Worst mistake you made while shooting?

[Adrian Tan]

Here's a common sort of mistake -- being caught without a spare battery. I think, if you're a pro, you should have a couple spare batteries and cards on you at all times.

I've never actually made that mistake... that I remember anyway... but have seen plenty of other people I'm shooting with running in panic for the camera bags during middle of ceremony/middle of speeches, etc.

Not noticing when 12-minute DSLR times out... Has definitely happened once or twice. Thank God I'm not relying on 5DMk2s anymore.

Some more minor mistakes -- not having all cameras on same settings. Eg, one person is on auto white balance, another is balanced to daylight, etc. But, in the scheme of things, that sort of mistake is the least of what keeps me awake at night.

[Kin Lau]

Originally Posted by Mark Whittle

I have experienced about 80% of Adrian's. Never had the H4n problem but using mine more than ever - hope that never happens.

That seems to be an issue of memory card size.

A 32gb card will take a couple of min's to boot, but 4gb cards will only take about 25 seconds, 8gb and 16gb a bit more, but 32gb seems to be the killer.

[Dave Partington]

1) Relying on the Matre'D to tell us when Cake cut was happening, because he didn't and we missed it. Trying to recreate it later with a cake that was already cut didn't work! They only do that to me once...

2) Expecting that camera positions agreed with a rather grumpy catholic priest at the rehearsal would be good on the day, then having him stop the ceremony and tell us the we couldn't have a camera there for 'health and safety' reasons. Bang, that was the main camera gone and we had to edit from other fixed cameras since the new position was totally blocked by other people.

....and to cap it all, they both happened at the same wedding!

[James Palanza]

Well its time I share this.
So it was one of my first or second gigs, doing it nearly for free for the experience.
Get to ceremony about 20 minutes early - go up to balcony/organ area to setup camera.
I suddenly realized I left my camera adapter plate at home. Back then I was only working with a single camera.

In the next ten minutes with the help of some bibles, duct tape and my jacket, I was able to prop the camera up at the perfect angle to be right where it needed to be and record the ceremony.

o.O

[Al Gardner]

Originally Posted by don bloom

the worst mistake i've ever made? Hmmmm, probably taking this one particular job in the first place.

Pressing the red button on my b camera 2x without realizing it.

Asking the president of a fortune 100 to please hold for a minute while i changed batteries in the mic pak because i had forgotten to do that before the job. He was not a patient man. Btw, i never did get to work for that company again. :-(

for the life of me i couldn't remember the b&gs names. I just blanked. I looked at the paperwork and still forgot their names. I wrote them in ink on the palm of my hand so i wouldn't look like a total idiot.

Shall i go on?

ditto! Lmao!

[Robert Benda]

Ugh... how much time do you have for my list?

*not hitting record
*hitting record twice so that I'm not anymore
*not having a spare battery ready
*not having a spare memory card ready (parent interview)
*battery going dead on external microphone during bride interview because I accidentally put an old one back in, instead of the new one
*losing a memory card from during the ceremony
*buying crappy tripods when first starting out
*not realizing that none of 3 cameras were setup to see the bride come down the aisle once everyone stood up
*not hitting record on groom's pocket recorder
*letting them setup a giant fan RIGHT NEXT to our camera, which was pointed right at the groom, ruining the audio from both (his pocket recorder)

And that doesn't even count technique, framing, picture profiles, exposures, et al.

[Adrian Tan]

Jeff Harper's already told a similar story, but I've twice gone to the wrong reception venue. Reason: on each occasion, there were multiple venues of the same franchise.

Fortunately, on each occasion, the multiple venues were also on the same street, and I'd allowed enough time to correct for the mistake (I try to arrive at least 30-60 minutes before introductions at reception).

[Clive McLaughlin]

Nothing major bad, but when I first got my Rode Videomic pro, (and before I realised the batteries last forever. I had been turning it on and off as I went. Forgot to turn it on for the entire bridal prep.

When I realised I just set the camera down in the room to record background noise for ten minutes to overlay with the footage.

Nobody seemed to notice that the hustle and bustle noise didn't match up with mouth movements! phew!!!

[Clive McLaughlin]

Can this be moved to members section please??

[John Estcourt]

I recently had a frantic phone call from another wedding videographer asking if he could borrow my radio microphones (if I had any) as he had forgotten his.
I didn't know him, but he had found my company using Google so he knew I was local.
He had only 30 mins until the start of the service. Luckily he was filming not too far from me and I no longer use the radio microphones.( digital recorders now)
Of course I obliged and after frantically hunting for them, I found them in a drawer and drove over just in time to help him out.
It brought back unpleasant memories of having done the same thing myself a couple of years ago.
That sinking feeling I had when I realized I had left my bag at home with all my sound equipment, I will never forget and you never know, if I am ever in his area of the country I may need the favour returning. Although I really hope not!

[Chris Harding]

My buddy Chip used to tell me he had a big note stuck on the Rode body saying "Turn Mic ON!"

Phantom powered mics do take the worry out of that issue now. I shot an entire ceremony once with my Azden transmitters switched to standby!! Why they have that switch I have no idea ...it sends the signal to the receiver but mutes the audio! Both transmitters now have a generous amount of glue from my hot glue gun in the space on the slide switch so it cannot be turned off!!

Now, not to hijack this thread, so why don't we start a new thread about ways to "foolproof" various systems on our gear which would make it very difficult for us to forget to do something or accidentally turn something off ??? Any bright spark want to start a thread like that??

Chris

[Andrew Maclaurin]

Back in the day when I worked for other companies with my ¨trusty¨ Sony PD170 filming weddings as a solo cameraman, I had one freak nightmare day , all my shots were pixelated, randomly, for a few frames. Thank f##k big jeebus was shining his holy lamp of funk on me and I managed to edit the whole wedding with the good bits and a whole lotta sloooomo. In fact they loved the edit. I s#at my pants when I saw the tapes. The horror, the horror…..

[Rob Cantwell]

Early on when I started video, I had filmed a project over a period of weeks for a local school and during the opening of the project by the headmaster, I was happily recording his very insightful speech, the lighting, audio, focus etc was perfect.
About a third into the speech I noticed the cam was still in standby, I still cant figure if i tapped it twice or not at all, there were a few people who were thanked and praised that never made it onto the finished product.
I cut about half of the speech which wasn't the greatest edit in the world, I also learned that handling noise could actually drown out anything else in the audio dept.

[Tim Bakland]

Back in the days of miniDV tapes, I took one out of my Canon XL2 too aggressively and ripped the tape in half.... (Yes, this was the main-cam tape and only copy of prep/ceremony).

Anyone else ever do that back in the day?

I sent the tape out to a company in California that mended it perfectly and sent it back to me. But I did not sleep very well those couple weeks as I waited....

[Leon Bailey]

Had my backup camera on auto exposure. lol.