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  1. #1
    Rotting Zealot
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    choptop2's Avatar
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    Kickstart My Heart!!

    Let’s do something different! The filmmakers section has become nothing but strangers looking for hands out on Kickstarter/indiegogo. I thought it would be fun for filmmakers to share their Production Nightmares. Don’t have to mention names to protect the innocent and the incompetent.

    I was an Art Department PA on a low-budget sizzle reel for a proposed tv/web series. The man strutting around claiming to be the writer and Executive Producer, never stepped foot on a set. Amateur or Professional. But because he was able to dig up some cash from investors and get a crew, he was a big shot. He always had a cigar in his mouth, raving about his Producer title.

    One night we’re shooting a simple scene, a girl working out. There’s no script or shot list on set. But we’re told it’s a girl working out in what’s suppose to be some kind of POW camp. The Big Shot tells me to grab some cinder blocks for the work out scene. I Lug them onto the stage and ask the director where they’re supposed to go.

    Director says “Get those the fuck out of here, this is a film shoot we’re going to use apple boxes!” I had thought the actress was going to be lifting the blocks for the workout scene… Wrong! They just wanted to make her taller in the frame. The director then leans over to the DP and says “You can tell who’s been on a set & who hasn’t. Some of these guys don’t even know what an Apple Box is.”

    I looked like a damn fool. I went to film school and worked on several shorts and features before this. I know damn well what an apple box is! ( & its brothers the halfbox , three quarter and pancake) Rest of that night I was trying to compensate and use industry terms the whole night. “That light has some spill, you want me to flag it off or get blackwrap?” etc.

    Moral of the story; if you want to call yourself a FILM producer, please know what the fuck an Apple Box is! This guy will end up paying somebody $500 for C-47s rentals.

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  2. #2
    Child of the Grave
    The Duke of NY...A#1
     
    koolmike's Avatar
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    lol

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    "Wake up sucker, we're thieves and we're bad guys. That's exactly what we are."


  3. #3
    Demon to Some
    Imagine peace on this earth
    when there's no grief Imagine
    grief on this earth when
    there's no peace
     
    Darkgod's Avatar
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    This is pretty funny

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  4. #4
    Rotting Zealot
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    choptop2's Avatar
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    In film school one Lab Instructor was DPing a feature for a friend, he had asked students to work as PAs. The film was essentially Lord of the Rings but replace Frodo and characters you care about with a Xena Knock off and body builders. We didn't care. It was a FEATURE! We were naive enough to get excited.


    At the time this film was in production off & on for two years. Key Crew members had left the project, financing would fall through, the original DP passed away. So whatever chaotic force that controls the universe was begging them to STOP production! The idea was to use the campus' resources to finally finish this monster in 10 days. This was in 2009. The film is still shooting...



    The writer/director/star/producer/stunt woman (I have found the more titles a person has on an No Budget shoot the less talent the they have) was getting access to a CineAlta, the camera Lucas used for the prequels, A soundstage, permit free locations, a 1 ton Grip and Electric truck crew of students and Professionals all for FREE! Networking favors the ruthless.


    All this for free, but the producer was refusing to drop money on craft services. DP had to twist her arm. The Golden Rule in Indie Filmmaking is; If you can't PAY your crew, you FEED your crew. Doesn't take much, fresh bagels and hot coffee will go a long way. So by day two The Quintuple-Threat Producer buckled. Her Personal Assistant arrived with one loaf of bread & walmart brand PB&J... Oh each slice of bread was cut in half to make the loaf go further.


    Why the 1st Assistant director kept his schedule/shot list I have no idea. Call time for actors was 8am and the writer/director/star/producer/stunt woman, Who's in EVERY fucking shot, usually arrived at 10:30 and sat in the make up chair till 11:30...



    But the 1st AD asks me to be his 2nd AD on day 3. It's now my job to get actors to and from the greenroom and sets. A Babysitter. So we're behind schedule and I'm told once this one actor gets out of make up, immediately get him to the location. I see the actor in the greenroom. His makeup is done but He tells me he's just waiting on wardrobe to bring him black socks for the scene. 15 minutes pass and he is still sitting around barefoot. I find the costume lady and ask what's up with these black socks for the scene?

    "Oh yes! Right!" She shouts and then kicks off her shoes and PEELS the black socks off her own FEET. Hands them to me and says "They're a little moist but not sweaty!" Disgusted I take the socks over to the actor, he saw the old broad take them off her feet, and without hesitation puts them on his own feet. Then what does he do? Puts on KNEE HIGH BUCCANEER BOOTS! Socks disappear. What the fuck!?

    ------

    The poor Art Director on this film. She was given nothing and is trying to pass off a living room set from a previous shoot as a medieval castle. We had 2 sets and would just keep putting up different fabrics and furs to make them look like different rooms. This is very Corman-esque. But she made it work.

