Worst Production Stories

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alebris

What was your worst clusterf%@# happening on the set? I'll go first.

Day one of my first project ever. I've spent a lot of money to rent lenses on short notice for a RED camera, rent the location for the day, and get all the actors together. One hour before crew call time my lead actor calls and says he can't make it because his aunt passed away and his mom needs him. What?! He's scheduled for every scene that day. So I call up my Plan B actor and tell him to get his butt to the set. When I get to the set, I notice the girl who is providing ALL the equipment, camera included, is not there. So I call and call and call but no answer. She finally calls back and says she had to stop by the Home Depot on the way to the set and got hit on the head with a ladder and now she has a concussion. In fact, she says, she lost consciousness twice while driving to the set. So three hours after crew call time, my Plan B actor is nowhere to be found. It seems like my first day of shooting has been shot to hell. Fortunately, the original lead was able to break away and make it over to the store, as was the equipment girl, and we were able to shoot half of the scheduled scenes. As for the Plan B actor: when I got home that night, I had a voicemail on my phone saying that his GPS couldn't locate the place and that I should feel horrible for getting him lost in DC. (Umm. I gave you exact directions, explained how DC was laid out on a grid system AND two other people gave you directions after me. If you couldn't figure out that numbering of buildings goes in numerical order, that's your own fault.)

Whew, that feels great getting off my chest! What are your production day cluster%#$@ stories?


Angie
Actress/Producer
www.WatchGraduated.com
 
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Wow that was pretty bad haha, my worst production story isn't as bad, but it still really sucked.


Well first my main character didn't show after we contacted a week before, and the night before to ensure he was coming. After he never showed, I decided to move on and shoot what little I could without him, he eventually shows up at the end of filming when everyone has already left. Along the way my cameraman recorded a 2 hour video of his feet while talking to the actors around set while we were waiting. Needless to say, I plugged in my extra battery which he also wasted the same exact way. He later blamed on an inconvenient record button placement. Obviously I don't use that actor anymore, and I do most of the filming now.
 
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Dang, that sounds like a rough day.

I've already told this story in a different thread, but it's pretty funny, so bears repeating.

We're a few days into shooting my first feature. The more I work with them, the more comfortable I become with the lead cast, as they are really fully stepping into their roles, and it's a lot of fun to see them bring these characters to life.

The two lead characters use bicycles as their primary mode of transportation. Many scenes have been written to take place with the two leads riding their bikes. The climactic finale has a chase-scene written into it, in which our main hero is to ride his bike in a chase-scene, with the damsel-in-distress riding piggy-back (she's very petite, so this wouldn't be a problem for any regular dude).

During casting, it never occurs to me to ask if the actors knew how to ride a bike. Cuz who the F doesn't know how to ride a bike? To me, that's like checking to make sure that everybody knows how to tie their shoes. Anyway, on the fourth or fifth day of shooting, I learn that my lead does not know how to ride a bike. He practically needs training wheels!

Needless to say, I had to do some rewriting!
 
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@ Cracker funk. Priceless!! I'm with you there, who doesn't ride a bike at least once in their childhood! LOL.

@ Dreadylocks. Since the original actor ending up making it to the set halfway through, we were able to film two scenes that day. But I had to shell out more money to rent that location again to get the scenes we missed.

To add to the thread... the third to last shooting day, the monitor for the camera broke, so we had to call everyone in town hoping that someone would be open on a Sunday and would let us rent a monitor for the RED. An hour later we found someone who drove an hour to deliver it. (What luck!) But my cast and crew weren't to happy about the delay since it was THE hottest day of the year; I think it got to 101 that day. Ugh.

With all the mishaps with my production, I'm so surprised it even made it to Amazon!
 
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Hmm.

I have to say that getting snowed out in mid-late may at 4000 ft while trying to shoot "summer trip to the cabin turns horror movie" did put the breaks on production pretty hard. Nothing like shooting all day while the snow outside the cabin gets deeper and deeper. I think around 5 in dropped that day and basically canceled the next day of shooting.

Come to think of it, I think my pic there to the left is from that day. Maybe from the other day it snowed, can't recall. We got some weird weather for that time of year at that elevation. It didn't so much suck or anything, no way to control it - but it was definitely a cluster-^&&*! :D

Cracker Funk said:
During casting, it never occurs to me to ask if the actors knew how to ride a bike. Cuz who the F doesn't know how to ride a bike?
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised how often that sort of thing gets overlooked, lol. Can you ...

