Share your DIT Horror Stories!!

[Aaron Hunt]

I don't have anything too crazy myself... On an Indie Feature our DIT 'accidentally formatted 6 days worth of footage' that had for some reason not been backed up (we had a complicated/inconsistent on site DIT scenario), BUT, luckily the editor made his own back up copy on a whim before he had to fly out to LA, so all was fine. But that literally would have been the film, it would have been cancelled. I imagine there has to be more stories like this, and ones more drastic? The DIT was quickly replaced.

 

[Dan Kanes]

That doesn't sound like a Digital Imaging Technician, more like a "Dangerous Information Trasher"

This kind of thing stems from people thinking that a DIT is someone who just copies files... In a case like this, I would prefer to literally use a scripted automated file transfer software compared to an overly eager PA who plays a lot of computer games...

By that I mean, in this era, better to spend the money for a professional to do their job, or not do it at all if its a burden on the budget.. Sad but true...

One time, back in the Red One days I had a guy cover me for a day who managed to blow up the Firewire800 port on his laptop, and a G-Drive. Now that same guy DIT's pretty big sized jobs. Who would have thought?

Can I just say, Fuck Firewire...

 

[Hal Long]

My favorite DIT is one of my first calls when getting underway. With so many things to keep track off as DP on set, it's invaluable to know your footage is in good hands and that the right set of eyes are watching your back.

 

[Louis Maddalena]

I DIT a lot, so I don't have any horror DIT stories as I can be pretty strict about about workflow. But one of my clients tried to go a job without me....

Took the footage out of the camera, brought it over to media management, got distracted for a moment, picked up the same card and brought it back to camera and formatted it. Whole days shoot was gone.

They never shot again with out me on set.

 

[Nick Gardner]

Jesus. Why do we still have dits? Loader. done.

Nick

 

[Dan Kanes]

All of these stories _are_ loader stories hahaha.

However - one of the carryovers from the film days is that the loader position is basically made out to be a "low man on totem pole" concept.

This is a fucking stupid anachronistic attitude.

Even thinking to film - hey let's make the person who could completely fuck up the whole thing by making a tiny mistake at any point responsible, and pay them the lowest, and make them the hinge point / lynch pin of production so that if anything at all goes wrong we can scapegoat them!

If the concept of a loader was treated with a level of respect it would be fine.

having someone who has more capability than just copying files - even if their task happens to be just copying files for a day is invaluable.

Look at when Panavision used to send out camera techs who would be on set to fix a camera or adjust something.

My belief is that unless an AC is actually intelligent in digital workflow (and let's be honest - Not all of them are even up to speed on what is happening technically with a digital camera, and are living in a nostalgic/anachronistic/hazy world view and blaming "the damn red camera" for their own lack of knowledge/issues) then you need someone who can smoothe things over. There are cases where everything can go fine with either a "basic" PA copying files, an automated file transfer station (my preference), or a very green person with barely passible computer understanding being a "loader" but more often than not this situation can lead to a big log jam on set at some point.

Problems also stem from Crew jealousy "Why does that person get to sit in the truck and click a mouse?" "That person needs to do my time cards!" "Hey loader - make me a coffee! and bring me xyz, you aren't doing anything important."

in summary - you only don't need someone of advanced intelligence, until you need them. Then you really need them. That's why I oversee traditional DIT technical camera jiggies myself when shooting, and always check up on the data or even initiate automated transfers myself sometimes.

Its a luxury to have someone smart to help on set, and let me tell you, I'm not a masochist, I like luxury.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

DIT's should not handle backups of files. A DIT is responsible for technical advices, LUT handling etc. but a DIT is only necessary when the cinematographer don't understand the camera :tongue_smilie:
Nowadays, since I stopped working as a DIT, if I ever am on location and get a credit for it I call myself a Digital Cinema Supervisor. But those handling the files are called Data Wranglers or Data Management. My first title was before the name "DIT" had even been put into use and it was called DMT, Data management technician.

