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If you were following me on twitter the weekend of September 18-19, you might have seen my flurry of tweets regarding the culmination of post-production on LOVE IN AN ELEVATOR.

I could have futzed around with it for many more hours, which could have spanned into days and weeks and probably months, but I realized I had very little to gain by doing so, and that the need to move on to other projects far outweighed my desire to fix certain issues.  After all, this was my first short film, created with the sole intent of gleaning an idea of how one goes about creating such things.  I wasn’t going for an Oscar or even for any festival submissions, so it was time to move on.  In allowing myself to do so, I knew I’d be chalking up some things to lessons learned.  Here are three items that jump to mind.

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1) Reflections in glass make good excuses for philosophical reflection.

 

As I’ve touched upon before, I ran into a little snafu when, during a sort-of-pivotal shot, it turned out myself and a couple of other members of the crew were visible in the reflection of the glass doors behind my male lead.  After spending an embarrassing number of hours trying to figure out how to blur us, I finally decided it was time to let go of that dream and pretend it was purposeful.  And so, I present to you here my newly developed film-school analysis.

In this particular shot, the male lead is watching the female lead walk away from him, struggling with whether or not to call out to her, and ultimately deciding not to, all while be watched by a film crew, which symbolizes how we all have the choice to be observers or doers.  We can sit back and be an audience to life as it passes us by, or we can take action and change our destinies.  We can become the people others watch.

That works, right? Symbolism is way easier than After Effects.

Lesson Learned: Don’t shoot against reflective surfaces from an angle and/or time of day where you’ll be visible because then you will dump hours of your life trying to learn After Effects on your own and still fail and have to draw upon your creative writing skills instead to explain away the fact that you and your crew remain visible in a shot where you should not exist.

2) You can see temperature as much as you can feel it.

I was amazed in post-production to see how moving the camera up or down a matter of three or four feet or in and out of an open elevator completely changed the color of the shot.  I managed to fix it a little in post, but it again ended up being one of those things that I decided wasn’t worth futzing with more than I already had.  I’ve got no film school analysis on that one, but it’s definitely something I’d like to avoid as much as possible in the future.

Lesson Learned: Find a set that uses the same style of lighting in all locations, bring your own lighting, or don’t move your camera ever.  Alternatively, read your camera’s manual, as there are probably settings to help lessen that effect.  Also, consider finding a cinematographer if you are not one (I am so not).

3) There is more than one kind of Creative Commons License.

Imagine you’ve found music under a Creative Commons License that you really like.  You download it and spend a good eight hours arranging it for your short film, matching it up just so it enhances what’s happening on the screen.  You’re really happy with it.  And then, you go back to double-check the info for the credits, and you see you’ve used a piece with a non-derivative license.  You furiously google this term that has stricken fear into the very center of your heart.  You feel your soul deflating as you find that you have violated the terms of this particular sort of Creative Commons license by creating a new work, both by arranging it and setting it with video.  You pin your hopes on an e-mail sent to the owner of the piece, asking for permission.  You never hear back.  You cry and gnash your teeth and scream to the heavens, “WHY? WHY?!”  But it does no good.  You delete the music track, the mouse-click like the sound of a shotgun firing at your heart.  And you go back to the drawing board.

I actually scored my film a total of three times.  The second bit of music I found never matched up quite as well as I’d hoped it would, and so I went back to the drawing board a third time.  Both the second and third attempts, I made absolutely certain I was using music completely and truly in the public domain, via a glorious website called MusOpen.  If you’re in need of classical music recordings in the public domain, they’re an excellent place to get it.

Lesson Learned: Do your research and read carefully.

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I know there are more lessons to be discovered yet, but my focus right now is on getting everything ready for my viewing party on Saturday.  I alternate between being excited, a ball of nerves, and just ready to have it all over and done with.  It’s probably a healthy mix, but it leaves little mental energy for deep reflection.  Next week I’ll be posting it online for those who want to see it, which will have me in another cocktail of excitement, nerves and fatigue, I’m sure.  But I can only focus on one near-meltdown at a time, so that one will have to wait until Sunday.

 

On May 22nd, with the help of four friends and one sister, we managed to shoot a short film.  It didn’t go perfectly, but I’d say it went nearly swimmingly, and for that I am thankful.  We kept the shoot to about four hours, despite a few hiccups.    Here’s a quick rundown of some lessons learned.

