Spook Hunt: On Writing

It was 1:57 am.  I had already gotten up once out of bed and dragged my ass in front of my computer, I really didn't want to have to do it again. My brain however didn't care. It kept swirling with ideas, dialogue and shot setups.

Go to sleep please, I told it.

Nope.

I knew it was a losing battle.  The more I tried to shut my brain down, the more ideas kept popping up, and when a good idea floated across, part of my brain kept flashing so I would remember that idea by morning.

Eventually I gave up, plopped in front of the computer and begin writing - or should I say, not so much writing, as brain-dumping all these ideas into Microsoft Word.  You see, I don't really write while I'm at the keyboard, I just self dictate ideas, sentences and dialogue that I've already worked over in my mind time and time again.

My best times for "writing" are either right when I'm drifting off to sleep, or when I'm in the shower. Something about when there's no other distractions allows these thoughts that have been percolating in the dark recesses of my mind to finally float to the surface.  Then it's a mad dash to record them before they sink back down into forgotten darkness. I've written many a blog post with nothing but a towel wrapped around myself - desperately trying to jot the ideas down before the images fade away from memory.

Why I can't write like a normal person (you know, sit in front of the computer, work through an idea and start typing) I really don't know, but this is what I'm stuck with.

So, a number of weeks ago I realized that I would have to re-write (and re-shoot and re-edit) the first two scenes of my movie, Spook Hunt.  It's not that they were horrible, they just were just a little flat. And they were almost 4 minutes long - a sure death sentence for a short film that needs to be 15 minutes or less.

These were two perfectly good scenes where my two characters discuss what's going on and set up what will happen - you know, the dreaded exposition scenes.  I tried to dress them up as much as I could, but I knew it was a losing battle.  After shooting and editing the first two scenes of my movie, I knew they would have to go.  I still didn't know how to fix them however.

Fortunately a good friend gave me great notes that hit it on the head why the scenes weren't working.  One of his criticisms was that the dialogue was too "on the nose", a very typical problem for neophyte screenwriters.

The premise is very simple:  Charles has been hearing and seeing weird things in his house and his wife has freaked out and wants to sell the house - not a good idea in this economy.  He has brought his buddy Rob over to help him investigate and hopefully rid himself of his ghostly problem.  Now obviously there is more going on in the movie (especially the end), but this is how it starts, so I just needed a way to get into the film and set it up.

I had the two guys sitting around talking about the weird sound Charles had captured; when the sound had been recorded, what it could mean, how the sound had effected his family, while they looked at and listened to the sound.  Pretty one-dimensional.  Then I had the two of them discussing the gear they were going to use (a camera, flashlight and digital recorder)  and why it was important to use that gear, and how capturing something on that gear would help solve Charles' problem, all while they got the gear together.  Again, one-dimensional.

Yeah, I added some other stuff to each scene, but it was just window dressing.  The problem is people, especially guys, just do not talk like that. They usually have cross-purposes and talk over each other and change the subject and evade and eventually get back to the subject at hand.  That push and pull is what helps make a scene dynamic.

There was no real conflict or tension in either scene.  Charles is kinda freaked out and desperate, while Rob is concerned -  doesn't make for great drama.

Finally, it came to me that I should just combine the two scenes.  Have Rob listening to the weird sound while Charles is getting gear together. Except Rob isn't really listening to the sound - he's half paying attention to it while texting on the phone and trying to get Charles to go get a drink with his buddies.  Ah, that's better, a little dynamism and tension.  It doesn't take much to bring a scene alive.  Now there is a natural arc to the scene where Rob starts out as skeptical and non-committed but then eventually agrees to help his buddy out.  But of course, to keep some tension going through the next couple of scenes, I added one caveat:  Rob gives him just two hours - then he's dragging his ass out to get some drinks.

