Let's VENT!

warner brown · April 1, 2005

It was my first real shoot i suppose, shooting a short film about a backward world, where everything is in reverse. I shot color 16mm on a bolex, lugging these unecessarilly heavy gigantic things around (with tiny little bolexes in them) location to location/paint me a river ok? we busted our asses to get everything.i unloaded a roll or two that came out of the magazine in zigzags. when the surviving film was transferred and came back, alot of it was underexposed,too dark, and completely saturated in red. none of the footage was usable.

I then found i had ironically ended up loading a couple (if not all) rolls into the camera, backward.

Keith Mottram · April 1, 2005

It wasn't a total disaster in the end, but I once directed a perfume promo for Mont Blanc and it had a shower shot. We were shooting overhead through a glass cieling and apart from all the standard issues steam etc, there was one problem I hadn't thought of- the fact that the model was so damn hot. When we went to TK half the rushes had a reflection of the DP's head as he couldn't resist looking at the water bouncing off the model's tits!

Keith

Laurent Andrieux · April 1, 2005

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.? :)

Yesterday I was shooting a gun scene in the street in front of a bank. After 2 takes, here come several policemen. We were sort of smiling 'cause we had a permit but... it was from Cannes' city, and we were on the same boulevard, but 100 meters after the Cannes limit, in the next city ! Damn ! Hopefully it was also the third take and they allowed us to finish it. That detail made them sort of "forget" the gun problem (that we had no permit for !). All ended well.

Mario Jimenez · April 4, 2005

well try this!!!

a coupla years ago I was working on a little commercial...

we were workin outside in sunlight and had a 6x6 silk on a high stand, u know, regular CU light shadow fixer, actually a high roller, well for some reason no one sandbagged and put the breaks on the thing after moving it out of the way, well just then a little breeze comes on...

Haha you never guess the speed a high roller with a verticall silk sail can attain!!!!

thank God it was near noon and people were not in the hot, sunny place, for their safety and for our embarrasement for chasing the runaway monster took some time and ended only after the breeze died!!