worst experience with film, with video

[Brian D. Goff]

It might be interesting to hear the what terible technical things can happen when working with video or film.

My nightmares:

On the video side: I once got back from a shot and the IIkegami only had recorded with the green sensor. I always do a quick playback to check if the recording was ok, but since I only had a B/W viewfinder, I could not see that R & B sensors had taken the day off. With RED this will never happen again.

On the film side: Arri 435 extreem. When unpluging the Arri FF reciever from the camera sector resets!?!? to 7 deg and stays there (don't know what the dev. at Arri created this handy feature for) - AC didn't check - film underexposed! Can't happen with RED

Any other horror stories to share?

[Priyesh P.]

At telecine. We shot orwo filmotec b/w stock and at that time there was no telecine suite in town free to do a attended session.
We ended up doing it twice and the results were still horrible to say the least.

BTW - Brian, did you get my e-mail?

[Brian D. Goff]

At telecine. We shot orwo filmotec b/w stock and at that time there was no telecine suite in town free to do a attended session.
We ended up doing it twice and the results were still horrible to say the least.

BTW - Brian, did you get my e-mail?

Hi kalone

Got your message - I'll send you some pics on monday when I get back from this shoot (as you can see it's not to much stress and I even got internet here:whistling: )

[Stephen Williams]

On the film side: Arri 435 extreem. When unpluging the Arri FF reciever from the camera sector resets!?!? to 7 deg and stays there (don't know what the dev. at Arri created this handy feature for) - AC didn't check - film underexposed! Can't happen with RED



Hi Brian,

What are the initials of the AC?

Stephen

[Brian D. Goff]

Hi Brian,

What are the initials of the AC?

Stephen

Hi Stephen

AC = assistant camera? Or am I wrong?

Brian

[martinnoweck]

With Video:

Pinchroll or some other transportation gear got loose, no way to repair in Camerun, we finished production and flew back to germany with nightmares, sony service in munich could fix the problem by treatening their service VTR really bad (=loosing the pinch roll?) and make a clone to beta SP.

With Film:

SR2 did not like the SR3 Mag and ate one roll of filmstock ...

[Stephen Williams]

Hi Stephen

AC = assistant camera? Or am I wrong?

Brian

Who was the AC?

[Brian D. Goff]

Who was the AC?

Now Stephen I can't tell you that - it was a lot of stress on the set, and the AC simply forgot in the hurry - besides that he did a great job all the way!

Brian

[Stephen Williams]

Now Stephen I can't tell you that - it was a lot of stress on the set, and the AC simply forgot in the hurry - besides that he did a great job all the way!

Brian

Hi Brian,

Always interesting to know who the best AC's are! I had one that needed 100+ takes to get the focus recently! LOL

Stephen

[Ken Corben]

Video - While underwater on the Aliwal reef in South Africa shooting a segment for Wild Things I encountered a 12+ foot female tiger shark cruising the reef. She swam right up to my lens and interacted with me for 10 minutes or so before swimming away. Unbelievable footage! Back on the surface I removed my trusty VX1000 from the housing and played back the footage. ARGH! - some sort of color smear over the entire segment. It turned out to be that particular DV tape cuz I could not replicate the problem.

Film - Besides magazine jams underwater, inability to view critical footage dailies on location, running out of film underwater at the worst possible time and other technical limitations of film I'd have to say my worst experience was the insistence by the producer that I check the exposed film with the luggage from Africa. That moment in telecine when the screen was all white for every reel will never be forgotten. It sure as sh*t was not me, the original film stock or the Arri SR2.

[Priyesh P.]

Sharkguy´s experience with the dv-camera reminded me of my latest nightmare ( maybe I disremebered it unconsiously ). We were under tight pressure and I was playing out the stuff onto my DSR-PD150. Then came the "surprise": Random audio dropouts - I tried it dozens of times and once it went ok. Don´t know what happened exactely, but seems to be that my Sony doesn´t love JVC tapes.
Damn F...ing tapes, I really, really hate them...I look forward to a tape and filmless future.

