worst media disaster ever?

[Tom.Wong]

so here's a question just to trade stories. what's the worst thing you've ever done yourself and or see someone do with their shot media on a hard drive/outcomes of those situations. i can name a few to start it off


1. someone who deleted all their archived footage after they transcoded from ex1 to quicktime and kept his whole fcp project on a lacie rugged drive, no backups nothing.

he managed to finish the project and deliver it before anything serious happened. sheer dumb luck

2. somebody who knocked over their hard drive really hard on the wooden table at an edit suite while it was rendering, and he picked it back up while it was still going with a lot of force and slammed it back on the table.

the drive started clicking...


3. was on set for a job, and the producer handed me a western digital passport drive and said that was all they had for offloads....

i yelled at him to get me better drives, and at least 2 of them, bare minimum. he got them for me

 

[Martin Weiss]

In film school I once realized that a roll of film had been stapled together (probably to make a longer run of 2 short ends).

Same film school, I once saw that a screw was missing from a mag, letting light leak through to the negative. When I informed the camera dep't guy about it, he just said "we know".

 

[Patrick Tresch]

The director, who wanted to do a copy of a Hard drive containing all originals of the sound footages of a feature (2 TB), used "carbon copy" software but instead of copying he deleted the hard drive... He then had the idea to use the production backup hard drive to copy the lost media but deleted it also...

After a week of despair, some friends managed to recrate the files by a guessing programm who assembled the different bits into polyfonic sound files. We manually reconnected and tagged them to the original names by listening at them one by one.

We managed to get 95% of the sound back.

Pat

 

[jimhare]

A few months ago I was on tour with Wayne Brady, doing multi-cam Red.

In Melbourne I was in the hotel at 1 a.m. backing up files. I got up, tripped over the power cable to the external drive and it flew off the table to it's death.

Lucky for me it was the backup, and I returned home with all my footage intact.

If not for the second drive it would have been "hey Wayne, remember all that great footage we shot? Um..."

 

[Steve Sherrick]

I was operating on a job recently and at the end of the night, director is walking to his car with some stuff, and I suddenly heard a crash. I looked over and a hard drive was sitting at the director's feet. Unfortunately, the tech had given him the drive without any case or packaging. Seeing that it was a WD drive, I thought to myself, no way that thing's going to work ever again. I was wrong, it booted up fine. But then I gave a five minute talk about why drives are treated like film negative, and that a drive should never be transported that way under any circumstance. Fortunately, they had another backup drive had that one not worked, but still the sound of that drive hitting the street like that really gave me a heart attack and I wasn't even the tech.

Dino had made it a point about walking around on set with drives (he was referring to RED drives but same principle) and that they should always go in a case when walking more than a couple of feet with them, and it makes a lot of sense. You risk getting distracted, and perhaps losing hold of the drive. You can never be too careful when it comes to protecting media.

 

[Jon B.]

I plugged the power wrong (disturbingly easy to do) into a Lacie and fried the back-up drive. Backed up originally from a Red hdd which was taken by a friend in an emergency at the end of the shoot so didn't have the original as planned.

Had another back-up on my desktop but was missing 7 set-ups out of 30-35. Took an identical drive apart to swap parts and hopefully salvage (amateur move) and fried that drive in the process.

I have the both dead drives sitting at my feet still, in case I ever get the clams to shove out for the recovery (like $1400)

Good thing it was a pet project, but had to explain to my friends what happened to those sweet shots.

 

[Tom.Wong]

got another one dealing with media management, but just as bad

thesis film for school, a girl accidently knocks out the power for her G drive while cutting, exits, hit save by accident in FCP, opened it back up after she plugged the drive back in, everything is still offline. her files were so scattered on her drive, nothing was re online right, she labeled everything badly and had a ton of redudant file names. film was do next day, she handed it in as a hodge podge film with segments linked to other films she shot in her earlier years. needless to say, nobody understood anything that was happening int he movie...

 

[Harry Clark]

What about NASA erasing the original slow scan "camera originals" of the first moon landing (the NTSC converted 15 fps footage is all that remains)
Apparently they had three copies, none of which seems to have survived. Tapes were routinely erased and reused (also a policy at the BBC, resulting in many one of a kind shows and performances being lost forever!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes
Cheers,
Harry

 

[Tom.Wong]

bladerunner, initial release did so badly they had all master copies destroyed. the very last reel of it got miss cataloged in a warehouse for destruction, was setting there forever until somebody found it and called and asked about it, in which it returned for blue ray remaster... i thank counts as worst disaster and best success story.

 

[I Bloom]

What about NASA erasing the original slow scan "camera originals" of the first moon landing (the NTSC converted 15 fps footage is all that remains)
Apparently they had three copies, none of which seems to have survived. Tapes were routinely erased and reused (also a policy at the BBC, resulting in many one of a kind shows and performances being lost forever!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes
Cheers,
Harry

They should just go back in the studio and reshoot those moon shots.

