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Studio Nightmares Vol. 2

Chief evangelist at Creative Force

Summary

This Halloween Studio Nightmares is back for Volume 2. You’ll hear about Faye Garland working in a haunted studio, Christopher Kern and the case of the 0kb image files, Caitlin Andrews and the mystery party, Cathi Singh getting trapped, and the night Daniel Jester stayed in a haunted hotel room.

Full episode transcript

Daniel Jester:

From Creative Force, I'm Daniel Jester, and this is the E-Commerce Content Creation podcast.

 

Welcome to Studio Nightmares Volume Two. A lot of scary things can happen when you work in creative production and in honor of Halloween, we've collected a few stories to share with you. You'll hear from Faye Garland of THG Studios.

 

Faye Garland:

It would be things like we'd turn all the power off at the end of the day, unplug everything, and flashes would still go off. You would assume that somebody was still in the studio. Walk around, nobody was there.

 

Daniel Jester:

Christopher Kern of CBU.

 

Christopher Kern:

In the middle of the night, I get a phone call asking about where is all the data because all the files were corrupt and each file was zero KB.

 

Daniel Jester:

Caitlin Andrews of Creative Force.

 

Caitlin Andrews:

...in the doorway and I turn around, it was the only other person in the office, and turned out to be a copywriter.

 

Daniel Jester:

Cathi Singh, independent hair and makeup artist.

 

Cathi Singh:

And then all the lights go out, and I have my wagon, and I'm pushing the button and then it starts moving and it stops. And then I just sit there and I'm like, and this is how you die, Cathi, this is how it goes. This is how it's going to happen.

 

Daniel Jester:

And I'll share a story to round out the episode. So I'm sitting there and just to be safe, I decide that I'm going to keep all the lights on and turn the TV on, and that's how I'm going to sleep, just because I don't really want to be scared. So sit back, turn the lights down low and enjoy this episode of Studio Nightmares, Volume Two.

 

Faye Garland:

So, the old studio for THG Studios was built on an old World War 2 aircraft hanger site, and people were absolutely convinced that it was haunted. So it would be a regular occurrence where no one wanted to work overtime there, as soon as the lights go out, people got a bit nervy.So it would be things like, we'd turn all the power off at the end of the day, unplug everything, and flashes would still go off. You would assume that somebody was still in the studio, walk around, nobody was there. Things would move, you'd put a reel somewhere and people were convinced the next time they came in that it had moved. All sorts of noises, music going off, things like that.

 

Daniel Jester:

No.

 

Faye Garland:

Yeah.

 

Daniel Jester:

Not the music! Faye, no.

 

Faye Garland:

You know you have those light sensors? So all the lights are off, you walk into a room, the lights go on? It was things like that where you're like oh, I thought I was here on my own. Go check, yeah, I'm here on my own. What's set off the light sensors? So people were absolutely convinced that the old site was haunted. It's that sense, isn't it? So like you say, studios are normally old warehouses and normally big expansive spaces, aren't they? So you'd have that sense that you weren't there on your own and then you'd go shout bye to everyone and no one would say bye back. And you're like, I've not been alone, I'm sure. Or even worse, someone would pop out and you'd think you were alone.

 

Christopher Kern:

Christopher Kern here, currently a program lead and associate professor of photography at California Baptist University in Riverside, California.

 

Thinking back to my days as a commercial advertising photographer, and very early on in my career, 2005, 2006. Embarking on the new world of digital photography within the commercial production space of photography. So there were a few of us that were really spending the time building out these ecosystems to be as efficient and productive as possible to streamline the process. So even in 2007, we were shooting tethered to Mac Pro and we were backing up as the days went on, utilizing and integrating ChronoSync and backing up to internal and external hard drives. So we are very diligent in the process of maintaining our data, but in this one instance, we were actually in a controlled studio environment. It was our own space that we were managing, which we were very familiar with all the tools and equipment, and we're also very familiar with the photographer we were servicing and the producer, and then also the client.

 

So it was a pretty seamless production. We were working on creating different styles within Capture One Pro, applying those styles to the capture. Everything was running seamlessly, the art director was making selections, we were outputting selections, we were emailing clients those selections, processing JPEGs, and sending those off. But the nightmare starts to occur when another digital tech later that evening was double checking our external hard drive and in the middle of the night I get a phone call asking about where is all the data because all the files were corrupt and each file was zero KB. So the whole entire day's shoot that we saw and we approved disappeared. That was it, so that was on the backup drives, but also on the hard drive itself. So the only record we had was the external drives that said it had 5,000 files or whatever crazy number it was.

