failed shoot, it needed to happen

it just needed to happen. It was an unorganized mess, I spent the whole day buying supplies and still showed up late and had to leave the location to look for last minute things and ended up making the crew wait an extra hour and a half.

1 hour into fail shooting me and my brother agreed we didnt want to be here anymore and started handing out the money and telling them we need to leave.

they were professional.

this shit needed to happen, it just shows every centimeter needs to be planned out, 8 grand down the drain.

EDIT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQiz...ature=youtu.be
 
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I'm a tad confused - Being late to the shoot, leaving for supplies, etc, is something we've all dealt with, but I've never walked away from eight grand an hour into the shoot. What was so wrong with the shoot where an hour in you just started handing out money and leaving? It's one thing to have actors and crew members want to leave if you've caused them distress by making them wait, but I've never heard of the director giving up before them.

It sounds like it could have potentially been salvaged if it had just stuck with it past the first hour. I say this, because I've had shoots exactly like this, and dramatically worse, and usually with some patience and creativity we were able to at least get something out of our time and money. (I once had a shoot at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in CO - The crew accidentally got locked out of the car, so we had to have a giant tow truck come from Denver, all the way into the mountains, up the steep Red Rocks trail and break into the car for us! We wasted like three hours, but still managed to keep going.)
 
this shit needed to happen, it just shows every centimeter needs to be planned out, 8 grand down the drain.

It's only 8 grand down the drain if you didn't learn anything from it. If you've learned from it, then it's not 8 grand down the drain, it's a lesson for which you've paid 8 grand! Hopefully, you've learned more than just the patently obvious lesson, in which case it could end up being a well spent 8 grand.

G
 
If you're paying people and you're late, they wait. No?

But if you didn't want to be there anymore, what do you do? I hope it wasn't your entire life savings blown there.
 
$8,000.00 !!!!!!!!!!! Holy crap. If I had that much invested into one day of filming then by golly something is getting filmed that day.

I too am curious as to what went so wrong as to cancel after such a short period of time. It boggles the mind.
 
Some of the advice he was given this past week

Preproduce the living daylights out of it; you're never prepared enough. Even for a short you should have a small binder almost full of lists for equipment, props, meals/craft table, schedules, release forms, permits, etc. Double check, triple check; confirm, reconfirm. Have plenty of extra scripts.

Suck it up and keep shooting. No one told you making a movie was going to be easy


Boy do I wish he had hired someone to film a BTS
 
First of all, I'm sorry things went poorly for you. I'd be interested to hear more about why your brother and yourself didn't 'want' to be there anymore. Did you shoot anything?
 
me and my brother agreed we didnt want to be here anymore

I'm confused did you guys just decide not to be filmmakers anymore? Because, and I'm gonna echo the others here, it can definitely take hours to get started. Especially on the first day of shooting. There is a lot of waiting around on a film set. This is totally normal.
 
This really has piqued my interested - here are the cliff notes

2012: http://www.indietalk.com/showthread.php?t=44302

If you can't handle the in between boredom and can't self motivate... this may not be your thing. Not trying to be a jerk, but I've never had to tell folks on my set what to do… Self motivation is a huge thing!


I have to agree: the film business is not for you. 12 hours is the industry standard, if you can't handle a job that involves these hours, and if you treat the job by sitting around looking miserable for hours instead of doing the job (and considering not coming in with only 2 hours notice because you're too sleepy), you can't handle anything beyond being a production assistant. Chances are just about everyone you were "working" had a much more difficult job than you, and you can bet that they stayed for the entire shoot as it became a 24 hour marathon. Hell, you just demonstrated that you can barely handle PA duties.

Sorry if this offends you, but find something else to do with your life. Become a 9-to-5 office worker, or be a plumber, or really anything outside of the film industry.

you know what, you guys are right. im gonna change my attitude, start being organized, and never be late for anything ever again.

And quotes from other threads of his, which are more recent:
Me and my brother have had this scene idea for 4 or 5 years now so we want to finally give it a shot and see how it goes.

me and my brother are trying to pay for it. We're going to raise the credit card limit and probably ask parents for a loan

If you have to get a loan to pay for this, I would highly, highly suggest that you don't.

I agree with Mike Regent, if this is just one scene for fun or a short, you should be able to get actors for free (more like food + credit), especially young kids for just one scene.

Paying an unknown child actor $500 is madness.

Also he has created a thread stating he has problems staying motivated during a shoot, which is an absolutely terrible trait for a leader to have, how are you supposed to be keeping everyone else motivated if you can't keep yourself motivated?

Most unsettling of all

my brother and i chose to go straight into film school after highschool, so if we fail we'll be trapped with no jobs and probably be forced to join the army lol

I just turned 23 (I went to a film school for game design when I was 18, I had to take a "foundation" course first and at the end of the course I decided learn film making instead of game design. I never took their real film course, I just had an introduction to film making). I was way more worried about the technical skills of making the scene look good but I didn't realize that organizing everything was half of it.
 
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it just needed to happen. It was an unorganized mess, I spent the whole day buying supplies and still showed up late and had to leave the location to look for last minute things and ended up making the crew wait an extra hour and a half.

1 hour into fail shooting me and my brother agreed we didnt want to be here anymore and started handing out the money and telling them we need to leave.

they were professional.

this shit needed to happen, it just shows every centimeter needs to be planned out, 8 grand down the drain.

First off, you really need to work on your pre-production skills. You shouldn't be out buying supplies and showing up late. Get the supplies you need as soon as you can possibly get them... before the day of the shoot. And show up on time, and have plenty of back up plans in case something fails. Because if there's a possibility something may fail, it probably will. Read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphy's_law

Look, I recommend you start off small. Just shoot something with your brother or a friend or even by yourself. You jumped into something huge way too quick and you may have burned some bridges with possible connections. Start on a smaller scale and work your way up so that you feel comfortable in the atmosphere you're in and you're professional enough to handle it.

Also, how did you blow 8 grand on one day of shooting?
 
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