What's been your biggest screw-up?

[Rick Spilman]

I shot a great series of interviews while underweigh on a replica sailing ship. The lighting was was great, the framing was good. Everything would have been perfect if only I hadn't bumped the switch on the lav so that I was recording dead air. I learned then and there never to shoot without headphones.

[Dan Uneken]

I had a shoot last year where I had to shoot Betacam instead of XL-1.
At one point I flipped off the ND filter, not knowing that this new setting has its separate white balance, which in that case was totally off (images came out as green as Kermit the Frog - unusable).
You can do that with the XL-1, but not with a Betacam, which has a range of 8 WB settings that are stored in connection to the filter wheel (A & B settings x 4=8).

One thinks: it's not called NEUTRAL densitiy for nothing, right?
WRONG! Pffff.


Dan.

[Rik Sanchez]

I received a Century Optics Full zoom through wide angle adapter for my XL-1 last summer as a bonus for a big video job. I received it without a filter and I assumed you couldn't put a filter on it so I just put it on the camera like that. I haven't shot anything that puts my camera in danger of getting banged up so I thought it would be okay.

I shot a friend's S/M performance and in this show they were using grinders and they had a woman with a steel vest on and they were grinding away with all the sparks flying up in the air. The sparks were going either up or down so I figured the best spot would be to shoot them straight on, but one woman turned it towards the crowd and I got a full shot at my lens, a small piece burned into the glass a bit, so now I can only use that wide angle adapter in dark situations, in well lit scenes you can see the chip in the lens. So this free adapter will cost me about $300 to get it fixed. Once I get it fixed I'm putting a filter on it.

[Nori Wentworth]

The last Feature I was camera operator on, using my XL1, we were jumping between lapels, boom mic, and the onboard camera mic. The last night of shooting we went to the onboard mic, (one of the only times I'd ever used the on-board mic), and I neglected to switch the mic selector to "mic".

DOH!!!

That was a nice waste of 5 hours...

Another reason to make sure you always have your headphones on.

I hope the XL2 will have an audio meter in the actual eyepiece, and not on the side of the camera.

-Nori

[Gary Chavez]

Where to start?
drove a live truck into a low hanging, clearly marked tree. pushed the mast back 8".
double punched more times than i care to admit.
left camera at the station on the way to interview a 3 star general. got to base, opened hatch and had a heart attack. he was cool enough to wait for me to go back and get it.
shot a friends band and came back w/o audio....
my share of blue video back in the day.
ripped the ass out of my pants on a story far from home and was not wearing any chones (underwear)!
went to a state prison in shorts cause no-one told me not to. warden would'nt let me in so i had to wear some prison "bench" pants. Community clothes the inmates wear to go in front of the judge. my reporter got video of that one.
had to buy a beta tape from the competiton in the field once cause i ran out.

but im really a good photog, honest.

[Rick Spilman]

"shot a friends band and came back w/o audio...."

For a couple of bands I know this might not be a bad thing.

[Robert Poulton]

well to my amazement I for some reason forget to hit the record button. Even though it will say rec at the top corner of the screen. I guess I forget to look.

My first mistake:

Taping a horse clinic and forget to record the one person I need to get a ride from to get home.

My second mistake:

While up in Alaska just last month, I forget to hit record while a bald eagle is catching a little bird in its claws. Zoomed in and all I was to excited to press the button.


Now I feel stupid.

Why cant the thing just say "Press the record button you idiot!"

crap....now I crawl into my bed and don't come out until next summer.

Rob:D

[Nori Wentworth]

Another Screw-up.

(Like you guys have never done this)

The last wedding I shot, I forgot to hit stop after the ceremony, quickly ran inside to get the signing of the registry, set up my tripod, and then pushed stop. It was snowing really heavy outside where they insisted on the ceremony, so I was busy drying off my camera as they were signing. I got some realy nice close ups that would of been perfect for a montage, when all of a sudden my camera turned off. "Nooo.... The battery is dead!" No, I just forgot to push record.

I Mentioned it to no one, and no one asked were the signing was...

[Michel Brewer]

went to go get lunch with rest of crew because nothing was coming out of court that day...spent the rest of day begging affiliate tape

went out drinking thinking its safe they wont raid elians house tonight its a weekend (and a holy weekend besides, they wouldnt do that in miami right?)....

shot a friends wedding enough said...

[Yow Cheong Hoe]

Not really my screw-up, but:

I was shooting some lions in the zoo, and suddenly they struck up a harmony. Man! It was really cool to have 8 lions roaring to each other. And then...

This joker dude was impressing his girlfriend with his great lion roar immitation, right next to my cam, screwing up the lion song that I was taping.

So I told him to give me a 30 sec window to grab some real lion sounds. That pissed him real bad and he walked off with his girlfriend in pretty foul mood.

Next time, I'll get a uni-directional shot-gun mic, one with 0% sound captured from sides and back. If only such a mic exist.

[Dan Uneken]

Now who gets the prize for the biggest bloop?

I have another one:
I was shooting a no budget short here. We improvised a travelling. The actor walking on the sidewalk, me with the XL-1 in a wheelchair being pulled backwards alongside of him by an assistant, along the empty parking lane, very smooth asphalt surface: splendid. Viewing the rushes was like this:
The actor doing his thing: young man's energetic pace, kicking an empty coke can on the way, walking 50 feet more, then looking at the camera shouting "¡¡Cuidado!! (look out) then him disappearing, sky and trees, shouting, the assistant's face upside down, then more faces and black.

The parking lane had ended in a concrete curbstone and the assistant had fallen backward, pulling me over him. Nobody got hurt and no damage was done to the equipment, but it could have been otherwise. The footage was hilarious and we thought about changing the script to include it, but didn't. Haha.

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

So far, the best story is Locke and his chutzpah to keep shooting the award winners without any film in the camera, but the part about him posing the subjects is over the top, so he's disqualified for exaggeration.

Gary Chavez in prison clothes is an award-winning image to be sure, but not strictly DV or photography related. And who's to say--he may dress like that at home, when he's not gallivanting about our criminal reform system in his speedo.

Nobody's been fired or frightened into a different career yet, so we'll leave the thread open for a little bit. C'mon everyone--spill it!

[John Locke]

All true...I swear...strap me up to the lie detector...beat me with a wet rope if I'm a-lyin'.

Think about it...about 19 or 20...male...wouldn't you prolong it as long as possible?

Yow...so did his girlfriend seem impressed by him making lion sounds? Class...repeat after me..."dork"...D-O-R-K. You should've taped him instead.

[Dylan Couper]

The winner...
Hmm, my vote is torn between John Locke, who made the best recovery, and Chris Hurd, who made the best blunder (wrong town? Priceless! :)

[Chris Hurd]

Hey, I recovered! But only because the wedding party had blunders of their own, heh. Let's keep the thread going, this is most entertaining!