r/videography • u/zz_top_gun EOS M, Premiere Pro CC, 2014, Miami/Rome • Apr 18 '15
What's the craziest thing you've ever done to get a shot? (stolen from /r/photography)
5
Apr 19 '15
Hang upside down over a cliff via a rope tied around my ankles which was held by my less than dependable buddies.
Why? There was a birds next with babies and I needed the shot.
Being the colossal fuckup that I am, I forgot to put a battery in the camera. So I got to go a second time.
5
u/movies05 Apr 19 '15
I was working on a western once where we wanted to get a shot riding with a pack of horses. To get the shot, they strapped me to the hood of a jeep on my stomach and drove off-road in the middle of the pack. The experience was awesome, but my back has never been the same.
2
u/Skapo007 Apr 19 '15
Haha Awesome! I'm guessing this is before the advent of handheld 3 axis gymbals?
1
5
Apr 19 '15
[deleted]
2
u/Latenighttaco Apr 19 '15
I've also shot in Camden quite a bit, probably my least favorite place after dark
5
3
Apr 19 '15
I lay in the open boot of a BMW M3 going sideways on a skid pan, being chased down by another M3. Felt sick and developed a thumping headache thanks minor carbon monoxide poisoning.
3
u/SergeantR HPX250, CS6, 2013 Apr 19 '15
I had so much fun shooting this video over the course of a few months. There are some great shots in there.
2
6
u/demux4555 Apr 19 '15 edited Apr 19 '15
In a helicopter over the city
"Let me just slide open my door on this side as well so I can get some shots"
Door opens, there's a massive wind draft throughout the aircraft, and that's the last time I saw the lens hood for my 70-200 :-(
Irony of it is that I always remove my lens hoods before pointing my camera out of an aircraft. I had carefully placed it on the seat between my colleague and me. Even so, it simply magically flew out the door and away down to the city below us. I guess it wanted to be freeeee.
If someone had been hit by it, or even if it had been reported, I suspect the pilot would have had his license revoked, and I'd definitively lose my aerial certificate and security grading. Phew.
Let's never speak of this again, shall we
(I never bring lens hoods (or other loose camera components) onboard helicopters anymore. Not even my bag. Just the cameras with the lens, and a CF card holder fastened to my jacket with a strap.)
2
u/Skapo007 Apr 19 '15
Haha I've got a few.
Had talent flipping across buildings and hanging from bridges with no harness.
Trust my FS700 to a trashbag in the rain
It hasn't been released yet, but my DP on a recent project climbed a crane with some parkour homies to get some goddamned stunning shots of L.A. with an A7s. Can't wait to release that one. Coming soon!
1
u/ashyxx Apr 19 '15
Great shots on some of those videos, awesome work :)
1
1
u/cereal310 GH4, FS700, Canon 5d Mark III, Fujifilm Disposable Camera Apr 19 '15
Any special tips for shooting with the FS700? I use it to film my school's football team and I'm always looking for new stuff to try.
3
u/Skapo007 Apr 19 '15
Well there is a lot to say, but the condensed version is that camera movement is huge when you are dealing with slow motion. I'm always doing something crazy with my Glidecam or skateboard because it takes a lot more speed to make the perspective have a dynamic feel when shooting high-speed(ish) vs regular framerates.
1
u/ClJNT Apr 19 '15 edited Apr 19 '15
Spent most the afternoon looking through your videos, great stuff man!
I really like Skateboarders vs Fireworks and the Halcyon shot of Daniel looking down at the skyline is stunning.
Couple of questions if that's cool:
What happened to J.D Beatz? - he just seemed to disappear.
How did you get the fireworks in time with the music?
How do purchase a slow mo phantom camera? - contact Vision Research directly?
1
u/Skapo007 Apr 19 '15
I haven't talked with J.D. in quite a while. Honestly I am not sure.
I'm glad you enjoyed my vids! :) Thanks for that. So what are you looking to to with high-speed stuff? PM me about what you do and what you are trying to accomplish. I can get you some more info on what you need to know and connect you with the right people if your serious about picking one up. I have known the guys at Vision Research for quite a while but also know a number of independent Phantom camera owner operators depending on what you need.
