The Funeral Date + BTS
Wow, we actually pulled it off. We successfully made an entire short film in 1 week flat. When I first heard about this contest, I knew I had to participate. It took a little convincing of Peter, but eventually we sat down and came up with a story together.
We shot the ending (as well as the Steadicam Merlin shot of the smoking trunk) the day this was due. Which pretty much gave us zero time to edit. Peter brought his portable hard drive and edited on my PC while I laid on my bed, occasionally talking to Marc Chester on the phone, going over the score.
My sister, Amy, made most of the skeleton, namely the skull. She's a ceramics student and has some pretty impressive work. She squeezed making this skull into her schedule by pulling an all-nighter the day before we needed it for a scene. It's made entirely of porcelain. I intend to fire the skull and jaw (at least) so I can keep it forever.
The actual "final cut" of the short film was nearly 5 minutes, but because of the strict rules of the contest, we were forced to cut out quite a bit. And because everything was coming down to the last second, some of it was a bit rushed. If the rules allow, Peter will most likely re-post The Funeral Date as a Director's Cut or something here on TZ. Relatively speaking, I think it actually turned out really well. And come to think of it, this was actually the biggest project we've ever taken on. It felt absolutely amazing. To wake up at 6am, dig graves, inhale homemade toxic ammonium nitrate smoke bombs, scramble to cast an actor at the last possible second. Most of the production days were very long and tiring. But it was the absolute best kind of tired, very satisfying.
Filmmaking is absolutely, hands down, a collaborative medium. I know we make it look easy (kidding, kidding) but really, there was quite a few people involved. Lily and Sandra's house was actually 4 different locations. The backyard was my own. Lily's bedroom was Anna's. We drove to LA to get the shots of Sandra's room at Francesca's apartment. The front of the house was my friend Sean Kao's. He was nice enough to give us free access to his house while no one was home. The truck and the guy who bought the trunk is the neighbor of my aunt, where we shot the garage sale scene. William Mas let us use his truck.
I was introduced to Marc, the guy who miraculously composed all of the music for the short in just a few hours on the last day, by an old friend from high school, Nikki. She was the senior clarinet section leader while I was a little freshman in marching band. I looked her up on Facebook and asked if she knew anyone who would be interested in composing for us. Oddly enough, Marc and Anna had taken an acting class together a couple years back. What a small world.
Sometimes, with enough effort, the stars just seem to align and everything works out. Oh how we struggled to find a little girl to play Lily. But then I posted a listing on NowCasting and there she was. The entire short film was almost ruined because the weather report said it would be raining on the one morning we had left to shoot the garage sale scene. We got up extra early that day and somehow the sun was out, shining bright as can be.
So, The Funeral Date may have flaws. Peter won't be satisfied with it until a month's time passes and he looks back at it. He'll watch it again and say, "That actually wasn't too bad." I feel incredibly lucky to be surrounded by so many friends who are willing to work with us on what it is we love doing. Thank you. I mean it with all my heart.
And now... time to go collapse in bed and sleep until noon.
Excellent work! You guys have traveled a LONG way since the beginning. Thanks for taking us along.
I haven’t seen all the 100+ submissions. Although I intend to. But I’ve seen maybe about 10. What I can say about yours and not the others is that you did not waste a single frame of your 4 minutes running time. Each frame either told us more about a character or moved the plot forward. That’s excellent filmmaking.You should be proud of yourselves. I am
I know this is a subset of a larger composition… sort of like listening to the middle 32 bars of a song… but it’s good.
I definitely want to see the rest of it!
Pity I’m not there (in SoCal) to help you finish it.
Cheers!
this makes me real sad I’m not living there anymore.
I’d be interested in how you did the smoke. I see in the BTS video that you reference a tutorial or something.
Also what camera did you guys shoot on? Looks like a DSLR… if so, how did you handle sound?
I see you are using Magic Bullet in post, is that in AE or PPro?
Great work guys!!
Thanks! Here’s that tutorial: How To Make Smoke Bombs
We shot on a Canon 7D. For sound we use a Sennheiser MKH-60, which we plug into a Zoom H4n.
We mainly use Premiere CS4. Peter uses Magic Bullet Looks, while I tend to just stick with Colorista. Both work in AE and Premiere
i really liked it! great work!
i was wondering how you guys worked around the rolling shutter and got such a clean shot with the truck scenes?
We actually don’t do too much. I guess just stay away from whip-pans or any rapid movement. For the truck scenes we did use stabilization. A Steadicam Merlin and Cinemount.
Awesome. Really well done, especially under such a tight deadline…
Though, sometimes, I feel, the best videos are those that have a deadline and a timespan to work with. As filmmakers with all this tech-y and addon-y knowledge, if there wasn’t a deadline, we’d spend years and years adjusting the saturation on this shot or tweaking the sound here or doing other unnecessary things…and the final production would never got done.
Glad you guys had fun with this project…Wish you guys the best in all your future endeavors.
Guys you did excellent work on this video. I wanted to see the parts you weren’t allowed to use, because of time restraints, and that’s probably why I felt something was missing.
Thank you. It was fun!
Do you aspire to be the next Spielberg or Cappola? If so, make your film available to the opinion of veterans in the field who will give you constructive criticism and show you a clear direction to pursue.
Turn your passion into a profession at the International Short Film Competition at Aahān 2011 hosted by the Usha Pravin Gandhi College of Management in Mumbai, India. With over 1000 short films from 43 countries being screened over the period of the last 3 years.
It’s Lights, Camera, Aahān!
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