I had a flawless track record except for one occasion when the producers said they needed me to be a second unit director a click away from the main shoot. I told them that I cannot be responsible for handling the material for the main unit if I'm over there shooting other things. They, in their arrogance and inability to listen to better knowing people, said it will be fine, that they will handle it. They lost the whole day of that shoot and the only material that was captured and correctly managed was my own second unit stuff because I was responsible for it. When I confronted the producers about this they complained about me, that I didn't do my job, never worked with them after that and they surely screwed up another shoot as well. Arrogant and ignorant producers are the worst people on a film set, that's for sure.

 

[Daniel Stilling]

What about positive stories?
What about that time the DIT made your footage shine for the client and you got hired again because of that?
What about when he made an extra copy of the footage just before the other drives broke/got damaged/dropped in the pond/eaten by the dog?
We always hear about bad stuff. I'm tired... Looking forward to positive thinking.

 

[Christoffer Glans]

What about positive stories?
What about that time the DIT made your footage shine for the client and you got hired again because of that?
What about when he made an extra copy of the footage just before the other drives broke/got damaged/dropped in the pond/eaten by the dog?
We always hear about bad stuff. I'm tired... Looking forward to positive thinking.

Because people like drama, it's the whole building block of screenwriting. It's also the whole building block for almost anything on TV and why people sit nailed at the screens. People don't like things that are good, even when they read or watch something that is just good they do it to juxtapose against their own life or something that is bad or has drama.

1. I woke up, opened the window and it was a great day, I was happy.

2. I woke up, opened the window and there was a man standing there screaming at me that he was gonna bash my head in, I shut the window and locked the door and...

The second one could continue forever as a story, the first one, well.. it ended there. :tongue_smilie:

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Everybody has this kind of horror story (even from the film age). But I wonder who will the Kamize be to put this out into the world. ;-)

 

[Dermot Shane]

only one..a tv movie for a nameless USA cable network.. shot on Epic, i was told looked good on set on the DiT's mon, dark / moody / see the eyes through shadows stuff

in the suite it was really REALLY dark, i was the third colorist to work on the show, called in for a "hail Mary" pass, as the show was about to be thrown away top to tail by said network...

The only thing i did diffrently was to throw away all onset metadata, includeding some pretty insanse FLuts and other DiT artwork

show was still underexposed as it turns out the DiT has used a Mac display set to flat out, full gammut, 300+ nit and the DP trusted that

But it was workable with some agressive NR and masking, but i did have the iso turned up well past where the DP had his settings at

End of the day it was the DP who carried the can on that show, and as far as i am aware he's not shot anything for that broadcaster since then

Some bridges were burnt by trusting a DiT (and his mon) on set

For me the cheque cleard the bank, and i have gone back to gradeing features for theaters mainly, not being a fan of 5 day scheds for a 90 min TV movie. and that seems the norm in 2016

the more the grade sched gets compressed, the more colorists need to lean on the DiT (or Alexa..) it's definatly faster to work off the DiT's settings if they are of value, and definatly far, far slower if they prove not to be trustworthy

in features i discard all but temp/tint/exposure but there i have enough time to change as needed, and there i normaly work in ACEScc and as a resualt the starting point is not the same as RC/RG, so the onset metadata is also not an accurate of the intent of the Director and DP anyway

 

[Mark K.]

only one..a tv movie for a nameless USA cable network.. shot on Epic, i was told looked good on set on the DiT's mon, dark / moody / see the eyes through shadows stuff

in the suite it was really REALLY dark, i was the third colorist to work on the show, called in for a "hail Mary" pass, as the show was about to be thrown away top to tail by said network...

