What happens on the set of a Turkey?

[Criswell]

I have always wondered what the emotions and feelings are like the set of a film that surely anyone with a brain knows is going to be a total laugh-out loud dud.

I am talking about films like Battlefield Earth, Waterworld etc. Filming scenes like in Waterworld when the gillman dags a bubble/diving bell hundreds of feet under the ocean so Tripplehorn can see ruined cities! What strength! No water pressure??? Or in battelfield where the cavemen learn to fly Jump Jets in 4 days!!

Anyone here ever been on set or know of stories where a film is so blatantly going off the rails? What is the feeling? Is everyone too scared to tap someone like Costner or Travolta on the shoulder and whisper in his ear???

I dont mean B or Z grade productions made by Ed Wood style hacks, I mean A grade shockers. lol Didnt ANYONE tell Mick Bay the old pensioner Transformer with the walking cane was stupid????

[Copyboy]

I haven't read it but Julie Salamon's book THE DEVIL'S CANDY is a behind the scenes look at how a movie can go very wrong. She was on the set of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES during the entire shoot and wrote all about it. As much as I love De Palma, this movie was pretty bad.

[rhett]

I've worked on some shitty Hollywood movies, and I can say that as a crew member you're more focused on your job than anything else. I'm sure in a movie like Troll 2, the Italian crew is focused on getting that nice move during the seance scene, or getting the popcorn effects just right for the TV seduction scene. It doesn't matter that it makes no sense, it matters that you get your job done properly. Building on that, because films are shot so out of sequence, you sort of just pass judgment on whatever ludicrous thing is going on, giving the film the benefit of the doubt that it's actually all going to cut together and make sense. A lot of the crew members don't read the script at all, so day to day it's often not making much sense anyway!

The thing is, too, a lot of the people who work in the movies don't even care for movies. They see a few a year, maybe, but to most it's a job, a trade, like construction or management. Those people don't go home and talk about nails or team leadership, and the sad reality is that a lot of the people who make movies don't care much about them outside of the job either. So whether they're making a dud movie of the week or an arthouse masterpiece, as long as there's a check every Friday it doesn't matter what's being shot so long as the job gets done!

[Criswell]

Originally Posted by rhett

The thing is, too, a lot of the people who work in the movies don't even care for movies. They see a few a year, maybe, but to most it's a job, a trade, like construction or management. Those people don't go home and talk about nails or team leadership, and the sad reality is that a lot of the people who make movies don't care much about them outside of the job either. So whether they're making a dud movie of the week or an arthouse masterpiece, as long as there's a check every Friday it doesn't matter what's being shot so long as the job gets done!

Well yes and no. I mean i know tradesmen who often come in for drinks and roll their eyes and the taste of clients or the incompetance or foremen etc.


As to filming, i know most films are shot out of sequence, but also they must know that some things just do not make sense.

[X-human]

Fantastic Mr. Fox got to the point where crews were actively complaining publicly about how bad it was, before it finished filming. There were quite a few articles on it, I just posted the first one I could find.

[SaxCatz]

Originally Posted by X-human

Fantastic Mr. Fox got to the point where crews were actively complaining publicly about how bad it was, before it finished filming. There were quite a few articles on it, I just posted the first one I could find.

But... um... that movie is considered... um... fantastic.
* I thought it was ok. *