    But man did the Star love to chew her out. There's a scene that requires a dozen roses. The superstar gives the Art Director $10 and says go find me roses. When the Art Director came back with silk flowers she almost got her head bit off.
    "I give you $10 and you come back with FAKE flowers!?! I want real roses dammit!"
    "I couldn't get a dozen real for $10"
    "If you bought it from the mexicans on the side of the road you could have!"

    Yikes.

    Then there was the star's super serious meryl streep acting moment. She's feeling pings of guilt and to wash it away she's going to try to scrub it away with a sponge in the bath. Now just to be a bitch, she tells the art director she's not competent enough to shop for props, so she sends out her personal assistant to get the sponge for this scene.

    What does he come back with? A fucking SCOTCHBRITE pad! They had those in 1700s right? Doesn't matter because that's what ended up on camera.

    The starlet keeps talking about how emotional this scene has to be how she has to scrub away all her pains and the DP agrees and once they start shooting, the DP who doesn't know she's using a fucking abrasive 3M scrubber, keeps shouting at her to rub harder. Go for it. Bitch rubs herself until she bleeds! NO JOKE. Who's to blame? That's right the Art Director.

    At the end of that night I shared a joint with the art director as she vented out all her frustrations with that set.

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  5. #5
    Demon to Some
    Imagine peace on this earth
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    grief on this earth when
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    Darkgod's Avatar
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    dude, keep these coming....awesome

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  6. #6
    Rotting Zealot
    blowin' heads up
     
    BurnetRhoades's Avatar
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    True that, craft service is the easiest, cheapest way to keep a crew you're exploiting from quitting. As far as I know on our two films we didn't ever have any crew fully work for free but we fed everyone and when any sort of shortage or issue came up related to food and beverage we took care of it immediately. We were pleased as punch on Sick Boy that we were able to find a caterer to come in. We had quick-n-dirty days where it was sandwiches but more often than not we had breakfast tacos, several burger cook-outs, salmon a couple times and even brisket. We had 100% crew retention, both times and ended production knowing that if they were available each and every one of them would likely come back to work with us again.

    I'll never understand productions being so cheap they can't feed people. That's seriously saving money in the wrong place. Plus, you can save here and there getting certain things donated (though this tactic is likely to be more effective for indies outside California). We've been given free cases of beer, soda and water. We had one particularly awesome day where a local diner brought in a full-on catfish and fried chicken buffet for the cast and crew (in retrospect we did note everyone moved a little slower after lunch that day, lol).

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    Last edited by BurnetRhoades; 09-28-2012 at 01:51 AM.

  7. #7
    Rotting Zealot
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    choptop2's Avatar
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    We almost got a hot meal on that set... once.

    After everyone complained about triangle shaped PB&J sandwiches and tapwater, a hot meal of homemade rigatoni was brought in. The personal assistant mom made it I think. However they brought it in a dutch oven with no way to keep it warm. Lunch was delayed FOUR HOURS.

    This was a pure vanity project and it wasn't just meant to show off the Lead's acting talents, but her Stunt talents as well. A scene called for her to fall out of a 10 foot high tree.

    She fucking wrote this scene, bragged about doing it, and what happens on set? She chokes! First it takes forever for her to climb the ladder onto the tree branch. There was a huge matt for her to fall on. Stunt Co ordinator showed her how to take the fall a dozen times. She wouldn't budge. Finally stunt coordinator brings in this huge 6 ft high air mattress that she can fall onto. The finished shot you can barely tell she falls.

    So four hours later and the pasta has become cold, coagulated cheese clumps with sticky noodles. Ended up going to a Wendy's.

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  8. #8
    Zombiefied Zealot
    damn status bar...my entries
    are too long for you:dislike:
     
    IrishG3nt's Avatar
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    chop you have me pissing myself over here this shit is hilarious!!

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    The UHM Clown

    “I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
    ― Edgar Allan Poe

  9. #9
    Rotting Zealot
    blowin' heads up
     
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    Horror stories from the trenches of VFX aren't nearly as entertaining as those from the set.

    A buddy of mine from CalArts who was also my roommate got a job at the studio I was working at. He didn't have any previous professional experience in production so he had to start in the entry-level, technical role of I/O which had more to do with computer science nerd stuff, networking, tape drives, etc. than anything to do with animation or film. The tools were just horrible back then, often crashing or breaking in some way and if you weren't a full-on UNIX guru you were SOL to solve your own problems.

    Background on my buddy is he was born in New York but his family (opera singers) moved to Europe when he was a baby so he grew up the first fifteen years of his life in Germany, speaking German. In high school his family moved back to New York where he finished school and somehow picked up a textbook NY-Italian accent when he spoke English (which matched his NY Italian persona). This was always amazing to me because his family never spoke English to one another unless they were including someone else in the conversation.