The only thing i did diffrently was to throw away all onset metadata, includeding some pretty insanse FLuts and other DiT artwork

show was still underexposed as it turns out the DiT has used a Mac display set to flat out, full gammut, 300+ nit and the DP trusted that

But it was workable with some agressive NR and masking, but i did have the iso turned up well past where the DP had his settings at

End of the day it was the DP who carried the can on that show, and as far as i am aware he's not shot anything for that broadcaster since then

Some bridges were burnt by trusting a DiT (and his mon) on set

For me the cheque cleard the bank, and i have gone back to gradeing features for theaters mainly, not being a fan of 5 day scheds for a 90 min TV movie. and that seems the norm in 2016

the more the grade sched gets compressed, the more colorists need to lean on the DiT (or Alexa..) it's definatly faster to work off the DiT's settings if they are of value, and definatly far, far slower if they prove not to be trustworthy

in features i discard all but temp/tint/exposure but there i have enough time to change as needed, and there i normaly work in ACEScc and as a resualt the starting point is not the same as RC/RG, so the onset metadata is also not an accurate of the intent of the Director and DP anyway

Ouch.

Precisely the reasons I feel that developing, lighting for and shooting with a single 'one-light' monitoring LUT is the most sensible course of action for the vast majority of productions. Everyone's schedules are so compressed these days, any added simplicity to the overall workflow at least leaves more time for everyone to do their one-thing well.

 

[Björn Benckert]

I litterary lost the footage from a 4 day moco shoot from my motocycle when going full throttle thru the night on the freeway from the studio to the lab. I did not realize it until the last can of film slipped away.

So nothing else to do than stop and leave the bike on the side of the road start walking back in direction towards the studio and hunt for round metal objects.

To make things worse I had not written a shoot report so i did not know exactly how many cans I was looking for, but somwhere between 5 and 8 or so. And I did not have a proper clapper loader on the shoot and i for some reason did not have any ductape. I had closed the cans by recycling the original tape. So while zig zagging, walking/running back along the highway to check both ditches I was shit scared to find the cans cracked open and film all over the street as they where so sloppy taped together.

It took the better part of the night before I partly gave up looking, partly could not look any more due to morning traffic and actually had the polis stoppning and telling me that I could not run around on the freeway. When I explained why and showed them the cans that I had found so far they first wanted to look inside the cans, then settled for giving me a ticket for not having a license plate on my bike. I think the no plate issue actually saved the cans from being opend so I was quite happy about that ticket.

So I dumped all the cans I had found over at the lab and went home to sleep a few hours and then went back to the lab to sit with the agency and clients in the telecine, ofcourse i told them nothing about my little night escapades and where sitting there scared shitless to see to see if there was any footage missing. But luckily it was all there.

After that little incident I handle footage with a bit more care.

 

[Marc Wielage]

If the concept of a loader was treated with a level of respect it would be fine. having someone who has more capability than just copying files - even if their task happens to be just copying files for a day is invaluable. ...My belief is that unless an AC is actually intelligent in digital workflow (and let's be honest - Not all of them are even up to speed on what is happening technically with a digital camera, and are living in a nostalgic/anachronistic/hazy world view and blaming "the damn red camera" for their own lack of knowledge/issues) then you need someone who can smoothe things over.

I agree 100% with that. In the old days, there might be five people between the DP and the finished dailies job: the courier, the vault person at the lab, the developing machine operator, then the video dailies colorist and their assistant. It's folly to believe you can eliminate all those jobs and just do the data backup/dailies/syncing/transcodes with one inexperienced person. This person is of crucial​ importance, especially if the camera is malfunctioning in a subtle way that nobody can see on set.

 

[Adolfo CV]

Major commercial production for a major car maker. One week worth of shooting in a rented race track with 2 pro-drivers as our talent. Shot on RED, big crew, long days, too many art directors, the works...

I normally run a pretty tight crew, pretty much no newbies, so I feel confident everyone is doing their job, which allows me to focus on mine...

During day one I notice the audio files are taking a while to reach our data wrangler and this is delaying our setups, so I go give our sound recordist (my younger brother) some shit about it. He tells me he's downloading the files to his laptop as a backup and to check them once he gets back in the hotel. I tell him to stop doing that, we need to keep moving and we have people running the data...

Every time I check on the DIT and data wrangler the footage looks good, I'm getting thumbs up from everyone, I'm seeing files being downloaded, copied and copied and copied...

Day 7 arrives, shoot went really well, we wrap, everyone goes home.

