Quick decision making on set

dlevanchuk

dlevanchuk

Yesterday I had the most nerve wracking shoot ever. Here is the setting:

Seattle. Late October with constant rains.. After three weeks of post-noting the shoot due to work/conflict with schedule/weather you finally get your volunteer actors for a day I shoot. The weather gives you some sunshine! This is a last available day for one of you lead actresses before she moves to a different state and this is her very last scene.
You start the shoot at 4pm. Its a bit late but you didnt have an option because yiu hust got off work and drove on your set like a mad man. You constantly eyeballing the day light because you have no money to get the lights.
The scene is going great. Your decision is to focus only on major parts of the scene to fight the ticking clock of day light : you get actors line delivery and snips of reaction shots. Close ups of hands, feet - fuck em, you ll find a double for the lead actress.
Going over the last 3/8th of the script, everything is fine when suddenly.... "Card is full"... You grab another card "card is full". Shit! You forgot to dump the memory card from the previous shoot! Go for the next card. Full! You look around - you have about 15 mins of usable day light left. No computer to empty your cards... 3/8th of the script is left to shoot. This is your actresses last available day an you HAVE to get her line!!
What do you do! Can't think for too long or the light will go away....



That was my scenario last night.
What would you do in that situation??
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Horrible thoughts come to mind... Capture the audio of the performance and fake the rest with cutaways.

Build a stronger appreciation for stringent adherence to my pre-shoot checklists.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
It's happened so many times to me... and is the reason that I always used new blank tapes and kept fresh ones in stock at all times in my case that I didn't use unless I had to... my camera case was stocked with emergency items as a double check against my own stupidity/laziness.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Actually, that has happened to me. Basically. I didn't forget to dump cards, but underestimated how much video I'd be shooting. My solution was to take the card from the audio recorder, use it for video, keep the camera as close to the talent as possible, and instruct them to project loudly. It sucked to be forced to use in-cam audio, but it was either that or cancel the shoot.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Cracker Funk said:
Actually, that has happened to me. Basically. I didn't forget to dump cards, but underestimated how much video I'd be shooting. My solution was to take the card from the audio recorder, use it for video, keep the camera as close to the talent as possible, and instruct them to project loudly. It sucked to be forced to use in-cam audio, but it was either that or cancel the shoot.
Click to expand...

That is a good solution! I tried that, but I was side swept with my card class rating. Instead of class 10 it was class 4... Too slow, and it would over buffer after 4 seconds of the shoot :(( I was pretty much getting a ton of reaction shots at that point haha and re recorded the audio.
I'm afraid to look at what footage we got now.... But I'm sure I can make it work! :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I would delete a few takes I absolutely know I won't be using. And if still not enough space I would delete other takes I might have used. I'd rather have a not-perfect edit of a scene than an incomplete scene.

Actually I do that often since I have only one card and often forget to turn off recording when I'm giving instructions after a lousy take.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
I'd probably go with deleting some takes that definitely wouldn't be used.

But realistically, this is why every day after set you always make sure you dump cards. Quite often we have a data wrangler on set anyway, but if we don't then we always make sure there's more cards per day than we need, and cards are always dumped every night after the shoot.

I think it's a lesson we all learn though. When I was starting out, there'd be times I'd pull the camera out to go shoot something only to realise I forgot to charge the battery, or that I'd have no spare tapes and have to tape over something I hadn't captured..
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top