IBloom

 

[Peter Osinski]

a friend of mine was shooting for his Film 2 class. I came to his first set up when I had some free time to help him light it, but then was too busy to help for the rest of the day. At about midnight he calls me and says "hey man, you don't need to protect the film from light once you shot it right?" Apparently he took it out of the magazine and dropped it right in the can without using a film bag. I of course told him that he was f**ked and he needed to reshoot.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

They should just go back in the studio and reshoot those moon shots.

IBloom

I was listening to some experts talk about this the other night, and it is starting to make me wonder if it was all a fake after all. Neil Armstrong saying he didn't see stars. Another astronaut says he can't remember the feeling he had when he walked on the moon, and of course some of the lighting discrepancies that have been called into question. Would be a major blow to American history if this was ever proven to be a studio shoot.

In my heart, I don't want to believe they faked it. But when you hear one of the designers of the cameras used talking about how shocked they were that the film didn't show the kind of fogging and contamination they were expecting given the conditions, it makes you wonder.

 

[Robert Frank]

I got up, tripped over the power cable to the external drive and it flew off the table to it's death.

This is the top of the list that I hear from people!

The next is having a drive on the floor next to the desk and someone walking by and kicking it across the room! :frown:

 

[N_Villers]

How about when I was just unpacking a brand new g-drive raid purchased for a feature I was dit on and it slipped out of the packaging to the floor right in front of the producer, production manager and about 10 other people. I tested the drive and it worked fine all the way through the feature. lol

 

[Frank Cueto]

I must have one of the most amazing of all these stories....

Years ago, in the Caribbean sea, a crew was set about filming a rum advert spot on a sailboat. To those who know sailboats, these are very crammed spaces... Anyways. One of the crew members had the urge to go do some #2, and when he tried to get to the head (toilet in boat speak) he found that the access was blocked by some lights that had been setup in that space. He REALLY needed to go, and was running out of patience quick, sooooooo..... He saw a lonely 35mm film can, both sides, not even put together, and h4 guesses what would be the harm, right? So he went about his business onto the poor 35mm film can LID, and after he was done he put the other half and closed it, figuring he could come about later pick it up and dispose of it accordingly...

We had a Great film Loader on that spot, and the poor sap was walking around the sailboat and saw a haphazardly placed can of 35mm film, he had no idea what it was, he was even concerned that it was exposed film and that if missing it would be his fault, so he went ahead, wrapped it up in tape and stored it with the rest of the film, thinking that if it was exposed film, all was good, and the worst that could happen is that nothing was shot on it, better safe than sorry, right?

jejejeje......


Couple days later the Lab tech called the production house, he wanted to speak with whoever was in charge. He said that in the 30 some years he had been working in film developing no one had sent him "Caca en la lata" (shit in the Can). Can you imagine this poor guy, sitting in a dark space,m opening this can up, being hit by the waft, and inserting his hands into the can, only to find the "gift" ?

Nuff to say, to this day we still make fun of the poor guy who laid the shit in the can, and now a days he is a VERY talented DoP, but still, funny as hell =)

 

[Roberto B]

In film school I once realized that a roll of film had been stapled together (probably to make a longer run of 2 short ends).

Same film school, I once saw that a screw was missing from a mag, letting light leak through to the negative. When I informed the camera dep't guy about it, he just said "we know".

fancy fancy filmschool.. not german the gang supposes

 

[Tom.Wong]

friend of a friend's story.

director goes to the beach with a sr-2 and her crew, they are doing underwater shots with housing and all. 2nd ac has the tether to keep it from floating away, slips out of his hands and the camera sinks to the bottom of the ocean. the housing wasn't sealed properly and it sprung leaks.

they couldn't find it after diving for it for hours.

3 weeks later it washes up on the beach 3 miles down from where they shot and a surfer finds it. he just happened to be a friend of the director's. she brings it back to the school where she took it out from and the people working there just look at her like this.

O_O


some of these stories are so ridiculous that they HAVE to have happened.

 

[Joel Kaye]

My brother used to tell a story about shooting beauty shots of a beer company speed boat off the pacific coast from a helicopter (years ago). He was either shooting or assisting and the tail rotor has a malfunction - the chopper starts spinning out of control and everything not nailed down goes flying out including all the film. The pilot hobbled back to the beach for a hard landing. My brother has been an editor ever since. LOL.

 

[Peter Osinski]

friend of a friend's story.

director goes to the beach with a sr-2 and her crew, they are doing underwater shots with housing and all. 2nd ac has the tether to keep it from floating away, slips out of his hands and the camera sinks to the bottom of the ocean. the housing wasn't sealed properly and it sprung leaks.

they couldn't find it after diving for it for hours.

3 weeks later it washes up on the beach 3 miles down from where they shot and a surfer finds it. he just happened to be a friend of the director's. she brings it back to the school where she took it out from and the people working there just look at her like this.

O_O


some of these stories are so ridiculous that they HAVE to have happened.

so do you mean the operator holding the camera and the 2nd ac holding the tether both dropped it? lol

 

[Tom.Wong]

essentially yes. it was epic fail on all fronts of the production. EPPPIIIIC FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL