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Cameraman Fail!
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I worked for a small gov. access station. We did a “Cops” style show with the local Sherrif’s department. A Deputy had stopped a couple of guys one night for public intox. I and the Deputy I was riding with responded as backup. We had to walk across a wooden foot bridge over a creek to get to where the other Deputy was, I thought I was directly behind ‘my’ Deputy but as I was taping and looking through the lens (not paying attention to anything else) I was actually a few inches to the side….and walked directly into the hole in the bridge.
I threw out my left arm to try to catch myself, and managed to hang on….just long enough to go from vertical to horizontal….then dropped into the water. Fortunately it was only about a foot deep but I landed right side (and camera) first. I instantly sat up and shut off the camera, then yanked the battery as I saw electrical ‘sparks’ in the viewfinder while simultaneously trying to catch my breath and answer the Deputy who was calling my name to see if I was ok. All of this was instinctive, the only thing I can remember registering at the time was one of the drunks saying sympathetically over and over, “oh dude! Oh man!” and me thinking ‘great, I’m getting sympathy from a drunk!’.
The end results? The drunks got to go home as they were no longer the most important thing on the Deputy’s minds, I had a bruise from my wrist to my armpit on my left arm, a 10-inch bruise on my right butt cheek and the camera was fine except for a couple of drops of water in the lens. (Had to send it out to get cleaned).
Something to look back on and laugh but could have been a LOT worse.
mental note….pay attention to your surroundings!
Doug
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It’s always easy to spot a shooter on gear he did not pay for.
While I’m very hard on a camera, I would have just laid down with my arm up and rocked on in that case. I only kill cameras when the shot makes it worth it… and when I purchased the camera.
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I dislocated my shoulder once, shooting hand-held with a rented camcorder in the bed of a dump truck half-full of animal manure. Saved the camera, it never got a thing on it, but all the weight of camera and operator went into the shoulder, and popped it out of the socket. Incredibly painful, especially having to keep shooting, standing on that slick truck bed, while they finished driving, clambering out of the truck, finding a clean place to put the camera down, and only then, popping the shoulder back into place, myself, by grabbing onto a nearby tree branch and hanging off of it. Plus there was trying to drive home, covered in manure, without getting any on the upholstery.
Ah, freelance documentary work, so glamorous. I also never got paid for that gig, but the shoulder still reminds me about it occasionally. -
I once brought a thousand pounds of sand into a studio shoot for chroma-keyed beach shot.
A thousand pounds of sand goes into a studio MUCH easier than it comes out.
Enough said.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Mark’s story made me laugh out loud…several times.
I would imagine everyone here has suffered some form of humility on a shoot. Mine came on a freelance shoot covering the grand opening of a defense contractor’s new headquarters here in Florida. I had the long lens camera on a very very small platform…no secondary platform for me to stand on…just one very tiny platform for me and the camera. Dignitaries, military, and elected officials all came in for this thing. Hell…I think their CEO flew in from Rome. 300 people in an extremely patriotic frenzy…I don’t know how many standing ovations took place. For 45 minutes I was fine…rock solid but being extremely cautious not to move my body around too much lest the camera get a little wobbly. That was my big mistake. I think I started to feel a little faint once the Colonel walked onto the stage and began his presentation. I did everything I could to fight it off……ohh, I’m leaving out a key detail here…to top things off my headsets weren’t working! I was told this by the engineer at the onset of the shoot…”You’ll be able to hear us just fine…but we won’t be able to hear you……” I didn’t even realize I had blacked out until I landed onto a table of 10 (I think a rather plumb woman buffered my fall). The fact that the barbeque hadn’t been served yet is one thing I’m grateful for. That could have been messy. Unfortunately the story doesn’t end there. Things literally STOPPED upon my fall. One minute I’m covering the show…the next I am the show. Surreal. A crowd gathered around me…PR people from the firm rushed over and called the paramedics. 20 years in the business and I had never experienced anything like this. The paramedics came in and tested my vitals…I was fine but they didn’t like the fact I had no color in my face. They wanted to get me to a hospital. I couldn’t believe this was happening. The PR people were about as nice as you could imagine…the engineer came out and said he thought it was a good idea. The director was assuring me it was the thing to do. Sooo…I reluctantly agreed. I figured I’d be able to walk out on my own and they could do their thing. Nooooo…they bring out a gurney and tell me they’re going to have to wheel me out on this. As I’m being carted out the Colonel stepped back on stage and addressed the hushed crowd in a rather reverent manner…..”His name is Scott Whitney….and he’s going to be just fine!” The place erupts into another standing O and the paramedics are chuckling to themselves. “Give them the thumbs up…you gotta give them the thumbs up…you got to.” And so I did. Turned out I was just fine…it was quite the day though. Something I won’t soon forget.
Scott Whitney
Whitney Media Productions
https://www.whitneymedia.tv -
Commercial for a bowling lane, trying to get a shot of the ball going by the lens, you can fill in the blanks 🙂
http://www.MediaCircus.TV
Media Production Services
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
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