To make your digital film, you will need lots of nice digital film equipment. If you're lucky, you'll also get your hands on some nice sound equipment, like boom poles and swivel mounts, and fancy extras like a Steadicam.

1) The first day we tried to use the Steadicam, it broke.

2) The second time we tried to use the Steadicam, it broke. We hammered it back into place.

3) The first day we used the swivel mount on our boom pole, it broke. We had it replaced.

4) The first day we used the new, replacement swivel mount, it broke.

5) Then the boom pole broke. It's now held together at the end with duct tape.

6) One of our shooting days was a long, hot summer outdoor shoot. We had about seven or eight actors called out, one of whom, a very busy man, had driven in from several hours away just for the shoot. We had one of our best days of shooting, very productive. Then we came home to watch the footage. Something sitting next to the camera had tripped a "gain" switch to the wrong setting and the entire day of footage was ruined.

7) One day, another very productive shooting day, the assistant director had sprayed a lens with an air gun to remove dust. Unbeknownst to him, some propellant had squirted out onto the lens, leaving marks invisible to the eye but which ruined the footage.

8) Our longest day of shooting was from 10 AM until about 2 AM the next morning, with nothing but a dinner break and lunch break. We were cooped up in a hotel room the entire time, and the hotel was being SOLD that weekend, so this was our only chance to get the scene shot. When we got home, exhausted, excited by the footage we got, we found we had accidentally erased half of it.

9) We managed to squeeze in to reshoot what we'd erased, but due to a mic problem, there was no sound.

10) It gets better. One night, we shot a scene with an elevator. The elevator was "locked," we were told, so that nobody from other floors could trigger it to make it ascend. What we weren't told was that we could, by hitting a button, make it go anywhere we damn well pleased. We set up the camera and a light tree in the elevator, got everything fired up and ready to go, with the main power cable running out of the elevator and into the lobby, where it was plugged into the wall. That's when the assistant director (detecting a pattern here?) accidentally hit a floor button. The elevator doors closed, the elevator started to move up, and there was a sickening groan as the elevator pulled up against the power cable which was still connected to the lobby below. Those of us in the elevator searched frantically for an emergency stop button. We were in the one elevator in the city which did NOT have an emergency stop button.The elevator shuddered slightly, the light popped out, and everything went dark. Then the elevator ascended normally, dropped back down normally, and the doors opened on the panic-stricken faces of the film crew in the lobby. The power cable, half an inch thick of insulation and heavy-duty wire, had been sheared in two.

So. This is how you make a movie. Go get 'em!

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