1.) Don’t trust yourself to remember everything in the morning, even if you have made a list, and even if you remember to reference said list.  I’d intended to purchase some food to be used for props during my Starbucks run.  It was on my list.  I had my list with me.  But when it came time to order, I had one and only one focus: needcoffeenow!  Luckily my crew was able to help me out, and we were able to grab some stuff at our location.  However, this also led to using a branded water bottle in many shots, when we’d made grand attempts at covering all other logos.  Things start slipping your mind when you have to think on the fly.

2.) Tell your Right-Hand Man to second-guess everything you say.  In this case, I called my sister, serving as my production designer, and asked if she’d printed the cat photo I’d requested the night before. This sent her into a frenzy, which included waking up our understandably grumpy and put-out mother at a much-too-early-for-Saturday hour — all this because my sister assumed that I wasn’t crazy.  What I’d really meant, instead of “cat photo,” was “dog photo,” which she had indeed printed the night before.

3.) Watch out for glass (and other reflective surfaces).  There are things you can’t see on a little viewfinder, like yourself in the reflection of the glass doors behind your two leads.  This ultimately leads to the weird, potentially-existential-crisis-inducing act of trying to erase yourself.  From video, of course.  But it could be a slippery slope.  (See? Existential crisis. Right there.)

4.) Divorce yourself from the movie in your head (and embrace humiliation).  One of my favorite scenes ended up happening because my lead actor was less than impressed with the aesthetic qualities of the leftover lunch I’d prepared for his character.  Because of his slightly-unwarranted disdain for my lunch-making abilities (the nerve!), we ended up with a scene that was funnier than what I’d written in the script.

5.) Get to know your tripod, camera, and other equipment.  I tried to get to know both of tripods, but we ended up only sharing a warm acquaintance. On set, this quickly turned into a contentious battle of wills, which resulted in my cast waiting around while I waged war with the pair three-legged monsters.  My camera and I got along pretty well, though there are a billion settings I didn’t really have time to explore that might have helped some of the color temperature differences I ran into in post-production.  The biggest disappointment was in my rigged-together dolly, which consisted of a skateboard, Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” books, and something else I can’t remember.  In the dolly’s defense, it would have worked quite well if I hadn’t needed to dolly out at an upward angle instead of straight back.  Because of this, I missed out on a couple of shots that would have added some visual interest to the film, but hey, that’s life.

6.) Before you have your actors do a wardrobe change, make sure you’ve filmed everything you want/need in Outfits No. 1.  The worst part about this is we’d already filmed what we thought were the last shots (in Outfits No. 2) and settled in for a relaxing lunch.  About two bites into my wrap, I realized I’d never gotten a couple of key shots I needed.  When I informed my leads that they’d need to change back and that we weren’t quite done, my lead actress, who is one of the sweetest and most adorable people I’ve ever known, actually almost scowled at me.  She’d probably deny it, but she did.  And it was deserved.  But them’s the breaks.

7.) Ask for what you need, even if you’re starting to annoy people.  If you’re not getting what you need from a shot, keep doing it and tweaking it until it works.  If you have to ask your actors to change back into their first outfits even though you thought the shoot was over, do it and get those shots.  If you have to ask your actors to crouch awkwardly on the floor of an elevator and deal with you leaning on them in order to get the angle you need, well, get down and get cozy.  If you need your production designer to run back to the room with all the props for the 87th time to grab something you forgot, tell them to get to it and chop-chop.  You can’t be timid when you’re directing.  You’re the boss, and you have to act like it.  That doesn’t mean you should be a jerkface about things; in fact, I’d highly recommend against it.  Be courteous. Be appreciative.  Listen to what your team.  But be firm.  I’d also recommend surrounding yourself with a cast & crew who support you and your vision.  Mine did.  They were a stellar bunch, and I’m super-crazy grateful to them.

8.) Do not take home the leftover craft service.  You will be stressed.  You will be exhausted.  This will lead you to eat it all (or at least way too much of it).  Or maybe that’s just me.

That’s it for now.  I’m done with the rough cut without music, though I still have to erase myself from those two reflective-glass shots and do some color correction.  The hardest task, I think, is going to be adding music, and that’s on the agenda this week and into next. 

If anyone has any relatively simple, step-by-step instructions on how to remove or otherwise smudge/sponge myself out from the background using Adobe Premiere/After Effects (I’m working in CS5), I will love you forever and ever.