VILLAIN: How I (accidentally) DELETED The Work Of An Entire Film Production
Before I tell you my story let me share with you a scoop from inside Hollywood. Not too long ago McG was working on Terminator Salvation, and a lowly fool was hired through a family connection to do some work on set. By inserting the wrong card he effectively deleted the footage of an 8 million dollar explosion. He was never hired in Hollywood again.
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It was the worst moment of my entire life. I destroyed something so valuable, not just for myself, but for others. Something I worked so hard for, and that others worked so hard for.
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Let me take a step back: I’m a writer, not a technician. Our sound engineer was due to take a day off, so I thought I’d step in, learn a thing or two about sound design, and the next thing I know I’ve reformatted (deleted) an SD card that had never been backed up. Audio files don’t take up a whole lot of space so this one card basically had the entire film on it. A more professional audio engineer would have backed up after every shoot… but it’s in the past.
SO HOW DID I DEAL WITH THE 25 OR SO PEOPLE WHOSE WORK I DELETED???
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My best friend, the film’s director, came up with an ingenious plan.
First: We reviewed the footage we had shot so far, most notably absent of audio. We looked for as many mistakes as we could find; botched lines from the actors, botched shots from the cinematographer, color mistakes, lighting mistakes, crew members who can be seen walking in the back round of a particular shot…
We compiled this giant list, then showed up to that day’s shoot to meet the whole crew. I should mention that I and the director put this crew together, we know everyone of them, are friends with everyone of them. But if they were told the truth the entire film would have fallen apart. There is a kind of glue that holds a group of people to a common purpose, especially when no one is getting paid for months or even years. Most of the people on my crew were students, not professionals, they were doing it for fame and glory, the chance to be noticed, not because they were getting a check at the end of the week.
So we needed to turn this highly negative event, in which some 500 hours of human labor was deleted in a single moment, into a positive event that would allow us to finish the film on time and on budget.
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We sat the entire production down, all 25 people, and showed them some of the best and worst footage that had been compile so far. We talked about all that had been accomplished, all that could be accomplished, how we needed re-shoots for many of the scenes we had already finished. And then our Director, and my best friend, did something totally unexpected…
He told everyone that he had deleted the audio.
He sold it to them on the basis of: “What we’ve done so far has been good, but if we take this opportunity to reshoot we can do so much better.”
Over the next several minutes a consensus was formed.
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Later he would tell me that if I had taken the blame for it we would have seen a drastically different result. If the Director of a production is seen to have made a mistake in trusting someone it sends a totally different message than if he himself stupidly (and accidentally) was responsible.
We finished the production on time and thousands over budget and for some reason this colossal lie has never hung over me. Somehow this highly negative event lead to a film that was of a much higher quality…
Was this the right thing to do? Did the cast/crew have a right to know the truth? Let me know what you think.
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For more Villainous Reads head on over to @escapehatch
Nice story and welcome!
It was clearly the sound engineer's fault, as you say after each shoot, it doesn't take much to store the file on your computer drives and an external.
There's no excuse, so in a way; you didn't lie :-)
Cg
There was the matter of him being an unpaid sound engineer (Most of my crew are students) and as such it's understandable that mistakes would be made - And we had everyone working 16 hour days. I'll be posting more insane stories from my productions @escapehatch over the next few weeks.
This has never happened to me thankfully (either by myself or by the crew I've worked with) Had a couple of moments where we "thought" we'd lost something, but it had just been mislabeled. Can never be too careful when backing up.
I'll be posting an article tmrw entitled: VILLAIN: Staged Robbery At My Film Production Ends In Disaster W/ Real Gunman
Or maybe something shorter than that.
In any case it will be at @escapehatch , the home of Villainous reads.
Do you direct/produce?
I've been a writer for over a decade but moved into directing. I'll be directing my first feature this year (very soon actually) which is currently in pre-production. www.intoblack.com.au for the not so subtle plug.
I have produced before (including a micro budget feature). Have to say though it's not something I enjoy as much as the writing/directing side of it, but at the lower end of filmmaking everyone has to wear multiple hats so you do the best you can with what you have.
Just checked out intoblack, what is the length? Where are you planning submission? Are you guys building sets?
I've been trying to think of a way to crowd fund my new film using Steemit - I'll get back to you when I have something beyond begging
It will be approximately 100-105 minutes in total. I'll be submitting it to most tier 2 festivals as these days most of the majors festivals (Sundance, Cannes etc) are dominated by big budget/star driven "independent" films.
I feel the pain on crowdfunding. Very difficult, and begging certainly doesn't get you too far. Fortunately I got a decent hook up with a large commerical space that hasn't been leased for months so I'll be able to build all the sets I need inside of there.
TIFU on steemit
lol i had to look that one up
Well done for owning up. If everyone did this , what a world we would live in.
Nice work. Reach out to me on steemit.chat, I think I can help get your work some attention
Will do- probably tomorrow - Just finished your Musk article, good shit
Oh man... Lol.
I can't even imagine. Thank GOD it turned out alright! And what a story it makes for. :-)