War Stories, Trey Murphy

Bill Mead -Director- Portland, Oregon

War Story:

On one of my first jobs as director, I was working on a small indie film and using a lot of non-professional actors, due to a lack of budget. I was very young and ambitious and thought I could start off just making full-length features with no budget with no problem. This really came back to haunt me as production went on. Some people nearly refused to acknowledge the directions or didn't understand them. This was in part due to my own lack of experience. My leading actor had some family problems and had to leave for a month and we had to halt production because we only had so much we could shoot without him in it. It was a nightmare, and we never finished it. I have since moved on to commercials. I will probably someday try for another feature, but I've been scared to touch them since.

Cohen-War Stories

Lauren Cohen

Van Lott

WLTX News 19

1. In your job, what are some challenges you have to deal with in relating to “production” people?

1. The main challenges I have dealing with production is just making sure we're all on the same page...Let’s say I’m cutting a bite from Spurrier’s post game conference. I need to tell production how long the sot is and what the outcue is. If the outcue is mentioned earlier in the bite I need to make sure that I tell them wait for the second time he says whatever the outcue is. Also if we need a graphic and we're pulling it from something file video...I want to make sure they use the best image so I'll pretty much look back at the archives and find the shot that best works for the situation...It's easier for me to look for that stuff because I shot it and I know where it is. Communication is the most important trait needed for dealing with production because a lot of times, if you’re scrambling just before a show you may forget to check in with the director and/or the audio op but you have to remember because if you don’t you can easily have a major disaster on your hands. So, check-in with the director if there is a late addition to the script or if there’s a quick out or if the audio is hot or low, etc…

2. Can you tell me a war story, or a story of when something went badly wrong, or seemed like it was going to fall apart, but then ended up working out [or didn’t work out].

2. You could tell a different war story every day...almost always something will go wrong and you have to improvise mostly on the fly.

For example, I’ll go with last Saturday following the SC-Clemson game. We get back to the station and laid the highlights down on the timeline, however the sequence wouldn’t transfer! I gave it multiple video id’s hoping that would clear up the issue. We get into the show and the reel still hasn’t been sent and I had cussed the stupid system out at least a dozen times…finally I decided that the timeline itself was the issue, so I dubbed the video in the timeline to a tape, then re-ingested it into the system and created a new timeline and video id and thankfully that resolved the issue. I sent it about 30 seconds before we went into sports and you know what? Nobody at home would have known that. If the viewers don’t know a problem is happening or has happened then your okay. It’s only bad when they know something is going on. Another time was back on September 12th in Athens, GA. The game started at 7:45 and was moving very slowly and we (Bob Shields and I) knew that getting anything on was going to be dicey at best. We did our usual post-game interviews on the field and then Bob hustled to the sat truck, which was parked on top of the bridge on the opposite end of the stadium. We didn’t know if anything would get on but we were hoping we could feed the material because we had great sound and video following the game, as well as, some of the video I shot during the game, which included Eric Norwood’s touchdown. Thankfully we were able to get all that stuff on because Serena Williams went bonkers during her match at the US Open. I chose this as an example because you see the importance of always hustling and doing your job to the all of the way through, despite the low odds that everything will work out. I could give you 7-10 more examples but I figure two will suffice. The bottom line is this: Always stay calm and do your job, unless it’s absolutely necessary to cut bait.

3. Do you have any advice for a person starting out in the

business, someone who is about to graduate?

3. The biggest advice I can give you is: don’t take anything personal. Things will go wrong, it’s not a matter of if but when. People are going to get pissed off at you sooner than later, so just understand it’s all heat of the moment. If you screw up (which will happen early and often) learn from it and try to reduce the likelihood of the problem arising it the future. Also, always be willing to work hard. There’s nothing that pisses me off more than lazy people. The work is hard and stressful enough and it’s even worse when you have to put somebody else on your back because you have to do your job, as well as, theirs. Another bit of advice (I know this doesn’t get talked about much but I think it’s important) is don’t worry about being liked. If you do your job and you do it well people will like you; if you’re lazy and you make errors constantly and don’t try to learn from them, people will not like you. I would rather work with the biggest asshole on the planet, who works hard and gets the job done, rather than work with the nicest guy on the planet, who is lazy and has no idea what’s going on and doesn’t seem to care. The bottom line is: just do your job and everything else will take care of itself. Worry about being respected first because if you work hard, learn on the fly, and have a strong work ethic, people will love you, respect you, and most importantly they’ll love to work with you.

War Story with Ashley Tucker

Ashley is a freelance graphic designer in Texas.

Can you tell me a war story, or a story of when something went badly wrong, or seemed like it was going to fall apart, but then ended up working out?

My first job as a graphic designer, I was in charge of designing and printing posters for an ad campaign for a large corporation. I designed the poster and sent it to the printer. When the 3,000 posters came back from the printer my superviser came into my office with bad news. I had a MAJOR typo on the headline and had used the wrong Pantone color for their logo. Needless to say, the posters had to be reprinted (with money from my next paycheck) and I was fired.

