[ChuckFrank]

That rigging looked outrageous. All I saw was one guy holding onto the models. If a model slipped and fell, that guy won't have stood a chance in holding them back.

Hopefully the person was themselves hooked into the roof, and the rigging was hooked into the roof, with him acting on belay. But I certainly didn't see that.

I'm so glad nothing bad happened, but this seemed irresponsible from a safety and technical standpoint.

(I mean even the camera rig looked flimsy.)

[vonwong]

Everything was doubly tied down, don't worry :) The person holding was there simply to maintain tension the entire way as the models walked from the side to the edge. As for the camera, the flex comes from the metal itself but it was also extra secured with straps in the event that anything fell loose.

[anigbrowl]

Obviously you were using a small lightweight camera, but a single c-stand and a few sandbags is not really adequate for this sort of work. Yeah, it'll work fine 99 times out of 100. It's the 100th time that you overengineer for. Those rotary clamps sometimes fail, eg because sufficient strain and a history of overtightening causes one of the screw threads to shear, and then your arm slides right out despite the sandbag on the end. In windy environments the momentary strains are much higher than the steady one of the weight.

Had that happened in this case, the arm and the camera would have been traveling at >100mph when it hit the ground, on the busiest streets in the city. When you rig something that could put someone else at risk, rather than just what's attached to the rig, you build with the assumption that each individual component may catastrophically fail.

At the very least, you should have had a second stand farther back with an arm clamped to the near end of your working arm, plus you should have one person on each stand whose only job is to watch the stand. What you have here is OK for the height of a garden shed or the deck of a low-rise apartment building. It's absolutely not OK for the roof of a skyscraper, man.

And that's with the thing just bearing the camera load. You had the models using your load-bearing stand, which you are holding with only one hand, to steady themselves as they step up on the edge wall. They're gripping it well above your point of contact. If one of them lost it, s/he would have pulled the whole rig down, exponentially increasing the chances of the arm coming free. Or the camera coming off its mount. Or the ballast bag on the arm vaulting over the side.

Fort that matter, at the start of the video you're leaning out videotaping yourself with a camcorder that isn't visibly secured to anything and that doesn't have any gaffer's tape securing the battery to the camera. At this height anything that falls presents a deadly danger to the people in the street below. A camcorder battery is certainly heavy enough to kill someone. Sure, you're a careful guy, you've probably never dropped your camera. But even though nobody means to drop a heavy light or an expensive lens or a c-stand or a camera or a sandbag, I've seen it happen many many times in the middle of film production. Shooting without permits is one thing, disregarding well-established safety practices is quite another.

[awor]

As someone who has spent a fair bit of time working on swingstages, towers and other structures, there's a few things that immediately caught my attention. Yes, I'm going to be that guy.

- As this appears to be a photoshoot for SmugMug, of SmugMug employees, does Smugmug carry the proper class of insurance on their employees to allow this sort of work? In most cases, unless additional coverage was purchased from the insurer, your general "office worker" insurance will not cover this type of work.

- Was the building owner aware of the photoshoot, and did they have the insurance to cover this sort of work?

- Does Von Wong's liability insurance cover this sort of work (especially since he's not tied off when jumping around on the ledges)?

- I don't see a shock absorber attached to the harness, whcih is necessary to limit the forces on the person to 900lbs (body belt) or 1800lbs (harness) in the even of a fall. I also note that the harness looks like it's a climbing harness NOT a proepr fall-arrest harness (the exception I saw was Hell-girl). Generally you must wear a full body harness rated for fall-arrest and be attached using the back D-ring when doing this type of work.

- The tie-off point, while not visible in the video/photos, (generally) must be a certified tie-off anchor or rated to 5000lbs arresting strength. Using a travel limiting device _may_ have been acceptable, but there doesn't appear to be one.

- The webbing making a sharp angle across the roof flashing is also not ideal, as you should be anchored from above in almost all cases.

- Was there a rescue plan in place? Had someone fallen, what would have happened?

If all of these things were taken into consideration and properly addressed, then thank you for doing your due diligence, otherwise I feel like this has OSHA violation written all over it.

I imagine the city of San Francisco also has regulations when suspending equipment beyond a buildings footprint over an active street.

People die regularly from improper fall arrest systems. You were not just doing a fun photo-shoot, YOU were responsible for these people's lives, as well as the lives of anyone walking below.

I will acknowledge that my knowledge relates to the Canadian labour code, but the US regulations appear to be similar.

https://www.osha.gov/Region7/fallprotection/fall_protection_... https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/construction/falls/fallarre...

[anigbrowl]

If this was insured (which I doubt) and a claim was made, the insurer would turn right around and sue Von Wong (as the organizer of the project) for gross negligence. On the preponderance of the evidence stand (ie >50% probability) that obtains in civil litigation, they would almost certainly win.

I don't like making all these negative comments. But I've seen people get seriously injured in entirely avoidable accidents, and could give you numerous examples of fatal accidents on film sets off the top of my head - whenever I read of one I study it carefully to ensure I never make a similar mistake. Film and photo shoots are fun, exciting environments, precisely because they often involve unusual locations, activities, or situations. But because everyone is participating in the pursuit of some larger goal (producing art of some sort) the people in the roles of director/producer have an outsize responsibility, because they are temporarily invested with significant authority to the point that people will put their common sense and personal judgement on hold, akin to Stanley Milgram's famous electric shock experiments, due to the blend of unfamiliarity and micromanagement that the endeavor necessarily involves.

http://deadline.com/2014/04/sarah-jones-midnight-rider-film-...

[devb]

We call these "Blood Rules" at my place of business because every single one likely has an unfortunate origin.

[ChuckFrank]

Von Wong, you know what would have really been impressive. If you had taken a moment to show the rigging in the making-of video. Just a walk through of the precautions that you used to showcase what an excellent shoot coordinator you and your team were. Jumping up and taking the crazy selfie was fun and crazy Russian style, leading to a fair degree of narrative power and sweaty palms, but it wasn't good safety promotion on your part. For the dudes that do this, it doesn't always work out for the best - those crazy youtube/liveleak videos sometime come with terrible falls. I've been in shot situations where I'm so glad nothing went wrong, and thankfully we didn't have behind the scenes footage to show how poorly rigged our set up was, but showing your dedication and diligence for the safety of those people that you were shooting would really be a testament to your work. It's my opinion that this bordered on unsafe and irresponsible. It's clear from your other videos that you care deeply about your creative work, you can do better with your technical and safety work as well. I'm glad nothing bad happened.