Worst & Best Experiences on Set

While the amateurs wax unrealistically, here's a topic for the pros! What's your worst experience on set to date; balanced out with a tale of your best one? I'll start...

I worked for about 8 days on an indie movie (4 in LA) with some fairly decent A/B-listers in the cast. The director was some no-name dude who sweet-talked some investors and had rented a RED Epic and some Zeiss glass without consulting me, the DP, first. Everyone was great and had good attitudes but the director and AD were just awful.

Things escalated to the point where one of the leads walked on day 5, the property master and armorer both walked on day 6. On day 8 I walked and the genies, sparks, stunts and effects guys went with me. Left a very expensive Epic on a very expensive Fischer and told the director to enjoy the ride. The next day, I find out from an associate producer that he had these kids doing stunts without supervision and...it was just awful. The only way I got paid for my time was I had to sign a contract removing my self from the credits and all that.

This was October 2011, it has 4 DP's attached to it (1 is the director, 1 is the AD, 1 is the guy who they hired to replace me and 1 is the B-cam operator in LA) and isn't finished yet, though they're filming a sequel already and the first one has distribution in, like, Russia...

Anyway, BEST experience was shooting Death Slate outside Austin, TX in August. Great cast, great crew. Tiny, micro-budget short film with so much heart from everyone involved. We were 500 miles from home, had $2000 and the crew all slept at the director's parents house and the actors made the hour round trip to set from Austin every day for 5 days. It was shot on a 5DmkII with a few 500w halogen work lamps and a few bits of 1/4 216 and opal. I was focusing the lights with blackwrap and grip clips. Pretty good stuff. Very proud of everyone doing 5 or 6 jobs at once. Still not too far removed from the days of shouldering a boom mic with an actual broom and duct tape!

So, what's your worst and best set experiences?

Good to hear about your micro-budget film using nothing but the bare essentials and making it work

I've really only got one music video under my belt which is going up in a week so no real horror stories or anything

The narrative was shot with an 800W redhead with baking paper to turn it into a soft box type thing, 250W work light for the odd fill and a Kino Flo bank and window sunlight. Shot on DSLRs of course. The performance was lit only with a single 800W redhead (as a spot light) and a reflector for fill.

All in all it was pretty uneventful, and I've learnt a lot in both editing, DPing and directing just doing this first narrative/performance mixture. Lots I'd do differently (and more thought out) on the next project.

Keen to hear some more

I was directing a music video at a boxing gym near Houston, TX. The location was an old warehouse and we had brought all this gear and it turns out there was no juice. This wasn't a big budget project, either, so we didn't have a genny or anything; it was going to be mains only. But, there was no mains! So, I had them open the loading doors, the ones that you drive tall delivery trucks through, and blocked a lot of the action near open windows.

The song was basically about being the underdog and fighting your way out of mediocrity to make it in the music industry –- something like that –- so I had envisioned a literal boxing fight with a gritty black and white look to sort of emulate Raging Bull. That worked out because I had to pull some seriously unrealistic ASA from my little Canon T2i. Shot it probably completely with a 50mm 1.8 wide open at like 1600-2500asa, and in monochrome, I would set up the villain in shadow, very backlit situations. And he had dark skin so the edge of light really made him pop out of the darkness...he always looked great..and I could really sort of have him work with his eyes a lot since they both wore these teeth protectors.



The underdog was this girl, 18-19, both of these actors were actual, award-winning boxers and both were very good at taking direction, but she was TINY compared to the actor playing the bad guy. I'd do some tricks with her, framing the bad guy so he was always above her, the camera looking up at him, the camera being either at her height or looking down at her.




But, I always made sure that while he was always in shadow, she was always in light. She would generally have a nice Rembrandt on her.



For the rappers, I always did something with the light. I always had this great sunlight pouring through the open loading doors, so I'd put a windshield reflector between them and the camera and have sunlight bouncing up into them with this great flare behind them. Everything was handheld, and anytime they moved to camera right I'd move to camera left and just add a lot of dynamics to the shot, which would help in cutting.