 

And every file was zero KB and with timestamp and metadata and it was gone. So we panicked in the middle of the night, I run back to the studio, we're using every disc warrior, super duper whatever software recovery we're trying to do. We're Googling everything, we're texting every digital tech we knew. The conclusion to all this was the whole job was gone, we had to email the producer and luckily we had a good relationship. The photographer, he was freaking out, and somehow we re-shot the job. I don't know, it was really embarrassing, but I'm not sure how it worked out.

 

The reshoot was successful and the client still remained a client to that photographer somehow, I guess. But what our conclusion to this nightmare was that somewhere during the day, Mac OS Finder stalled and we had to do a force quit and we didn't restart the computer. So the Mac OS was only writing that job to the RAM, it never wrote to the hard drive ever for the whole day. But in this case, the big lesson is if Finder ever gives you an error, restart your whole computer.

 

Caitlin Andrews:

So I long time ago, I think back in 2017, did a project with a pretty famous high-end jewelry company where my team, I hired everybody. We were set to basically do this project to do 360 and 3D photography for this brand, was really, really fancy on Fifth Avenue, New York City. I got to live in New York for a couple of months, but this story takes place right in the very beginning when I was just setting up the project and getting all the photography equipment set up and I was working late nights. It was 14 hour days for the first couple of days, getting everything calibrated and ready for the photographers. And one of the nights that I was there, it was the Friday before Halloween, and I was working late and all the lights shut off in the whole place. It's really bougie so I was the last person there, heard all of the little Louboutins clicking out of the office building and then-

 

Daniel Jester:

So wait, hold on. The lights turned off as in a timer? This is the end of everybody's day?

 

Caitlin Andrews:

Yeah, so this is hours after everybody left.

 

Daniel Jester:

But we're not getting into the spooky stuff yet, the lights turned, this is a normal part of it? Or are we getting into the spooky? You heard the high heels clock away and then all of a sudden somebody turns the lights off.

 

Caitlin Andrews:

Right, that's the thing. So around 6:37, that's when the office shuts down, but you could still stay as long as you had a badge. But it's still the Friday before Halloween, and this is my last day, I'm trying to get everything set up for the week after. So lights go out, not un-normal for the office, but still, there's just me and one other person in the whole office. So around 7:30, I'm like, okay, I got to get out of here, it's starting to get weird. And so I felt someone behind me in the doorway and I turned around, I was the only other person in the office and turned out to be a copywriter and her name is Oju, she's really sweet and positive girl. She was like, "Hey, what do you do? What's all this weird stuff in here?" And we started talking and she's like, "You got to come to the Halloween party." And I was like, "Is it here? Where is this, is this in the room with us right now, Oju?"

 

Daniel Jester:

Are you seeing the Halloween party right now?

 

Caitlin Andrews:

Right now? Exactly. She's super cute. She was like, "No, no, no, we got to go down a couple floors. And then through a couple things." So she invited me and she pulled me over. So we're riding an elevator and it's literally on the 13th floor and I was like-

 

Daniel Jester:

Oh, perfect.

 

Caitlin Andrews:

...I'm going to get killed.

 

Daniel Jester:

No, nothing weird.

 

Caitlin Andrews:

Yeah.

 

Daniel Jester:

I never noticed this elevator had a 13th floor before.

 

Caitlin Andrews:

It just wasn't there before, right? But no, yeah. So it was weird, it was on the 13th floor and we rode down together and we walked down this hallway. And so just one of those weird, I don't know if you guys have seen Severance, but you walked down a hallway and then you walked to the left, it was just very far and you're in a weird spot. And so this girl that I had just met, just like, "No, no, no, let's keep going." So we get to this door and it literally looks like a janitor's closet, and I've been in such bougie areas in this corporate headquarters, I'm like, this is not real, this is not happening. And so we get through this first door and it's this brand's historical, it's like a museum basically, of this brand's history and this brand is very famous for doing windows.

