Chimp TV...lost footage

[Blink]

Oh bother.

I wrote all about this on my blog, but basically I found out that the footage that I had being worked on for over a year has been completely/accidentally deleted by the company.

Heart breaking.

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

My project is called Chimp TV and you can see the only existing rough concept video here.

I am planning to have it all re-edited, but boy this is taking a long time to get done.

 

[MGov]

Bummer.

I was shooting an indie feature, no-budget stuff. I had shot most of a roll of film (we were shooting on 16mm), unloaded the magazine in the changing bag, put the the shot film in one can, the short end in another can. It was near the end of the shoot and the short end was only about a minute or two of film, not enough to be worth saving.

So I took the cans out of the bag, set the can of good film to the side and decided an empty can was more valuable than the unexposed film inside it. I open the can and think, "Well, that's certainly more than a minute or two of film."

I, of course, opened the wrong can. Killed about four hours of work.

It doesn't make your problem better, but at least you weren't the dumb one like I was.

 

[muppetperson]

I sent a 30 second promo of my vent dummy that encouraged you Americans to vote during the last Presidential Election, to VH1 (MTV) only to have it get lost in their mailroom, and then the whole project got cancelled.So much for my break into American TV!!!

 

[Buck-Beaver]

That's too bad...at least you have the source tapes, right? I ended up losing most of the episodes of the first web series I did because the company that sponsored the show (and owned the masters) went bankrupt in the dot-com bust and as the bankruptcy proceeded they completely lost track of where the masters and most of the other elements went.

 

[muppetperson]

That's too bad...at least you have the source tapes, right? I ended up losing most of the episodes of the first web series I did because the company that sponsored the show (and owned the masters) went bankrupt in the dot-com bust and as the bankruptcy proceeded they completely lost track of where the masters and most of the other elements went.

No!! I posted my one and only master copy.

 

[Blink]

wow, i guess you are really upset.
thinks like that happened to me before but on a much smaller scale. you know, like when the computer crashes before i saved the last version of the project. but this never cost me money since i have a very cool editing system at home. YEY!!!! only extra time.

good luck with the reconstruction

I am actually not that upset. Hey, things happen.

I haven't heard back from the company that was doing the editing. I am not sure that I will either.

I may end up going with someone else to do the re-edit if I don't hear back soon (which has been a part of why things have taken sooooo long to get done. There seems to be quite a bit of a time delay with reponses to my emails, phone calls, etc.).

That's too bad...at least you have the source tapes, right? I ended up losing most of the episodes of the first web series I did because the company that sponsored the show (and owned the masters) went bankrupt in the dot-com bust and as the bankruptcy proceeded they completely lost track of where the masters and most of the other elements went.

I'm not sure if this was directed at me or not Buck.

But at any rate, one of the resons I am not too upset is because I got the source tapes back just before everything got erased. Now I haven't looked at the source tapes because I am afraid that something happened to them too.

 

[MGov]

Then there's the old story that every new camera P.A. is told at their first job.

A new Production Assistant is given five cans of film shot that day but not yet developped and an airline ticket to Los Angeles and told to deliver the cans to a guy that will meet him at LAX. He gets on the plane and then decides he doesn't want to waste the productions time if there is something wrong with the film.

So he opens the cans to see if the pictures showed up on the film.

 

[Buck-Beaver]

I'm not sure if this was directed at me or not Buck.

Jusy a general comment, this kind of thing happens a lot. The nice thing about digital is that you can "clone" everything so there is a back-up.