Let's VENT!

[Brian Rose]

Here's a fun topic that I'm sure will provide some nice stress relief. What has been your biggest disaster while making a film? I will start. Recently, I was doing some second unit photography, and I was taking a light reading, when slowly but surely one of the legs on my tripod began to give out. I ran for it, but was inches too late. My 16mm hit the pavement with a sickenly crash, the force simultaneously releasing the cover on the magazine, and starting the motor, resulting in the enire roll of film being spewed out into the daylight. I should say I feel fortunate in all that I lost was a roll of film. The camera (a Bolex), emerged with only a few scuffs on the body and an odd squeeking noise when I run 8fps (but how often is than, anyways?). God bless the Swiss!

 

Now, let's hear yours!

Best,

BR

[Laurent Andrieux]

Well, it isn't that funny, if you consider that the biggest desaster that can happen either on a shooting or in prep is somebody to loose his life, and that happens...

[Robert Hughes]

OK, we'll limit it to non-lethal accidents that would get a laugh at the pub afterwards.

 

Here's mine - from film school. Our class project was working with a non-profit org for an anti-drug PSA, or something like that. I set a 1K Lowell Totalite on a stand, high up near the suspended ceiling for bounce softlite. It worked just fine. 15 minutes later, everybody's hard at work on the ground and I happen to look up at the ceiling. Directly overhead, above the Totalite, was a blue sheet of flame travelling across the ceiling. If you've ever been in a car accident you remember the deliberate slowness of the last second before impact, and that's what happened to me. "Uh, uh..." is all that came out of my mouth as I gaped at the fire. My instructor must have recognized that line before, and quick as a wink he ran up a ladder, tearing down the flaming ceiling panel. I was mortified, first for having placed the lamp in such a dangerous location, and also for having frozen up in an emergency. But we all walked away safe & sound, we got a new ceiling panel in place, and the facility never even heard about the incident.

[Laurent Andrieux]

Once on a corporate, I was going to interview the boss of this enterprise, I can't tell his name, but the guy is of a international reputation and his factory group is one of the biggest in France, let's only say he makes weapons and things like that, you see.

 

So they give us the "nicest" room they have, that is a meeting room, with a hudge table.

 

An employee opens us the room and says, be very carefull if you climb on that table as to grip something, it costs 100 000 $ and it's not so well done, so that if you walk close to the edge, it surely will brake..

 

So do we. The guys stays with us just to make sure and we fit the room and wait for the boss. He turns in, we make the interview and so on so that 3 hours later, we go for the wrap... The employee just turns away (thinking, that's fine, now, they're done...) when the gaffer climbs on the table as to get a clamp back, moves a foot may be 10 inches too close to the table's edge, we hear a big "crack" the whole table moves, the gaffer walks back, with the clamp, goes down the table and just puts it back in place. It's only the fixing that got damaged, so that you can't see it. It doesn't make the table dangerous either, it doesn't move so easily. The employee comes back as we finished wraping. 'No problem ?", he asks... "No problem !" we say, all as one man !

Edited March 28, 2005 by laurent.a

[drew_town]

Greetings,

 

I haven't been responsible for a major disaster yet (knock on wood). But, once I was on a shoot and someone took a light off a stand and placed it face-down on the rug in my living room. About three or four minutes later someone asked "what's that smell?" The rug caught fire and burned a big hole in it. We put it out and no one was hurt. The girl was worried I was mad but all I could do was laugh. A month later my friend puked all over the same rug at a party. I had to throw it out after that. :lol:

 

AT

[Brad Grimmett]

Well, on the feature I just finished we had about 5 people go to the hospital with injuries...some with stitches and others with concussions. Most of the injuries were to stuntmen, but the star got 7 stitches at one point as well. We were actually VERY lucky that those were the only injuries sustained. We were doing tons of stunts (it's an action movie) and had any of them gone wrong people could have easily been killed. These injuries occurred when the stunts went right! I guess it's not necessarily a disaster, but it sure came close on many occasions.

