Sex scenes suck. Well, for me at least. My actors were just fine with it.  So while I was busy blushing and being embarrassed about the whole thing they were enthusiastic and ready to get filming.  Nudity and sex scenes are a touchy area in any production but especially in a low budget one where your actors are working for deferred pay.  In general, I’m always really sensitive about what I ask of my actresses and try to take all the precautions necessary to make them comfortable.  In this case, it meant a closed set with as few crew members as possible and at least one female crew member present at all times.  Once the lighting was done we were able to reduce the crew down to a totally of three people including myself.

Choreographing sex is an odd and uncomfortable thing.  A film set is a place filled with crude jokes and vulgar comebacks but it completely different matter when it comes to directing actors in a sex scene.  I often found myself struggling to phase things a in a way that didn’t come off sounding perverse or gross.  The scene itself is not a gratuitous one just thrown in for the sake of showing breasts but a moment of connection between two people.  It was something I stressed to my leads over and over.  More than anything else I wanted to see eye contact between them.

And then it was time for sex.

Both the actors were highly amused by my embarrassment and mocked my blushing between takes.  When I stepped out for a moment my assistant director wanted to know if I needed some water since my face was so red.  As if I wasn’t uncomfortable enough, I also was hit in the back of the head by an airborne bra on two separate occasions.  However, after a certain number of takes it eventually stopped being embarrassing and starts just being monotonous.  My actors stayed in good humor the entire time though, joking and laughing as we went and doing take after take with the commitment of professionals.  More than anything I am thankful for the actors I chose for this film.  They have all shown a level of dedication that is admirable and encouraging.  Despite long days and difficult scenes they have carried through  and risen to the top.  Even with Hollywood backing and a big budget I couldn’t hope for a better cast.

There’s an odd dichotomy going on within this film’s production.  I hadn’t even noticed it until this past weekend when our female lead, Emma Dubery, commented that so far she’s essentially been making a romance movie and only knows she’s in a horror movie by hearing about what happened on the day after she wasn’t on set.  Because of the availability of certain actors/actresses and how we scheduled the film so far production has been broken up so that Saturdays normally are filled with ordinary dramatic scenes and Sundays typically are filled with mayhem and horror.  This past weekend being no different.

Saturday was indeed all about romance and human connection so our two leads spent the day in scenes building their characters bonds.  These scenes were all about revealing who these two people are as characters so that when the bad things begin happening to them the audience actually cares.  The final major scene of the day was in fact them sharing a new drinks and a joint over a conversation that would lead to the film’s one sex scene.  The scene was a joy to shoot as, by this point, both leads are quite comfortable with one another and performed with a relaxed ease that really sold the moment and their connection.  My few notes to them were all about issues of blocking rather than anything to do with their acting, which is truly the most a director can ask for.  The scene was also not without a few laughs off camera as well. The script required Emma to roll at joint for the two of them to smoke.  Something she proved less than capable of doing.  After several disastrous attempts it was decided that the joint would have to be pre-rolled for her and that she would merely finish the task once the scene began.  However, even that proved to be a hardship as her sweat from the heat caused her fingers to stick to the paper making closing the joint difficult.  Any smoker will end up shaking their heads at the misshapen messes that they end up smoking on screen and the two of them ended up picking tobacco out of their teeth between lines.

Sunday on the other hand was all about blood as we were shooting our first big effects scene.  This was going to be a difficult shoot no matter what as it involved a blood knife gag, make-up effects, prosthetic and nudity.   On top of all that the weather decided to be uncooperative and we had torrential rain showers throughout the day.  This was a particular hindrance to us as we were shooting in the kitchen and in previous scenes we had established our lighting design as throwing lighting from outside through the kitchen windows.  In order to maintain this design we had to build a canopy of shower curtains to cover the lights and keep them dry.  However, once this was accomplished, there is  no way to tell that it wasn’t a bright sunny day in the footage.

Once the camera rolled things didn’t get any easier as we did take after take struggling to get that holy combination of excellent acting and technical perfection.  During this process the heat and humidity were unrelenting so patiences wore thin and tempers flared but ultimately, it was all for the best as we got what we wanted.  To keep the actors from totally burning out we often switched them out with stand-ins while we lit and set up our shots.  Our producer Elias often stepped in and pretended to be both our male and female characters, requiring him to walk with bent knees or speak with ridiculous voices.  Okay, that last part wasn’t required but it certainly helped relieve some of the tension on set.

To help with creating a sense of surprise and fear our lead, Michael Jefferson asked that we hide the make-up effects from him as long as possible.  As such we shot all of the reverse angle first and he played the scenes with his eyes shut so that when we turned the camera around and he opened his eyes he was truly seeing the horror before him for the first time.  Later, I had to take over as camera operator for one shot.  We wanted an over the shoulder shot but DP Mike Aransky just wasn’t tall enough to achieve it so that camera was handed off to me.  Even I wasn’t quite tall enough though and had to shoot the entire thing standing on my tiptoes.  At the end of the day everyone was tired and worn out but we got the footage.  Currently, I am in the process of putting together a rough cut of the scene because after all their hard work I feel the cast and crew deserve to not have to wait to see what they accomplished this weekend.

