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Crazy/embarrassing/funny filming stories?


Benjamin Hilton
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I thought I would start this thread for anyone to share any crazy/embarrassing/funny stories they might have from film shoots, things we would all be interested in. Whatever it is, I'm sure we can all relate. I have quite a few, but I'll start with one. 

 

A couple of years ago, I was filming an interview with someone in a remote location. I had light stands holding diffusion and negative fill, and the light stands were weighted down with rocks. I was filming with a couple of GH5s and Leica lenses while another guy was conducting the interview. One of the stands started to sway a bit, so I quietly inched my way over to fix it before it fell over, trying not to distract from the interview. I moved one of the heavy rocks from one stand to another, and when I went to set it down, caught my finger between the rock and the stand. It crushed the fingernail, really badly. It was everything I could do to keep quiet and blood was dripping everywhere. I managed to kind of turn around to hide it, and make it back to the cameras, I then grabbed some leaves off of the tree behind me to hold on them as blood was dripping all over the ground. I didn't want to stop interrupt a good interview with, "excuse me, I just crushed my finger and blood is gushing everywhere."

Somehow I managed to keep it from everyone else and the interview went flawlessly. The talent never knew...:-) It was so bad the fingernail ended up completely falling off a few days later, but the video turned out amazing! 

 

What are your stories?

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I once travelled 3 and a half hours to an interview shoot and left all my batteries at home, next to the charger... fully charged 😂

I explained to everyone involved that I was an idiot, made a detour to a high street store / rental place who sold me a charged battery for a small fortune and I salvaged what I could from the rest of the day.

Also, years ago I fumbled a mini DV tape and it fell down a waterfall.

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9 hours ago, Benjamin Hilton said:

A couple of years ago, I was filming an interview with someone in a remote location. I had light stands holding diffusion and negative fill, and the light stands were weighted down with rocks. I was filming with a couple of GH5s and Leica lenses while another guy was conducting the interview. One of the stands started to sway a bit, so I quietly inched my way over to fix it before it fell over, trying not to distract from the interview. I moved one of the heavy rocks from one stand to another, and when I went to set it down, caught my finger between the rock and the stand. It crushed the fingernail, really badly. It was everything I could do to keep quiet and blood was dripping everywhere. I managed to kind of turn around to hide it, and make it back to the cameras, I then grabbed some leaves off of the tree behind me to hold on them as blood was dripping all over the ground. I didn't want to stop interrupt a good interview with, "excuse me, I just crushed my finger and blood is gushing everywhere."


Eh, that sounds too tame.

One of my best mates was nearly killed a little while back by a falling S60. Has the nasty head scar still from it. 

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I was with the founder of our organization one time and he wanted to grab a quick statement with a VIP he had with him. I swung up my camera and pushed record I thought and did the statement. When I pushed stop the record light came one...somehow I had missed it. It was quite embarrassing to ask him to do it again, had a technical difficulty;-)

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I've double tapped the record button a few times, always embarrassing when you have to ask someone to re-do an interview they just wrapped. Sucks getting into the edit and seeing some of your b-roll is me walking around with the camera or the camera in a bag. I've left without batteries and cards before too, but always managed to grab them and not screw up the shoot. I recently shot an interview in the warehouse of a brewery and my earbuds that I use to monitor audio crapped out, no biggie since I knew the levels that should give me pretty clean audio in my Beachtek adapter with a lav, only I forgot to plug the adapter into the camera, so all I had was a noisy scratch track with all the background brewing crew noise. Fail. I shot a hike on a volcano once and the plan was to use mostly GoPro footage to keep my pack light, but I only brought one battery. After my first couple shots I put it in my pocket to preserve the battery. After about 30 minutes of hiking my pocket was feeling really hot, when I took the searing hot GoPor out it was doing a thermal shutdown, I had 30 minutes of dark pocket footage and felt like an idiot. I've had lots of close calls too, people bumping my tripod, me bumping my tripod, crazy waves on the beach without a waterproof housing and so on.

Chris

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