[John Mastrogiacomo]

I was shooting a magician at a public library one day. We were using a smoke machine and it set off the fire alarms.

 

The fire department came and evacuated the entire library. It was very embarassing at the time. If this is the worst disaster I ever have, I will be very happy.

:P

[Rich Steel]

I was working on a UK drama series around 2 years ago doing steadicam. Did one shot and the director shouts cut. My grip's about to grab the rig when the director see's another shot he'd like, I ask how long before turning over and the director says a couple of minutes so I say to my grip stand fast I'll carry the rig for a bit, so we're ready to roll immediately. Anyway, 20 minutes later the DOP's happy about the lighting reset, I'm still standing with the rig when I'm told the talent won't be ready for another 5 minutes. I tell my grip to get my stand so that I can dock the rig and rest.

 

He brings my stand and my brain sends the right messages to my legs to move over to the stand and dock it, unfortunately only my upper body decides to move and my legs stay firmly planted where they are.

 

It's amazing how quickly you accelarate to the ground when you have a fully loaded SR3 pulling you down. The rig bites the dust first with me very soon after it. Everyone's standing around looking in disbelief at what just happened. I've got a bloody nose and cut lip but the rig seems AOK.

 

I believe because I was standing in one position for too long a time my vest actually nipped my nerve ends at the top of my legs stopping any bidirectional communications with my brain.

 

Moral of the story.....Never, ever listen to a director between takes and always and I mean always dock the rig when your not using the bloody thing.

 

Rich "Bruised Ego" Steel

[Laurent Andrieux]

I read stories about falling with a steadicam, I think it was on the steadicam's forum that Im Tyler also administrates, and I told there this story : it was on a tv film, 16 SR too. I was assisting a steadicamer and truly, the guy wasn't a good one at all, we had to retake all he did. Anyway, as I was assisting him I would always help him to dock it on the stand but he never wanted me to help him, and do it all on his own. The thing is, he would never mind that the sled was in a good position on the stand, so that once, it felt (it was a little windy) before my very eyes, five seconds after he docked it. I was a couple of meters away doing my filter stuff, and when I saw it I ran to it but couldn't make it in time. It was on the grass, so hopefully, only the 85 was broken ! The worse thing is that it was going to happen again, but since that first experiment, I had decided to stay close to the stand when he would dock, set the sled in the good position on it and put a sand bag (he had no idea of doing so) so that it didn't fall twice but closely...

[J.M. O'Malley]

All my shooting experience so far has been stills work. I was taking some film of a young woman, and I heard/felt the tape snap at the end of a roll. (I used to use masking tape sometimes, now I only use a good quality splicing tape.) I didn't want to toss out the roll of film, and we were on location so there was nothing to do except have her shut me in the trunk of her rusty old car so that I could get the film out. I asked her to open it when she heard me banging, and I kept thinking, she's probably so mad she's not going to let me out. Not a huge disaster but pretty embarassing. We were both at a house party later where she insisted on telling everyone how funny it was.

[Don Davis]

A friend of mine worked on a film in NYC where they had a million dollar day. At the end of the day the loader gave the exposed film to production, and production gave it to a PA to take to the lab. The PA ended up leaving all the film in the cab when he got to the lab. The cab took off, and all he could remember was that it was yellow. Imaging having to call your boss and tell him what happened!

[Laurent Andrieux]

Didn't the driver have a look at the labels on the cans, so he could come back and give it to the lab ? I mean, were the rolls lost for ever ?

[Rik Andino]

A friend of mine worked on a film in NYC where they had a million dollar day. At the end of the day the loader gave the exposed film to production, and production gave it to a PA to take to the lab. The PA ended up leaving all the film in the cab when he got to the lab. The cab took off, and all he could remember was that it was yellow. Imaging having to call your boss and tell him what happened!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Hopping on a Cab with a couple of film cans to take to the lab...

Gee seems like simple job any idiot can do...hmmm...