The other issue was I just had too many pieces of information crammed into these first two scenes, so my movie was top-heavy.  It was like, 4 minutes of setup and information and plot points and then whammo - 10 minutes of non-stop ghostly action culminating in a wild climax.  So, it was just a matter of paring down those plot points to the essentials in the beginning, eliminating some altogether, and then sprinkling the rest throughout the following ghost-hunting scenes so that I could build a more natural rhythm of tension and release.

This of course meant that I would have to work on not only the first two scenes of my script, but many of the later ones as well, all while I had already shot half of the movie already. 

Now you can understand why my head was swimming with ideas at 1:57 in the morning...

The Commune's Elisabeth Fies Interview

Speaking of courageous independent filmmakers, The Vault of Horror just posted an audio interview with writer/director Elisabeth Fies wherin she brilliantly discusses her horror/thriller The Commune, her take on genre films with a feminist point of view, and the process of indie filmmaking.

(FULL DISCLOSURE:  I am of course the editor and a producer of The Commune so I have a completely biased opinion of the movie - so there.  However, unbiased opinions can be found here, here, and oh yeah, here.)

The Story of Ink

If you are into visionary fantasy films, you owe it to yourself to check out indie cult favorite Ink.

From their website:
An 8-year-old becomes a pawn in a metaphysical war being fought between the forces of light and darkness in this visually outrageous indie thriller.

Kidnapped by a large, strange creature known as Ink, the girl is taken through a labyrinthine world of dream states while those who love her fight to bring her back into the real world and bring salvation to her desperate father.

Ink is one of the most ambitious indie films I have seen.  With a budget of around $250,000 filmmakers Jamin and Kiowa Winans have squeezed every penny of that mini-budget and put it up on the screen.

watch trailer 1  |  watch trailer 2	visit website

It completely sidesteps the usual hallmarks of low-budget filmmaking by including a large cast, many locations, superb fight scenes and amazing art direction.

You're just not supposed to bite off that much with so little budget and no studio backing - but thank goodness they did.

I especially loved the look of the Incubus (or is that Incubi??) with their ever-sneering projected faces:

(do I sense a little Dave McKean perhaps?)

Amazing as it is, the film is not perfect - the first act is somewhat confusing, the dialogue is a bit stilted at times and the editing unnecessarily frenetic in places.  Sounds like a typical Hollywood film. The micro-budget does inevitably show through in some scenes, but that is only because Jamin stubbornly refuses to be held back by commonsense notions of low-budget filmmaking.  Big kudos for pushing the envelope of what can be done!

As is so often the case these days, Ink is also a story about the trevails of independent filmmaking.  I particularly enjoyed reading their blog as they journey through the ever-changing sands of today's indie film world, while traditional distribution models crumble around them.  Ink had a film festival premiere, garnered great reviews (including Aint it Cool News, LA Times and Fangoria), amazing word of mouth, was theatrically released (by Jamin and Kiowa themselves) in Denver, New York and LA, their trailer was viewed hundreds of thousands of times, the movie itself ripped and dowloaded on bit torrent more than 500,000 times, was ranked as high as #16 on imdb, and had army of dedicated and passionate fans who clamored to see the film.

It also never was picked up by a distributor.

Refusing to sign with a distributor who at best might offer a small advance and retain all rights to their baby, and who at worst might just shelve the film, never to pay back a dime, Jamin and Kiowa made the inevitable decision to distribute the movie themselves.  In today's market that meant a combination of continuing to try to find independent theater owners who would screen it for them as well as the usual DVD and digital outlets - Netflix, iTunes, Blockbuster, and Amazon.

(For a more in-depth examination of the nuts-and-bolts aspects of indie filmmaking and distribution, take a listen to their Film Courage radio interview.)

Jamin and Kiowa make the case that the festival circuit of today is no longer a place to sell a film but an opportunity to launch a media blitz that may hopefully ultimately lead to paying back one's investors through self-distribution and a ton of hard work.  If these guys can't make it work, with their incredible film, dedicated fans and tireless work ethic, then the whole model of indie filmmaking is surely broken.