 

So they have these window displays that span all the way back to when the brand was just first coming out with becoming famous. So it's an archive of all of their famous windows over the years, over the past 200 years or however long. And we stop for a minute and it's decorated but then the next part of it is every person at the company is at the Halloween party. And mind you, I've only been there for a week and a half and I'm the new kid, everybody knows who I am, but I've not been introduced. But needless to say, it's extremely intimidating, everybody is in super fancy, beautiful costume and you can't really tell who anybody is. And this girl and I are just contractors, well, I'm not, but we're contracted by the company and so she's super friendly and she's pulling me around like, "Hey, this is the president of the creative direction of the whole company and this is the global VP of X, Y, Z."

 

And I'm like, Oh my god. And here I am in my casual, nothing-wear, just trying to pull myself together to be presentable, have words to say hi to everybody. But yeah, it was really wild because everybody was weirdly friendly and, "Oh, I've heard about you", and, "Yeah, you're doing that 360, oh we can't wait to work with you." And photography team was there and it was just absolutely out of control. I still couldn't believe that it was just behind a random door, but it's just, I had to pinch myself, like is this really happening?

 

Daniel Jester:

Okay, so I'm cheating a little bit with this story because I wasn't exactly working in the studio yet, but it was work related. I was working as a marketing assistant for a company that was, doesn't matter what they did. But I was a marketing assistant and I got to dabble a little bit in some graphic design stuff. But I had actually gone to school for scenic design and so they asked me to come on this, they were having a retreat. All of these auto body shop owners were going to Estes Park, Colorado for this retreat that included an awards banquet or something like that. And they asked me to come along to assist the marketing manager who was producing this event and they wanted me to build a very basic set design for this awards ceremony that they were going to do.

 

So any of our listeners who knows Estes Park Colorado might know where I'm going with this. But I stayed in the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. So the Stanley Hotel is famous for a few things. First and foremost, it was I think owned or created by the person who also created the Stanley Steamer, which is the steam powered car, an automobile from the early days of the automobile. So, that's number one. Number two, the lobby bar of the Stanley Hotel is featured in the hit comedy film, Dumb and Dumber. You might remember the scene when Lloyd is expecting to meet a woman in the bar and she never shows up, that bar is in the Stanley Hotel. The third thing that the Stanley Hotel is famous for, is being the hotel that Stephen King was staying at when he was inspired to write The Shining. My marketing manager was a young woman named Liz.

 

She was older than me, but in retrospect, I think she was probably younger than I am now. But she thought it would be funny, basically we were at this hotel for the first, it was middle of the week, so we had pretty much bought out the hotel. There wasn't really anybody else staying there, but I think the awards thing was maybe on a Friday night. So by getting closer to the weekend, I think more guests started showing up at the hotel but for the most part, we were there alone. And most of our attendees of the event were staying on the second floor, my marketing manager thought it would be super funny to put me on the third floor by myself with nobody else up there in one of the rooms that is advertised as a haunted room at this hotel.

 

Cathi Singh:

No.

 

Daniel Jester:

Yes. The story of this room is that there was some people honeymooning in this hotel room and the husband went crazy and murdered his wife. And people have reported seeing the husband and the wife, apparitions of them. People have reported going into the closet and seeing blood dripping down the walls of the closet. And then in my mind, I remember thinking they embellished the story a little bit to say that's where they found the wife was dead in the closet. So I go into the room and my relationship with this stuff is like, I want to believe it's true because it's interesting and fun, but I'm not sure if I'm genuine in my belief about this kind of stuff. So I go into the room and I think I was 19 or 20, so I'm trying to be cool, trying to be not exactly tough, that's not my vibe, but trying to be cool about it.I go into the room, I go to check out the closet because that's where the action is. This closet, Cathi, this closet was a small room, maybe about six foot square and didn't have any bars or anything with coat hangers that you could hang your clothes on. The entire wall was just covered in very sinister looking rod iron hooks that were like towel hooks, but that you can also take a side of beef and trunk it on this hook and just hang it up and it was pretty sinister. So I'm like, okay, cool, my stuff is going to stay out of this closet, I will not be putting any of my clothes away out of my bag.

 

Cathi Singh:

We will not unpack these.

 

Daniel Jester:

And yeah, so I'm checking out the room, I'm like, okay, we'll see what happens, this'll be funny, but probably nothing will happen but I don't know. In the back of my mind I'm like, maybe something. So I'm going about my business, I've got full days doing this event and I'm running errands and I'm going into town and doing all this stuff. And at one point in one of the days I had to go back up to my room to get something that I needed for whatever I was working on. And I noticed in the hallway right outside the door to my room, in the plaster wall was a gouge in the wall and it was pretty deep. What struck me at the time was somebody had maybe taken a cleaning cart or a room service cart or something and rammed the wall on accident or lost control of it and there was plaster on the ground and stuff. I went in the room, I think I was grabbing my laptop and I got distracted by an email.

