Your worst blunder?
 

Besides getting married, or not picking the right lottery numbers---or buying a Sony instead of a Pana, what was your worst blunder with your video or still cam?

I have two, but both with still cameras:

1) At a wedding, I took about 20 pictures with my flash turned off. :(

2) I had this German Rangefinder in a cloth cam bag, the cloth was, well, rotting or something and the cam fell out from the bottom and smashed onto the sidewalk. Yes, the cam shattered into many bits and pieces. :(

Buying a camcorder that DOESN'T have a microphone input. That really came back recently to kick me right in the arse. ;)

Thanks! Here's a good one...

Some time back on dv.com's camera forum, or was it Frosty's? can't recall, but I recall the blunder. Some poor guy popped in a tape and starting shooting. After about 7 minutes the cam went "hay-wire." It made some noises, then stopped working. He couldn't even get the cam to open, so he could take out his miniDV tape. Finally he brought it back to the dealer, and in it went to the repair shop. The cam still had warranty---thank G-D, he must have thought. Hehe. But here's the funny part. The cause was not with the cam. Instead of putting in a miniDV recording tape, he had put in a cleaning tape. True story, I swear. :)


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"Lulu" means the boogie man (monster) in Farsi. :)

i needed a hand with a huuuuuuuuuuuge wedding i was diong...

so i asked my bro in law to help out...
3 manned cameras... big headache

well, needless to say he saw the wide angled lense on the DS88 and thought he was king shit, his character changed so much it wasnt funny...
he decided to .....

1) take control of the filming and became the makeshift director telling my regualr camera man what to do. NOT good as I had already co-ordianted placement.

2) saw a good shot so he decided to take it, without any thought as to the fact that we were actually already getin the shot on the mx500's, so hed ruin our shots by walking in front of me and everyone else who was in his way.
The resulting footage was atrocious as image framing is not a comprehensable idea to him and stability well, lets jsut say it looked like he was in teh middle of a riot...

3) He was only there to man a tripod and get some fill shots from the back of the church... were talking 1100 people here... instead, during the ceremony he WALKED DOWN THE AISLE BACKWARDS as the bride walked the aisle with ehr old man... all teh while holding the cam to the brides face...
We had already lined our shots and had everything planned and told him to stay behind as we had some good angles from where we were. It was a looooooooong aisle and there was LOTS we had planned..
Needless to say his squat walk down the aisle did nothing for our shots, and his shots didnt have any backlight compensation (as teh cam was configured to face AWAY from the light coming from the entrance.. in the end we had to use his footage processed to a point where i had to slow mo it down to 15% and use split second cuts from our cams slo mo'd as fills. Then ran colour corrections and bump maps to lighten the shadowed faces... prolly one of the biggest post processing jobs ive ever had to do...

it goes on.... throughout the night he killed almost every shot...

this whole thing has taken me 16 weeks to edit (and render in parts to save time and wear on the workstation HDD's...... )

he no longer works for me...

NOT HAPPY!!!!!!

I salvaged most of the footage, but thats a mistake i will never make again..

NEVER hire family... and if you do, get rid of them at the FIRST sign of them not listening to your directions...

Ohhhh....! That's a good one! I can just picture it! hehe.

1. Letting my wife volunteer me for shoots.

2. Not getting 120GB drive sooner.

3. Bringing my cam to my daughter's junior high graduation.

Mate, i tell ya, i thought he'd be cool with a couple of hours work for some extra cash, instead, he stayed all bloody day and night, and ran wild...

I had all my tapes marked and labeled (CamA 1, CamB 1, CamC 1, etc etc )
We attempted to sync all cams to my flash, that failed as he already started shooting....

When runnign low on tape, we would all meet up and change tapes all together, this makes syncing a little easier if each tape is close in time with the other...

He DIDNT do that, he just took any tape he could see, which ruined the whole tape order which was detrimental to the timing of the edit.

He had no concept of post production and took it upon himself to interview the guests WHILE THEY WERE EATING... without telling us....
So there I am trekking around with the Senn wireless mic tryin to interview these guests and the looks i got were murderous...

ooooooh boy.. never again, i swear i dont care if i have to trek the damn country on my own, but ther eis NO WAY in hell hes touching one of my cameras ever again!!!

I look back now and laugh, but it could have been worse...
Like him tripping as he walked down the aisle with the bride..
I still cant get over that...

oh well, live and learn... LOL

Hey nath, tell us about the graduation... u got me curious!!! what could POSSIBLY go wrong??? LOL

The classic blunder before every shoot is trying to pack "light", in other words stripping down your package. Every time you decide "nah, I'll never need THAT on this shoot", without a doubt you'll end up needing it desperately later on. And the further your shoot is from your house, the more you'll need it.

I'm surprised no one said packing up for an exotic shoot somewhere and leaving the batteries at home....figured someone would have done that seeing as to how chargers are usually on or under tables somewhere.

(no- it hasn't happened to me- but there's always a 1st time)

somewhat exotic...
 

i was going to shoot this final freshmen year project, and we were going to get some establishing shots, and try and get a good amount of scenery in before we came back with our actors... well the story condenced is that a guy wakes up in the canyon area... and he ends up racing death, well death's assistant... and the race is set in all the canyon, and the above ledges... well i went the entire 1.5 drive and forgot the batteries for my camera...
we ended up just shooting some stills that i eventually got developed and turned out well...
but the project was finished, with some very crude special effects, so much so that i never want to show it to anyone...
but im shooting something this weekend, and i will be hoping for it to turn out well...
thats my story, and i dont know what else to say...

-jake