The Director of Photography on my film, Mike Aransky, is a veteran of several low budget film productions and holds one strong belief about it.  As often as possible you should filled the crew with friends.  When you’re not paying your crew it’s good to have as many of them as emotionally invested in the film as possible.  This was an important lesson that I also learned last week when we suddenly lost two important crew members and I spent the week desperately searching for replacements.  Relief came in the form of a good friend Kurt B. Davis, who stepped in at the last moment, dramatically altered the mood of the set and the crew for the better.

Which was good because this was another hard week.  On paper it looked easy enough but, in production, paper is usually a lie.  Unforeseen technical issues never show up on paper after all.  But we persevered and got everything done that we needed to.  Saturday was the introduction to the set of Emma Dubery, our female lead.  Like all our actors and actresses, she showed incredible dedication, putting in the long hours necessary and dealing with a multitude of mosquito bites as payment for her time.

But I’m sure none of this is what you really want to hear about.  You want to know about Sunday, when we finally started shooting the creepy stuff.  Sunday brought Sandra Palmeri and her character, the Shade, to the set.  The Shade is the first of several malevolent entities that plague the main character throughout the film.  In the scripting process the character actually went through a fair number of changes, even starting out as a male.  During auditions, Sandra, who had actually come to read for a completely different character, stuck us with her strong physicality, a necessity for a mostly silent role, as well as a bone structure that would lend itself to creepy make-up.

Her costume was a the result of low budget ingenuity.  Rather than incur the cost of designing and creating a costume from scratch our costume designer turned to the local vintage shops first.  Sure enough, among the racks she found the perfect dress, a white gown that strongly resembled a wedding dress.  The resemblance was so strong in fact that she made the brilliant suggestion that we use it as the wife’s wedding dress.  So peppered throughout the set are photographs of the main character’s wedding day and his wife in the dress, adding to the question of whether or not the Shade and her fellow spirits are real or delusions. The white dress wasn’t particularly spooky on its own however and so work was needed.  First it was dyed black and then distressed, primarily by setting it on fire!  All that was needed then was the addition of a large black veil and our monster had her look.  Now she just had to do was some haunting.

Which proved a little more difficult than expected.  The first scene was a tracking shot that followed the main character down the hall only for the Shade to slip into view behind him.  Seems simple enough, right?  Maybe on paper.  The hallway proved to be our biggest adversary since it was quite narrow and cramped.  Lighting was a struggle, which Kurt diligently overcame with good humor and creativity, and space to maneuver came at a premium.  All told, it took 12 takes to get enough material that we were happy with.   By which time Mike’s back was killing him from all the collision with the banister of the staircase, my fault since I was behind him to steer him around it. Ultimately, though the footage looked good, a seemingly benign moment suddenly turned menacing and creepy.  The second scene proved just as difficult but for completely different reasons.  It was to be one of those infamous mirror shots, in which the main character sees the Shade in the mirror only to spin around and find the room empty.  The problem was a matter of height.  We needed the main character high enough that we could see him properly in the mirror and the Shade even higher so that she could tower menacingly over him.  If Tom Cruise can have a career standing on boxes then so could our lead.  The difficulty was finding boxes of the right height.  We just couldn’t get them to the perfect levels.  So desperate times called for desperate measures and the lead ended up standing on a cast iron pot while the Shade rose above him on a heavy-duty typewriter case.  The result was pretty darn creepy, as long as you didn’t look at their feet.  Luckily we were only shooting them from the waist up.

I had intended the title of this series as a euphemism since I’m making a horror film but there’s a very real chance that it might just end up being the truth.  Here’s a little secret, low budget filmmaking is not fun.  It’s long and it’s hard and, even if it’s something you truly love doing, it’s incredibly stressful.  Over the course of the weekend I managed to get about 5 hours of sleep each night, usually in two to three hour batches.  I was almost constantly on my feet running around the set making sure things were moving along or working with the actors.  The house we’re shooting in has no air circulation and so is naturally hot, which is only exacerbated when you add lights into the mix.  I ate very little and often had to be reminded by my assistant director to eat at all.  By the end of the weekend my brain was having difficulty with even the simpliest of thoughts and I was ready to fall over.  So was it all worth it?  In a word, yes.

The digital age has been a boon for indie filmmakers and, beyond just making it easier and cheaper to make a movie, I’d say one of the biggest advantages it’s added is the ability to review what you’ve shot almost immediately.  Film may look beautiful but it is a long and laborious process to get it to the point where you can actually view it.  With digital, all it takes is a couple of minutes to dump the footage onto a computer and you’re ready to go.  There’s nothing that salves the tired, wounded soul of a director than watching the footage they’ve just shot and seeing that’s its actually good.