    One particularly bad weekend leading up to a deadline, either for Show West or some silly trailer deadline or some other reason for everyone to freak out and madly scramble around I was headed out pretty late and stopped by my roomie''s cube to see if he was going to be able to leave anytime soon, figuring I'd wait for him and we could carpool. It wasn't often practical for us to combine our hour-plus commute from Sherman Oaks to Venice but I knew he'd been there three straight days, too paranoid to leave long jobs running so that he could get some sleep at home.

    I found him, scruffy, staring bleary eyed into his monitor, watching at least a half dozen jobs slowly echo'ing their progress to stacks of IRIX shell windows. When I asked if he was anywhere close to being able to head home he just starts babbling to me in German. I could tell it was German because I somehow passed three years of it in high school being able to say not much more than, "hello, how goes it today?" and "today is my birthday," and "I have a big, red erection." I knew it was German but I didn't know what he was saying to me.

    I stopped him and told him my problem and he just looked at me. Several times he opened his mouth like he was about to say something but nothing came out. Finally, he just waved me away and put his head down on his desk. So I go home and when I wake up the next day I can tell he still hasn't been home. If I remember right, it would be the following evening before we eventually hooked up again, either at work or at home and he says to me: "dude, it was so weird. When you came by last night I could understand what you were asking me but I couldn't figure out how to say what I was thinking in English. I just couldn't form the words. All I could speak was German!"

    That's a whole level of tired I still have a hard time fathoming. Being so tired you lose access to parts of your brain. I've been so tired I couldn't keep my eyes open or I'd wake up and not remember closing my eyes. But unable to speak...wow.

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  10. #10
    Rotting Zealot
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    choptop2's Avatar
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    His brain melted to Strudel!

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  11. #11
    UHM's Rogue Director
    Any man who thinks he can be
    happy and prosperous by
    letting the Government take
    care of him, better take a
    closer look at the American
    Indian.
     
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    A true story...

    You're going to love this one. One lovely winter day in turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh, I was drafted by my friend Bub, a producer, to take time away from pre-production on my feature to direct a trailer for a writer whose screenplay had won a regional Pennsylvania competition and received a grant through the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He wanted to go further with the screenplay and get himself known as a real screenwriter so he threw some money our way, and we picked out a few good scenes that seemed representative and cinematic, and went about the pre-production to shoot them.

    Flash forward to the third shooting day. Bub (who's name has been changed here) and I are "out in the cut" in a little town south of Pittsburgh on the Youghiogheny River called West Newton. The scene takes place down by the river's edge where our hero(?) takes a hostage. Before the crew shows up, Bub and I, bundled up against the cold, South-Western Pennsylvania winter wind, go to locate an eight-foot rowboat he arranged for us to take the props and actors over to a little island we've picked as the location. We find the guy, get the boat -- small boat -- and start to load it up with props. As the crew arrives and we load the rowboat, my friend Jim (who naturally I conned into being a grip) comes over and inspects it. He looks at the boat, then looks up at me and says "You're going to need a bigger boat..." Yeah, yeah. Ha-ha. I say "We'll be fine."

    Bub and I devise a way to run a belay line from shore to the rowboat, in case of trouble. We board the rowboat which sinks down to where the water level is about two inches from the top. Bub and I, undaunted, look at each other and shrug. Jim reiterates his distress at seeing his friend go out onto the icy waters of the Youghiogheny River in an overloaded rowboat. "We'll be fine," I say.

    We push off, Bub letting out the belay line, as the current takes us off toward the island. All was going well until we ran out of line. About a hundred and fifty yards from the island, the line pulls tight in Bub's hands. Instead of just letting it go and trying to navigate on our own, he panics and pulls at it. Hard. I suppose it wouldn't have mattered anyway since he'd tied the line to the boat anyway. The icy water starts to pour in over the sides of the boat. Bub looks at me and I at him, and in about two seconds the boat sinks. We're both in winter gear, trying to stay afloat in water that must have been around forty degrees, at best.

    Too far from the Island. I glance over at Bub. Still alive. Good. The water is slowing me down. I can't even feel my legs anymore. I look at the shore. A hundred feet away, at least. I start pumping my arms, dragging myself through freezing water by sheer force of will. I glance at Bub. Still alive and doing the same. Good. On the shore, the crew are yelling and screaming. Bub is now yelling "Dial 911! Dial 911!" I wonder how he has the energy. Oh, yes: he's ten years my junior. Jim, my friend, stops to take a picture of us. For posterity, I suppose.

