As a documentary-track student enrolled in Lights Film School, I needed to complete their second module’s assignment, which includes filming a simple scene with at least four camera angles: establishing, medium, close-up, and insert. Continuity and mis-en-scene are also key grading factors. The challenge would be I had no talent on-hand, available crew, nor time to waste. In hopes of giving back to the indie film community, I documented the creative process from ideation to its final export. I hope this BTS inspires starting Lights Film School students and gives them the confidence to tackle the school’s second assignment.
Log line: A weary, small-town sheriff copes with loss, addiction, and mounting debt. But, a pending retirement is cut short after his child's killer strikes again.
Genre: Dark Comedy, Drama
Cost: $118
Link to Film:https://vimeo.com/361296433
Story. To alleviate any dependency on character or story development, this class project would be a spin-off of our previous micro-short. Grease Ghoul, our second production, had received a handful of festival selections and good response. This would constitute the assignment’s backstory with “A Broken Oath” serving as its prequel. The rest of the scene was simply resource film-making having taken stock of what I had on hand: a Sheriff uniform, old liquor bottles, prop (sugar) glass, guns and a bit of lighting. I did have to purchase some music, PVC and dirt (more on that later), so I have $118 invested in this micro-film.
Fun Fact: The background furniture consists of a barrel hi-top table, pony barrel light stand and a wine cabinet. Ironically, the sheriff is surrounded by booze even if not drinking.
Tone. They say don’t shoot against blank, white walls. Unfortunately, this was all I had as there weren’t any real dramatic or interesting rooms at the location. Given the dark tone, it needed to be at night-time. To add a touch of sadness, I rigged a drilled section of half-inch PVC pipe with fittings for a garden hose. This provided the artificial rain and (hopefully) made the faux “city” lighting a bit less noticeable. The latter a nod to Shane Hurlbut’s online courses. The scene’s room was chosen due to the warm, dark wood. The palette is mostly brown punctuated by blue (moonlight) and orange hues (practical, evidence tape, reflector vest, etc.). Color theory suggested brown denotes strength and reliability (e.g., law enforcement), as well as sadness or isolation. The film definitely has subtext surrounding coping with grief, but it is ultimately about exploring morality. The original concept (see PreVis section below) was another sci-fi horror to connect our first two micro-shorts. To be frank, it was just too dark and serious for a single-person film. It slowly evolved into a dark comedy with a few of the jokes created the night before during the “rehearsal”.
Fun Fact: The sun/ocean painting in the back corner was my second attempt at acrylic painting. My first painting is barely seen hanging on the fireplace, but was featured as a backdrop in our stop motion film: Sticks & Stones: A Story of David.
Framing. The master shot was unfortunately tight due to the room’s constraints. Shots started off above the Sheriff’s eye level (in line with his child’s viewpoint) as we subconsciously start off judging the character and looking down at him. The child’s portrait serves as his conscious or angel on his shoulder. The Kuleshov scene was much tighter with “prescriptions” still in view serving as the devil affixed to his other shoulder. We stay with short side lighting until he encounters evil (in the form of stolen evidence and the phone calls). My hope was to slowly encroach upon the character with each shot size getting smaller until the sheriff “snaps”. I did add one gratuitous, dutch tilt for emphasis. Then, we pull the camera back as tension is relieved through the punch line. Within the house, all shots were locked down on sticks with the exception of the POV shots as I wanted to get a matching angle in a confined space. I used Elderkrone’s Pro slider and app to capture the glove and bills on the table. The crime scene was shot nearly all handheld as I was on very sloped ground.
Lighting. In every project, I pick a film-making growth objective. For VFP’s latest stop motion film (Sticks & Stones: A Story of David), the goals were to a.) Work with real talent; b. Set design and c.) Practice the fundamentals of lighting a (tiny) set. For this project, my goals were to focus on Mis-en-Scene and continue to practice lighting a (person-sized) room. I drew lighting schematics and took into account the availability of receptacles, as well as overall load (amperage) on the individual circuits. Lighting was a combination of stylistic (GVM) LED set lighting, diffused/bounce (Lowel) Tungsten, Rosco CTB gels, 3x dimmers, a gobo and a 15 Watt practical bulb. Faux rain was backlit by a stack of low-wattage, colored fluorescent and LED bulbs affixed to (Newer) light stands arranged at various heights. The set’s lighting diagram, made with Shot Designer, follows this film’s credits.
Fun Fact: The practical lamp is sitting on top a cigar-labelled humidor. This was my first attempt at decoupage.
PreViz. After sketching fifty or so potential shots, I picked the best of the best. These crude, hand-drawn storyboards were rendered in FrameForge Storyboard 4 into a shot list. From there, I could see a rough animation of how the film would look. FYI, a few shots were dropped given the tone of the film changed from horror to dark comedy. The relevant previz animatic follows the film’s credits. I previz’d using what focal lengths impacted me. Naturally, we do not own every focal length; therefore, it was important to take inventory and perform a lens test.
Lens Test. With a head on a light stand and an attached color card, I tested ten MFT lenses on my GH5 using a single practical. All test shots were taken ten feet from “subject” at approximate eye-level (53”) from the “seated” head. Each clip underwent noise reduction via ReduceNoise plug-in and a single frame was extracted for each focal length. At this time, I had an understanding of how each lens looked wide-open in low light and its resulting frame size to the human face. This test was invaluable for starting off wide and setting up the close-ups. For the scene, I primarily used Rokinon cine-primes, but I did revert to a Lumix 45-150mm as I needed to leverage continuous auto-focus given I was the entire crew. The crime scene was shot with a 100-300mm Lumix zoom to help compress the image (making it look larger) and give it a more voyeuristic feel.
