Editor’s Note
The following story was submitted anonymously. Names, titles, and identifying details have been changed or removed.
Film sets can be chaotic, especially at the low budget and early career level. These stories are not shared to shame individuals, but to highlight common failures, hard lessons, and the realities many crew members experience behind the scenes.
If you have your own on set horror story, feel free to submit it anonymously. Chances are, someone else has lived it too.
Anonymous Submission
This story goes back a few years to one of my first jobs as a Second Assistant Director. I took the gig as a favor to a friend. It was ultra low budget, barely staffed, and I came on the day before shooting started, which should have been my first red flag.
The schedule was brutal. Fourteen straight overnight shoots. No days off. Minimal prep. Almost no real pre production. By night one, it was obvious the whole thing was held together with duct tape and optimism.
The first shoot day was chaos. The crew was a weird mix, about half actual professionals and half friends of the director who had never done their jobs before. We were disorganized, overwhelmed, and constantly playing catch up. By day two, our First AD quit for a better paying job and did not bother lining up a replacement. The Production Manager stepped in as First AD, and I absorbed everything else.
From there, it only got worse.
We regularly did not roll camera until 4 or 5 hours after call time. Crew members would disappear without telling anyone. We burned through what little budget we had in the first few days. Every night felt like a new disaster.
The art department treated the location like a playground. They painted walls and doors that were not part of the set. They glued shoes to the ceiling because they thought it was funny. They had fire extinguisher fights which destroyed the air quality and forced us to evacuate the building for over an hour.
It is honestly a miracle we got anything shot at all. And of course, we did not finish the movie.
Half the crew showed up to work. The other half showed up to hang out with their friends and have fun. That divide killed the project. No amount of effort could bridge it.
The producer was actually a solid guy who genuinely wanted the film to succeed. Unfortunately, he was constantly at war with the director and the cinematographer, both of whom were arrogant, unruly, and more interested in fighting the producer and partying with their friends than making a movie.
Every single night we had extras, sometimes up to fifty, and it was my job to wrangle them. By day four, I was effectively the Second AD, Production Coordinator, crafty backup, and assistant to the Production Manager. And yes, I originally came on as a volunteer. It took me two days to negotiate a rate, and if I had not, I probably would not have made it to the end.
I could go on forever. This is just a highlight reel of everything that went wrong. Somehow, things managed to get worse every single day.
The one positive is that I learned a hell of a lot about what not to do on a film set.
What We Can Learn From This Story
- A brutal schedule with no prep is a red flag. Fourteen straight overnights with minimal pre production almost guarantees failure. If the schedule looks insane and no one can explain how it will work, believe what you are seeing.
- A mixed crew with no accountability will sink a project. When half the crew is there to work and the other half is there to hang out, the people who care will burn out fast. Professional standards only work if they are enforced.
- Losing key leadership early is catastrophic. When a First AD walks without a replacement, the production is already in survival mode. Every department downstream will feel it immediately.
- “Having fun” is not the same as making a movie. Sets are allowed to be enjoyable, but uncontrolled behavior, property damage, and safety violations are not personality quirks. They are production failures.
- Being difficult only works if you are competent. Ego without skill kills morale. Fighting producers and ignoring reality does not make you a visionary. It makes you a liability.
- Volunteer labor has limits. If you are doing the work of multiple paid positions, the production is exploiting you whether they admit it or not. Set boundaries early or walk.
- Chaos is a great teacher, but a terrible business model. You can learn a lot on a bad set, but no one builds a sustainable career running productions like this.
