a short film
by Kevin VanHook
The Script:
On one level, I wanted to keep the piece restrained. The personal edict was a minimum of locations, few or no visual effects, and I wanted to shoot it on HD to go through the experience.
I wrote a 10 page short script and let that percolate for a few weeks, letting my friends read over it. It was genuinely well-received and found to be more than a little disturbing.
I knew I could top that.
Another draft. Some comments.
This is the last one that had an albino in it. I have a friend down the hall that's an albino. He's into film and I'm pretty sure he'd do it. Unfortunately, my scheduled shoot weekend coincides with his parents visiting from the mid-west.
A final draft.
(SPOILER!!!!): It's in this one that I introduce the idea of the, "normal" looking Demon. A man who is innocuously seated throughout the piece.
This draft got me a slap on the arm from a Producer at Film Roman. "Warn somebody next time! I read that at bedtime! I had to get up and watch cartoons for an hour-and-a-half to get it out of my head!!"
If you read the script, you'll see that we cut the whole double-amputee part of the father's character. I had written the role for a friend who unfortunately didn't feel he could be a part of the project because of some of the nudity. Respectfully, I ultimately decided to delete those references rather than digitally create the effect.
Summary:
A mental patient is having a conversation with her doctor. Meanwhile, we see what she's seeing in her mind...dreadful figures representing death and self-mutilation...
The SCRIPT to PERSONAL DEMONS can be found HERE.
The Cast
Kristin Kat and husband Steve Beckler had acted in some of my other projects, as had Merrit Bailey. Newcomer Laura Fraser and veteran character actor Kim Story came on as the other leads.
The Personal Demons themselves were in the form of The Cut Woman (Allison Harris), The Clay Woman (Erika Siefred), Burnt Father (Chadd B. Cole), Daddy's Little Girl (Anissa Braggs ), The Stitching Woman (Andrea Yomtob), and lastly, The Stitched Woman was played by Dee Waldbridge. Sadly, just a week after completing the music for the short film, we learned that Dee had succumbed to cancer. She was genuinely one of the nicest people I've ever met and had about the best outlook on life that one could have.
She will be missed.
Pre-Production
Steve Fahey and I worked together pre-visualizing the story with Lightwave 3D. Then a couple of snapshots of the location; A Conference Room at the office.
Getting the crew together wasn't too bad. We're a pretty tight-knit family and as long as there are no previous committments, I can count on Matt, Chadd, Scott and Mike, most of whom have been with me since my first Short in 1996. Karen acted in Frost and came along as Producer. Andrea's been with us since The Fallen Ones Promo trailer, working both sides of the camera. Former VanHook Studios animators Vince Di Meglio and Tim Rasmussen (now big-wig Hollywood Studio Screenwriters) came out to play, with Vince (a Director in his own right) pitching in where he could and Tim acting. LeeAnn Taylor and Lynna Sim provided makeup and hair, doing an outstanding job. Steve Fahey and Adam Klein (both Forum Visual Effects artists) rounded out the crew as the sound guys.
Then, we got everyone together except the actress playing our Clay Woman and did a readthrough. It gave all parties a pretty good idea of what I was going for.
Kevin's Big Insight of the Day:
The BEST thing I did, though, was videotape the read using the basic camera angles and moves that I wanted in the final.
THEN, I edited that rough videotape. It showed me what angles I wanted to add, what could be cut, where I'd like to add more movement, etc.
Using this, I output a storyboard thumbnail of my rough edit. I labeled these in two ways--The Editorial Cut Number of the Shot, and more importantly, the SHOT SET-UP Number. At this point, I grouped shots by angle, lens length, dolly movement, etc.
I put this information and a brief description of the shot as a TEXT OVERLAY on each cut, then output my edit as a Quicktime Movie that I had on my Powerbook when we did the real film. I had a roadmap laid out on video and on paper. I purposely put myself into the most anal-retentive mode I'd ever been in as a film-maker. With my edit, I knew my approximate running time. I was able to smoothly schedule the set-ups, knowing that I could shoot Kim or Kristin in the mornings while the Demons were getting into their heavy makeup. Ultimately, we ended up shooting the short in two 8 hour days with an additional 4 hours shooting bed-room footage (on Mini-DV) to be played on the TV.
My concern was whether or not I would feel that I had overplanned it. Would I feel as if all spontaneity was gone? In fact, the opposite was true. Because I had all my bases covered, I felt freed up to experiment in a few places. I knew what worked, now what could work BETTER? Probably more importantly, I could work more closely with the actors because I wasn't worried about what we were shooting next.
