Therapy: production

This short was shot in March 2003 over the course of two days during two separate weekends (about 20 hours total). The camera was a Canon ZR-20 (a 1-chip) with a wide angle lens, a polarizing filter, a fluorescent filter, and a cheap camera tripod (no pan or tilt). The 1-chip camera favored close-ups and disliked long shots. Color rendition was poor.

Lights were done with basic shop lights that cost about $30. The lights were very harsh and gave off a yellowish tint on video. (Proper white balance, even on a cheap camcorder, was essential to getting rid of this.) Since we didn't have any reflectors or diffusion screens, we had to resort to bouncing light off white poster boards and off walls.

Sound was recorded directly into the camera through an external cheap microphone (about $30 off E-bay) and an extra long wire. (This did not work out too well, see below.)

The film was not ready until March 2004. Most of this time was spent in post-production and editing. (Some of that time was admittedly spent dickering and learning the software.) We lost several good shots (like the scene were Max is actually run over by a car), because of digital artifacts. Four separate edits were made. The final edit is a little over 7 minutes long. Winmorph, the free software, was essential to the demon-doctor sequence. The music was composed using loops.

Location, Location, Location

Trying to find an office to shoot was like pulling teeth. For some strange reason, no one would let us use their office or waiting room. We got some pretty strange excuses.

We were trying to avoid that "home office" look, but we eventually had to resort to rearranging furniture in one room and hoping for the best. The Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church was kind enough to let us use a room in their church. The waiting room and the actual office were the same room at different angles. We only had one day to shoot in the church. The rest was shot in one of the actor's apartment.

Because we didn't have a visually interesting location, we didn't have a visually interesting movie. Way too many blank white walls for our taste. Shot composition was difficult because we didn't have much in the way of foreground and background to play with. For the next film, we hope to hold out for better locations.

Outdoor shots were also difficult, because the 1-chip camera didn't handle skies well. But we did record some great ambient sound (the bird noises were completely unintentional but they added so much, a happy accident).

Sound Is Everything

The sound on Therapy is horrible. Let us get that out of the way right now.

In this modern era, people are getting more accustomed to the video look. More movies are being released that were shot on DV formats like the PD-150, the Canon XL, and the Panasonic DX100 (drool). The general public still doesn't like it for narrative work, but they're more willing to accept it than they were in the 90's.

The one thing that can kill viewer's engagement is bad sound. Bad sound will kill your movie dead. Static, hiss, dropped dialogue—all that will disengage an audience faster than bad acting. Sound is meant to be subtle, but when faulty sounds come to the foreground, everything bad becomes more blatant. Actors come across worse, direction becomes sloppier, and the visuals can lose their appeal. It's all psychological.

We tried every trick we knew to correct the sound. Sound was recorded through a cheap external microphone connected to the camera. It was a standard mic hookup and not an XLR hookup. Something was wrong in either the connection or in the wiring, because there was lots of hiss in the final track.

We didn't have the advantage of being able to do an ADR with the actors afterwards, so what we recorded was all we had. The editing software's noise reduction filter cleaned up the sound a lot, but not enough. The first correction cleaned out the non-dialogue sections, but that was too jarring—there were moments of complete silence followed by sudden bursts of hissing dialogue. Everyone who watched the movie jumped whenever someone spoke. Instead we decided to even out the bad sound so that it covered the entire film. We hoped the sound would end up as background noise.

Post-Production Rocks!

Most of the time spent on Therapy was spent on post-production. Post-production has come a long way since The Undergraduates. What was considered impossible or cost-prohibitive only a few years ago is now within the reach of the zero-budget producer. (It's still fairly expensive, but nothing like it once was.) No longer do you have to rent an editing facility; everything can now fit on your home computer.

Compare these two screen grabs. The left screen grab is a direct capture from a 1-chip miniDV camera. Notice how flat and washed out it is and how much it looks like cheap video. Now compare it to the screen grab on the right. This one has been through an extensive post-production process, which included color correction, contrast and gamma increase, and adding an opaque and blurred video layer over the top. Experimentation (and patience) pays off.

No, it doesn't look like film. But it does look like higher quality video.

Vegas Video has these features built in. Even if you can't afford that software (or some other one, like Final Cut), try to use what's available on your own software. See if it has color curves or brightness or contrast adjustments.