 

And so I'm answering the email and I was in my room for, ended up being in there for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. When I came out of the room, the gash was gone, didn't exist, gone. No plaster on the ground, no evidence that this had ever happened, no fresh paint on the wall. There's no way that somebody just came and fixed it, right? There's no possible way. And so I'm like, that's weird, but I've got things to do, moving on. So I go about my day, come back to my room that night and this gash in the wall was on my mind. I'm like, that was strange. Now my day has slowed down, it's time to start going, it's time to get ready for bed. The next day I think was the day with the awards banquet and the stuff going on that I needed, I wanted to get some rest, but this gash thing, I'm like, that was weird, what was that?

 

Was it ghost things? I don't know. So I'm sitting there and just to be safe, I decide that I'm going to keep all the lights on and turn the TV on and that's how I'm going to sleep. Just because I don't really want to be scared. And so I'm sitting up in bed and I'm on my computer and TV is on. And as an aside for the story, Friends was on and it was actually the series finale of Friends and I didn't know that it was the series finale of Friends, because I didn't watch the show. But the next day I spoiled the series finale for a Friends fanatic that I worked with because I thought I was watching a rerun. That's an aside. I'm sitting in bed, Friends is on, I'm on the laptop, and I get this sensation that somebody has leaned right next to my ear and said something to me, and I can't tell you what they said because I didn't actually hear it.

 

It was just the sensation of someone being very close to me and whispering something. And I was just like, I froze and I got this chill down my spine and I just was like, I'm very tired and I have a big day tomorrow and I don't want to do this, so can we not? And then that was it, that was the end of it. I fall asleep.

 

Cathi Singh:

I love it.

 

Daniel Jester:

Go to sleep.

 

Cathi Singh:

Can we not.

 

Daniel Jester:

I wake up the next day, yeah, I did the thing where I was super worried about oversleeping so I set 30 alarms and I was waiting to have a wake up call and I still woke up before all of them. I go and it's like, I don't know, I didn't have to be out of the room super early in the morning, I didn't have to be up super early, but I wanted to get plenty of rest. So I don't know what time it was, but it was things were going on in the hotel at this time, it wasn't 6:00 AM or anything, it was probably eight or 9:00 AM. I get out of the shower, I'm in the room getting dressed and I'm alone obviously in this room. And I was in some state of undress and in my memory, I think I was maybe pulling my pants on coming up. As I'm doing that, the door to the room that I'm staying in, bursts open.

 

Cathi Singh:

Stop it.

 

Daniel Jester:

In the hallway is a tour group, unrelated to the guests at the hotel that are there for the event that I'm working. These are just people who've gotten into town and are doing a tour and the person's like, "Oh yeah, let me show you these haunted rooms that we have here." And somebody failed to tell the person that I was staying in this room.

 

Cathi Singh:

Oh my lord.

 

Daniel Jester:

So I stand up straight, pull my pants up to my chest, basically. I'm like up, what is going on? And then the person's like, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I didn't know what he was staying." They lean in, they come to the door, they're fumbling the door, they're trying to close it, and everybody's just looking in the hallway super embarrassed. But yeah, I spent the night in a haunted hotel room and some weird shit happened and then a tour group busted in on me.

 

Cathi Singh:

But it was such a good story. That sounds terrifying. No, that sounds way creepy to me. The whisper would've got me, I would've been like, and this is when I leave, my bags.

 

Daniel Jester:

All right, so you have a story.

 

Cathi Singh:

Mine isn't haunted though, mine's just a onset scary story. So I would finished in an e-com day, it was a campaign day so we were in studio. And we were in this big studio in downtown LA, and for those of you who aren't in LA, a lot of the downtown studios are in very old buildings and big warehouses, very, very, very run down. Hairs, et cetera, right? So getting up there is a thing. Usually the elevator, a lot of times you take this freight elevator to this one client because it leads us out into the alley with all the clothes, blah, blah, blah. So we're all done, everyone's gone, I'm the last one leaving because I have the most stuff besides wardrobe. So I have my wagon and everybody goes at the front door, like everybody, and then the guy who's going to let me out is down, he's going to be in the garage somewhere.

