Complete directing nightmares!

[Alex]

Hey guys. I see this section isn't getting the attention it deserves, so I thought I'd post a message and invite anyone to join in on the discussion! ;D

Have you ever had the oppertunity to direct your own low-budget horror pic? Ever encounter one of those situations when you just had to slap your hand against your forehead and cry out, "Oh Jesus, how am I going to get out of this one!?!"

Then post your stories! What happened on the set of your horror film that, to this day, you'll never forget! Strange situations, unbelievable circumstances, camera problems, acting difficulties, etc...

Or, heck, just post up some of your strange and funny incidents that happened when, ahem!, you were the big man in charge.

Alex

[Airk]

Alright i am making this movie right now. i am filming it in my basment and well i started filiming already and then one day i was out and i come bac home and my mom changed the whole basementaround. she moved everyone thing around. i was like sh*t how is this gonna work for the movie? but it al worked out just did some tricks with the camra and wverything was fine. but i was kinda scared when i first saw what my mom had done.


Eric

[DAD]

Sometimes you come across a nightmare scene that you just know your actress won't want to do and to your surprise she comes through for you.

I was working on a feature called The Vampyr's Coffin and it called for a scene where one of the leads has to walk through a field of snow in a very thin nighty barefoot! Well as luck would have it we were moving into winter and got our first good snow fall of the season so I call the actress and say "Hey, it snowed last night you up for this?" In a very hoarse voice and with a few sneezes she answers back "Sure, I was just thinking about it myself."

Blew me away.

She had just gotten over having pnemonia and here she is a day later standing ankle deep in snow barefoot filming the scene. And not only did we make this poor girl walk through the snow barefoot and half naked ... we even poured a gallon of fake blood over her as she was standing in the snow!

A nightmare scene to shoot but sometimes when you have a really dedicated actor ... nightmares can come true!

[CrawlingKaos]

I was working as a grip for a mystery film shot in Richmond KY. We were working with a set of lowell (is that the correct spelling, I have little knowledge on these things) lights . The day we shot at a funeral home I couldn't make it so the director had to set everything up himself. He forgot about an extremely hot light that was left on in the hallway until he smelled something burning. Turns out the light had scorched the wall and the owner of the funeral home refused to let him shoot there afterwards. He found another place to film and decided to reshoot everything that he had shot the previous day. So he ended up paying for the damage he caused, alienating a few friends and scraping about two hours of footage.

[Dr. Phibes]

You're going to love this one. One lovely winter day in Pittsburgh, I was drafted by my friend Bub, a producer, to take time away from pre-production on my feature to direct a trailer for a writer who's screenplay had won a regional Pennsylvania competition. He wanted to go further with the screenplay and get himself known as a real screenwriter so he threw some money our way, and we picked out a few good scenes that seemed representative and cinematic, and went about the pre-production to shoot them.

Flash forward to the third shooting day. Bub and I are "out in the cut" in a little town East of Pittsburgh on the Youghiogheny (pronounced Yock-a- gayney) River. The scene takes place down by the river's edge where our hero(?) takes a hostage. Before the crew shows up, Bub and I, bundled up against the cold, South-Western Pennsylvania winter wind, go to locate the boat he arranged for us to take the props and actors over to a little island we've picked as the location. We find the guy, get the boat -- small boat -- and start to load it up with props. As the crew arrives, my best friend Jim (who naturally I conned into being a grip) comes over and looks at the (small) boat. Did I mention it was small? He looks at the (Small) boat, then looks up at me and says "You're going to need a bigger boat..." I say (confidently) "We'll be fine."

Bub and I devise a way to run a belay line from the rest of the crew on shore to the (small) boat, in case of trouble. We board the boat -- did I mention it was small? -- which sinks to where the water level is about two inches from the top of the side. Bub and I, undaunted, look at each other and shrug. Jim reiterates his distress at seeing his best friend go out onto the icey waters of the Youghiogheny River in a (Small) overloaded boat. "We'll be fine," I say.

We push off, Bub letting out the belay line, as the current takes us off toward the island. All was going well until we ran out of line. About a hundred and fifty yards from the island, the line pulls tight in Bub's hands. Instead of just letting it go and trying to navigate on our own, he panicks and pulls at it. Hard. I suppose it wouldn't have mattered anyway since he'd tied the line to the boat anyway. The icey water starts to pour in over the sides of the (small) boat. Bub looks at me and I at him, and in about two seconds the boat sinks. We're both in winter gear, trying to stay afloat in water that must have been around forty degrees, at best.

Too far from the Island. I glance over at Bub. Still alive. Good. The water is slowing me down. I can't even feel my legs anymore. I look at the shore. A hundred feet away, at least. I start pumping my arms, dragging myself through freezing water by sheer force of will. I glance at Bub. Still alive and doing the same. Good. On the shore, the crew are yelling and screaming. Bub is now yelling "Dial 911! Dial 911!" I wonder how he has the energy. Oh, yes: he's ten years my junior. Jim, my friend, stops to take a picture of us. For posterity, I suppose.

Still pumping my arms and seriously considering converting from Agnosticism to Catholicism just in the hope that my prayers won't be completely ignored, I realize I'm being pulled AWAY from the shore. By my feet. Which I can't feel anymore. I stop and reach down, realizing that the line Bub tied to the boat is now wrapped around my ankles, and the (small) boat is pulling me down-river with it.