[Clint Johnson]

Well, mine isn't near to the same catastrophic level as others here.

The white balance ceased functioning on the video camera at the beginning of the day. I noted that the colour was wrong but the camera crew insisted that it must be a problem with the monitor I was using. I accepted that, hey it was three to one.

We went to a completely different setup and it still didn't look right to me so I got them to throw some blue gels on the lights to give us a big colour change and got them to try and white balance that.

We adjusted the lighting so that it was neutral and we could shoot with one of the standard settings that worked well enough- but there was no way to go back to reshoot the first half of the day since there wasn't that kind of wiggle room in the schedule. All I could do was try and fix it in post and that wasn't very pretty.

[Jeff Kilgroe]

For me...

Film: I co-directed and helped shoot a short feature called "Donut Shop Cop Killers from Venus". I did this my Junior year in college on 16mm... 'nuff said. I hope all evidence of that film have been destroyed..

Video: I have two events, both pretty minor, but very aggravating at the time.

1> Wife and I took a fun trip to Hawaii about 4 years ago. Very first afternoon there, I took my Canon ZR-20 to Hanauma Bay to play with it and the underwater housing I bought for the trip. I wanted to take it on our dives... Well the housing leaked that first day there and while I found a replacement camcorder the next day, no luck on getting help with my housing and I didn't want to cough up money for a new and different one.

2> I was shooting some promo footage for some of the local alpine resorts. It was January and I was outside one day at about -25F or so. My XL1 ground to a halt and I thought it was a battery issue. So I swapped out a warm battery from inside my coat. Everything powered up fine, but the tape mechanism wouldn't roll tape, FF or rewind... I figure it was the cold that messed up the camera. Had to send it in for repair. Canon covered it under warranty, but it took them 2 months to get it back to me. In the mean time, I bought my DVX100. I had to borrow a VX1000 to finish the job I started with the XL1.

[chuck colburn]

For me...

Film: I co-directed and helped shoot a short feature called "Donut Shop Cop Killers from Venus". I did this my Junior year in college on 16mm... 'nuff said. I hope all evidence of that film have been destroyed..

Video: I have two events, both pretty minor, but very aggravating at the time.

1> Wife and I took a fun trip to Hawaii about 4 years ago. Very first afternoon there, I took my Canon ZR-20 to Hanauma Bay to play with it and the underwater housing I bought for the trip. I wanted to take it on our dives... Well the housing leaked that first day there and while I found a replacement camcorder the next day, no luck on getting help with my housing and I didn't want to cough up money for a new and different one.

2> I was shooting some promo footage for some of the local alpine resorts. It was January and I was outside one day at about -25F or so. My XL1 ground to a halt and I thought it was a battery issue. So I swapped out a warm battery from inside my coat. Everything powered up fine, but the tape mechanism wouldn't roll tape, FF or rewind... I figure it was the cold that messed up the camera. Had to send it in for repair. Canon covered it under warranty, but it took them 2 months to get it back to me. In the mean time, I bought my DVX100. I had to borrow a VX1000 to finish the job I started with the XL1.

Jeff,

That's what you get for fooling around with those home camcorder thingys.
You wouldn't had those problems if you had shot on a spring wound Eyemo 35.lol
Well at least you didn't name your student film project something stupid like, "Donut Shop Cop Killers from MARS"

Chuck

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Well at least you didn't name your student film project something stupid like, "Donut Shop Cop Killers from MARS"

As for "Donut Shop Cop Killers.." I didn't write it or title it. I went to school for CompSci and I joined the cinematography club along the way. It was an independent feature by this club and it was fun to make... It was anything but fun to watch. General premise was police offers and firemen in a small Kansas town were turning psychotic and suicidal. The CDC and FBI investigations link it to food and later to dough-nuts. Specifically a small dough-nut shop on the outskirts of town run by two incredibly hot chicks. Alien operatives from Venus had implanted themselves in the girls' bodies and were using the dough-nut shop to poison and undermine local law enforcement and first-responders as preparation for taking over the town. Ultimately to use the town as a base for their impending invasion... :alien: :alien: :alien:

Yep, it was that bad.... Complete with plastic dime-store cap guns, and cute girls who would ensnare their victims with green silly-string.