Please check out their work and if you enjoy it, support them by buying directly from their store where they will receive most of the profits.  Indie filmmakers like them can only survive by the continued support of people who actually buy their art and allow the artists the financial freedom to actually do their work for you, the viewer (more on this in a future post.)

Film is dead

First of all, I love film.

In elementary school I was one of those AV monitor dorks who wheeled the projection equipment into your room and threaded the film whenever your teacher needed a break and forced you to watch that boring volcano documentary again.  I started shooting with Super-8 cameras as a 12-year old and spent many a long night gluing edits together in my dark, noxious-fume-laced-room.  I later finally got my hands on real 16mm equipment as a film major at S.F State.  We Cinema students scoffed at the broadcast arts department kids and their aesthetically inferior crappy-assed video cameras that they were forced to use.  Eventually as a professional video editor, I spent many long hours trying to make video look more like film (Cinelook anybody), but it never really got there.

With its slightly stuttering 24 frames per second, motion picture film suggested another reality altogether different from our own - a place to pour our ideas, our emotions. It was the medium of visual poetry, of dreams. Video on the other hand, presented the harsh, glossy reality of the now. The faster frame rate of 30 frames per second made it appear to our eyes to be a glance not of art, but of our own mediocre everyday reality.  Video was the realm of soap operas, of news, of live events.

I wanted to live in the filmic world of metaphor - of campfire tales and big-screen dreams. I fought the film battle long and hard, but you know, what?

It's over - film is dead!  Long live digital!

Spook Hunt Scene 4 Preview

Here's a scene 4 sneak peek preview (you'll just have to wait until the whole movie is finished to see the entire scene!)

Keep in mind that the audio has not been mixed yet and some shots are still kinda dark as there has been no color grading yet.

Best to watch at night with the lights out!


Spook Hunt Scene 4 Preview from Todd Miro on Vimeo.

Spook Hunt Scene 4 notes - the perils of microbudget filmmaking

It was 1:30 am Saturday morning.  We had just finished almost five hours of shooting.  Everyone else had gone home and I was transferring and backing up all the media to hard drives.  I pulled up a couple shots to see how they looked and my heart sank to the pit of my stomach.  There was practically nothing there - no usable image at all.  There just was not enough light.

 (Yep - that's my master shot - enough to make a grown man cry)

 (...and there's Charles' close-up Charles?  Charles? anybody there?)

Writer/Director Todd Miro was really pissed off that Producer/Prop Master Todd Miro had slacked on his duties.

This last shoot for Spook Hunt really hammered home to me how much I've been juggling on this project.  I've been wearing the multiple hats of:

Writer
Producer
Director
Post Production Coordinator
Editor
Digital Media Wrangler
Sound Recordist
Production Manager
Craft Services
Set Design
Location Manager
Script Supervisor
Prop Master
Stunt Coordinator

Not to mention, running and maintaining my post-production business, Miro Digital Arts (finishing editing and sound mixing for the latest Goldman Prize videos), and oh yeah, being a father and husband too.

Something had to give - and it finally did Friday night.

Spook Hunt Scenes 2 and 3

Here's a rough cut of scenes 2 and 3 with a first pass of color-grading.  At the end of Scene 3, we really start to get into the meat of the film!


Spook Hunt Scenes 2 and 3 from Todd Miro on Vimeo.

Spook Hunt - Scene 3 notes

Now this was a fun shoot - the first time we got to sneak around in the dark and really get into some of the core elements of the movie.

On the set were the usual suspects: myself; Charles Yoakum and Rob Sandusky as, well... Charles and Rob; Director of Photography Rob Weiner,  and his son Ben to help out; also with us was Eduardo Silva, a great cameraman himself and jack of all trades who recently finished shooting a fantastic looking indie comedy, Not Quite College.

