What's been your biggest screw-up?

Zac Stein · June 14th, 2003, 10:49 AM

OK ok, I never wanted to admit this...

*sigh*... I dropped a pd150 in a toilet once... it was my universities...bathroom shoot and i was pirched up over the toilet.. looked down to do something, strap was broken, dropped it, cracked the edges of the toilet 3 times then went right into it.

The water was an off yellow colour too... was not a fun experience... i had to retrieve it... wash it, then pretend it got broken from shooting in the rain. I was never allowed to touch the equipment at my old uni again.

It was an accident i swear.

Zac

Gary Chavez · June 14th, 2003, 12:23 PM

Here is a great one that i swear is true, just didnt happen to me.

about a year ago we had a new hire to the station. nice guy, was young and loved the snap zoom, swish pan, pictures in a blender style of shooting and editing. not my bag, but to each his own. he shared a camera with my best friend. one day i come in and my buddy is using my camera. whats up? well, it seems the new guy had used over the weekend on a story out of town. there was a native american ceremony at the springs of the a river in new braunfels. The participants blessed some flowers and sent them downstream.
well, the new guy got a brilliant thought in his head to JUMP IN THE RIVER! didnt take off his phone, pager, wallet, etc. he was wearing long pants to boot. well, he hit the water at about mid-thigh and he starts pacing with the flowers as the dumbfounded reporter watches him wade downstream. she loses sight of him in the shadows of a bridge.

as she catches up with him on the other side he is holding his betacam over his head and they are both dripping wet@ yep, he hit a hole and went completely under water, cam and all.
unbeliveably to the rest of us, he only lost the tape, story and camera (un-fixable) but not his job. there was even some management talk about his "commitment" when asked what his punishment would be!

Brian Wood · June 14th, 2003, 08:34 PM

I was taping our school musical for the parents and kids but never checked the feed to the camera, not only was the feed muted but when the audio tech noticed it he pushed the fader all the way to the top (i was working backstage and yes the audio tech is a friend of mine) Lets just say i speant many hours attempting to get the sound to a point where you can understand the words

K. Forman · June 15th, 2003, 10:58 AM

Last night takes the cake for me. And it wasn't even my screw up. I took a job shooting a proposed pilot for an MTV show. The concept was, live musical performance, with spoken word, and video/animations playing in the background. The "musicians" did one hour sets of some kind of syntho stuff.

I got there, and it looks like a Canon showroom- I've never seen so many XL1's in one place! There ended up being like 8 cams all going at once, including a guy with a little Sony consumer cam on a steadicam jr. Watching this guy was almost hilarious. He was swishing the cam back and forth, spinning it, and anything else that would get him in front of the other cams.

That coupled with a lack of experienced lighting crew, made for one verrrrry long night. We wrapped up around 3 AM, and I started my 2 1/2 hour drive home. I almost didn't make it several times.

Heath McKnight · June 15th, 2003, 12:19 PM

There are a couple; most recently, I accidently sent a video of a photo montage (I don't do this stuff, but it was a favor for a production company's client's friend) for a wedding via UPS' next day SAVER. ARGH! It got there 20 minutes after they left for the rehearsal, which was 40 minutes away. The bride was pissed, but they had it for the wedding and she and her hubby watched it the day after and called me while I was working out. I was so scared until she told me she was sorry, and understood it was a mistake!

At school, I was behind, actually three feet behind, a 16 mm film camera that the professor had put on a STILL camera tripod. The head broke and the camera went down. I couldn't grab it in time, since I was only just standing, not operating the camera. Another time, I decided to keep a VHS camera on the tripod and put that on my shoulder. The camera disconnected and fell. Heck, even when I was 14, the new camera my Dad bought me fell because I put it on a bar stool for a tripod.

The absolute worst was when I shot my first feature on my then-new XL-1, and Chris Hurd here confirmed for me two years after that fact that it wasn't my eye! The late 1998 XL-1 models (I bought mine in early 1999, but it was a late '98) had backfocusing issues that I thought was just my slightly bad, but corrected with glasses, eyes. Nope! And, here's the clincher, most of the movie is slightly out of focus! You can only tell if the subjects are close to a wall and really look. And bingo, the wall is sharper while the subjects are slightly fuzzier. Someone else told me the camera's back focus was off and Chris told me what to do. Two years later...

Lastly, I thought, since I used DVCPro Cameras at work, the "zero" level (ideal) of audio was -20, so I set all my XL-1 levels on my first movie to -20. BOY WAS IT LOW! And boosting it up only made the "noise" sound worse...I learned, again, 2 years later, it should've been set to -12 for "zero"/ideal.

