#196 Making of "The Third Room" Pt. 4

Pt. 4 Rehearsal and First day of shooting....

Without the use of the hotel, we were kind of stuck.  Luckily enough; Karen (our supporting cast and Matt and Nathan's Aunt) agreed to let us use her house.  Remember what I said about family and friends.  Trust me they are a godsend.  So we agreed to meet up on Friday at Karen's house for a preliminary rehearsal.  Matt had been going over the script every day, with a fine toothed comb.  I knew he would be working hard to deliver a top notch performance.

Rehearsal

We all gathered in Karen's room and got the official introductions out of the way and proceeded to block the scenes and rehearse.  I was impressed with the way Matt and Victoria delivered their lines.  Meanwhile Nathan and I proceed to discuss how we would set things up; still these were just basic walkthroughs.  The actors knew what to do, so the rest was up to me and Nathan to deliver.  Him on sound; me on direction and camera.  It was going to be tough.

Shooting Day 1
We arrived at Karen's the following day ready to film.  Victoria was supposed to arrive till later, so we did some of the cutaways and cat in the window shots like "Paul" in the bathroom getting ready.  These shots were easy to film since they only required a few seconds and then cut.  We did three different shots of the clock used in the very first shot.

Each shot after wards was done several times.  There were very few one shot takes.  I just don't trust my skills to do it the right way in a single take.

Tip
Always do more than one take, until you are confident in your ability.  When you are new to doing this, it can be overwhelming.  It's a major undertaking to get a shot just right.  Spielberg always makes it seem easy, but even he does more than one take.  Other great directors are known to do dozens of takes, sometimes more.  If the shot it easy, then one take is usually enough but more complex scenes are always best done more than once.  Sometimes a second or third will be enough for the actors and technical crew to get into their groove.  Remember not everyone has the experience to get it right in one.  Myself included.

Each successive take presented it's own technical problems and it's own solutions.  Problems such as exterior shots being lit differently than interior shots; and this has a major effect on shooting.  We knew what scenes we were going to do.  We had like a 5-1 ratio  (i.e. five scenes for this day) and getting them all done was crucial since they represented the bulk of the film.

Tip: FEED YOUR PEOPLE.

Making a film regardless of size (well unless it's super short) is a major undertaking.  It's like
working a 9-to-5 job.  A lot of repetitive work.  A LOT.  People get hungry after doing work.  Make sure you feed them.  I can't stress this enough.  Nothing is worse than try to get work out of a hungry crew.  You can't expect people to work hard on an empty stomach.  McDonalds is always an option but just make sure you get enough food that can feed your crew and make it good.

We started with the easiest shots first.  These were basically small shots that had various places in the
story, but were a good way to get warmed up.  I guess you could call them warm-up shots.  They required the least amount of effort.  Next on the list was our main shooting schedule.  Since we only had one camera, most of the main shots would have to be shot in continuity.  Only one camera for coverage gives you less control in uncontrolled environments.  Sometimes it's a don't have a choice so do what works thing.  We took each shot, did some quick blocking and then shot the scene.  Some scenes were easier because of their simple nature and I made sure to make any of the scenes unfilmable.  I knew what we would have to work with so planned aound a simplistic method.  It took all of one day to get most of the interior and exterior shots and this was due to one camera, one battery.

Tip? Always have more than one camera and one battery.
The logic behind this is simple.  If you only have one camera you can only shoot one scene at a time.  If you only have one battery then when it eventually runs out of power you are stuck not filming anything; and that is a waste of time.  While in some cases, you shoot with what you have, you should plan on having one or two extra cameras as a minimum.  Luckily this sort of thing is becoming a lot easier to deal with.  As new cameras come out, older cameras get cheaper to buy and even cheaper to rent.  If you want to own all your cameras (something you will do less off when you become a professional) then keep in mind that as technology improves, prices are driven down on older models.  These older models while less technically advanced are still capable of delivering high quality visuals that can be displayed on nearly any screen.  Batteries can also be easily obtained from either Craigslist, Amazon or eBay.  The prices on those changes almost as quickly becuase of new developments in battery technology.

While the battery was charging in-between scenes, we took the time to get some extra rehearsals in, as well as take some very "interesting" behind the scenes shots.  Most of those were done for fun, but they also showed the serious side of what we are doing as indie film makers.  At the end of the day we walked away with over ten really good shots and some that would work with a little editing. There were more shots that need to be done, but those would be in the coming weeks.  I had something to work with in the mean time.  A rough cut was next on my agenda.  Normally a rough cut is done after all the scenes are shot; so technically mine was like a composition of dailies (footage shot for the day are called Dailies)  This rough cut would be just to show how the shots locked together in black and white.

Building A Roughcut
I had all the shots and having wrote the script, I knew what each shot was supposed to represent.  The first thing about building a rough cut for an indie film that isn't finished, is that you don't care if it is perfect.  You don't care if the timing is off.  This only represents, the raw elements if you will.  I went through each shot studying it for where improvements would be needed and how many frames to cut.  A lot of this is done by feeling.  My editing technique isn't done based on a learned technique such as from some sort of primary education; no it's learned from using video editing software for over a decade and just having a feel for what it is I want to see.

I know it seems premature to build a rough cut when all the scenes aren't shot, but when dealing with people who don't really know what you are capable of, it's good for them to be able to see what you can do.  I have a lot to prove, not jsut to myself but to everyone involved.  A rough cut was key to showing them what we were doing.   For people who have never seen what they look like on the other side of the camera or at least the work they contributed, it's a good motivator.  Still we are all new to this, so expectations aren't so high, but they aren't so low either.  The rough cut had to at least look watchable.  I made the rough cut without sound, so that they could concentrate on the visual aspect only.  I knew that sound was going to give me trouble; especially considering a very vital mistake that I made.

Tip? Always record with sound.

It's a well known fact that DSLR's are great little devices, able to record HD footage, but they absolutely suck when it comes to sound quality.  The built in mic is HORRIBLE, yet they still have a purpose.  Always record sound when you record footage.  I made the mistake of trying to be a purist, without realizing how much I would need the original on camera sound and it's better to have it than not have it.  Now I have to do twice the work.  You may never use the on camera sound for anything other than synching with the video, but that may be all you need.  NLE makes it easy to toss out the original sound and replace it with a remastered soundtrack, but without an audio track you are susceptible to eye balling it and that is a pain in the ass.

Even though I recorded the sound using a Digital Audio Recorder (Zoom H1) I didn't do that with the Day 1 footage.  I didn't think about it then and I wish I had reconsidered.  I literally took the advice of don't depend on on camera audio as don't use on camera audio.  Boy that one would hurt but that came later.  In the meantime I had enough footage to lay down the roughcut in only a few hours, then spend a few days tweaking it to looking decent and somewhat presentable.

I took more time than necessary, but one has to consider that I work 8-10 hours a day and I only have a few hours to edit video and while I'm at it, learn anything else about the process that I don't already know.  It's like trying to do an assignment for a film class while only having a little time in the day to get it down.  Still the cut came together really well.  Everyone who saw it understood what they were seeing.  Even without dialogue.  Of course there's always subtitles.  Which would present a new take on the film; but that's for another day.

We still had a few scenes left and I was nervous as hell.  The next scene would take place in the diner; so I had to prepare.  I knew how I wanted to present the scene, but would I be able to pull it off steadily remained in my mind.  Luckily  the crew (Matt and Nathan) would give me the encouragement I needed.  Matt was also nervous but he had a different way of getting encouraged.  A slap to the face.