A film on screen seems to flow effortlessly. On set, it’s a different story. Between the spotlights, cables, heavy loads, high-altitude shoots, on water or in contact with animals, cinema sometimes looks less like a dream factory and more like a war zone. Audiovisual production exposes teams to very real risks, from falls to physical issues to particularly sensitive filming situations. And when budget pressure, unexpected events, or excessive ambition take over, some shoots turn into a survival test.
“Apocalypse Now” (1979): Coppola in the heart of darkness
When Francis Ford Coppola set foot in the Philippines in early 1976, he was determined to realize his great work on the Vietnam War – an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novel “Heart of Darkness,” published in 1899.
The American director ignored the warnings about the monsoon. Soon enough, torrential rain poured down on the crew before a hurricane ravaged the giant sets. Technicians and actors waited in the mud, some, including Coppola himself, drowning in alcohol and drugs.
When filming resumed, everyone was at their breaking point. Actor Denis Hopper was so high he couldn’t remember his lines. Marlon Brando, whom the director had to beg to come, had outrageous demands: a million-dollar weekly salary. The script required his character, Colonel Kurtz, to be emaciated. Upon arrival, the fragile star weighed a ton and showed no interest in his role.
Coppola thought he had reached the end of the nightmare when a foul smell filled the set. Local scammers had provided real corpses instead of the mannequins planned to create Kurtz’s camp setting. The director was on the verge of collapse, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet.
Martin Sheen, playing the lead role, exhausted by the weather conditions, suffered a heart attack. He was replaced by his brother as a stand-in during his recovery.
In total, sixteen months of filming instead of six weeks and a blown budget. It could have been a disaster, but it turned out to be a masterpiece.
“Jaws” (1975): the shark that wouldn’t bite
If Steven Spielberg’s first major success is such a hit, it’s partly due to its main prop – a malfunctioning shark. Nicknamed Bruce, the mechanical shark was far from perfect. The teams struggled to make it float, and the electric circuits controlling its eyes and jaw, damaged by seawater, behaved erratically.
These technical issues didn’t help the already tense atmosphere on set. Add to that, complete lack of preparation. Neither the Atlantic’s unforeseen events, nor the presence of pleasure boaters in the shot, nor the exorbitant price of hotel rooms on Martha’s Vineyard during peak season were anticipated.
Delays piled up, the budget went off the rails. What a decision to entrust such a big project to a director with little experience! But young Spielberg had a stroke of genius: replacing the faulty shark with subjective camera shots that amplified the sensation of terror. The audience wasn’t mistaken. “Jaws” became the first blockbuster in cinema history.
“The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” (2018): Terry Gilliam’s conquered curse
In 2018, when this free adaptation of “Don Quixote,” by Cervantes, signed by Terry Gilliam, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the former member of the Monty Python troupe heaved a sigh of relief.
“The film, which had a rather complicated genesis, took over twenty years to materialize.”
A first shoot began in 2000 in Spain with Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp. From the first days, the French actor fell ill. Prostate infection. To make matters worse, sound recordings were ruined by the roar of fighter jets taking off from a nearby military base. Then, torrential rains washed away a large part of the equipment and turned a landscape meant to be arid green. Filming became impossible, as the scenery no longer matched. To top it all off, Jean Rochefort threw out his back – a terrible herniated disc that prevented him from riding a horse. Gilliam threw in the towel.
But he was obstinate. Four failed attempts later, he finally managed to make the film with other actors. To general indifference. It turned out to be a flop.
In total, sixteen months of filming instead of six weeks and a blown budget. It could have been a disaster, but it turned out to be a masterpiece.
“The Revenant” (2015): in the freezing hell of the Great North
Alejandro González Iñárritu isn’t one to compromise. The filming of “The Revenant” in western Canada was done in chronological order (an unusual method in cinema) and in natural light. So close to the Arctic Circle, this only left a few hours a day. All at -25 degrees Celsius.
Actors and extras wore no gloves or hats. The Mexican director’s level of demand bordered on tyranny. He fired those who didn’t comply. A particularly grueling battle scene required an actor to be dragged naked by a horse on the icy ground. Iñárritu claimed all precautions had been taken. This was not the general opinion – several testimonies accused the director of endangering his team.
Spring arrived, and the snow melted suddenly. The set had to be relocated to the extreme conditions of Argentina’s Patagonia. “Everyone was frozen, equipment was breaking. Moving the camera from one place to another was a nightmare,” the filmmaker admitted later. According to a technician, capturing “The Revenant” on film was “a real hell”.
“Fitzcarraldo” (1982): dangerous delusions in the Amazon
Dealing with a psychopath like Klaus Kinski is not a walk in the park, but in the Amazon rainforest, the situation becomes downright scary. The constant screams of the actor? Director Werner Herzog was used to them. The indigenous people hired for the filming of this story of a man wanting to build an opera in the jungle, not so much. Two of them, unable to take it anymore, discreetly suggested to Herzog to get rid of the man they rightly saw as a dangerous madman. But Herzog was focused on his vision.
One scene required a steamboat to be lifted up a hill by human hands. Herzog refused special effects. No use of a model. He had the forest bulldozed. The indigenous people pulling the 300-ton ship took enormous risks and exhausted themselves. It’s a miracle that none of them were injured during this insane episode. Unfortunately, the technician who had to amputate his foot with a chainsaw after getting bitten by a snake was not as fortunate.
“Waterworld” (1995): the blockbuster is taking on water
Kevin Costner’s ambitious project – a kind of “Mad Max” on water – promised to be complicated to implement. It turned out to be even worse: constantly rewritten script, decompression accident for a diver, jellyfish stings, an atoll set swallowing up everything during filming – nothing was spared, not even the inevitable clash of egos between the actor-director and his producer. With a budget of 175 million dollars, it was at the time the most expensive film in history. It barely broke even.
“The Wages of Fear,” by Henri-Georges Clouzot, remake. The filming will be a descent into hell.
The completely megalomaniac director fires his cinematographer, who tears his hair out trying to manage the lighting of the shots in the Dominican jungle. Not to mention malaria, gangrene, drugs, and alcohol wreaking havoc among the technicians. Three months and two different locations were needed to film a twelve-minute scene in which a truck had to cross a rickety bridge in a torrential downpour. Several vehicles fell into the water. The river was too small for the director: he diverted nearby waterways to increase the flow.
Considered a classic today, the film was a financial disaster upon its release, marking the end of New Hollywood’s brief golden age in the 1970s, where directors had taken control.
“Poltergeist,” “The Exorcist,” “The Omen”: the most cursed film shoots in cinema
Falls, injuries, and even a fire – it’s as if the devil himself had been invited to the set of “The Exorcist” (1973). The death of one of the actors shortly after filming only added to the film’s dark legend. Just like the deaths of four actors in the series of “Poltergeist” films, released between 1982 and 1988, with the first installment being the scene of an incident that could have ended very badly. One of the children almost strangled by the strings of a supposedly haunted puppet. And when the crew realized that real human skeletons were being used for “Poltergeist 2,” they requested an exorcist.
As for “The Omen” (1976), its filming was also plagued by incidents, such as lightning narrowly missing the plane carrying its producer, or trained Rottweilers attacking their dog-handling trainers.
