As you may already know, I didn’t go to film school, I went to the Utah State University to major in Finance. I later went on to get my MBA.

So what does any of that have to do with making movies? Well, not much, especially since at that time, I was studying to become the next Wall Street big wig. Obviously, that didn’t happen either.

My goals evolved over time and for the last 10 years or more, I’ve been devouring everything I can find on the art of filmmaking and storytelling. One of the things every film school will have you do though, is make a student film.

So I made a few. Each time I made a short film, I picked a few key things that I wanted to learn, and I focused very heavily on those things, while perhaps ignoring some other important things. So lets dive into this short film breakdown.

One For The Money, Two For The Soul – Prologue

This short was inspired by the book release I just had this Spring, titled—wait for it: One For The Money, Two For The Soul. Yeah, big surprise, right.

Okay, so in that book, I had a prologue that I had to delete. I thought it was a great little story to introduce the technology of the main meat of the book, however it was not in the same genre, and thus it didn’t mesh very well.

So out it went, but when I needed to find a good new story to practice my filming knowledge, I thought it would be the perfect stand-alone story. By the way, if you’re at all interested, please buy my book and leave a review where every you bought it from. Preferably a good review. All proceeds go to supporting me as I change careers from being a general contractor to a full-time storyteller, and trust me, that’s a scary leap when you haven’t been proven yet.

Like in my last article, I want to share with you the goals I had, how I feel they were accomplished, and other great lessons I learned while making this movie.

Goals:

1. Learn how to better composite multiple elements
2. Combine 3d animation with live action
3. Do a location scout’s job (not just what I find for free)
4. Work with professional crew and actors
5. Be intentional on camera movement
6. Create a color theme
7. Get better audio

This will be another long article, so buckle up and get ready to learn with me.

Let’s Start with Pre-Production

To start, let’s talk money. After my last project, I knew what I needed to do, to lock in a budget a little better. I put together a spreadsheet, because I love spreadsheets. In my screenplay, it called for two main actors and a few side actors.

Now, I wanted to try working with some actors that had some training and were working actors. For this, I reached out to a local talent agency. I got to pick through a handful of actors on their roster and had them do an emailed audition.

The two that stood out most to me were the ones who actually memorized their lines for the audition. They were so polished and prepared, I thought, great, I’ve found my main characters.

For the side actors, I went through my Facebook group and had a couple of people send in their reels. I wanted this short to have a serious but not too serious vibe, and so I hired one guy who had some of the best facial expressions that I thought I could play with. I don’t remember why I hired my nurse actress, but I do remember having several options to choose from, and she was the one I ended up casting.

Let’s not forget my child actor. His mom joined him on set every day, and they were very ambitious about turning him into a professional actor. I should look him up someday and see where he ended up.

There were a couple extra roles that I needed to fill, but they were very minor, and I thought I could do them and challenge myself to be in front of the camera for a change. This would be the guard, and the camera operator at the end. Plus, I was a lot cheaper, and I was very conscious about my budget.

In the end, I had 3 actors for the 1^st day of shooting, 4 actors for the 2^nd day, 2 actors for the 3^rd day, and 1 actor for the 4^th day. That totaled: 11 actor days of filming, not including the extra day I used to film myself. I believe the dollar amount came in at roughly $3250.

Already I could see that this was going to be expensive. For my crew, had to make some compromises to my goal. I couldn’t afford a pro sound guy, so I decided to be my own, and just work harder at getting it good. I did hire a professional gaffer though. For the rest of my crew, I was able to get some BYU film students, and they were awesome. They knew just how to work on a film set, more so than me, and they all came eager to practice the things they’d been learning as well. If I had my actual film studio up and running and needed help, I would have hired them in a heartbeat.

On this shoot, I hired a hair and makeup artist, who was super. She was there on set with us, touching up makeup before the takes, and just making sure our actors looked amazing.

For my total crew budget, I was looking at spending another, oh about $3800.

I did save a little money by not bringing in my gaffer on the 1^st day of shooting, nor did I bring in my agency actors that 1^st day, rather I chose to lump their scenes together with the 2^nd day’s shoot, since I figured I’d have enough time to get that done then.

For my locations, I needed an indoor commercial pool. I called multiple hotels, and nobody wanted to work with me. At this time, Covid was just starting to sweep the nation, and hotels were shutting down, so I thought it would be easy to convince them to let me in, since it would give them at least some revenue for a day.