 

I used to be a messenger way back then in the late 90's & I never lost a package.

 

Most of the messengers I worked barely got a GED

But they were smart enough to never lose a package.

PAs are usually bright enough to be in college...

But how can some of them be so dimwitted to lose the film.

 

I tell ya this country is going to pieces. :)

[Don Davis]

The production company offered a substantial reward for the return of the film but never saw it again. The cabbie probably just threw the stuff in a dumpster. Or opened the cans. Insurance paid to reshoot the day, but I'm sure there was still a significant loss.

[Brent J. Craig]

A friend of mine...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Sounds like urban legend to me.

 

When I heard it, the guy:

-stopped at a pay phone to call the lab, cab took off

-took the film in the camera truck, stopped at a bar/restaurant/his girlfriend's house, truck was stolen

-took the film home because he didn't trust the lab's drop box. Overslept. Woke to phone calls from paniced producers.

 

Give us names, shoots and dates and I will believe you.

[Tenolian Bell]

I'm laughing I haven't heard that story in a while.

 

Actually its a true story I have a friend who worked on that same shoot.

 

I wonder who was the PA, that is like the worst of the worst NY stories.

[Dominik Muench]

my biggest mistakes so far: loading a magazine and forgot to put in a white core in the takeup side, let the camera run and thought: hmmm that doenst soudn right, thank god only a few foot of film got scrambled up in the take up side.

 

another time i unloaded the mag after a hard shooting day, caned the exposed and unexposed stock, and brought the unexposed can in the lab :/ hell i was scared when the labtech told me there was nothing on the negative:)

[Peter J DeCrescenzo]

Apologies for the long post, but I hope you enjoy this story:

 

About 30 years ago when I was a teenager, I was an assistant to an assistant (!) on a music recording session at Electric LadyLand Studio in NYC. This one of my very first gigs, and I swear this is a true story.

 

One of my responsibilities that day was to drive my then brand-new van (of which I was very proud & had worked very hard to save up to buy) around the city early that morning to pick up various musical equipment for later use at the studio. The recording session was for guitarist Al DiMeola, with Jan Hammer on keyboards and Steve Gadd on drums.

 

Anyway, Chick Corea (!) loaned Jan one of his keyboards, and this precious item and a whole lot more were carefully loaded into my vehicle over the course of the morning. It was really humbling to be working with these folks and to be entrusted with their gear.

 

Our last pickup was at a musical instrument rental shop, and I managed to get a parking spot directly outside the shop's front door. The parking spot and the shop's check-out counter were literally no more than 20 feet apart, with the sidewalk between. Both of us PAs had to get out of the van to lift the heavy amplifier waiting for us at the counter, so I turned on the van's 4-way flashing lights, and we went into the shop. (Back then, car alarms were not common, and my van didn't have one.)

 

Since all the gear rentals had been arranged in advance, all we had to do was sign a receipt, lift the amp and carry it back 20 ft. to the van. The shop door was wide open, so we could keep an eye & an ear out toward the street. Note we're talking a span of about 1 minute, maybe 2, of which apparently one of us wasn't watching the street for about half that time. Oops.

 

To our shock -- horror actually -- when we turned toward street on our way out of the shop, my beautiful, shiny new van and all its precious cargo was gone! Vanished! Had it been stolen _that_ fast without a sound, or what?

 

Of course, this was also before cellphones, so we immediately made a semi-frantic payphone call to the NYC police to find out if they had any idea what happened, or what we should do. (Silly, I know, but as a kid, I couldn't think of anything else.) We also immediately called Mr. Dimeola's people and the studio people, and apologized profusely, and assured them we'd do everything we could to retrieve the equipment ASAP.

 

Eventually, after several payphone calls and a rapidly dwindling supply of coins, another call to the NYPD yielded a suggestion to call the city towing services to see if the van had been towed. Although the van had been in fact legally parked, this seemed better than nothing, so we called. And we called. And we called.