As always, our main camera was the Canon 7D, this time with a zoom lens to facilitate quick setups.  We used a Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 which we rented from BorrowLenses.com - a great resource that fedexed the lens right to my doorstep!  We were wide open on the lens the whole time, at ISO 800.

Our lighting rig consisted of the following:

1 flashlight.

Yup, that's it.  I really wanted the look of a pitch black house with just one light source constantly creating new looks - sometimes silhouettes, sometimes bounced light of the walls or ceilings, sometimes pitch black.

 

 

I wanted to blacks to go absolute black because I'm trying to build a sense within the viewer that anything could come out of the shadows at any time.

For audio we had Charles and Rob on wireless lavs which were sent to the Zoom H4n.  We also used another Zoom as a prop (their recording device for catching disembodied sounds or EVPs), and had that rolling as well.  I always like to have two sound recording devices going as you never know when one will fail during the best take.  The wireless lavs are great but occasionally pick up random RF hits, so I can always go to the handheld Zoom as a backup for that reason.

The other camera in this sequence (and for the rest of the movie) is a Sony HDR-CX12 with the infrared NightShot turned on.

The camera is setup with a wide-angle lens, and an additional IR light.  It shoots Hi-Def video at 1080i and then records AVCHD (a flavor of H.264) to Sony MemoryStick cards.  Unfortunately I found out late in the game that my old G5 can't read the files directly (it needs an Intel-based Mac for that), so eventually I found this little utility - VoltaicHD - which will convert the files to ProResHQ Quicktime movies for me to be able to use within Final Cut.

This camera is a prop also - it is the POV cam that the actors will use for the rest of the movie as they move around in the dark trying to solve the mystery of the sound Charles recorded.  I will use this shot whenever I need to show something that the Canon 7D can't pick up, and also when I want to build the tension by seeing their faces and putting the audience right there with them in the moment.

One thing when working with an IR camera is that... oh yeah, it can see in the dark!  Now this may seem obvious, but it is still easy to forget this basic point.  Everyone and everything should be cleared off the set - standing back in the shadows is not good enough.

Oops - Ben is in the shot.  I should have realized this during the shoot but didn't see it until playback.

Overall the shoot went very well, we worked very quickly, and everyone got to go home early - (a bonus when everyone has already worked a full day on their jobs and has families to go back to).  Thanks again to everyone on the shoot - we're about 1/3 of the way through the script and I'll be posting a rough cut of scenes 2 and 3 soon, so be sure to check back next week.

Spook Hunt - Scene 2 notes

We shot scene 2 recently, and it was a challenge to get this baby to work.

Charles gears up for the spook hunt - Canon 7D 17-55mm f/2.8 ISO 800 - all shots not color-graded

First, it is a dreaded exposition scene - in other words a scene in which I just need to give the audience some bits of info - mostly through dialogue.  Basically, the boys are gearing up for their spook hunt,  I introduce the infrared night vision camera that they are using (more on that in the next post), and we explain a bit more motivation behind why Charles wants to do this.

 

View from the Infra-Red POV cam (shot later with lights out)

 Some basic rules of exposition scenes:

1) Don't do 'em.
2) If you must do them, at least give the actors some other action to be doing while they are talking.
3) keep it short
4) Get out on a beat or a key bit of dialogue - DO NOT LINGER.

After fiddling with the scene a bit with my actors Rob & Charles, we managed to accomplish 2, 3 & 4.

Also making it tough was the challenge of shooting in a plain bedroom and trying to make it somewhat interesting.  I'm not sure we succeeded tremendously in this respect, but given our limited time constraints, and zero budget, we had to do the best we could and move on.  

Sometimes these are the hard decisions for a director - knowing when to cut your losses and not burn out your actors and crew on scenes that in the end are really not that crucial. 

Kubrick has been quoted as saying that to make a great movie, "All you need is six non-submersible units. Forget about the connections for the moment..."  What he means by this is to focus on the six or so essential core scenes in your movie that tell your narrative and your thesis.  Do your hard work in these scenes. If they are made well and hold up under scrutiny, then they will become the foundation upon which your movie is made.  Everything else is window dressing - don't blow your creative energy and budget on the window dressing.  This is where most Hollywood films get it wrong.