My head feels funny. Oh, yes: hypothermia. We learned about this when I was in the Army. I'm having trouble remembering where I am and what's going on. I go under. I pull my pocketknife from my pants. I cut the line.

I drag myself through the water, not knowing why anymore. I'm trying to do the multiplication tables in my head so that it doesn't shut off completely. I don't know what's going on. I'm on the shore, but don't know how I got there. I guess, rightly so, that I did it myself since there wasn't anyone else in the water except for Bub. Jim grabs me. Pulls me to my feet. Starts to rub my shoulders. "Hi J-J-Jim."

I warm up in the poor excuse for a convenience store this town sports. Someone keeps pouring hot coffee into me as someone else strips me. And not in that good way, either.

Eventually I come to my senses. One of the crew has some dry clothes in his trunk. I squeeze into them. I stretch. Jim again says "I told you you needed a bigger boat, you dumb son of a b*tch." I smile and look at him. Look at the crew. Think to myself that we don't need a real island, we'll just shoot towards the water and cheat it if we need to. I take another swig of coffee. "Let's shoot this fucker," I say.

[Multiplex Manner]

Sure, but try telling that to Richard Dreyfus....

[hollowhead]

This was only a minor problem but it was still a PROBLEM.

In one of my scenes in '62 pages' The derranged lunatic is waiting in a campers tent who has just gone out for a piss, anyway, the mad man points the gun at the back of the campers head and fires, exploding the campers head.

Me and the crew waited till dark and came out into my back garden (looks like a forest) and it was freezing, cold and damp. we set this dummy up which took nearly half hour to get right and filled the fake head with guts etc. I had bought some explosives from France and i only had 6 left. I stuffed an explosive in the back of the head, and then came the problem.

I had the camera rolling and i lit the bomb, we waited and waited and waited some more and the bomb wouldn't go off-camera still rolling-so we got the embedded bomb out of the head and put another one in...AND THE NEXT ONE WAS A DUD TOO!

After 3 attempts it finally worked and the results were pleasing in the end so it wasn't so bad after all.

[ThePit]

My problem comes from attempting way too much (now I know the importance of special effects Make-Up people) and with "buddy actors" (aka offering friends beer to be in the film).

This was 3 years ago when I was working on a short horror film titled "Jay." I was shooting on 16mm film (which until than I had not realized just how much it cost to shoot on) and I had a tight deadline (film school). So the first day of shooting passed with a few minor issues (asides a wasted roll of film, things went ok).

So a few weeks pass and I get the processed film back and... the monster costumes looked horrid. Very Very horrid. So I had to rewrite the whole script (thankfully it was a short) around what I had already shot. This included taking scenes and reworking them a bit, but over all I could still use the footage I had shot, which saved me a good deal of money.

So I go back to reshoot and one of my "actors" (the buddy who had already gotten all his beer) can't make any of the proposed days (IE every day of a month), so I had to recast the day of shooting. Luckly, I got someone to fill the role, but... the original actor had larger muscles and was taller.

It was an interesting mix. To solve my "actor" issue I edited the film so all the close ups would be one actor and the long shots would be the other actor. The character was wearing a mask over his eye/nose area so I didn't have to worry about his face being different.

Noone who watched the final film had any idea that the role was filled by two actors, not even the very anal professor.

[thundy]

Do you guys have any idea how hard it is to get Karo syrup, that's been mixed with red food coloring out of carpeting. Even when you think you've finally done it. Two weeks later it turns into a black spot.

The actor stepped off the plastic. I had to pay for a large section of carpet to be replaced.

For a no budget movie- paying for new carpet sucks.

[ReelSplatter]

I was filming Chainsaw Chink Vs. Santa claws. It was a freezing cold day in december. The scene I had written involved a Josef Stallin to be hanging over a balcony and have his arm sawed off with a chainsaw. The balcony was about 10 feegt off the ground and ended in a small slope, which of course, was covered in mud and ice. I rig up the chainsaw and the blood tube, the actors get into position and I yell "Action!" The blood begins to flow the fake arm seperates from the actor and then "Chainsaw Chink" slips and cracks the poor kid across the face with the blade. He yelps out "sh*t!" and falls, slips on the ice and lies still. Everyone starts scrambling down the to the ground to see if he didn't break his neck. I rush over to him and see a large bruise forming on his cheek and opens his eyes and smiles. "Did you get the shot?" After that fiasco we filmed the rest of the scene and wrapped up production. As we were editing I realized that I had attached the blood tube on the wrong side and it was completely visible along with the duct-tape.

[stalkersrage]

during filming of a movie i was co-directing, Dead, we were shooting (at about 2 am) in the woods, and the scene called for a zombie to come out and attack one of the kids walking through. That part went ok, and when he got the kid to the ground he ripped open his shirt and began to dig at his flesh...some "fancy" editing and cuts made it looks as though he ripped into him, but the balloons/condoms we had filled with blood WOULD NOT POP for the desired squirtiing effect. They ended up looking like chunks of flesh, anyway, so it wasn't too bad...just a lot less bloody then we would have liked.

BTW: melting marshmallow with some red coloring/hershey's makes GREAT tendons and "gore" for a person's insides...just let it coola bit, and it pulls apart all stringy and has a nice pop sound when it rips.

[xander171]

we've shot a scene somewhere that we cant go back to, and although half of it turned out great - the other half is slightly poor...