[Manjeet Singh]

Hi Sharkguy,

May be the X-Rays at the airport damaged the film. Have haerd stories when the stock looks smoky due to the x-rays!

Manjeet

[Cam Crowley]

Ok - Here's mine. Film

Shooting a 16mm short comedy film quite a few years ago, we had one tempremental actor who refused to travel to an outdoor location some hours out of town. An alternative plan had to be hatched that very day so as to actually get the shoot done. Right, thought I, I'll just pop down to a closer-to-home location, get some digital stills for the background and rear project them in my studio with the actors performing in front. Cool, how easy was that, AND it was going to save all the hassles of shooting location, carting gear, location sound etc etc. Why didn't I just think of that in the first place?!

So in the studio, everythings set, camera is loaded, backgrounds look great, actors are rehearsed and made-up, and away we shoot. We were using a very old wind up Bolex H16 camera - still working beautifully but obviously no video tap.

Anyway, shoots done in relatively quick time and everyone's happy. Two days later, developed film in hand we pop down to a local Di Vinci suite to take a look and give it some grading before the edit.

We watched in horror when we saw our beautifully lit, beautifully exposed subjects deliver a quality performance in front of a hideously strobing background - YES I had used a video projector for the backgrounds!!

All I could say to my co-director was - "It's OK, I can fix it in post" knowing full well that we had a little over 48hours to deliver a cut of the film before the submission deadline. I did what I could (wont bore you with the details) but there was no real saving this baby in that timeframe.

At least I know that I will NEVER make that particular mistake again!

And Video:

Bit over a year ago I was putting together a documentary. We had 3 hired PD170s to shoot at a particular location (the opening ceremony of a major sporting event - getting lots of behind the scenes type stuff as the doco was about the putting together of the event, not the event itself). Anyway, we had shot the dress rehersals on previous nights so we had most of the shots in the bag already. All I really needed was a 'money shot' of this 6 tonne tram flying from the stadium roof!

So Im all nicely positioned, get the shot, get the other shots and gather the group at the end of the night so they can hand me the tapes. Now, I'm not just responsible for the shooting of this thing but also all the editing and finally delivery in a very small time frame. Basically I had by this stage been working SOLID for the previous couple of months and by the time of the shoot, I was living on 3 hours of sleep a night and coffee and chocolate bars for energy producing sustainance!

Sorry - back to the story! Had all the other tapes handed to me and as i was labelling them I rewound my camera tape. Then I packed up all the gear ready to return to the rental facility first thing in the morning.

Returned the gear after another long night of editing, and as Im sitting in my office the next day around lunch time, I realise Im missing a tape - MY tape to be exact. Call the rental facility. Yes I left the tape in the camera. Pop down there to grab said tape and am met by the facility manager who wants a quick chat. Seems the camera technition performed all his usual camera return tests with my rewound tape still in the deck. Panic quickly sets in as I watch about 2 mins of colour bars and then more minutes of the techies hand waving in front of the lens then - CUT TO tram sitting on its landing spot on the arena floor. Yep he had taped right over my money shot!

Of course they were extremely apologetic but there isn't exactly much you can do in that situation. Luckily for me one of the other cameras managed to get the shot from ground level so all wasn't completely lost and it didn't turn into the mother of all F ups it could have potentially been.

Once again, a mistake that I will NOT be making again (and I should hope the camera techie learnt to use a dedicated TEST tape rather than whatever the hell he finds already in the deck!!)

My names Cam and thats my story!!