... swim?
... ride a bike?
... swim?
... drive a stick shift?
... swim?
... sprint repeatedly for a prolonged period?
... swim?
... handle being around mud, insects, and the general great outdoors?
... swim?



Did I mention swimming?
 
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I don't feel so bad about my production problems. You guys have had it much worse!

My worst was back in 2008. We spent 2 months planning a night shoot at a creepy mobile home out in the "country," only to get there to discover the air conditioning condenser unit was dead. It was working 2 weeks prior to the shoot. Great. It was in the mid-90s and humid. OK, we brought fans, so we can work around that.

Then, we discovered there was no running water. After calls to the owner, we found out they had shut the water off. No big deal. We dug around through all the deadfall for an hour in the dark to find the tiny hole that had the shut-off valve. We finally found the hole and...it appeared it had become a summer getaway for a rather large family of spiders. I was the lucky one who had to stick my hand in the hole to turn on the water, trying to avoid getting bitten by anything. Whew. Success.

Suddenly, we hear a scream from the mobile home. We ran back and one of our actors was in a panic. Water was shooting out of one of the toilets, and flooding the room we we about to shoot in. Grrr.

I franticly ran back to the hole and once again stuck my hand in the spider-infested hole to shut the water off. By this time, I was losing my patience.

But, we decided we had to shoot, so we pressed on. It wasn't easy scheduling 8 actors and 5 crew members who were doing this gratis. While the producer developed a bathroom plan (there was a gas station not too far away), I spent the next 2 hours lighting the set, avoiding the flooded room. We were finally ready to shoot.

As we began the first scene, our lead actress, who did great during casting, completely froze up in front of the camera. It was...awful. Too late now, so the director did their best to make it work. We got about 3 shots done when suddenly, the electricity went out. $%#@!!! Gotta love living in Tennessee where summer thunderstorms pop up out of nowhere.

After that, we gave up. It was probably for the best. It was a disaster from the start. Any time we have a problem now, I just go back and watch the footage from that shoot. It makes me realize it can't get much worse.
 
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Cracker Funk said:
Dang, that sounds like a rough day.
I learn that my lead does not know how to ride a bike. He practically needs training wheels!
Click to expand...

Should've made him use training wheels :P

Worst thing to happen to me was the first day my group was ever filming anything, I had 4 cancellations day before and day of.
So it was me and 3 other guys with nothing planned out
That's where these two

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chMGVOujVYM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVcnwWoAm44

Which still make me (y) came from
 
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David.rhsc said:
You'd be surprised how often that sort of thing gets overlooked, lol. Can you ...

... swim?
... ride a bike?
... swim?
... drive a stick shift?
... swim?
... sprint repeatedly for a prolonged period?
... swim?
... handle being around mud, insects, and the general great outdoors?
... swim?



Did I mention swimming?
Click to expand...

Swimming!! What a great question to ask at the casting call. I don't know if it's cause I'm from Florida and down there swimming was like a requirement for passing pre-K, but there's a LOT of people in DC that can't swim. How's that even possible? Good thing I haven't done any pool scenes yet.
 
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These are the sort of threads that I so wish we could all magically transport ourselves to a bar or someone's patio with a cooler of beers and spend the evening swapping bungled and botched production stories. Love it. Can you ride a bike? Hysterical.
 
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That is the definition of clusterfuck.

I've never had it so bad on film. I've had more problems with theatre, but none as impressive.

I was acting in a production of The Visit (Durrenmat or whatever) and I broke the handle on the inside of the costume room accidentally about ten minutes before we were due to start. Three of the leads were therefore locked in the costume room for half an hour before someone came and cut the lock out of the door with an electric saw. Needless to say, it threw the start time right off.

In terms of my own productions I was directing (and acting in) a play at the Edinburgh Festival a couple of years ago. It was single act and conducted about 80% in total darkness but with many crucial lighting cues. The dialogue was kind of rambling and we sometimes got the order a little wrong. The audience would never know but it really threw our lighting guy off and on one performance we got to the end of the section, expecting a lighting cue that never came. We had to ad lib for ten minutes before we finally got the cue. I don't know how familiar people are with live theatre but ten minutes is f*@$@# ages and my heart has never been so firmly in my mouth. Eventually the cue came and it's testament to how pointless all the dialogue was that none of the audience seemed to notice we'd been BSing for ten minutes.

Film ones have been less exciting. PDed on a set where we smashed a set of glasses with a golf club and put them straight through a wall. But that was what the director/maniac wanted, so not really a disaster...
 
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