 

And I'm like, okay, great. So they're like, why don't you go in the elevator, push this button, we'll see you there. And I was like, sounds great. I get in, I push the button, nothing happens. But the doors have closed, I pulled the wooden thing down, the rickety... I close the other door, I lock it like this, death lock, feels like it and I'm like. And then all the lights go out and I'm like, and I have my wagon and I push the button and then it starts moving and it stops. And then I just sit there and I'm like, and this is how you die, Cathi. This is how it goes, this is how it's going to happen.

 

Daniel Jester:

Oh my gosh.

 

Cathi Singh:

We're going to get left in this warehouse all night. I couldn't hear any, so I started yelling and I was like, "Hello". And I started screaming at the top thinking they were going to hear me, but I was not at their level anymore, I wasn't at their floor. I was in limbo in elevator purgatory in the middle of somewhere, and no one could hear me. So then I'm just yelling and yelling, no phone service. So that-

 

Daniel Jester:

No.

 

Cathi Singh:

Super cool. And so then I'm just sitting there with my light on like, okay, all right, what do you have in your kit? That you can do this? Let's get all MacGyver crazy, I'm going to figure this out. So I'm just sitting there and I'm like, now I'm covered in sweat. I'm a little bit panicked, it's getting dark so now the energy's getting creepy. It's also old and dirty and it smells really weird and there's a bunch of wood and stuff. And so then somehow I start yelling and I hear this little tiny, tiny voice and it's like, "Cathi, is that you?" And I was like, "Oh my God, it's an angel." And I just started yelling at whoever it is, and it ends up being one of the girls forgot something, came back, thank God, heard me yelling, and then went and got the guy and he had to manually bring me down but I looked totally stuck. So if thank God for her forgetting something.

 

Daniel Jester:

And just to also say, and I want to ask this question. Many of these elevators in old buildings are also extraordinarily small. There are some elevators that I've been in LA that are illegally small.

 

Cathi Singh:

Yeah.

 

Daniel Jester:

I'm not a particularly claustrophobic person and have had a hard time. So is this one of the small elevators?

 

Cathi Singh:

Good. If it was, I'm not claustrophobic either. I probably would've been very. It was one of those long freight ones.

 

Daniel Jester:

Oh good, okay.

 

Cathi Singh:

You know where in you walk in and you do the two doors and you wheel in the warehouse stuff?

 

Daniel Jester:

Yeah.

 

Cathi Singh:

So it was long and skinny and tall.

 

Daniel Jester:

Okay. But that helps a little bit.

 

Cathi Singh:

And it was just me, but to see black walls and to see nothing, like a void when he looked in the walls, I will not. So I have learned I will go with a buddy, it's a buddy system situation. I've never going alone.

 

Daniel Jester:

And at the end of the day, yeah, for sure. Because thank God somebody came back for something.

 

Cathi Singh:

Yeah. Oh god, I don't even know. I don't know what I would've done. Jumped up and down lot, I don't know. I made it go down.

 

Daniel Jester:

Yeah, you have to establish a pee corner at some point, that's for sure.

 

Cathi Singh:

I would've, yeah. I would've been finding snacks in my kit and 20 face masks by then.

 

Daniel Jester:

That's it for this episode of the e-Commerce Content Creation podcast. Many thanks to our guests for sharing their studio nightmares story. And for you the listener, be on the lookout if you've got a good story that's maybe a little bit spooky, a little bit funny, kind of embarrassing, kind of a nightmare. We'll be looking for more stories for studio Nightmares, Volume Three next year. So think about your stories, you've got some time, you've got a little bit of a deadline here, but you've got time. Think about your story and submit them to us for our next volume of Studio Nightmares. The show is produced by Creative Force, edited by Calvin Lanz, special thanks to Sean O’Meara. I'm your host, Daniel Jester. Until next time, my friends.

 

Hi Ian.

About the host

Chief evangelist at Creative Force

Daniel Jester is an experienced creative production professional who has managed production teams, built and launched new studios, and produced large-scale projects. He's currently the Chief Evangelist at Creative Force but has a breadth of experience in a variety of studio environments - working in-house at brands like Amazon, Nordstrom, and Farfetch as well as commercial studios like CONVYR. Creative-minded, while able to effectively plan for and manage a complex project, he bridges the gap between spreadsheets and creative talent.