ImpossibleFX - photography | filmmaking

August 27, 2007

This weekend was amazing. After being sick for two days with a stomach virus, I was completely, absolutely involved with the CineSol Film Festival’s 36 Hour Film Race. Our group, Orange Media, was tasked with completing a complete ten minute short film, from start to finish, in one and a half days.

We were told to create a horror movie which consisted of a cheerleader character, had a meat market as a location and used the dialogue “I’ll have another.” We are competing against several other teams from across south Texas with the same parameters that we were given.

We decided to create a zombie-horror-survivalist movie starring Eric, Adriana, Edgar, Amber and Sergio. Directing was Gibby, Edward was DP, Erick was producer and our AD was Jessie. Jay and Rom with sound design and myself as film editor and foley artist. I also made an on-screen appearance as a dead body that is pulled from a truck; a scene in which I performed my own stunt fall.

Gibby asked me to write and perform the part of the Emergency Radio Announcer where I decided to give background to the short film and also gave the film an answer for the zombie infestation albeit a depressing one. I had written the script in my Google Mail account as I was finishing editorial at Ed’s house. Then I drove to the studio where ADR, music and foley was being recorded. I stood at the microphone holding Erick’s Apple Book and read the scripts I emailed to myself. After a second take of the first monologue which needed to be timed to fit before the first bit of dialogue, I delivered the next two monologues on the first takes. I then performed foley noises with Jessie and Erick assisting and performed the vocal effects for the zombies.

This little short film, I think, is some of my best work from an editing point of view. The film is tight; it MOVES quickly and covers a lot of territory story-wise. There are no less than nine locations. One scene involves quite a lot of dialogue that actually wound up requiring a re-shoot because it was too damned long. Once it was done, the movie had a running time of 9 minutes and 32 seconds. The end credits (which needed to run no longer than a minute outside the duration of the movie proper) were about 45 seconds in length. The film was titled “The End” whose title appears at the very end of the movie. Sort of like a reverse on “28 Days Later” whose card appears at the end of the precursor scene as both a title and an explanation for the proceeding scene.

The title was my idea. Gibby would have liked “Decay” as the title but didn’t make a decision so the title was picked by lottery. Everyone put their idea for a title onto a piece of paper which was then mixed in a hat. The winning title was drawn from the hat and Gibby had to live with it. He wants to call the film “Decay” when we do the director’s cut. I don’t think there will ever be a director’s cut unless several scenes are completely re-shot. I found most of the original scenes to be absolutely underexposed. As a result, many of the scenes show unfixable video artifacting. I know that the guys like their movies dark and moody, but that doesn’t mean you shoot them that way. If anything, you shoot them very well lit and make them darked in post using telecine conversion and color correction processes.

No matter, the next film we make as Orange Media will have me directing the photography. It’s going to be yet another horror-gore-thriller, independent movie which I really don’t want to be pigeonholed to. But whatever, making movies with the guys is fun. They’re all a bunch of creative fellows and we have some great talent such as Eric, Adriana, Edgar, Amber and Sergio.

Interestingly enough, Sergio was supposed to be just the continuity guy, but wound up being a zombie in full makeup and prosthetics. I think we used tripas (cow intestine) for Amber’s Victim #1, masterfully handled by Jay. And Sergio was an extremely capable actor. The dude surprised me, actually. I work with the guy almost every day at the office in master control and he’s real quiet. Loves “24″ though.

“The End” was shot using a Panasonic JX-2000P in 16×9 at 24p. Edited using Final Cut Pro on a Quad Core Apple Macintosh PowerMac. The film was completely produced between 11pm Friday, August 24 and 7:30am Sunday, August 26, 2007. The judging and awards ceremony for the 36 Hour Film Race competition will be held during the CineSol Film Festival at the South Padre Island Convention Center at 3pm Sunday, September 2, 2007.

Watch “The End”

Check out the production stills.