Spook Hunt - scene 1

Alright, here it is - the first cut of scene 1:


Spook Hunt Scene 1 from Todd Miro on Vimeo.

This cut has a first pass of my color grading, graphics and music (which I did my own dang self in Garage Band in about 15 minutes!)

We shot the scene in about 4 hours with about 7 different setups.  Lighting was fairly straightforward as I really wanted the sense of two guys at night around a lit dining table in an otherwise dark house.

Present for the shoot were myself (writer/director), Rob Weiner, (director of photography), Charles Yoakum & Rob Sandusky (talent), Kristin Nelder (audio/gaffer/camera advisor/production stills/and jack of all trades) and Ben Weiner (key grip/clapper/PA).

We shot with a Canon EOS 7D with a couple of rented prime lenses - a Canon EF 24mm f/1.4  and a Canon 50mm f/1.4  The fast lenses allowed us to shoot at ISO 400 most of the time.  For those unfamiliar with the 7D, (and what rock have you been living under) this amazing camera allows you to shoot full HD video (1920x1080) at 24fps with beautiful 35mm lenses and depth of field for around $2,000.  This allows for a very convincing film-look at a bargain price.  (For info on this camera and HD DSLRs in general, be sure to check out Phillip Bloom's incredibly informative blog.)

 

(Rob Weiner with the Canon 7D)

Monitoring was done through Rob's Panasonic BT-LH1710W 17" HD monitor, looking at HDMI out from the camera.  This was essential for framing the shots and finding critical focus.

 

(me looking at framing through the BT-LH1710W)

Audio was fairly straightforward: 2 wireless lavalier microphones (1 for each actor) fed in to a Zoom H4n digital recorder.  We used another Zoom on the table pointed at the actors as a boom mic.

 

(only follically challenged filmmakers need apply)

I slated every take to match sync between the camera and the two digital recorders.  I wound up hand-syncing in Final Cut (since there weren't that many shots) but I will eventually use Plural Eyes to sync when we start shooting more.

 

(enjoying a frosty beverage from craft services - oh wait, that's just a water from my garage - the travails of low budget filmmaking!)

(Rob extolls the virtues of alcohol to Charles...  Charles isn't buying it)

 

(Me pointing at nothing in particular. That's a director's job - to look like you're in control and know what you're doing even when you don't.  When in doubt, point at something. Rob is playing along, pretending to be impressed at my eloquent insights, but he really just wants to know when he can go home.)

After the shoot, Rob loaded the video files onto my drive (I prefer the GTech drives - rugged, fast and mobile) and then I transcoded them to ProResHQ to import into Final Cut.  The scene cut together very quickly as I knew pretty much what takes I wanted to use.  Also, being the writer/director/editor, I had already played the scene out in my head many times, so the actual cut went very fast.

This scene was fully scripted and blocked out ahead of time.  Rob and Charles added a bit of improvisation at rehearsal which we incorporated into the final shoot.  The rest of the movie will be very different as it is not fully scripted and we will improvise lots of it.  I have each scene written out with the beats I want to hit, but I want to allow Rob & Charles to explore the scenes as they happen to them.  This, combined with the infra-red POV camera shots should add some realism and immediacy to the scares that await them.

That's it so far - we start rehearsing the next scene in a week and will shoot it later this month.

There really are no excuses anymore to making your own high-quality movie.  The tools are incredibly cheap and offer amazing, professional results.  As technology has leveled the playing field, content is king, so story should be your primary concern.  If you've got a great story to tell I encourage you to get out there and do it!

  

(all photos courtesy of Kristin Nelder - thanks K!)

Spook Hunt - the beginning

Oh god not again!

That's what I said to myself when I first heard about Paranormal Activity.