In the end, I had to reach out to the Utah Film Commission, a group I’d only ever heard of, but never actually worked with. They were amazing. They found me a hotel that was willing to let me shoot for a day. It was crazy, they had a front desk guy there the whole day, and we were the only other people in the hotel, right in downtown Salt Lake. I paid $500 for that location.

For the outdoor scenes, I found a city park, and filled out the required permits. I don’t remember if they even charged me for it. If they did, it was probably something small, like $25.

Then I found a school and over several emails and site visits, I was able to work with the principle and get permission to shoot there for a day for another $500.

My last location was free, because I did it in my office. All in all, my locations cost pretty close to $1000.

Next was props. I’m pretty scrappy when it comes to props and costumes, however I couldn’t find everything I needed at the second-hand thrift store for this shoot. Most of what I ended up with was sourced through eBay and other online retailers. A couple of the expenses were things I’d wanted anyway, like a wheelchair. What indie filmmaker doesn’t have a wheelchair?

I also needed a hospital gurney. That was a bit trickier, and more expensive, but I found one that wasn’t too bad, and the coloring was close to what I wanted for my overall look.

Some of the outfits were second hand, some weren’t, but when you’re going for a specific color scheme, it gets tougher to find cheap. Other props were kit bashed together and cost practically nothing.

I think after all my props and costuming was purchased, I had spent about $1600.

I now had everything I needed. I had my actors, locations, dates, props and costumes, and I was committed to spending a grand total of: $9650. Assuming I’d estimated wrong, I added in a little fluff and rounded it to $10k.

This would be the most expensive project I’d ever done, and I knew immediately that I’d never make that money back, so I better make the best of this.

Production Day(s)

Day 1:

Since this wasn’t my first rodeo, you’d think I’d be a little calmer, but no, that first day of shooting was as nerve racking as ever. Again, I got little to no sleep the night before, and felt completely nauseous the whole morning, up until it was time to shoot.

All my crew and cast showed up like clockwork. We got set up and got ready to shoot. This was the one location I didn’t scout beforehand, because of Covid, I couldn’t get in to see the place, but also, it was the only place willing to let me shoot their indoor pool, so I didn’t have a choice. It was here, or nowhere.

So I came without a storyboard, and planned to composite my main actors in later. We measured everything, took notes on angles, lenses, and tried our best to imagine where our main characters would be and we did our best.

This turned out to be complete chaos, and everyone I’m sure was wondering if I knew what I was doing, including me. Oh, and I forgot to bring a memory card for my camera, so we were delayed from starting an hour while we waited for that to show up. Thanks to my brother, I didn’t have to drive 45 minutes back to my office to grab it, he just brought it up to me. Whew, one crisis averted.

The rest of the day went very well. We got plenty of coverage, and by the end of the day, I was feeling pretty good. The pool did have one wall that was covered in glass and created a little problem for my scene, but I felt like it was something I could manage in post. So all in all, the set wasn’t perfect, but it was close enough to my vision that I felt it would work.

Day 2

This was the big day, the marathon day. I told everyone to plan for about 12 hours. Even then, the talent agency I used called and complained to me about the hours. I thought I’d made the conditions clear to them, but they wanted more money. In the end, I didn’t have to pay out anything additional.

Anyhow, we started off really good. This was filmed in a local school, which had the perfect look and while the coloring was a little off, it was close enough. Then came the 1^st major snag of the shoot. My child actor’s mom told me that she had double booked her son, and that they had to catch a flight to Hawaii soon and that they couldn’t stay much past noon.

I don’t blame them for taking that other job. It was better pay than I could give, plus a trip to Hawaii, I think had I been in their position, I would have wanted to take it also. Plus, she did give me ample warning that day, so I could at least try and make things work.

That meant that while everyone was taking lunch, I was combing through the shotlist, scrambling to figure out how to finish shooting everything I needed with that boy in the next hour.

The next two hours became a tornado of improvising and cutting shots out and run and gun filming to get his footage in the can. During this time, we also had a location change, which was really just the park behind the school, however, half of my actors got lost on the way there and we lost another ½ hour of shooting trying to track everyone down.

When finally I felt I had everything I needed from him, they raced off to the airport, and I worked with my remaining actors to get the remaining footage we needed from them.

One of the problems I also faced, was that I had some steady cam shots. I’d bought a cheap steady cam rig online, but it was made for a much fatter man than me, and I couldn’t size it down. So I had to wear a thick winter coat to make the thing fit on me, and that was during 90-degree weather.