-Karmen Kaufmann

War Story, Interview with David Vaughn

David Vaughn is a photographer who does headshots for actors and models.



Can you tell me a war story, or a story of when something went badly wrong, or seamed like it was going to fall apart, but then ended up working out or didn’t work out.


“I really haven’t had any thing horrible go wrong but there are always little things that go wrong all the time. Probably the worst thing that ever happened was when I was in New York shooting headshots for an actor. We went outside to a park and it started snowing and it was just terrible weather. He wanted the shots anyway so we were outdoors for about 2 hours, my fingers got so cold that I couldn’t release the shutter on the camera, my fingers weren’t even working … but he was so desperate to have these shots we went ahead and did it.”


Do you have any advice for a person starting out in a business like photography or advice for someone coming out of college?


“Actually I have two things; one would be word of mouth. You can advertise your business all you want but some of the best business is word of mouth. Usually an actor will come to me because they heard another actor recommend me. I think that stands true with any business in the arts. Your history with clients is always really important. All the time I hear clients say “I hear you do really good headshots” from this person and so forth… Only on two occasions have someone called me from an online ad.
My other thing is, especially working with actors and models, is to keep it as low pressure and as light as possible. They are so incredibly self conscious and nervous and you want to keep them as relaxed as possible, encourage them to goof off and be as casual as possible. The more relaxed they are the better product you get in the camera.”

Jimmy Preston's War Story From Andrew W. Bofinger

For my war story I interviewed Andrew Bofinger he has worked as an Art Director for many short films, commercials, record companies, and feature films. Andrew told me a couple of war stories. The first of which I will tell you about is when he was working as an Art director on a film and the director of the film originally wanted a metal furnace built that looked rusty, so Andrew and his team built the furnace to look rusty, but 5 minutes before the shooting began the director changes his mind and wanted it to look more like concrete and wanted it to be plastered, but plaster takes 24 hours to dry. Andrew didn't share with me how that particular bad day ended.

Andrew's second war story he told me that he actually feared that he was going to get fired because he messed up so bad. The director wanted to set the scene up as a starving artist that is barely making it, so Andrew set the scene up with an old vinyl record player with sort of a old school musical look, the director absolutely hated because his vision was that the characters place has all the top of the line equipment need to make music in his apartment, but that he was struggle finiancially because he has spent all of his money on this equipment that he can't live that well and barely eat. Andrew told me that the production had to be halted for an hour and a half, not the mention the director was very upset about the whole situation. He told me the him and his team were blowing up the phones trying to find anyone who would rent recording equipment out. Andrew said the he was literally just sitting and waiting for the director to fire him. He called it the worst day he has ever had on set, but in the end they were able to finish the project on time and he did not get fired.

Andrew also said that most of the bad things that happen on set stem from last minute changes to the script or the director changing his mind about a specific thing, so to work in this business you gotta learn to roll with the punches and keep your composer when something changes all of a sudden and your put in a tight squeeze because if you can't then you will never make it in this business.

WAR STORY INTERVIEW WITH LEIF ANDERSON

Leif Anderson
Charlotte, NC


Leif Anderson is the CEO and Founder of Rhino Assembly Corporation. I found his advice can help anyone who who is trying to start their own business and deal with difficulties, no matter what type of business it may be.

1. In your job, what are some challenges you have to deal with in relating to “production” people?

They are less concerned with quality control than they should be. Meeting a certain productivity rate puts a lot of pressure on them.

2. Can you tell me a war story, or a story of when something went badly wrong, or seemed like it was going to fall apart, but then ended up working out [or didn’t work out].

It is important to look at a mistake you make in business as an opportunity. If you do a good job of taking care of a problem, then your customer knows that if they ever buy anything from you in the future and there are issues, you will be there to support it.

3. Do you have any advice for a person starting out in the business, someone who is about to graduate?

Be persistent and ask for what you want. If you are ever interviewing for a sales position, always ask for the job at the end of each and every interview.

War Story

War Story Interview

Glen Ishikawa - Production Manager - Hawaii

Can you tell me a war story, or a story of when something went badly wrong, or seemed like it was going to fall apart, but then ended up working out [or didn’t work out].

Oh yes. I was helping to Produce a pilot for a new television show. The show involved a lot of breaking through things as a main chunk of the special effects. We used primarily glass although we did use some explosions. So towards the end of the shooting week we had 1 more day left to shoot and there was a scene where the main character jumped through glass. We set up the scene but we couldn't find the glass. It was no where on set. So I had to drive all around for a few hours trying to find some glass that was safe for us to use. I literally went everywhere and nobody had any. So I started to give up when I get call from another producer on the show and it turns out our Special FX coordinator had the glass in a moving truck so it wouldn't break. We had lost 3 hours of film time but finally managed to get the scene shot. It was a rough day.

Do you have any advice for a person starting out in the business, or someone who is about to graduate?

Work extremely hard. Nothing in this business is going to get handed to you, unless you know a lot of people. So keep working hard, keep meeting people and make connections.


Thanks for taking time to answer my questions.

You're Welcome.