What was that sound you heard?  It was the sound of my soul being ripped apart once again.  How many times was I going to let this happen?  How many times have I had ideas that I've played with in my mind, written treatments, maybe even had a few discussions with buddies saying, "Not this time - this time I'm actually going to do it - this time we're going to make this movie...", only to let it slide away like some elusive dream that you try to hold on to upon wakening, but it always is just beyond your reach to remember.

I can't tell you how many ideas for movies I've had that eventually have been made.

Years later.

By someone else.


This time I have to make a stand. This time I'm doing it - I'm making it so dang easy for myself that I have to do it.  I'm shooting it in my own house, with my friends, with gear we already own - no excuses!

 (actors Rob Sandusky, Charles Yoakum, and Director of Photography, Rob Weiner rehearse the first scene)

Spook Hunt came from a kernel of an idea that I played around with about 6 years ago.  My idea was simple - no one had really yet exploited the first-person found-footage horror genre that Blair Witch Project opened up back in 1999.  The beauty of this genre was two-fold.  First, the first-person POV of the camera placed the viewer directly in the path of the horrors unfolding on the screen, and second, the medium allowed you to use inexpensive gear without having to make excuses for it.

I also wanted to tap into the then emerging YouTube phenomenon by not only using it to generate buzz for the project, but by posting clips of the project as if they were found footage.  Basically, I would create 3-5 min clips about a guy documenting the weird things going on in his house.  Eventually, these would ramp up and get weirder and scarier until all hell breaks loose.  I liked the tension of having the YouTube followers not really sure if what they were seeing was "real" or not and I would play that out as long as I could before letting on that the whole thing was fiction.

The Commune DVD is here!

My first foray into the indy film market is done!



A labor of love for over 2 years, The Commune is now available for everyone to enjoy. We worked really hard on the DVD to pack it with many extra features including deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes interviews and not one but TWO entire commentary tracks that take you deep inside the making of the movie and the process of developing the story, themes and symbolism hidden within The Commune.

---

OK, enough hyperbole for now.

Allow me to fill you in on the backstory of The Commune.

Almost three years ago, my good friend and brilliant screenwriter, Elisabeth Fies started working on pre-production on her first feature film, Pistoleras. Now, her screenplay for Pistoleras had already won a couple of awards and everyone who read it instantly recognized not only its smart mashup of Spaghetti western and teen flick genres, but its instant marketability.

While Lis started casting the movie, my other good friend, comic book artist Charles Yoakum begin work in the graphic novel version of the movie.

I concentrated on the production and post-production workflow. At the time, affordable HD camcorders were just hitting the market, and the Panasonic HVX200was getting lots of buzz due to it's ability to shoot 1080p at 24fps - in other words, produce a convincing film-look for under $6000. Add to that, the new 35mm adapters that were coming out like the Brevis and the Red Rock Micro which allow for true 35mm depth of field just like the big boys in Hollywood, and this combo looked to me to be the perfect way to enter the feature film market with a microbudget.

We started to do some screen tests but soon realized that the scope of the project was just too big for the resources that we had available. The script just had too many characters, too many locations, too much action choreography and to be honest, we had too little experience to do the script justice. Although Lis and I both had filmschool backgrounds, and I had over 15 years experience as a professional editor (mostly documentaries and corporate videos), this would be our first feature film. We decided that it would be best of we got our feet wet on a smaller-scale project that had fewer locations and actors, and that we could shoot in a matter of weeks.

Lis happened to have a screenplay that she had been working on that was almost ready to go, so she emailed it to me. I was blown away. Again, this was a genre mashup but this time a classic 70's style thriller mixed with a coming of age drama, all wrapped up inside the creepy Patchouli oil drenched commune. It was a slow-burn kind of story where you get lost in the intrigue and the amazingly honest love story and then BLAMMO you get blindsided at the end and realize that what you thought the story was about was far, far from the awful truth.

This was The Commune.

(To be continued...)