By the end of the day, after we called it good, everyone was exhausted. We sat on the curb, trying to cool down in between packing trucks up.

I had actually brought 2 trailers with me. One for my gear, and another small camper for actors to get dressed in. I took the 1^st one home, then worshiped my porcelain god as I vomited from heat exhaustion for the next 3 hours. Then I went back and picked up the other trailer. Got that home, and dreaded tomorrows shoot.

Day 3

By morning, I was feeling a lot better. I don’t know that I slept any better than the night before, but my heat exhaustion had mostly passed, and I was as ready as I could be for the day.

I drove to my office where I had the basement set up with a large green screen, and I had turned my actual office into one of the sets.

Everything here went very well, though I think my star actors were a little frustrated with me, because they kept asking for help on their acting, wanting to know what I needed from them. My answer was the same. I didn’t care. I wanted them to play their parts as best they saw fit, and for my female lead, I only tried to direct her as far as letting her know where she was and what she was doing during her greenscreen moments.

If you’ll notice, in my goals, I only mentioned that I wanted to work with trained actors on this film, but knowing how to direct them was not one of my goals. I had read books on it, but at the time, I hadn’t taken any acting classes, and I hadn’t acted myself, so I didn’t know what I didn’t know as far as how to direct them.

All in all, this day went much smoother than the previous day. However it wasn’t without its problems too. First major problem, was that we lost power to our building for a couple of hours. Luckily, a lot of our equipment could run off batteries, however the office building was equipped with battery backups for some of the computers, and when they activate, they start chirping, which was impossible to film around because we couldn’t get clean audio.

Eventually we got through that, though it added a couple hours to our shooting day. And then came the next setback.

My last actor, who was supposed to be there by now, still wasn’t. When I finally got ahold of her on the phone, she told me that she’d decided to back out, and would not be joining our film.

As soon as my crew found out, one of my PA’s, a BYU student said that she’d been studying acting and would love to give it a shot. So I said great. I gave her the lines, she went home to find some clothing that matched the scene, and we agreed to meet up the next morning to film her character.

I paid everyone else, and said good luck, give me a year to edit this.

Day 4

That 

That PA, now turned actor, showed up the next morning with my makeup artist, which I now needed to pay a little extra for the extra day’s work. We got her part all filmed just us three, and I paid them both, then we were done.

I still had a few shots to film myself in, which I did after everyone was gone. They were all greenscreen and static shots, so I was able to handle it without much trouble, though I realized that I was a bad actor, and should probably invest in some acting classes at some point.

Finally, everything was in the can. I was ready to start editing.

The Neverending (Post Production) Story

When I did my Matrix spoof, I learned that it took me about 4 hours to edit every 1 second of finished footage. Then again, I was learning Adobe After Effects and Blender, and I had a terrible computer for the job.

This time around, I had a beast of a computer that I had made. It had two high end graphics cards, the best processor I could get, and I had already learned so much more within those two programs that I felt confident that I could cut that time in half.

I was wrong.

While I had learned a lot more about greenscreens, and I had a pro gaffer helping me light them, the footage proved to still be a major headache to get keyed out to my satisfaction. Even now when you watch the short, you’ll probably find some bad coloring where I had to push things a bit too far to get my keys to work out. Even then, I had a lot of masking still to do. Green screens I’ve learned, aren’t the end all be all of visual effects. They take a lot of time and craftsmanship to get right.

On top of that, my ambitions to build a world that was both 3d animation and live action, meant that my Blender models and rendering had to be top notch. Most of this worked out ok, though render times in Blender for the quality I was going for still took a long time.

In the end, I found myself still having to make a few compromises on the 3d animation. For example, when she’s driving in the car, you’ll notice that the light and shadows that play against her are in straight lines. This is because she is a 2d image inside a 3d animation. The shadows don’t actually wrap around her like they would in real life.

I did love working on this new computer though. I could actually composite in a non-destructive work flow. Which was nice, because I think every single frame of this movie has between 2-6 different layers of compositing meshed together. The entire movie is a big vfx project. 

So even though my skills in this department were improving, the degree of complexity I threw at this project still made it take about 4 hours of editing for every 1 second of finished video.

Things that were difficult in the edit included: the opening sequence. Parts of my Blender animation worked out good, parts didn’t. So that’s why it’s so choppy at first. Also, I struggled figuring out a good way to show the text conversation between our scientist and his sister. Text conversations can be so tricky, at least for me. Keying out the greenscreens was still perhaps my biggest bane, though I did have a problem with some reflections that I had to deal with on the glass doors.