 

Eventually -- it seemed like hours but it was probably less than 1 hour -- we finally got thru to someone at the towing company who said, yes, they did recently tow a van that matched the description!

 

We grabbed a cab and had the driver race to the towing company's impound lot underneath an ancient overpass (was it a section of the West Side Highway?) and lo & behold, there was my precious van, still locked, with its lights still flashing, unscathed! Oh joy, oh rapture! (You know, like Scarecrow in "Wizard of Oz"!)

 

I can't remember how or if we paid to get it sprung out of jail, but at that point I would have paid almost anything to get my van & its contents to the studio, stat!

 

So, this story has a happy ending -- the studio sessions were awesome! -- but man oh man, ever since then I never let anything like that happen again! In the years since, I've been way paranoid, er, careful about equipment in & out of my vehicle and everywhere else.

 

Incredibly embarassing at the time, but kinda funny in hindsight.

 

All the best,

 

- Peter (Older and somewhat wiser) DeCrescenzo

[eggjelly]

I had my worst day when I was a PA. In the morning I was asked to park an actors car which I did. At lunchtime I went to make a run for somthing and drove past where I thought I had parked the car, yet the car wasn't there. It had been towed and two producers had to go down to the impound lot and get it out. Not too bad a day, until... I was asked to drive the Art Dept. cube truck at the end of the same day to the next days location. I hop in and drive away. We had been shooting in Bayonne, New Jersey, just over the river from Manhattan and the next days shoot was in Brooklyn. I'm driving along back to Manhattan and marveling at the traffic leaving the city and heading to NJ (it was about 5 or 6pm). Just as I get to the Manhattan side of the Holland Tunnel my phone rings..."do you have the keys to the camera truck on you". Two hours in traffic back through the tunnel to Bayonne where someone had to wait for me to get there so they could drive the camera truck to Brooklyn. And then I broke the mirror off the truck driving down one of those narrow brooklyn streets, I knocked it into a guys truck. Just gave the guy $10 for his mirror and drove off. Then when I parked in front of the location, I heard a wooshing sound and watched as the rear tire slowly flattened. A fitting end I thought. I think as a PA you honestly become stupider than you really you are.

[Guest Y.M.Poursohi]

The PA who lost the film in a cab is not a legend it did happen. Another one is: at the end of a shoot a PA was given the film to take to the lab, the location was remote in the middle of nowhere, the PA stops at a pub gets a few beers and passes out in the car. When he wakes up, it was hours later and he panics burrying the film by the road side, then tells the PM he did drop it off. Not surprisingly the lab had a camera pointed at the drop-off counter, indicating he never showed up.

On one job I did in south Jersey, we were shooting in barnd new pre-fab homes for a real estate company. We moved from hero house number one to hero house number two. Couple of hours later the coordinator is yelling for paper towels so I rush and give it to him he says " There's a flood in house one the carpets gonna get ruined" they were gonna shoot more in house one. So I rush with him to clean up, he goes to the kitchen while I am drying the wet floor and had to push my long hair back a few times, while gathering the soaked paper towels. Then he comes and says "dude all I did was use the bathroom and it just flooded after I flushed" I say in dismay"dude you should have said that 30 seconds ago". I showered repeatedly that night.

[Laurent Andrieux]

On a TV film that we were going to shoot in Bucarest, Romania, the director of production asked me while we were preping if I would accept to evenly drive the camera truck from Paris to Bucarest, if ever he needed to. I thought to myself, that's not my job, but that would be a funny opportunity to travel through Europe and discover countries I had never seen before.

 

As you can imagine, an hour after he said he would call me only if he had no other solution, he called me. I said OK, but I want two conditions : first, I take three days to do the trip, I stop when I want and where I want, no matter how expensive the restaurant or hotel is, second, I want an assistant with me, I don't drive alone all the way through. He says ok, let's do that. We left Paris with guns in the cabin because it couldn't figure on the official list, and after the custom, I ask the assistant if he wants to drive first or if I do. "I'm sorry, I have no driving licence he says" ! I can tell you the hotels and restaurants weren't cheap ones !