Oh, well...Ya live, ya learn, call Alanis Morrissette.

heath

Heath McKnight · June 15th, 2003, 12:34 PM

Acutally, I have a story of two photogs at my station who were fired for stupid reasons:

1. This one dude slammed his finger in his car door and walked to the interviewee's house to get a bandaid and fell in the pool, destroying his Nextel, pager, etc. Then, several times we received his video to edit, and saw nothing but the camera on as he went to the interview then returning to the truck. The final was when he crashed his news van!

2. The other dude was in his mid-30s but looked like he was in his mid-20s, so he would pick up chicks on the job, or take forever getting to breaking news so he could drive down the "nightclub" street in West Palm Beach, FL. He finally blew it when he was tooling around in the news van, off the clock, and was on his station-issued nextel talking. He reached over to grab something and crashed the van. I was driving into work later that day, he was behind me; I slowed down to 20 miles an hour since school was letting off near the station. He honked his horn and at the station, asked why I was going 20. I told him the sign to slow down for kids was flashing. He blew it off! Unbelievable! He could've had two tickets that day! Suffice to say, he was fired. And failed the drug test.

heath

K. Forman · June 15th, 2003, 01:31 PM

Heath- Does this mean you are hiring? I'll happily send you a resume! I would love to do something in the broadcast field. From the sounds of it, good help is hard to find :)

Heath McKnight · June 15th, 2003, 01:56 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Forman : Heath- Does this mean you are hiring? I'll happily send you a resume! I would love to do something in the broadcast field. From the sounds of it, good help is hard to find :) -->>>

Hey, Keith!

That actually happened in March of 1999, but we're always hiring. You live a bit north of West Palm Beach, FL, but send your resume in. Call 561-655-5455 and ask for details or go to www.wptv.com and see if we're hiring. I'm no longer in news, but promotions, so I don't know what's up. Lately, contracts have come up (even the non-contracted people are moving on) so it's that time of year when we're hiring, I just don't know what.

I think you get us, we're NewsChannel 5, WPTV. I think we may have one or two editor positions coming open, I think...One guy is moving onto photog, but I don't know if anyone else is leaving.

heath

K. Forman · June 15th, 2003, 02:02 PM

Thanks Heath- I don't get your channel as I have kicked the Cable habit. I have an antenna that gets a few of the good stations if they're local... and the wind is blowing the right way :)

I will call in Monday morn, and send down a resume. Like I said, I would love to do broadcast work. Thanks again!

Heath McKnight · June 15th, 2003, 02:19 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Forman : Thanks Heath- I don't get your channel as I have kicked the Cable habit. I have an antenna that gets a few of the good stations if they're local... and the wind is blowing the right way :)

I will call in Monday morn, and send down a resume. Like I said, I would love to do broadcast work. Thanks again! -->>>

Once you're in though, the pay sucks and it's hard to get out. I'm in L.A. now editing, but head back tonight. I hope to get out of news once and for all ASAP. Even if I am in Promotions.

heath

Robert Mann Z. · June 16th, 2003, 07:36 AM

not really a screw up but:

about a month ago we we doing a piece on fly fishing on the Kennebec in maine, when someone suggest we should go white water rafting on the last day. ...we had some sort new guide that helped us flip our raft on a class 5+ rapid (means it very dangerous) ...i ended up getting seperated from the bunch, and had to swim through crazy rapids hoping i would not die by getting smashed up agains a rock wall or drown from current...

so finally i see a boat and get pulled up on it...i was so tired, and thankful i was alive, so when 30 minutes later we arrived at base camp i noticed i had giant dried buggers all over my face, i mean up to my hair line...nobody told me i was so embarrased spent the whole trip back that way...augh..nobody had camera though...

Gary Chavez · June 16th, 2003, 10:41 AM

Hey Heath, i worked at WPEC in 98! thats when i put the live truck into the tree. i loved west palm beach but hated WPEC.
I miss living 4 miles from Jupiter beach.

Heath McKnight · June 16th, 2003, 02:57 PM

<<<-- Originally posted by Gary Chavez : Hey Heath, i worked at WPEC in 98! thats when i put the live truck into the tree. i loved west palm beach but hated WPEC.
I miss living 4 miles from Jupiter beach. -->>>

Gary!

I interned there the summer of 1997 in editing. Originally I was to be hired, took the drug/psych test, but they dragged their feet for months. I was pretty depressed, because I was in seafood/meat sales at a local Publix (and broke up with my girlfriend, which led to me making my first film, but that's another story). I sent a resume to WPTV and they couldn't STOP calling me, unlike 12 who I had to call literally every day for 3 months, outside my three week internship. And I made more money and did less work than at 12.