I took advantage of the out of focus bits and the fast bits and just cut it in a way that was so quick that the video almost punches the viewer a little. I'd use the beat of the song and sometimes cut down tempo to add confusion, like when the bad guy is beating the living tar out of the underdog, using lots of backlight and shadow to 1. quickly enforce the idea that he's winning, 2. make the beads of sweat and spit that flew out between them look super awesome!



Anyway, it was a great shoot and I always go with the idea that great things come from when you don't have a whole lot to work with (is it "art through adversity" ?). Maybe it's the limits imposed on the artist? Otherwise, we'd just keep shooting, wouldn't we? The rap artists loved the final video and the finished gym now has plenty of electricity!

You can watch the whole thing right here:

This is a good thread for perspective.
While waiting for this camera and reading some emotional posts, this thread made me stop and think.
Not getting the camera I paid for 5 months ago, bummer but I was one of the first 10 to get the original decklink card and it was bulletproof so I trust BMD and it ain't going to kill me.

A worst experience is being on a job in cairns, and letting my best mate Dop take a Saturday freelance job shooting a promo for the local news channel. Chopper crashed in the harbour, he was caught in the rig as the pilot swam off and didn't help him. He drowned in 8 ft of water.

Or when I shot the Nagano Olympics tvc and finished the recce early and gave the crew the afternoon off, the gaffer skied off the mountain and died.

The best times are the fantastic people I have worked with and the amazing places all over the world I have seen.

We are so lucky to do a job we love and be breathing so the camera being late doesn't really matter.

This is a good thread for perspective.
While waiting for this camera and reading some emotional posts, this thread made me stop and think.
Not getting the camera I paid for 5 months ago, bummer but I was one of the first 10 to get the original decklink card and it was bulletproof so I trust BMD and it ain't going to kill me.

A worst experience is being on a job in cairns, and letting my best mate Dop take a Saturday freelance job shooting a promo for the local news channel. Chopper crashed in the harbour, he was caught in the rig as the pilot swam off and didn't help him. He drowned in 8 ft of water.

Or when I shot the Nagano Olympics tvc and finished the recce early and gave the crew the afternoon off, the gaffer skied off the mountain and died.

The best times are the fantastic people I have worked with and the amazing places all over the world I have seen.

We are so lucky to do a job we love and be breathing so the camera being late doesn't really matter.

Sorry to hear about your friend and colleague. That's going to be hard to top as bad days go.

Nightmare shoot - being bricked by a bunch of kids when we had our hands full of gear in Portsmouth.

Best shoot - Doc whilst on a trek in the Himalayan mountain for 10 days on a little Sony Prosumer camcorder with about 10 batteries - each lasting only 20 minutes at altitude!

@Nick - interesting to hear you used Baking Paper with a Redhead - never thought of that. I may give it a try!

The best times are the fantastic people I have worked with and the amazing places all over the world I have seen.

We are so lucky to do a job we love and be breathing so the camera being late doesn't really matter.

Couldn't agree more. I've been photographing as a serious hobby (sometimes freelancing) for just over 2 years now and I've finally managed to score a job that involves photography, videography and graphic design. Coming from 5 years of a dreadfully dull office job, it's amazing what simply having a job that involves the things you love can do to your stress levels.

I have many best shoots.. being part of the Pentagon Pool in 88 based in Bahrain.. Working as the White House independent Pool videographer.. recently a great shoot on Lake Lanier in Georgia with Champion Barefoot water-skiers. too many to list..

Worst shoot.. easy.. my recent Documentary.. the shoot itself actually a fun experience.. but dealing with the "Talent" after the DVD was released was a nightmare.. and She decided she wanted to become a "Filmmaker" herself.. and wanted to make some changes on the film 8 months after it was released so she can play with her new fancy software.. as you might imagine it didn't end well..

I have to agree that the best part is getting to work with folks that are passionate about their craft.

Great idea for a thread, Jason! I look forward to hearing everyone's experiences.

Bernie, I'm so, so sorry to hear of your loss... I do hope that everyone else's horror stories have been much less tragic.

...letting my best mate Dop take a Saturday freelance job...

