hire loaders if they'd fogged a roll of film, and if the hadn't then he wouldn't hire them. Guess I'm at two strikes now...

JB
 
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