this one time i was doing location audio on a student film in saskatoon infront of city hall but we were getting a lot of noise cause airplanes were going overhead but i was hardpressed cause the director wouldnt listen to me when i gave him the heads up that our audio wouldnt be so great if we were to keep shooting while the planes... in any event we got in a huge fight me 66 got smashed.
I've never had a bad experience with an actor (knock on wood), but I've had some rotten experiences with producers, always on for-hire stuff.
One was a music video for an upcoming artist who the producers were backing. It was, from day one of preproduction, the worst I have ever been treated as human being or as a director. The actual artist was cool; great to work with and he took direction extremely well. But the producers were awful. The crew stopped listening to them entirely after the first day, and that only upset them more. When it was over, I complained to a friend of mine who had directed a few videos, and he just told me, "welcome to the music business." I haven't done a video in a while.
The other was a small little movie that my partner and I were brought in to direct. I'm not one to bag on producers as a whole, but the producers on this project seemed to be trying to fit the definition of "suit" as closely as possible. Neither had any artistic background or any clue what made a good movie, yet each would constantly say "I'm good with story." Well, not only were they not good with story, but they were constantly wanting to hold emergency meetings, in which they would give suggestions that would not add anything to the movie and would in fact cripple the story completely. The words "we need to up the body count" were actually said. I swear. I found myself arguing, "the reason that guy can't die in the beginning is...he's the killer!" The project actually came out really great, though.
One last story. My partner and I were shooting a movie on location at an Inn, a real old-fashioned historic kind of place. Our Line Producer had talked to the owner, and he agreed, signed the papers, etc., but when we showed up, with three trucks and the crew and all, the guy freakout out! He was expecting a few people. Okay, so we started setting up (the guy was still wigging out), the setup took a couple hours, we got ready to shoot, went to flip on the fog machine, and...BOOM...somebody forgot to disable the smoke detector. And the alarm was deafening. So the owner's mood wasn't improving at that point. He had a wedding at five o'clock and we were behind, because it took half a freakin' hour to turn off the damn alarm. We got all our shots in the end, about fifteen minutes late. The lession was: if you're going to smoke a room, make real sure somebody turns off the smoke detector.
I was in the middle of a shoot for a recent 48 hour film project when my two actresses (the only two characters in the film) got into a HUGE catfight. One of them got so mad that she got in her car and left. The other one just sobbed. Unfortunately, I didn't get the fight on film because we were breaking for food. After the dust settled, my crew and I simply shrugged our shoulders and headed off to lunch. There wasn't much we could do. Later on that evening, our actresses decided they wanted to finish the film despite their issues. We quickly rounded up the crew and filmed their "friends in the bar" scene. Watching it now is funny because the tension between the two in that scene is ridiculous! We did manage to finish the film, but it sucked :
A short film in NY Chinatown, actor had driven 3 hours to get to our location, then in the alleyway, there wasn't enough light, and it started to rain...I had to tell my cast and crew to go home
I ve been shooting indoor scenes for 4 hours.
After shot I realized I cant find ... the tape.
I did not find it till today.
Everybody say they saw me putting the tape to my drawer (where I always put my tapes after shooting).
Nobody knows how come there is no tape in there.
....i was shooting only one actor in my own apartment so if I had to reshoot it - it wouldnt be such a tragedy but I dont have to reshoot it cos my lead star left the project when we had 10% of the footage to go ..... :'(
well lets see,
about 6 months ago i was directiing a movie we were workin on for about 2 months, a 20 minute short. Its senior year in high school so it put a lotta stress into makin this film with projects and all. anywho, we filmed all of spring break, everyday. so we have about 60% of the film shot. the last day of break, our man actor who is hanging out with this girl he likes and she tells him that he would look hott if he shaved his head, so ... yea he shaved it. i gotta phone call from him right after it happened, i couldnt believe what i was hearing, so i went over there and saw it. i was so pissed i threw my cell phone on the street and it shattered into peices. my friends came out, the ones helpin makin the film, came out teary eyed because they felt guilty in letting it happen, but it was too late, they couldnt stop him. any ways, we shot all over again, and the film was due in two weeks and we had up to 80% of the film done and shot. we had so many complaints from the main actors parents inusing there home, so we basically got kicked out because we were so sick of dealing with it. so we had to pull the plug on the film. but i promise you this, this film will be made
My personal worst... back when i was 1st AD on a feature film.
I did fire a trainee grip because he agressed my 2nd Assistant, he almotst broke his jaw . He was obviously on drug but the producer convinced me not to call the police (i think because he knew his father well) i was pissed an i warned the producer that he was doing a mistake.
3 days after that, we where shooting a 4 cameras sequence at night in a warehoouse... when the trainee attacked me from behind in a middle of a take (thank you security men...) we went into a fight that ended up by having the fully loaded Arri535 + lens broken down and me with a broken nose...
I started my first feature this past weekend. My lead actor is my 1/2 brother and he's an obnoxious loudmouth type-perfect for the role and he's really hammig it up. However, the second male lead, a backwoods redneck/hunter type, whose very cold and collective in his personality(which is eactly why I chose him), we shot him the first time on sunday and he was so completely awful. I'd given him the lines to his dialog 3 weeks in advance but he couldnt do em. I made these guys do the same scene over and over again so I had lots of coverage. The sad(yet extremely funny) thing was he screwed up every time.
Suddenly, a major role has become a very minor role.
Oh well, adapt and move on.....onward and UPWARD!+
We were shooting your typical film noir starting show down with guns and everything college style on top of a parking deck without permission, forgetting that the parking deck was right across from the city police station. Needless to say, running around with guns (even fake ones) screaming at each other gathers attention. We had a cop pull up, watch us for 5 min. without us even realizing, then said, hey what the heck, your in college and making a movie, go for it. Gotta love possibly sticky situations working out!
Yesterday was day 4 of the shoot. Day 3 had gone nice, lots of exttras and some bigger scenes than previously done. worked out fairly well. Yesterday, I had to step in front oif the camera and between framing the shots, setting up the scenes, getting th props, etc, all that stuff, I wrote the dialog but in front of the camera it was pretty limp. I cast mysefl as just me. however, with my involvement in this film taking over so much of myself, there is no 'me' to give to the role.
It wasn'tr such a bad thing, just made me realize that I can't be in front of the camera and running it also.
I think casting is now the hardest part of this for me. I need to work on that.