Sorry about your mate. It reminds me of the stories of crew coming home after an 18 hour day, falling asleep at the wheel and an accident happens. But carelessness on the part of the pilot not helping: that bothers me. After finishing Death Slate, the last day was 16 hours, and a shuttle driven by an actor and also transporting another back to home base, he fell asleep and they hit a fence pole. They were both fine, but the car was totalled. The worst I've had was a necrotic spider bite and ... I took a fall once. Arm still hasn't healed completely.

We are so lucky to do a job we love and be breathing so the camera being late doesn't really matter.

Yes, we are. Waiting for a pricey camera to ship is a GOOD problem to have!

Nightmare shoot - being bricked by a bunch of kids when we had our hands full of gear in Portsmouth.

Bricked?! omg

She decided she wanted to become a "Filmmaker" herself.. and wanted to make some changes on the film 8 months after it was released so she can play with her new fancy software.

There's a lot of that going around these days. Lots of people buying fancy cameras and calling themselves DP's, hoping that 5DmkIII will make pretty pictures for them because it's expensive so it has to make good images, right? That new Final Cut is only $299 now and I heard it was the best so I got Final Cut and now my editing will be professional! My mom bought me a RED so now I'm a cinematographer! Meh.

Great idea for a thread, Jason! I look forward to hearing everyone's experiences.

Just give us concrete numbers, you! JK Thanks, Christine. Me too!

For me? My Worst Experience on a Set"Set" was agreeing to DP a movie in 2010, then finding out that it was a marathon shoot, meaning they only secured the "Soundstage" for 24 hours. The "Soundstage" was a cinderblock gym with wood floors and a full kitchen to boot. Very live for sound. The kitchen had deep freezers that had to be unplugged during the takes due to the 60 cycle hum the compressor was producing. The walls that were supposed to be built for the bedroom scenes were not plural: "walls", it was a singular wall, and it wasn't a wall, it was a few plywood sheets supported by 2 by 10s so that made for an extremely close camera setup.
After everything was set up, the cast was late, the producer was a battle axe and we had to call the police because a crackhead was trying to break into cars.
We finally wrapped somewhere around 26 hours after we started and we tore down for another 2 hours. This is only half of it, what happened before and after the shoot are even worse.

what happened before and after the shoot are even worse.

Eww.

Some 24 year old first time director wanted me to DP his feature; some script he'd been working on for seven years about the duality of a bulimic teenager, or something. I was in the middle of finishing another project on our initial meeting and he emailed me the script.

I told him "i'll get to it on Monday" a full week away. After 3 days he was asking me if I'd read it yet. "No, sorry. Not until Monday." And for the next few days he kept bugging me about it until finally he said "I suppose you're not interested in making this film with me" and I said "bro, I said wait until Monday. I'll read it then." And he says "if you're very serious about continuing on this project then you must write an essay, the longer the better, about what you think of the script and how you will perform as the DP."

So, completely offended by this little kid, I said "if this is any indication of how you'll be on the set, then I don't want to work with you." A few days later he says, "if I got a RED and a good budget, would you come back?" And I said "it's great if you can get a nice camera and the ability to take care of your cast and crew, but none of that is a substitute for a good attitude. Sorry, no."

He started harassing me and the girlfriend and so I blocked him from Facebook and all that.

Afterward, when he was done shooting I get a text from him saying "you were right" and he texted my gf to invite her [and I] to the premiere. None of us went, but the theater was packed, but the movie itself turned out to be such an incredible testament to arrogance, self righteousness and insistence that people walked out of the theater...having paid $7 a head.

The bad part is he billed it the greatest movie to be made here locally and sort of burned a lot of the financing bridges around these parts, making it very difficult for future, legitimate filmmakers to get their movie off the ground...

@Nick - interesting to hear you used Baking Paper with a Redhead - never thought of that. I may give it a try!

Yeah, baking paper can handle really high temps, so I just pegged a couple of layers onto the barn doors. I did the same with a single sheet over the kino flo just to diffuse it a bit as well.

Silly wrap photo of my massive cast and crew .