I get all the drives from the shoot (4 freaking copies of everything), I just need to take a quick look before we ship to post and the client... I start to notice a pattern... audio folders were created, but they contain zero audio files... All our talking head setups and interviews had a boom and a lav, and we run redundant recording on both... But not a single file in the HDs... All our captured car sfx, nope... ZERO.

I call the data wrangler, the DIT (they were working closely the whole shoot), I start hearing denials, excuses, lies but no solutions and no files.

I quickly realized that we might be royally and properly screwed... I'm literally seconds from calling the lawyer to see how we're going to tell the client the whole week shoot went down the drain, but first I call my brother (the sound recordist) to tell him of our catastrophic situation... After some yelling and ranting, I hear him laugh... which causes me to yell more and then he says "You know on day one you asked me not to download the audio files to my laptop? Yeah, well, I didn't listen."

He had all the audio files, shoot saved...

Sometimes it's great to work with family members that don't listen!

 

[Christoffer Glans]

I agree 100% with that. In the old days, there might be five people between the DP and the finished dailies job: the courier, the vault person at the lab, the developing machine operator, then the video dailies colorist and their assistant. It's folly to believe you can eliminate all those jobs and just do the data backup/dailies/syncing/transcodes with one inexperienced person. This person is of crucial​ importance, especially if the camera is malfunctioning in a subtle way that nobody can see on set.

They should be treated with respect and with given more power on set for the decisions that revolve around the camera and backups etc. However, as you say "inexperienced person". There are too many inexperienced people who talk like they have experience and in the end doesn't have the right workflow or safety precaution and when asking about their insurance they have non. Not only are they inexperienced and a risk, they might ruin everything for themselves if they screw up a days shoot not having any insurance to cover it. Even if the production has a production insurance, every team member who's freelancing should have an insurance if they screw up in a way that isn't the productions fault.

I respect and want to give more resources to a loader or DIT on set, but almost all sets I've been to I had to do my job and on top of that later do all the backups myself, because the loader was said to be experienced but didn't have any routines for safety necessary. DIT and Loaders have become the new "coffee maker" on set, where people start their career and few producers adress that this thing is a risk and bullshit. A loader and DIT is on par with the first assistant camera when it comes to technical skill and experienced and no one wants a focus puller that's inexperienced.

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Major commercial production for a major car maker. One week worth of shooting in a rented race track with 2 pro-drivers as our talent. Shot on RED, big crew, long days, too many art directors, the works...

I normally run a pretty tight crew, pretty much no newbies, so I feel confident everyone is doing their job, which allows me to focus on mine...

During day one I notice the audio files are taking a while to reach our data wrangler and this is delaying our setups, so I go give our sound recordist (my younger brother) some shit about it. He tells me he's downloading the files to his laptop as a backup and to check them once he gets back in the hotel. I tell him to stop doing that, we need to keep moving and we have people running the data...

Every time I check on the DIT and data wrangler the footage looks good, I'm getting thumbs up from everyone, I'm seeing files being downloaded, copied and copied and copied...

Day 7 arrives, shoot went really well, we wrap, everyone goes home.

I get all the drives from the shoot (4 freaking copies of everything), I just need to take a quick look before we ship to post and the client... I start to notice a pattern... audio folders were created, but they contain zero audio files... All our talking head setups and interviews had a boom and a lav, and we run redundant recording on both... But not a single file in the HDs... All our captured car sfx, nope... ZERO.

I call the data wrangler, the DIT (they were working closely the whole shoot), I start hearing denials, excuses, lies but no solutions and no files.

I quickly realized that we might be royally and properly screwed... I'm literally seconds from calling the lawyer to see how we're going to tell the client the whole week shoot went down the drain, but first I call my brother (the sound recordist) to tell him of our catastrophic situation... After some yelling and ranting, I hear him laugh... which causes me to yell more and then he says "You know on day one you asked me not to download the audio files to my laptop? Yeah, well, I didn't listen."

He had all the audio files, shoot saved...

Sometimes it's great to work with family members that don't listen!

That's a fantastic story hahah!