So what did we shoot this weekend?  Well, as horror fans most of it won’t be of much interest to you because we haven’t gotten to the juicy stuff just yet.  This weekend was primarily the calm elements that come between the storms.  Which is not to say that it wasn’t important or essential.  The first day was taken up mostly by small character moments for the lead, played by a very talented young man named Michael Jefferson.  We tried to shoot as many scenes that were set in a single room as possible to keep us on schedule and cut down on the time it took to move and reset lights.  Yet, we still found ourselves falling behind schedule quite quickly.  This out of sequence method of shooting also proved to be a nightmare for continuity, with headaches rising up almost every time we moved on to a new scene and we struggled to make sure that the actors were wearing the right clothing and at the right level of distress.

The second day proved slightly easier as the crew began to become comfortable with one another and their roles.  The schedule was also simpler and more streamlined with far less scenes and set ups.  The entire day was made up of scenes between the main character and his best friend, one of his few remaining tethers to the outside world, played by another talented young man named Andrew Ruth.  These scenes were the ones we had rehearsed the most before actually shooting in order to build up a sense of comradeship between the two actors.  There were still some struggles on set as we sought to find just the right tone or performances for specific sections.  At one point, Michael was finding it difficult to delivery a few lines in the manner I wanted.  Likewise I was finding it difficult to find a way to express what I wanted from him.  So, instead I took a different tactic.  The point of the dialogue was that he was relating a story that while embarrassing at the time was something he could laugh about now.  So I had him tell us a real story from his own life that was originally embarrassing but now funny in retrospect.  Once he had loosened up I then had him tell the story from the film in his own words while we filmed the scene.  Then when he was comfortable with it we returned to the original dialogue from the script.  While it took us longer to shoot these scenes than originally planned for we were able to get everything we wanted and more importantly it all looked good as well. In the end that’s all an indie filmmaker can hope for.

About a month and a half ago, Drunkzombie.com posted an article entitled Support Indie Horror Films – Alone.  The article was to help raise funds for low budget horror film called, obviously, Alone.  The article may passed by unnoticed by some of you but I certainly took note, mainly because Alone happens to be my film.  After many years of directing short films I’m stepping up to the plate and trying my hand at a feature.  Now with less than a week to go before we start shooting, Bryan and the gang have ask me to do a weekly feature sharing the experience of making a movie to you all.

Super low budget films, of any genre, are made primarily through the kindness of others.  My budget is .00001% of the minimum Hollywood considers low budget so it’s taken a lot of kindness to get us to this point.  Friends and strangers have donated to budget and the crew and cast have all agree to work for deferred pay.  But truly this film probably couldn’t have happened without the supreme kindness of two men.  The first is my father, who has foolish volunteered his entire home to be used as the film’s location since the story is confined to a single location.  His beautiful three story brownstone will be the site of murder and horror for the next two months, driving him out onto the street.  The other is a good friend, Elias of Biff Juggernaut Productions, who, beyond dropping pearls of wisdom gained through his own experiences directing a feature, has also provided the production with the majority of its equipment free of charge.

While the real fun and headaches doesn’t start until next week, this past weekend was probably the most essential weekend of the production so far.  We picked up Elias’ equipment and transported it to the location.  The production designer came to the location as well and we spent several house transforming my father’s house into the home of an agoraphobic widow.  Then, Melissa Vento, our SFx make-up artist came by so that we could run camera/make-up tests.  While we tried to keep the effects to a minimum, relying more on atmosphere and acting to carry the film, there are a couple of set pieces that require disturbing effects and if they fail so will the film.  This was our opportunity to see what worked and what needed to be improved.  The main test was that of Jane, the victim of a car accident, who’s face has been ravaged by the accident.

Melissa’s original concept sketch looked like this:

It was a good starting point and gave us a clear idea of what she had planned.  It helped us establish the style of the effects (realistic) as well.

Once the role was actually cast Melissa was able to get more detailed in her design, using photos of the actress as the basis of the new design.  It ended up looking like this:

Personally, I thought this was brilliant way of working as it gives a far clearer idea of what the character would look like than any normal sketch would.

Once both Melissa and our actress, Sarah, has arrived Melissa set about the task of turning those drawings into something real and far more disturbing.

There’s nothing quite as unnerving as a bloody, disfigured woman laughing and joking with you.  Once the application was finished the real test began as we set up lights and put Sarah in front of the camera.  We had her run lines, move about and give  multiple different views of the make-up all to make sure that it would hold up on the big screen.  In doing so we were able to figure out how forgiving the HD format we’re shooting in is (not very) as well as the best ways to light the make-up (the darker the better).  It also revealed to us how the make-up needed to be altered to better show it off.  All told we spent nearly 5 hours applying and testing the makeup so that when the time comes it won’t look like make-up to you.

Now we have our refined effects design ready, the proper equipment to make the movie and a set to film it in.  Which is good because in 5 days there’s no turning back.  The cast and crew will arrive, the camera will roll and I’ll be making a movie, which I plan to see it to the very end, even if it kills me.