Making any short film can be daunting. In my first two articles on this topic, I talked about my Matrix spoof, and the short story that was inspired by my book: One For The Money, Two For The Soul.

Each of those had a respectable budget for a student filmmaker. The 1^st had about a $1500 spend, and the latter had a whopping $15,000 spend. However, today I want to go over my very 1^st short film, which had a budget closer to $150.

Buckly up, as we dissect my very first project ever, a 1 minute short film.

Never Talk To Pears, While Walking Down Stairs

I got the idea for this story while I was at the Timpanogos Storytelling festival. They had one day that was devoted to learning the art of verbal storytelling, which by the way, is fascinating to me. If you ever get the chance to attend something like this, do it.

One of the workshops had us brainstorming ideas. At the end of it, a few people shared their brainstorms, and then I shared mine. Mine got a lot of grumbles from the audience, mostly older folks, who apparently liked the idea of non-fiction better.

Didn’t matter. I was off to the races. Coincidentally there was also a 1-minute short film contest on a YouTube channel that I follow, called Film Riot. These two things coincided into the perfect motivation for me to do my first quazi-student film ever.

Lets start with some goals I had:

1. Actually shoot a short film
2. Do it cheaply
3. Make it cinematic

Simple goals right? My goals tend to get more specific as I progress, but just filming something was a big leap forward after all my studying to this point.

Planning and Pre-Production

So I wrote down my script. It was about 3 pages long. That should’ve been a red flag from the get go, but I didn’t think too much on it at the time.

Next, I needed gear. I had no gear. I had a little Sony Cybershot RX100. It allowed for some video with manual settings. It would have to do. I had no lights, but my uncle had a couple of small lights with umbrellas from when he used to do HR interviews, and was more than happy to lend those to me for a day.

For audio, I rented a Zoom recorder with a boom mic for a day. 

Next I needed a couple actors. What do you do when you don’t have friends, film school classmates, or money? You ask family. So I recruited my mom, dad, and sister.

I needed a location, and luckily I had a model home from my construction job that looked great. Check.

Funny thing is, my mom had done some acting in a previous life, though she’d pretty well sworn it off. Thing is, she’s one of the best actors I’ve ever worked with to date, she could have probably had a good career of it if that had been something she’d wanted. She ended up being my main character.

My dad was to be the lips and voice of my talking pear.

My sister, who spent some time in theater during school, became my makeup artist, which I needed to make my mom look older than she was.

Since the model home was pre-furnished, all I needed was a few smaller props. Some I had already. I bought a larger canning jar to add to my collection of normal sized canning jars, then I printed a fake newspaper on my office printer. I got a picture of my parents and framed it on the wall, and last of all, I bought a can of aerosol mist. I was ready to shoot.

The Production

There was only one day needed for this shoot. While my sister got my mom’s makeup done, I filmed the clips that didn’t require any people. Since I didn’t have any professional sliders, I stuck a plank of wood between two ladders, and placed some books on top of the plank where my camera rested to make the camera motion a bit smoother, then I dragged the camera across the plank and got my opening and closing shots.

For a tripod, I was using my sister’s photography tripod, a clunky thing that had no fluid head, just locking pivot joints. To add in some cinematic camera movement, I grabbed one of my construction dolly’s and placed the tripod on top of that. Luckily the floor was made of hard laminate, and not tile or carpet, so after several tries, I was able to get some reasonably shake-free footage.

And what would a production be, even a simple one like this, without some kind of snag?

My little camera only had a 30 battery life. It was rechargeable battery, and I didn’t have a spare. I’m not sure, but it might have even been an internal battery, I can’t remember. I’m sure someone out there would know. It’s since gone to the grave, so I can’t check and I’m too lazy to do a google search on it right now. Never-the-less, I had a camera with no power, and no spare battery.

To deal with this, I found the charging chord, only to realize that you couldn’t charge the camera at the same time as you were shooting with it. Great. What now? Well, it turns out, that we tried charging the camera in-between takes. We’d set up, practice, then hope there was enough charge to make that take before turning the camera off again and plugging it in.

I ended up pulling out an extension cord to facilitate quicker plug-ins without having to pull the camera off the tripod.

This was a 2-location shoot. Once we finished at the model home, I took my family to my office, where we had stairs to an unfinished basement, perfect for the scene where she falls to her doom.