    Still pumping my arms and seriously considering converting from Atheism to Catholicism just in the hope that if there is a God my prayers won't be completely ignored, I realize I'm being pulled AWAY from the shore. By my feet. Which I can't feel anymore. I stop and reach down, realizing that the line Bub tied to the boat is now wrapped around my ankle, and the (small) boat is pulling me down-river with it.

    My head feels funny. Oh, yes: hypothermia. We learned about this when I was in the Army. I'm having trouble remembering where I am and what's going on. I go under. I pull my pocketknife from my pants. I cut the line.

    I drag myself through the water, not knowing why anymore. Fortunately it was in the direction of the shore. I'm trying to do the multiplication tables in my head so that my brain doesn't shut off completely. I don't know what's going on. I'm on the shore, but don't know how I got there. I guess, rightly so, that I did it myself since there wasn't anyone else in the water except for Bub. Jim grabs me. Pulls me to my feet. Starts to rub my shoulders. "Hi J-J-Jim." He takes the knife out of my hand. I see Bub already on shore.

    I warm up in the poor excuse for a convenience store this town sports. Someone keeps pouring hot coffee into me as someone else strips my soaking clothes from me. And not in that good way, either.

    Eventually I come to my senses. One of the crew has some dry clothes in his trunk. I squeeze into them. Jim again says "I told you you needed a bigger boat, you dumb son of a bitch." I smile and look at him. Look at the crew. Think to myself that we don't need a real island, we'll just shoot towards the water and cheat it if we need to. I take another swig of coffee. Hmm. Should have thought about that in the first place.

    I check the inventory against the stuff we lost on the boat. We have extras of all the props. We can rig some reflectors. The cameras were smart and never got into the rowboat.

    "Let's shoot this thing."

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    Last edited by Dr. Phibes; 09-30-2012 at 11:15 AM.

  12. #12
    Rotting Zealot
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    choptop2's Avatar
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    Considering how filthy the Monongahela and Yough rivers are I am surprised you didn't end up looking like Emil at the end of Robocop after falling in.


    Kudos for shooting the thing immediately after suffering hypothermia.

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  13. #13
    Rotting Zealot
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    choptop2's Avatar
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    Hopefully more folks folks that post in here will contribute stories. Sure beats reading about a film that MIGHT happen if it gets enough kickstarter donations.

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  14. #14
    Rotting Zealot
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    A few weeks ago at a site that list Entertainment jobs, I found a listing for "A brand new Theatrical Experience" In need of stage hands and Videographers. Not knowing much about it, I still apply. This week I get an email about a hiring open house.

    SPOILER ALERT: This theatre venue is a Bar (Built right into the side of a Denny's) that splashes paint and has dancers kick dirt around... and there were blue jeans stapled all over the walls...

    There are a few people ahead of me. I hear the owner interviewing a musician who looks like he was just escaped Ben Stiller's Reality Bites. She was rambling about how there should be no Starving Artists, they just need to find their Marketing Niche... Which is why this place was charging $30 just to get in and FIVE dollars for Bud Light Draft beer with food coloring.


    Then it's time for my interview for videographer. She's not looking for someone to shoot the staged performances. Right out the bat she's asking what kind of commercials I would shoot for this place. I tell her that's a director's position. You want a director say so, you want creative input, pay up... (I don't say this)

    After looking at my Resume and Reel she notices how I usually focus on the Art Department. "The bar can use more art direction" -- Yeah with just a handful of blue jeans on the walls it was looking bare. "HOWEVER, you are here two weeks too late" --Hey you decided to have the open house, now!

    And that old chestnut "We simply don't have it in the Budget now, BUT if you'd be willing to VOLUNTEER your services and supplies" -- Yeah so I'd literally have to PAY to dress your stage... "We could consider you for future paid work."

    30 fucking dollars just to get in the place and you can't pay a crew? No Thank you. "There's no such thing as a Starving Artist"... Unless you work for me.

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    Last edited by choptop2; 11-29-2012 at 04:06 AM.

  15. #15
    Rotting Zealot
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    BurnetRhoades's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by choptop2 View Post
    Hopefully more folks folks that post in here will contribute stories. Sure beats reading about a film that MIGHT happen if it gets enough kickstarter donations.
    I'm thinking I'll start a topic on distribution soon. Just gotta get some more thoughts together. More specifically, on how Tim and I have approached getting our films distributed. We're 2:2 now but it's a continuous learning experience. Most of what folks tend to read or hear about for pretty much everything after shooting wraps is folklore and un-truths.

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  16. #16
    UHM's Rogue Director
    Any man who thinks he can be
    happy and prosperous by
    letting the Government take
    care of him, better take a
    closer look at the American
    Indian.
     
    Dr. Phibes's Avatar
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    Had a blast revisiting this thread. Anyone else? Come on, you filmmakers out there: pony up!

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