Special Effects. I added a few drops of cheap stage blood into NewRuleFX’s SMASHProps breakable shot glass; then, I added a few shards of rubber glass shards. I expected the shot glass to break effortlessly as their coffee mugs; however, it took a bit of squeezing. The result was being littered with sugar granules and getting a stained, red hand. The resin skull was a spent Fourth of July firework layered with latex and coats of different Halloween blood offerings. I had re-used a few props and clothing from the Grease Ghoul film in hopes of ensuring a subtle tie-in between films. The crime scene was setup in a massive hole in my backyard previously showcased in “Mole Hunt” - last year’s entry into the 48 Hour Film Project competition. About 10 pounds of soil and grass seed was added after the shot to make mowing a bit easier!
Fun Fact: The bourbon bottle was filled with apple juice.
Sound. Shooting wide with a boom is always an issue. The Sennheiser MKE600 is a great shotgun microphone and my boom man (an On-Stage microphone stand) kept it steady the entire shoot. But, there was too much distance; thus, I tried Zoom’s F1 Field Recorder with lavalier to aide in dialogue capture. On camera, a Rode Video Mic Pro was routed into the GH5 to help sync audio. The phone call was recorded in my homemade sound-booth using the Rode NTG3B as I wanted a bit of distinction between microphones and the Rode seems to offer a deeper sound. The Rode and aforementioned Sennheiser were phantom-powered and recording into a Zoom H6 recorder. I ultimately, selected the best audio clip from the three microphones and used an old Dereverb effect to help clean-up some of the echo. The villian’s and wife’s voices had simple effects (primarily phase shifter) added to them within Adobe Audition; then, imported into Premiere for assembly. Eventually, I slowed the villian’s clips down by 95% to help separate characters’ tone and speech tempo. My kid and I messed around in ADR with a Roland SP-404 sampler. A tad bit of experimenting with its pitch, delay, and filter knobs resulted in the creepy victim’s voice.
I spent weeks pouring over stock songs looking for something that helped establish the mood. I eventually settled on “Anatomy of a Touch BML” by Stan Tristan. Fortunately, I had a 10% off Pond5 coupon; thus, the actual spend was two dollars off. Sound effects came from my library, which is mostly derived from asoundeffect.com offerings collected over the last year and a half.
Fun Fact: This is Veteran Film Productions’ second lowest budget micro-film with “Mole Hunt” winning at $20.
Editing. After selecting the most impactful scenes, I increased my editing focus on continuity of action and repositioning each clip to avoid any unnecessary criticism. Having shot wider (in 4K), I was able to adjust most clips’ frame lines, which accommodated my (self-shot) close ups and ECUs. Shooting at 4K also had the unfortunate side effect of increasing rendering times and bogging down my system. To compensate, I edited a bit in the morning (cuts, effects, etc.); then, rendered while I was at work. Once the edit was 90% locked, I overlaid the free Rule of Thirds overlay from Premiere Gal to identify a few overt framing issues that was easily mitigated by shifting via the Premiere’s effect controls. Martin Scorsese and David Sandberg fore-warnings were right. This rough cut/assembly made me sick. In response, I must’ve exported more cuts than Apocalypse Now! The final cut was the hardest and I recorded additional dialogue, as well as tightened up the punchline.
Tip: Export your film with a timeline and keep an error log to ensure issues are identified and corrected. I uploaded to Google Drive, so I can access the film on multiple screen sizes (mobile, monitor, widescreen TV) and QA the audio on cheap headphones, PC and mobile speakers, etc.
Coloring. The resultant footage contained a ton of noise. This surprised me given the amount of lighting, but I eventually deduced the cause as my ignorance for selecting V-Log in lieu of an in-camera color profile. After white balancing the image and increasing the saturation, I added one of Triune Film’s Hitchcock LUTs as I wanted to retain that blue moonlight. Saturation for all footage was increased to 120% to compensate for V-Log flatness. Adobe Premiere’s color match functionality was a lifesaver as I needed to identify which shots were too noisy after coloring. Noise was removed via Neat Video’s ReduceNoise SR plugin. To ensure (some) consistency, I played back the movie while monitoring Premiere’s Lumetri Scopes. Any dips or spikes were adjusted per clip. Unwanted noise wasn’t an issue in the (well-lit) crime scene day footage and I added a vivid (free) LUT that emphasized the blood.
Titling. It may be my fondness for Hitchcock, but I am big into fonts, titling and posters as they instantly prepare the audience for what to expect. Our no-cost, commercially-licensed font came from Apostrophic Laboratories via 1001fonts.com. I always try to plug someone on who provides quality products for indie filmmakers. The title, A Broken Oath, was a play on the Sheriff’s retirement, quitting the hunt for his son’s murderer, and a nod to divorce. The faux Manson quote is actually from Augustine. I was inspired by Werner Herzog’s Masterclass to take some liberties with quoting in order to set the desired tone. The poster was simple text overlaid (in Photoshop) onto a TIFF still frame extracted from unused footage. It felt like overkill to create an actual poster for this short.
A special thank you to my wife and kiddo for stepping in to help with this class assignment. We also thank everyone who took some time to read through this lengthy, making-of blog post!