Nice DIY flozier, Nick! Thanks for sharing the set pics, too!

This is an interesting thread to read. So I will contribute.

My best experience was landing a job as a full time DP for a major electronic retail network. I met so many people that are so important in my life even 10 years later -especially when I went freelance.

But it was also my worst experience. The producer I shot a lot of commercials with at the network left and never returned from her maternity leave.

The network replaced her with the crew stylist. What a nightmare. She was so job scared. No experience, no patience, no education. The meanest nastiest person I have worked with to this day. We cycled through countless other crew members who couldn't stand the producers attitude or verbal abuse and dozens and dozens of talent refusing to come back to work with her. Some of our talent just walked off during shooting- they couldn't take it and didn't give a s--- about loosing face with the network.

It was so stressful I began seeing a psychologist so I didn't have to vent to my poor wife. I also started taking Paxil work caused so much anxiety. Finally I had enough going on outside the network to go freelance. That was almost four years ago.

I hear she is still at the network- and she continues to be way over her head in regards to her job. And it makes sense. She was a life long secretary with a high school education who kissed the right ass to get in to production at the network. As Malcolm Forbes said- "People are promoted to the point of incompetence". Once you stop doing well and screwing up you don't get promoted anymore as compensation.

It is so much more rewarding to work for yourself and be on set with people who care and respect the job they have. But I can say this much. Bad, good, and even awful I wouldn't have traded my experience at the network for anything. It made me a proficient shooter, sharpened my lighting skills and I met great people who I still work with outside the network to this day.

Mine was a simple one. The Director that couldn't direct. He expected to just be able to give a script to everyone and they would automatically be able to do what he wanted. No rehearsals, no planning, no anything. Worst of all though was his lack of understanding why it was all going wrong, temper tantrums and being unable to think of any ideas (including asking others advice) to help solve problems. I was just doing a mate a favour helping out with the grip work. After a week of it, he (the Director) had lost his dp, camera man, sound, and his 2 main actors. He ended up taking the leading role himself. Anyway suffice to say it never got finished and was a huge waste of everyones time. He still bitches about it now and blames everyone but himself.

The best experience was undoubtedly doing our own first short. The end result didn't quite come out as good as we wanted it too, but considering the challenges we faced ( especially looking back at it, the fact we were filming in a museum, we only had 3 evenings of 4 hours to shoot in, which included set up and packing time as well feeding everyone) we all got that magic of when the cameras roll moment happening and all involved considered it a brilliant experience. Because of it and the positive experience it just landed us our first fully paid non corporate work for 3 projects over the next year as well as involvement in 2 feature fillms. It was all down to the prep work, the planning, the rehearsals, getting everything right so when those words "action" were shouted it all came together. Everybody was positive, everybody had an answer or an idea but when the time came the director made the call. The team worked. I'm addicted to that feeling now and can't wait to get the ball roling on these new projects.

As Malcolm Forbes said- "People are promoted to the point of incompetence". Once you stop doing well and screwing up you don't get promoted anymore as compensation.

I know lots of those.

It is so much more rewarding to work for yourself and be on set with people who care and respect the job they have. But I can say this much. Bad, good, and even awful I wouldn't have traded my experience at the network for anything. It made me a proficient shooter, sharpened my lighting skills and I met great people who I still work with outside the network to this day.

Absolutely! Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger...or smarter.

I have had two really good experiences on sets. 1. A pilot about the 310 sovereign nations in the United States called Homeland Nation it is from the perspective of the Indians and let me tell you it is different form our history books. We were told that they wouldn't want to tell their story that we would have difficult time. It was the furthest from the truth they wanted to to tell their story and it was great. The reservation we worked on were the Mescalero Apache in New Mexico. 2. Another show called The Sinner which I DP'd one of my first full projects, it was great to collaborate with a director who had a good vision. Working with a micro crew that synced, I enjoy the smaller crews I feel much more connected with the project.

I have been fortunate not to have had a bad experience I can usually sniff them out.

I have been fortunate not to have had a bad experience I can usually sniff them out.

