Hi,
Of course the fall of anybody with the machine on is a serious thing, but the fall of it on the stand is a pain in the ass too...
I assisted a guy once - I won't tell his name - who was not a good steadicamer at all, and he made the machine fall because he didn't mind the stand's sticks orientation and didn't put it in the axis of one of them. I hadn't noticed the way he put it on the stand as this guy never wanted any help to take the machine off the arm and on the stand-
We were in ext and it was a little windy. I was doing my stuff nearby, like 6 feet away from the machine and sundenly saw the stand and machine fall. I ran on it and only could make the fall more "cool" but not keep the camera (aaton s16) from touching the ground. Hopefully it was not a hard ground, but (only) the filter got broken.
Since that moment, I didn't let the machine more than 2 feet away from me. I told the guy that whenever he wanted to put the machine on the stand I was there to help, but he still would do it beetween takes, very suddenly with no advice, and believe it or not, it was gonna happen again, but this time I was close to the machine and stopped it's fall in the very first second and then, put the weight in the axis of a stick.
This guy is a prat, he didn't change anything, and I can tell you the shots were so bad we had to retake with somebody else.
But... what I learned, is to really mind that the machine keeps in good position on the stand and to put sand bags on it.
As an assistant you don't necessarly choose or know the steadicamer, so I would warn any assistant to mind this and be carefull with the wind !