For audio, I used a subscription that I’ve had for some time called Filmstro. They’re app is super clunky, but they have a bunch of great music that can be customized.

When it was all done, I felt the same way I did upon finishing my Matrix spoof. I felt there was more I could probably do to improve it, but it was to the point where I had to give up and move on. It still turned out ok, but I wasn’t surprised when it failed to get accepted to any film festivals.

Afterthoughts

This was a super ambitious project. Not only because we had a 15-minute movie, most of which was shot in 2 days, but because it had so much vfx included. I am proud of how it turned out, though the problems always stand out to me like a sore thumb. I wonder if anyone else notices them as badly as I do.

So let’s review how I did on my learning goals.

1. On learning compositing:
   1. I did a fair amount of this in my matrix spoof, but really elevated the complexity and expectations here. There’s a few issues here and there, but for the most part, I think I did a good job, and I learned a lot that can help me in future shoots.
   2. One of the things I did here, to aid in pulling my chroma keys and in masking that I knew was going to be a thing, was I filmed this whole video with a 90 degree shutter angle. Basically twice the shutter speed as normal, so that I could get crisper images, which hurt motion blur, but aided in masking. I don’t regret that decision, though it wouldn’t be right for every project.
2. On combining 3d animation with live action:
   1. This part was fun. Most of it wasn’t a big deal, aside from render times, which at one point, I had my awesome computer chugging away for over a month on renders, only to realize I needed to redo some spots and start the render all over again.
   2. As I mentioned earlier, I discovered that 3d shadows on a 2d image don’t work right. When my character is driving her 3d animated car through a 3d animated scene, the light coming in from the windows does not fall naturally on her. Next time, I would turn off the light interactions with her, and film those practically on her during the actual shooting day—which we did to some degree, but not nearly as much as we were expecting to need.
   3. Sometimes matching a 3d animated object to a real object can be tricky. I ran into this with the car, when she steps out of it. I had to use a real car, then color change it to match the 3d version I’d created in my computer, and they don’t match perfectly,
3. On doing a location scout’s job:
   1. I was a bit nervous at first. Tracking down locations, then getting permissions was a slightly tedious project. I didn’t know if the people and institutions I talked to would be accommodating, and some weren’t. I also didn’t know how much I’d have to spend to get some of them. In the end though, it turned out very well, and I was pleasantly surprised with how smooth everything went, minus the near miss on finding an indoor hotel pool.
4. On working with professional cast and crew:
   1. I learned a lot from my gaffer. He was such a pro. I wish I had the budget at the time to hire a pro sound guy and a pro DP, but my budget was already getting unreasonably high. Mostly I loved how he had the tools to not only rig a set fast, but he had spare parts that came in real hand for my camera rig that made things so much easier. He was hard working and knew how to shape light better than I could have. I loved seeing how he set lighting up and I feel that even though we had a very neutral lighting setup, in order to match some of what we filmed in the pool, that it turned out great, and informative.
   2. Working with professional cast was a delight also. They were less concerned about how they appeared to everyone else, and more focused on playing their parts to the best of their abilities. I wish at the time that I had taken acting classes so that I would have better known how to direct and work with them. That is one thing I would suggest to any wanna-be director. Take acting classes. Put yourself in their shoes for a little while. It will help you be a much better director in the long run.
5. On being intentional with camera movement:
   1. For a lot of our composite scenes, having a locked off camera was essential. However, there was some camera movement that I planned in there, and I felt like it gave the picture a sense of motivation that I didn’t have in my last short.
   2. The one caution I can give though, is if you are going to do some vfx on a moving camera, be very intentional about how you plan to edit it together. It adds a lot more difficulty to the edit.
6. On creating a color theme
   1. I feel like I did a really good job on this. I wanted this to be a futuristic looking world, but one where the styles and trends had circled back around to the era of avocados and yellows, with fun curvy cars. Not only did I want the color to give a nostalgic future vibe, but I also wanted it to give you permission to laugh. So I wanted a little vibrance to the world.
   2. There were a few things that threatened my color scheme. One was the School where I shot the standard interiors and doorway scenes. The brick was perfect, but the tile left a little to be desired. In the end, I added a few elements to mask the school mascots, and did a minor color correction on the tiles, and though it wasn’t perfect, I felt like it looked ok.
7. On getting better audio:
   1. This time around, I had extra microphones. I still used my boom pole microphone, but I also used lavalier microphones on my main actors, so that I could have a backup audio track, and have something that just caught their voices rather than everything around them. Plus, a boom pole wasn’t always able to get in close enough for my liking. 
