Let’s face it, no one plans for a video shoot to go wrong, but sometimes s**t just happens. Good planning is always the best way to make sure things go well, but there is always a chance it will go pear shaped.
There are probably three areas where things might not go as planned:
- An unforeseen technical problem with camera, lighting or sound equipment (see story below)
- The client is not prepared
- Despite your planning, you know that what you’re shooting just won’t work. ie – it’s your fault
So what to do?
One day, when I worked in regional television, we were heading out for a location about two hours away. We packed the gear, picked up the TK 76 camera in it’s case on wheels (it was that long ago) and headed out.
Two hours later we unpacked the production van, laid the camera case down, unclipped it and opened the top. With a gasp, we quickly closed it again and slowly re-opened it. Yes – it was still empty! The camera had been in the workshop for repair and hadn’t been put back in the case. It was still on the bench in the workshop – two hours drive away.
Not good!
We had to find a phone (a long time before mobile phones) ring the station and arrange to meet someone half way back to the station. Now, 40 years later, I have never left a piece of equipment behind.
Equipment failure
In the early days of digital, equipment ‘non-performance’ was a frequent occurrence. Sometimes the camera just wouldn’t turn or it came up out of register. (Those were the days when there were three separate sensors for the red, green and blue channels. Each week they needed to be adjusted to make sure the image was in register.)
Sometimes the batteries failed, even though they had been on charge overnight and they indicated they were full.
Whilst I have never had to do this, I always have a back up camera with me. In my case it’s either a Canon 5D or a Sony A6300. Whilst these are not ideal, you can ‘get the shot’. Even an iPhone will capture usable high definition images.
For audio, I always travel with a Rode Shotgun and at least one radio microphone channel.
Lighting is a bit less critical and if you have a kit of three lights, then it’s unlikely you will lose all three of them.
If might just be your fault
The worst thing you can do, if it is your fault is not to admit it. Most clients will understand that sometimes things do go wrong and will respect you if you ‘fess up’. While this may mean a re-shoot and a loss of income for your business, its by far the best. Make sure you learn from the experience so it doesn’t happen again.
Sometime you think the shoot has gone well and it’s not until you start editing that you realise you’re in trouble. Maybe you forgot to push record on your audio recorder? Or maybe there’s a focus issue?
Sometimes you can re-think the edit, but without a sync audio track, you may just have to re-shoot.
The client is at fault
In some ways, this might be harder to deal with, especially if your client is adamant that he did everything you asked to make the shoot go well but its obvious to you that this wasn’t the case.
You may need to go back over your correspondence to check who said what and when.
If you can’t agree, the you may need to decide if you should walk away from this particular job.
Every video producer will have a shoot that doesn’t work out as expected. Having redundancy built into the equipment is one way of reducing the risk of this happening.