WPTV has changed quite a bit, we have a great building, HD tower, FCP edit systems (and tape-to-tape). It's cool, but I wanna make the move to L.A.!

Jupiter rules; I live in Boynton, which is all right. Where are you at now?

heath

Michel Brewer · June 16th, 2003, 09:44 PM

Heath & Gary

Thats a great market...I was one of the fortunate many who spent a month there during election 2000 recount, although I have to admit I was dissapointed at the move to gun club road from downtown.

There were a number of the locals near our position (cnn) and went out with them a few times usually to that tiki style place down near the water in west palm...reading your posts rings a bell. Heath It might have been a photog from your station; female photog who went driving down the road with the mast up.....well until a overpass took it off. And she said she wasnt fired.....

One of our correspondents who was there for the elections story told us some great stories, seems it was the same when he was there...you guys are lucky to work/worked in that market :)

I for one wish the recount had dragged another three months to keep me there......

ps. heath, is brian chacon still over at wpec if he is tell him michel says hi

Michel

Gary Chavez · June 18th, 2003, 09:56 AM

hey Micheal,

if you partied w/Brian and didnt get arrested or dead....kudos!
i was always scared to hang with him outside of work, but a very likeable guy.

heath,
im back home here in san antonio. wpec was my grand experiment in moving around in the biz. i also miss the long straight flats on my motorcycle.

wasnt WPTV just sarting all thouse changes around the end of 98? are you guys still the dominat #1?

my wife was the EP/Proudcer of the 10 the July that wpec finally beat you guys at 10:00pm. 1st time in like 8 years or something?we left the day before the ratings came out! bob jordan fired the sports guy, Anthony Pitman, blaming him for the slip to #2.
he came home to S.A. and got a job at the station, FOX 29 , i left to go to wpec. when i met him here...didnt know him there, i told him my wife was the reason he got canned!!!

June 14th, 2003, 08:34 PM	#33
Brian Wood Regular Crew Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: East Lansing, Michigan Posts: 77	audio goof I was taping our school musical for the parents and kids but never checked the feed to the camera, not only was the feed muted but when the audio tech noticed it he pushed the fader all the way to the top (i was working backstage and yes the audio tech is a friend of mine) Lets just say i speant many hours attempting to get the sound to a point where you can understand the words

June 16th, 2003, 07:36 AM	#41
Robert Mann Z. Skyonic New York Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: NYC Posts: 614	bugger not really a screw up but: about a month ago we we doing a piece on fly fishing on the Kennebec in maine, when someone suggest we should go white water rafting on the last day. ...we had some sort new guide that helped us flip our raft on a class 5+ rapid (means it very dangerous) ...i ended up getting seperated from the bunch, and had to swim through crazy rapids hoping i would not die by getting smashed up agains a rock wall or drown from current... so finally i see a boat and get pulled up on it...i was so tired, and thankful i was alive, so when 30 minutes later we arrived at base camp i noticed i had giant dried buggers all over my face, i mean up to my hair line...nobody told me i was so embarrased spent the whole trip back that way...augh..nobody had camera though...

June 16th, 2003, 09:44 PM	#44
Michel Brewer Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Ventura California Posts: 179	west palm tv Heath & Gary Thats a great market...I was one of the fortunate many who spent a month there during election 2000 recount, although I have to admit I was dissapointed at the move to gun club road from downtown. There were a number of the locals near our position (cnn) and went out with them a few times usually to that tiki style place down near the water in west palm...reading your posts rings a bell. Heath It might have been a photog from your station; female photog who went driving down the road with the mast up.....well until a overpass took it off. And she said she wasnt fired..... One of our correspondents who was there for the elections story told us some great stories, seems it was the same when he was there...you guys are lucky to work/worked in that market :) I for one wish the recount had dragged another three months to keep me there...... ps. heath, is brian chacon still over at wpec if he is tell him michel says hi Michel

June 14th, 2003, 10:49 AM	#31
Zac Stein Major Player Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Melbourne, Australia Posts: 730	OK ok, I never wanted to admit this... sigh... I dropped a pd150 in a toilet once... it was my universities...bathroom shoot and i was pirched up over the toilet.. looked down to do something, strap was broken, dropped it, cracked the edges of the toilet 3 times then went right into it. The water was an off yellow colour too... was not a fun experience... i had to retrieve it... wash it, then pretend it got broken from shooting in the rain. I was never allowed to touch the equipment at my old uni again. It was an accident i swear. Zac