 

But this is not the bad side of the story.

 

At the Romanian border, we were meeting the car's specialist of the production who would drive to Bucarest because you don't have many road signs, there. Fortunate this guy joined us ! at the hotel by the border, somebody cut the clutch cable under the truck during the night, and we had to cross Romania and its mountains with no clutch ! I can tell you now I can drive a car with no working clutch !

[Guest Daniel J. Ashley-Smith]

One incident I remember didn't happen to me or the camera but the boom operator and the mic. We were shooting in a park, loads of pigeons around and stuff, and what do you know, the boom operator shouts CUT. I just turned around and saw a big dob of bird crap on the £1000 microphone. We were all laughing our heads off, but I don't think the producer was too happy, because he was the one that owned the mic. (But hey he's a complete w..... anyway so I don't care)

 

Apparently the previous £1000 microphone he had fell off a bridge into a river in Paris... It's all good fun.

Edited April 1, 2005 by Daniel J. Ashley-Smith

[Matt Butler]

many years ago i was working on a low low budget film that we were shooting on week-ends

with borrowed equipment - some of which was not 'officially' booked out.

after a very long day,the producer and myself were packing away the camera kit,which had

been 'borrowed' without permission from the ad agency where i worked.

after a 10 minute drive from the location in surry hills(a not so reputable neighbourhood)we

arrive outside jwt and we open the boot.NO CAMERA! i see my career disintergrating before my eyes. "i thought you put it in the boot" i gasp to the producer - "i thought you did" replies the equally stunned producer.

after an extremely tense and rushed return trip,we turn the corner into the narrow location

street,and there STILL sitting on the footpath was a big shiny camera box.

i learnt my lesson and now that i own my personal gear i'm even more paranoid.

[Rik Andino]

Well I?m not the best of storytellers but I can try to weave a tale of interest to some?

 

Anyways I was working on the lowest-budget feature I have ever done?

I the gaffer/AC (yes it was that low-budget?they shot on a GL1!)

I was helping out the DP who was a friend of mines

And it was my first day there since the last gaffer/AC had quit. (I wonder why?)

 

I show up and the first thing I ask was for coffee?I?m sorry but need it?

(I know I have a problem but is a dollar-cup-of-coffee too much to ask?)

Somehow the producer tells me there was no money for it? :o

Unless I?m willing to pay for it--so already I knew it was going to be a bad day.

 

Anyways everything goes off very slow and boring but not much problems

Since most of the day is outside and we?re using a GL1.

 

But near the end of the day that?s when the fun started

They?re doing this crazy shot from the roof of a Tower records in Upstate NY?

There?s this guy walking down an alleyway with a GUN?

He cocks it back and aims it at another guy?seems like pretty simple stuff?

But imagine you?re the neighborhood policeman driving by?

 

And yes I ask even though I knew the answer was NO

?If they didn?t have any permits??

 

So anyways we get TWO good takes but the director wants another one? :huh: ?

 

So as we?re getting ready for the third take and losing the sun and everything

In walk 25 police-officers with their guns aimed swarming on the actor

If we hadn?t quickly grab the camera and broke it down

We might have caught some mild police brutality?

(Of course to their defense the guy had a gun.)

 

Next thing I know they?re bursting on the roof and it?s an episode of NYPD blue.

 

The worst part of it all is that it wasn?t after all of us were cuffed and searched

That they decided to listen to our story--?We?re only making a movie?sorry.? :)

 

Good thing no one was stashing any substances (like on some sets). ;)

 

At least no one died but goes to show you--

Get some permits when you?re shooting!

 

And I learned:

The next time I?m refused coffee on a set--run for the hills! :D

Edited April 1, 2005 by Rik Andino

[Brent J. Craig]

And I learned:

The next time I’m refused coffee on a set--run for the hills!  :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That's the Golden Rule!

 

You'll be fine now that you know that!