Thankfully, that gets easier to do as time goes on.

@Nick - interesting to hear you used Baking Paper with a Redhead - never thought of that. I may give it a try!

Yeah, baking paper can handle really high temps, so I just pegged a couple of layers onto the barn doors. I did the same with a single sheet over the kino flo just to diffuse it a bit as well.

Good thinking! Usually I like to bounce them off some poly or shoot them into a large sheet of muslin but sometimes that isn't practical.

Not really related but on the topic of Redheads - on a recent shoot one of the runners somehow misplaced our clamps - we didn't find them till the end of the day, and there were no clothes pegs at the location we were shooting in. We ended up using electrical tape to strap gels to the barn doors of redheads knowing full well that they'd melt in less than 5 minutes. They did too. Despite switching them off to cool them. Nasty smell - probably not very good for you either. Anyway, the gaffer ended up just retaping every five minutes...

The moral of the story is use big gels, don't tape them to your hot lights with electrical tape!

I have a bad post production story for you:

Some years ago, I edited a short film for a young female director in Berlin.
It was a ten-minute film and I also had to do all the sound-syncing before I could start editing, so it was quite a bit of work.

The editing went fine and I was happy with it. I even asked her if she was satisfied with my work and she said yes. Unfortunately the ending of the film didn't work. There was nothing I could do about that because of the way it was shot. It was clear that the director realized that too. She said that she had to think about it.

One month passed in silence.

When I contacted her again, she told me that she had re-edited the film without me.
I'm not a bad editor and I'm always open for ideas so I have no clue why she did this.
It was just insulting.



Good experience:
I guess being D.I.T. and editor on a martial arts commercial recently. I prefer being a Post-guy and the job of D.I.T. gives me the opportunity to be on set and give valuable advice to the director while still doing what I do best.

I consider it also good to have good idea how stuff works on the set is really nice ability.
Even when working mostly in post it feels to me that to have ability to use
light meter and knowledge of light setup and dop work helps when consulting on set.
This makes me "eat" everything i can get from threads like this.

I think i saved one music video shoot as i was demanding more light on the set
as i actually was the guy do color correct it later on.
On red histogram there was only 25% of curve of 100% what made me really nervous.
It would go bad in post even when shot on red under exposed.

Please keep story's coming!

Worst set:
I was the main DP on a historical documentary shot this year in July.
Already during pre-production i had a small feeling that something was not right.
(short story, the producer, a friend of mine, whom was also the director, didnt listen to me and another friend of mine when it came to different things, such as re-enactors and stuff, and gave those responsibilities to another production friend of mine, who had never done such things{she was then still after the 1st year of production at our school, while the director was finished with the 4th year}Ofc, im not blaming her just so that is said)
Another thing is that the producer/diretor didnt manage to get more people for production so he had almost 3 to 4 other roles he had to take care of, which meant that sometimes i was left to direct the whole thing.
In any case, i had also invited another DP friend from Norway to help me out on this set, since this was my first, major undertaking, and i was hopeing that everything would have gone by profesional standards.
Ofcourse it didnt, even though i was asking the director a few days before if everything was set, and ready for shooting.
Mostly it was the production/directing department that was lacking because of the many things that were production wise beeing finished on the days we were shooting, which kind of stressed me and the rest of the crew. We had 7 days to shoot everything, and somehow we did shoot everything in those days, thankfully to the will of some of the crew, altough it was pretty close to muttiny near the end.
The camera and props/scenography department got aswell cheers and thanks from the rest of the crew because we were able to take and handle the project, while the director was somewhere else.

Now the project is beeing edited, dont need to do any reshoots, and im waiting for the chance to colorcorrect it.
As soon as the trailer is colorcorrected, ill let you guys know

Best set:
So far all of the other sets that i have been on, have been pretty ok, no bad stuff going on.
One school set thought was pretty far out, since i managed to shoot everything that was in the script (which is rare at school) and got lots of positive feedback from the school supervising units/producers.
The film itself got badly edited though, and most of the meaning in the story got cut out :/ But all in all, i think everyone on set was happy with the project.