 

[Nick Gardner]

As someone who worked as a loader back when it was an actual position, I never felt that real loaders were disrespected. It was a valuable position and everyone knew you had the potential to fuck everything up. The difference between now and then is protocols. There was a way you did it and you did it exactly the same way everytime. I've never had any problems with lost data from day one with RED, partially because we instigated strict protocols. Only one person is responsible for media. Not, "Oh, I'll format that card!". No not your job. don't touch it. The ACs and the data manager have their thing and leave them be and let them do it. We usually have a piece of tape on the side of the ssd module on the side of the camera with the camera and roll # on it. As soon as that card comes out of the camera, that piece of tape goes on the card, over the pins, so you can't install it in a device without actively removing the tape. Just like the exposed film tape ran around the film can the perpendicular to the tape that held the can shut. That way you have to remove a big piece of tape that says "exposed" on it to open the can. Etc, etc.

Nick

 

[ericyoung]

I litterary lost the footage from a 4 day moco shoot from my motocycle when going full throttle thru the night on the freeway from the studio to the lab. I did not realize it until the last can of film slipped away.

So nothing else to do than stop and leave the bike on the side of the road start walking back in direction towards the studio and hunt for round metal objects.

To make things worse I had not written a shoot report so i did not know exactly how many cans I was looking for, but somwhere between 5 and 8 or so. And I did not have a proper clapper loader on the shoot and i for some reason did not have any ductape. I had closed the cans by recycling the original tape. So while zig zagging, walking/running back along the highway to check both ditches I was shit scared to find the cans cracked open and film all over the street as they where so sloppy taped together.

It took the better part of the night before I partly gave up looking, partly could not look any more due to morning traffic and actually had the polis stoppning and telling me that I could not run around on the freeway. When I explained why and showed them the cans that I had found so far they first wanted to look inside the cans, then settled for giving me a ticket for not having a license plate on my bike. I think the no plate issue actually saved the cans from being opend so I was quite happy about that ticket.

So I dumped all the cans I had found over at the lab and went home to sleep a few hours and then went back to the lab to sit with the agency and clients in the telecine, ofcourse i told them nothing about my little night escapades and where sitting there scared shitless to see to see if there was any footage missing. But luckily it was all there.

After that little incident I handle footage with a bit more care.

Wow, crazy close call! :smile:

 

[ericyoung]

Major commercial production for a major car maker. One week worth of shooting in a rented race track with 2 pro-drivers as our talent. Shot on RED, big crew, long days, too many art directors, the works...

I normally run a pretty tight crew, pretty much no newbies, so I feel confident everyone is doing their job, which allows me to focus on mine...

During day one I notice the audio files are taking a while to reach our data wrangler and this is delaying our setups, so I go give our sound recordist (my younger brother) some shit about it. He tells me he's downloading the files to his laptop as a backup and to check them once he gets back in the hotel. I tell him to stop doing that, we need to keep moving and we have people running the data...

Every time I check on the DIT and data wrangler the footage looks good, I'm getting thumbs up from everyone, I'm seeing files being downloaded, copied and copied and copied...

Day 7 arrives, shoot went really well, we wrap, everyone goes home.

I get all the drives from the shoot (4 freaking copies of everything), I just need to take a quick look before we ship to post and the client... I start to notice a pattern... audio folders were created, but they contain zero audio files... All our talking head setups and interviews had a boom and a lav, and we run redundant recording on both... But not a single file in the HDs... All our captured car sfx, nope... ZERO.

I call the data wrangler, the DIT (they were working closely the whole shoot), I start hearing denials, excuses, lies but no solutions and no files.

I quickly realized that we might be royally and properly screwed... I'm literally seconds from calling the lawyer to see how we're going to tell the client the whole week shoot went down the drain, but first I call my brother (the sound recordist) to tell him of our catastrophic situation... After some yelling and ranting, I hear him laugh... which causes me to yell more and then he says "You know on day one you asked me not to download the audio files to my laptop? Yeah, well, I didn't listen."

He had all the audio files, shoot saved...

Sometimes it's great to work with family members that don't listen!

Bet you don't ever question his working methods any more after that! Hard to believe how they could possibly lose every audio file though.