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

[David W. Richardson]

Good reason to A) only buy name brand SD cards and B) never buy SD cards off Ebay, only from a trusted source , as they could be "name brand" fakes. Also a good reason to consider camera system that uses pro cards, such as P2 or XQD, as SD cards were never originally designed for critical, high bitrate uses.

Well again, he wasn't even using the camera audio. I wasn't at the wedding shoot, but when he did the band shoot, he recorded to an SD card inserted into his mixing console. It was a name brand card, but I do know that he bought it off Ebay -- another thing he brags about is how cheap he gets his cards for. So they very well could have been fakes.

It just appalls me that he would turn down having a secondary recording unit. If I had access to TEN recorders, I'd use them all.

 

[Alex H.]

... and he considers himself quite the pro at sound capture. Brags about it all the time.

And this is a major warning sign. Most of us don't need to brag about what we do. We just do it. Those who have to talk up the fact that it's what they do, are often compensating for not really knowing what they're doing.

When he shows up at the shoot, my friend tells him she is planning to mic the officiant with the Zoom and lapel mic. He convinced her not to bother with that. He was a sound pro, so he would handle all the sound capture. Against her better judgement, my friend went along with this.

On one hand, I can sort of get this. If I show up to a gig and there's someone I do not know, or even (escpecially) the client, offering me gear, I'm probably going to turn it down. I have no idea who this person is, or what skill set s/he has to offer, and I have my own gear that I know and trust and my own process to accomplish the task.

On the other hand, we're talking about a "sound" guy who has to remind everyone that he is a "sound" guy. On top of that:

She got a wedding video with NO SOUND at all. He didn't even bother to turn on the mics on his cameras. The sound recorder that he did use, the SD card it recorded on was defective. Since he didn't have the 'safety' of the backup sound from my Zoom, he was screwed.

Which means he wasn't confidence-checking anything. Sound professionals do not operate on blind trust.

Oh....I should mention that this wasn't the first time this 'sound pro' had had the exact same problem. He recorded audio for a performance by a local band, for a video they were shooting. Once again, defective SD card.

Moral of the story: use a track record of botched jobs as a major consideration in hiring or recommending this person for anything, ever.