For this, since I didn’t really want to throw my mom down the stairs, I compiled a bunch on montage shots to make you think she was falling. Then at the bottom, rather than having her hit her head on the concrete for real, I had her jerk her head up from the floor, then I reversed the footage in post. I looked great.

Afterwords, she got pictures with my sister in her old lady makeup, which could have probably passed for zombie makeup also, and it was off to the edit for me.

The Edit

Remember how I said that I had about 3 pages of screenplay? Well, that proved to be a challenge, since I couldn’t exceed 1 minute, as per the Film Riot rules. I think though, that if I could have had one and a half minutes, the short would have played much better. But I got it cut down ok.

The 3 hardest things I encountered while editing this were, first, I couldn’t get the pictures of my mom’s body parts in those mason jars without them moving all over the place. Since my camera was moving, and I didn’t have a good way of tracking that movement, I had a super hard time of it.

Second, I was surprised to find myself in the reflection of the glass cabinet door when my mom opened and shut it. It had never crossed my mind that I might be in the reflections.

Last, I couldn’t do a whole lot to color correcting to anything. The camera I used only shot 8 bit color, and when you push the color correction to any degree, you start getting a lot of noise and artifacts showing up.

But this was a much simpler project than the two that followed it, and for a complete newbie, I learned a lot about what to expect next time. It also inspired me to get a better camera, and I fell in love with the microphone and Zoom recorder I rented.

I do remember the edit taking a lot of time still. I started this project with a month to edit it before the submission deadline, and even though it was only one minute long, I spend nights and weekends working like crazy just to meet that deadline. But meet it I did, and it did not win.

I was a little bummed that it didn’t even get an honorable mention, but I was still proud of it, because it was my first completed project, and I learned so much from it.

The Learning

How did I do on my goals:

1. On making an actual short film
   1. Well, I made it. Goal met. You can study all you want, but at some point, even if you don’t have the gear you want, you can use the gear you have access to, and just make something. If you’re ever going to call yourself a filmmaker, you got to start somewhere.
2. On doing it cheaply
   1. I didn’t have a choice. I was dirt poor at the time. I was pinching pennies till they warped, and I had to make due with what I could. I look back on that project though, and parts of it still hold up better today than some of the things I’ve shot with the better camera I now have.
3. On making it cinematic
   1. The aerosol mist didn’t really do much for me during the shoot. I tried using a cookie flag that I’d made, then shining a flashlight through it. It was kind of pointless. The movement of my camera did add some good production value to the project though. I would have liked to play with the colors more, but like I said, 8-bit color space is very limiting.
4. Other things I learned
   1. I learned to be mindful of reflections in glass and other shiny objects
   2. I learned that having the right tools for the job isn’t necessary, but it sure would be nice. For example, a fluid head tripod, with wheels would have saved time and headaches. A camera that had more than 30 minutes of battery life, and that could be hooked to external batteries would be nice. A camera that shot in at least 10-bit color space would be amazing. Even my cheap umbrella lights could do a lot.
   3. I learned that 3 pages of screenplay, really do translate into 3 minutes of footage.
   4. I learned that shooting day can be stressful. It’s not just a party with cameras and makeup.
   5. I learned that I shouldn’t ask for other people’s criticism, unless I’m prepared to get it. I had a guy I knew who did some film work, and I asked him to criticize it for me. I was expecting a critique of the filming work, and I got a critique on the story end instead. I thought the story was solid, but he pointed out good things that I didn’t like hearing at the time.
   6. I learned that I wanted to do this again soon!

In the end, this film kicked off my desire to build up an arsenal of better filming equipment. I started prepping for my next short film, which I planned to do in about a year or so from the time I finished this one, you know it now as my Matrix Spoof.

This one does however prove that you don’t have to spend a ton of money on a film project. Mine still turned out pretty decent, and at a tenth of the price of my next cheapest film. But just because you can make something cheap, doesn’t mean you always should either.

As a general contractor, I’ve learned that the tools you buy and use can make a world of difference in your work as a craftsman. It’s the same with filmmaking. Yes, I could build a house with a hand saw, but if I have an electric circular saw, I can build that house much faster and more efficiently.

That wraps it up for now. I hope you’ve enjoyed this breakdown of Never Talk To Pears, While Walking Down Stairs.

If you’d like to see my breakdown on Youtube, you can check it out here: https://youtu.be/QtKrU-8sq7I

Also, if you just want to see the 1 minute short film, Check it out here: https://www.lightmindedarts.com/

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