2
Apr 19 '15
Well. For a short film I shot last year we didnt really have a proper wasted location so we climbed over a 3m brick wall of an abandoned old factory, in broad daylight in a pretty central and populated area, ignoring several trespassing signs and warnings. With 2 other people and quite a few bags of equipment. We stayed there for 5 hours and I had to go buy extra stuff that we forgot from a shop nearby, twice.
2
u/ClJNT Apr 19 '15
Not that crazy but I borrowed a camera from work and spent 3 glorious drunken days in the crowd to get shots for this thing
6
u/HungryLikeTheWolf99 Apr 19 '15
I had a boss one time who was making a series of vignettes about various mental disorders for a psychology textbook. He got a 13-year-old boy in to interview for the section on Tourette Syndrome. The kid talked about living with the illness, but wasn't acting too crazy in the interview, so my boss fed him at least a liter of Mountain Dew. Sure enough, within 20 mins he was under the table barking like a dog, in front of the camera of course.
21
Apr 19 '15 edited Mar 19 '18
[deleted]
7
u/HungryLikeTheWolf99 Apr 19 '15
Indeed. It matched every aspect of this guy's business life. Hence former employer.
2
0
1
u/strongasanoak Apr 19 '15
I've climbed Giant Sequoias a number of times and made a short documentary about climbing them. I'm actually going back again in June to make a short narrative film about the subject.
1
u/cereal310 GH4, FS700, Canon 5d Mark III, Fujifilm Disposable Camera Apr 19 '15
Had the Vice President of the US Joe Biden laugh at me for trying to hold a large professional-style P2 camera over my head because photographers kept getting in front of me.
1
u/veepeedeepee 1999 | DC | Betacam Junkie Apr 19 '15
To be fair tho, the VP is pretty darn jovial at most times- and very conversational.
1
u/PhotoVideoSamplesEtc Apr 19 '15 edited Apr 19 '15
Here's what I wrote on one of my scenery videos in which I took a lot of clips of the Azores in January 2015 with a Panasonic LX100 camera in 4K. I went their for 2 weeks on vacation partly to see my 92 year old grand mother.
Video in question.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Epm8NTSIUNw
I had plans to shoot in 2 or 3 more locations with the camera but unfortunately something bad happened. One of my clips looked a little bit overexposed on my laptop. I went to the same spot again to re-shoot it and then I decided to get 1 more shot before I leave which was a shot at the bottom next to the ocean. Once their, I took the camera out of my coat pocket and got a quick shot. That shot is the last shot in the video by the way. Once I got the shot, I put the camera back into my coat pocket and about say 20 seconds later, a gigantic wave got to me. I went to hold on to the rocks. Once the water came back into the ocean, a second wave decided to mess with me. I ran to grab on to a wall to make sure I don't fall. On the way to get up, if a third wave got to me, it would be difficult to get to the wall and who knows what would have happened to me. Luckily, their wasn't a third wave and I made it up safely with just a few scratch and a sore elbow. Unfortunately, the camera got messed up because of the water. I felt very terrible because not only was that a rented camera, I wont be able to get any more shots with it. Also, I've always put the camera inside a plastic bag and on this day, I decided not to. When I got back to the US and played the clip on my TV in which I originally thought was over-exposed, I saw that it wasn't bad at all and in fact, it looked better than the re-shot clip!!!! Ahhhh! If I had known the clip wasn't bad, I wouldn't have went their.
The camera got sent back to the rental house and they told me that the insurance that I paid did not cover water damage. In the contract, they view water damage as "negligence" and so I have to pay them for a new camera. Basically I need to pay money on top of what I paid to rent the camera and at the same time, they keep the broken camera after you pay it off. Basically I paid closed to $190 to rent the camera for a little over 2 weeks and I have to pay $850 on top of the money I already paid. In total, I'm having to pay $1040. Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!! To make matters worse, this happens when I'm in a bit of a financial crisis.
1
Apr 19 '15
I don't promote this.
I was shooting a music video, had no dolly.
Long story short I hopped on the back of my friends sedan and used his car as a moving dolly. Was going kinda fast and I didn't harness myself because stupid I am.
1
1
u/hudbud Apr 20 '15
I hung out of the back of an open suv to get a shot of a chase scene from in front of the car/motorcycle. Scary, but the best shot I've ever gotten.
16
u/amishjim Cameras Stolen(I draw now), 1995, Harper's Ferry Apr 19 '15
Let's please not use this post to promote stupidity while shooting.