June 14th, 2003, 12:23 PM	#32
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	Here is a great one that i swear is true, just didnt happen to me. about a year ago we had a new hire to the station. nice guy, was young and loved the snap zoom, swish pan, pictures in a blender style of shooting and editing. not my bag, but to each his own. he shared a camera with my best friend. one day i come in and my buddy is using my camera. whats up? well, it seems the new guy had used over the weekend on a story out of town. there was a native american ceremony at the springs of the a river in new braunfels. The participants blessed some flowers and sent them downstream. well, the new guy got a brilliant thought in his head to JUMP IN THE RIVER! didnt take off his phone, pager, wallet, etc. he was wearing long pants to boot. well, he hit the water at about mid-thigh and he starts pacing with the flowers as the dumbfounded reporter watches him wade downstream. she loses sight of him in the shadows of a bridge. as she catches up with him on the other side he is holding his betacam over his head and they are both dripping wet@ yep, he hit a hole and went completely under water, cam and all. unbeliveably to the rest of us, he only lost the tape, story and camera (un-fixable) but not his job. there was even some management talk about his "commitment" when asked what his punishment would be!

June 15th, 2003, 10:58 AM	#34
K. Forman Capt. Quirk Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Middle of the woods in Georgia Posts: 3,596	Last night takes the cake for me. And it wasn't even my screw up. I took a job shooting a proposed pilot for an MTV show. The concept was, live musical performance, with spoken word, and video/animations playing in the background. The "musicians" did one hour sets of some kind of syntho stuff. I got there, and it looks like a Canon showroom- I've never seen so many XL1's in one place! There ended up being like 8 cams all going at once, including a guy with a little Sony consumer cam on a steadicam jr. Watching this guy was almost hilarious. He was swishing the cam back and forth, spinning it, and anything else that would get him in front of the other cams. That coupled with a lack of experienced lighting crew, made for one verrrrry long night. We wrapped up around 3 AM, and I started my 2 1/2 hour drive home. I almost didn't make it several times.

June 15th, 2003, 12:19 PM	#35
Heath McKnight MPS Digital Studios Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Palm Beach County, Florida Posts: 8,531	There are a couple; most recently, I accidently sent a video of a photo montage (I don't do this stuff, but it was a favor for a production company's client's friend) for a wedding via UPS' next day SAVER. ARGH! It got there 20 minutes after they left for the rehearsal, which was 40 minutes away. The bride was pissed, but they had it for the wedding and she and her hubby watched it the day after and called me while I was working out. I was so scared until she told me she was sorry, and understood it was a mistake! At school, I was behind, actually three feet behind, a 16 mm film camera that the professor had put on a STILL camera tripod. The head broke and the camera went down. I couldn't grab it in time, since I was only just standing, not operating the camera. Another time, I decided to keep a VHS camera on the tripod and put that on my shoulder. The camera disconnected and fell. Heck, even when I was 14, the new camera my Dad bought me fell because I put it on a bar stool for a tripod. The absolute worst was when I shot my first feature on my then-new XL-1, and Chris Hurd here confirmed for me two years after that fact that it wasn't my eye! The late 1998 XL-1 models (I bought mine in early 1999, but it was a late '98) had backfocusing issues that I thought was just my slightly bad, but corrected with glasses, eyes. Nope! And, here's the clincher, most of the movie is slightly out of focus! You can only tell if the subjects are close to a wall and really look. And bingo, the wall is sharper while the subjects are slightly fuzzier. Someone else told me the camera's back focus was off and Chris told me what to do. Two years later... Lastly, I thought, since I used DVCPro Cameras at work, the "zero" level (ideal) of audio was -20, so I set all my XL-1 levels on my first movie to -20. BOY WAS IT LOW! And boosting it up only made the "noise" sound worse...I learned, again, 2 years later, it should've been set to -12 for "zero"/ideal. Oh, well...Ya live, ya learn, call Alanis Morrissette. heath

June 15th, 2003, 12:34 PM	#36
Heath McKnight MPS Digital Studios Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Palm Beach County, Florida Posts: 8,531	Acutally, I have a story of two photogs at my station who were fired for stupid reasons: 1. This one dude slammed his finger in his car door and walked to the interviewee's house to get a bandaid and fell in the pool, destroying his Nextel, pager, etc. Then, several times we received his video to edit, and saw nothing but the camera on as he went to the interview then returning to the truck. The final was when he crashed his news van! 2. The other dude was in his mid-30s but looked like he was in his mid-20s, so he would pick up chicks on the job, or take forever getting to breaking news so he could drive down the "nightclub" street in West Palm Beach, FL. He finally blew it when he was tooling around in the news van, off the clock, and was on his station-issued nextel talking. He reached over to grab something and crashed the van. I was driving into work later that day, he was behind me; I slowed down to 20 miles an hour since school was letting off near the station. He honked his horn and at the station, asked why I was going 20. I told him the sign to slow down for kids was flashing. He blew it off! Unbelievable! He could've had two tickets that day! Suffice to say, he was fired. And failed the drug test. heath