   2. All of this audio was recorded on separate tracks, and in one instance, where a key mic should have caught the dialog, it turns out we forgot to turn that microphone on, and we got saved by our backup, even if the quality of that backup wasn’t as good, we still got it.
   3. For my locations where I knew echoes would be an issue, I invested in sound blankets and reduced the reverb considerably. In fact, I think I added some reverb back in during post, because I felt that and indoor pool area would sound wrong without a little.
8. Other things I learned aside from those focused around my goals
   1. I learned that compressing several pages of script into a single day might save money, but it might ruin your project. You never know when one of those little setbacks is going to occur, or how it might happen, but issues happen, and when you’ve already planned out every second of every shooting day, a minor problem can turn into a huge issue. So give yourself the time to get things right, even if something unexpected happens. 
   2. Fifteen minutes of something like this was so close to being a half hour high budget sitcom. For Hollywood to produce the same thing, They would have spent over a million dollars. I guess there’s two key take aways in that thought. One is that as an independent, we can make a dollar stretch a lot further. On the other hand, consider how many hours I spent editing this. I probably put about 3000 hours of free labor into the edit alone. It took close to 2 years to finish this when all I could do were nights and weekends.
   3. Be consistent with your payroll practices. This was a goof on my part. I had a little extra cash, and I worked my crew to the bones, so when it came time to pay them, I felt like tipping them above what I had agreed to pay them. However, since one of my crew also did some acting for me the next day, I held off paying her with her crew. Then when it came time to pay her, I gave her the money plus the generous tip I’d given the others. The only problem was, she had come in for an extra few hours that next day, and my mind was so stretched from the stress of the last few days, that it didn’t even cross my mind to pay her for the acting job she did. She never mentioned it, and we all parted on good terms. But some time later, as I was reflecting on everything, I realized my blunder. I ended up reaching out to her and sending her some extra money, though it was embarrassingly late in coming. I felt pretty bad about that. You should always take good care of those who help bring your vision to life.
   4. Be careful about catering. I thought I had my bases covered. When I hired everyone, I asked about any food allergies or preferences. All told me they were good with anything. I didn’t want to do just a cheap greasy pizza, so I ordered in some nice food for lunches, however the food still got one of my crew members sick, not because it was bad, but because they had an intolerance to the food choice I picked. I’m not sure what to do differently next time, but I’m sure that if I hired a crafts service crew member, I’d learn better how to feed my cast and crew.
   5. I learned a little about pacing and dialog too. Some of the dialog I wrote came across as cheesy, and some was just too much, the pacing was off. I ended cutting a lot of it in the edit. I’ve often heard that American movies have too much talking, and I’ve tried to limit that in my writing, but I’ve realized that I still do far too much telling and not enough showing. The only problem was, to show what I needed, I would’ve doubled the length of my film. So learning how to write more concise and make every word and image count is something that I need to consider going forward. Every frame should be a masterpiece of composition and storytelling when finished.

Well folks, I told you this would be a long article. Sheesh, it’s almost a novella. But I hope you learned something from my experience. I do hesitate in calling this a student film though, only because of the budget I ended up with. When you consider that I had to add a little to my gear to make this happen, my $10k budget probably grew to $15k.

There’s a reason I haven’t been able to produce a short film like this every month, it’s because it takes a year to save enough money to afford something like this. But that also is one of the reasons I didn’t mind learning how to do so much with the 3d animation and compositing. It gave me plenty of time to save up between projects so that when I finally finish this, I’d be in a position to start another.

So what will that next project be? Well, I think I’m going to do a lot of very short shorts next, stuff that I can quickly turn around and post on Youtube, along with some helpful info on my journey from being a homebuilder to being a writer producer.

If you’d like to see my YouTube breakdown of this short, check it out here on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gvqREZSWt5k

Don’t forget to also check out the actual short film here: https://youtu.be/mj4XN0OvtYc

Then like, comment, subscribe, and all that fun stuff so you can see what new stuff I end up posting.

Also if you’d like to support me in this journey, don’t forget to buy the book that this short was inspired by. It would really help me out especially if you could leave a positive review from whatever online book retailer you buy it from.

Thanks, and until next time, keep learning and following your dreams.