Production:
It was our first time using HD and we had a Sony 950 F with a Fujinon Lens. High Def Cinematographer Keith Duggan came in for a few hours as a consultant, but ultimately said that Matt had a great handle on the gear intuitively. Matt also deserves MAJOR kudos for getting the lighting I was going for with a pretty ingenious little group of Chinese Lanterns. They cost practically nothing and they gave us a great look. My style had always been to go with deep shadows and harsh rim-light, giving us a pretty, comic book look. This time around, I wanted more realism, and in Post, I desaturated the image a bit and pushed the color toward green.
We used the Super PeeWee dolly to give us some mobility in the relatively small room. A skate-board sized table dolly added even greater flexibility.
The pre-viz helped immensely. All of the actors and actresses with one exception watched it through and this gave them a better idea of what they could accomplish onscreen and what it was I was trying to achieve.
The one exception chose not to cooperate and her role was cut down dramatically. Outside of this exception, the cast was and crew was a joy to work with and will be involved in future projects of mine, I'm sure.
Karen Bailey was invaluable in getting our cast together and generally keeping stuff from falling through the cracks and me from swatting the afore-mentioned exception.
As always, my wife Carol brought a great deal to the project. In this case, she helped with wardrobe and makeup design as well as making sure we had food on the set when it was time to eat.
Post Production:
We shot on HD-CAM. I down-converted those tapes to DV-CAM at Matchframe Video in Burbank. With the aid of fellow-filmmaker Jeff Coatney's editing system and DV-CAM DECK, I digitized the footage onto a 180 Gig Firewire Drive connected to my 500 Mhz Apple Powerbook.
Steve Fahey and I synced the sound (recorded separately on Dat) in a day.
I had never really used Final Cut Pro, but had experience in Premiere, Media 100 and a little bit with the Avids. I had a picture cut within two days.
I tweaked that over the course of the next few weeks, tightening here and there, cutting almost all of the bedroom Flashbacks originally planned (Flashes of imagery from the night of the incident).
I still ended up with three visual effects in the film, all of which were created by Steve Fahey.
From there, Will Richter took the cut and began music, which to be fair is more of a combination of music and sound design. It was a tough haul with Will's ever-growing career as a higher and higher profile composer (Nike, American Express, BMW, etc.), but in early December, he put the finishing touches on the score and it was worth the wait.
I'm extremely proud of the piece. It's hard to say it's entertaining. It's a little disturbing. A little sad and overall I think it shows growth in my skills as a film-maker in getting consistently stronger performances than I had been able to in the past. The camera has a palpable presence at times and at others, the very act of it being non-moving heightens the tension.
The frenetic panning of the camera recording the locked-off image on the television lends a creepy, voyeuristic tone to the revelation played out before us.
I have a couple of features that should be greenlit shortly. If life is unfair and this doesn't happen, I'll shoot another short. It's a blast to have the relatively immediate sense of accomplishment. (Remember, my last film took 5 years from script to delivery!) You can experiment in tone, style, camera movement and everything else in film-making FAR more easily than you can in a feature.
I'll be posting at least a portion of the film sometime soon. For now, there are some pictures to get an idea of the visuals.
Now it's off to the Festival Circuit.
Best always,
Kevin VanHook
12-29-03
Toys used in the process:
Apple Ipod (transporting the actual DV cut of the film as well as the score)
A keychain flash memory drive (transporting the actual DV cut of the film as well as the score)
Lacie 180 Gig Firewire 800 drive (down shifting to 400 speed)
Sony VX2000 (video rehearsal, bedroom flashbacks for TV playback)
Apple Powerbook G3 500
Software used:
Lightwave 3D (pre-viz) PC
Adobe Premiere (rough rehearsal edit) PC
Final Cut Pro (Edit of the actual short film) Mac
Adobe After Effects (Visual Effects Shots, Title Sequence) PC
Hard Costs:
The Camera, Tripod, Lens, tap and batteries was $1,000 a day. Since we shot on a weekend, that's counted as one day.
The tapes were 40 minute HD-CAM tapes at 24 fps. They're around $60 each. We used three tapes.
The tape conversions to DV-CAM was $300, including stock.
The Dolly was under $300 with the Ubangi attachment and track. Yes, the trick about using baby powder to keep rubber wheels from squeaking on the track and get them rolling really, really works.