June 15th, 2003, 01:31 PM	#37
K. Forman Capt. Quirk Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Middle of the woods in Georgia Posts: 3,596	Heath- Does this mean you are hiring? I'll happily send you a resume! I would love to do something in the broadcast field. From the sounds of it, good help is hard to find :)

June 15th, 2003, 01:56 PM	#38
Heath McKnight MPS Digital Studios Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Palm Beach County, Florida Posts: 8,531	<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Forman : Heath- Does this mean you are hiring? I'll happily send you a resume! I would love to do something in the broadcast field. From the sounds of it, good help is hard to find :) -->>> Hey, Keith! That actually happened in March of 1999, but we're always hiring. You live a bit north of West Palm Beach, FL, but send your resume in. Call 561-655-5455 and ask for details or go to www.wptv.com and see if we're hiring. I'm no longer in news, but promotions, so I don't know what's up. Lately, contracts have come up (even the non-contracted people are moving on) so it's that time of year when we're hiring, I just don't know what. I think you get us, we're NewsChannel 5, WPTV. I think we may have one or two editor positions coming open, I think...One guy is moving onto photog, but I don't know if anyone else is leaving. heath

June 15th, 2003, 02:02 PM	#39
K. Forman Capt. Quirk Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Middle of the woods in Georgia Posts: 3,596	Thanks Heath- I don't get your channel as I have kicked the Cable habit. I have an antenna that gets a few of the good stations if they're local... and the wind is blowing the right way :) I will call in Monday morn, and send down a resume. Like I said, I would love to do broadcast work. Thanks again!

June 15th, 2003, 02:19 PM	#40
Heath McKnight MPS Digital Studios Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Palm Beach County, Florida Posts: 8,531	<<<-- Originally posted by Keith Forman : Thanks Heath- I don't get your channel as I have kicked the Cable habit. I have an antenna that gets a few of the good stations if they're local... and the wind is blowing the right way :) I will call in Monday morn, and send down a resume. Like I said, I would love to do broadcast work. Thanks again! -->>> Once you're in though, the pay sucks and it's hard to get out. I'm in L.A. now editing, but head back tonight. I hope to get out of news once and for all ASAP. Even if I am in Promotions. heath

June 16th, 2003, 10:41 AM	#42
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	Hey Heath, i worked at WPEC in 98! thats when i put the live truck into the tree. i loved west palm beach but hated WPEC. I miss living 4 miles from Jupiter beach.

June 16th, 2003, 02:57 PM	#43
Heath McKnight MPS Digital Studios Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Palm Beach County, Florida Posts: 8,531	<<<-- Originally posted by Gary Chavez : Hey Heath, i worked at WPEC in 98! thats when i put the live truck into the tree. i loved west palm beach but hated WPEC. I miss living 4 miles from Jupiter beach. -->>> Gary! I interned there the summer of 1997 in editing. Originally I was to be hired, took the drug/psych test, but they dragged their feet for months. I was pretty depressed, because I was in seafood/meat sales at a local Publix (and broke up with my girlfriend, which led to me making my first film, but that's another story). I sent a resume to WPTV and they couldn't STOP calling me, unlike 12 who I had to call literally every day for 3 months, outside my three week internship. And I made more money and did less work than at 12. WPTV has changed quite a bit, we have a great building, HD tower, FCP edit systems (and tape-to-tape). It's cool, but I wanna make the move to L.A.! Jupiter rules; I live in Boynton, which is all right. Where are you at now? heath

June 18th, 2003, 09:56 AM	#45
Gary Chavez Major Player Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: San Antonio Posts: 355	hey Micheal, if you partied w/Brian and didnt get arrested or dead....kudos! i was always scared to hang with him outside of work, but a very likeable guy. heath, im back home here in san antonio. wpec was my grand experiment in moving around in the biz. i also miss the long straight flats on my motorcycle. wasnt WPTV just sarting all thouse changes around the end of 98? are you guys still the dominat #1? my wife was the EP/Proudcer of the 10 the July that wpec finally beat you guys at 10:00pm. 1st time in like 8 years or something?we left the day before the ratings came out! bob jordan fired the sports guy, Anthony Pitman, blaming him for the slip to #2. he came home to S.A. and got a job at the station, FOX 29 , i left to go to wpec. when i met him here...didnt know him there, i told him my wife was the reason he got canned!!!