Shooting Puppet Magic!

Written by Lauren Richardson; directed by Michael Goyert. With Nelson Carter-Leis and Paula Burrows.

By DTL
Posted August 20, 2010

In early June, I replied to a Craigslist ad seeking an on-set Sound Recordist for a short movie. This was to be the final project for one group of students in the “Film Arts” Programme at Langara College. I’m always looking for opportunities to practice my technical skills, and helping out students is a good and noble thing to do, so I offered myself and my gear, and they accepted.

The Programme itself is interesting. It’s divided into three concurrent streams, eight months long, focussing on Acting, Writing, or Directing. There were eight groups making short movies as their final projects. The Writing students write a screenplay, the Directing students choose which one they would like to direct, and the Acting students audition. And each group can also bring in outside talent — which is how I, and one of the actors, got involved with this project.

I visited the College to watch a rehearsal with the actors, and afterwards discussed the project with Director Michael Goyert and Writer Lauren Richardson, who were also co-producing. Everyone seemed very nice, and I was confident that I could be an asset to the production.

It was interesting how many of them are writers. Lauren is a writer, although she plans to act for a living. Erik Hofmann, the Gaffer, is a writer. Shayan Bayat is a Writer; he likes suspense movies. A couple of the other crew members are Writers; one of them is currently in the Directing stream, but last year was in the Writing stream; he said this seemed like the logical next step.

The story

The title of the piece was Puppet Magic!. They sent me the screenplay, which I found had a few laughs, a clear dramatic through-line, and a nice twist ending.

The story concerns Stefan (Nelson Carter-Leis), a theatre teacher who’s attracted to Griffin (Paula Burrows), one of his students (it’s at a university or something, so everyone’s an adult, but that’s still a bit inappropriate).

Stefan strikes a deal with the Devil — who appears to him as the Devil puppet from the “Punch and Judy” show he’s been teaching in class. Griffin shows up at his home, to his delight . . .

She disappears after their night of passion. The Punch and Judy puppets reveal that the Devil abducted her. Our hero follows her through the puppet theatre to Hell, where he strikes a bargain that frees her.

But it turns out that Griffin has been working for the Devil all along, and the whole thing was a trap to capture our hero’s soul.

We flash forward a hundred years. Stefan, now aged and grotesque, still performs the Punch and Judy show he’s been condemned to for all eternity, to an audience of no one.

The gear

The camera we used was a Sony PMW-EX1. It is amazing how much more control over depth of field you get just with the jump to a half-inch sensor from the one-third-inch typical of prosumer cameras. They were actually able to use a rack-focus to direct the viewer’s attention within a shot.

The video was recorded directly to an external hard drive clipped to the top of the camera. This eliminates the need for a large number of expensive SxS memory cards, and it allows you to start editing instantly, without waitng for cards to copy; just plug the hard drive into your editing system  and go.

To record audio, we used a Sennheiser ME66 microphone, mounted on a Van den Bergh VDB-L boompole, fed through a Mackie 1402-VLZ3 mixer for its preamps, and recorded onto a Zoom H4n. To enable the Editor to synchronize the video and audio, we used a simple clapper slate.

Alas, I can’t completely recommend the Zoom H4n. They’re very popular on micro-budget movie shoots because they’re small and they’re cheap, but sometimes you get what you pay for. I could hear a lot of hiss in my headphones. At first I thought it was from the air conditioning.

A frequent criticism of the H4n (but not, interestingly, of the H4) is that it introduces too much hiss. Martin Doppelbauer compared the Zoom H4n recorder to the Edirol R-4 and the Sony PCM-D50 audio recorders, and the H4n came out very poorly. [Update 2010-12-02: See also René’s comparison of the Zoom H4n, the Sony PCM D50, and the Tascam DR-100.]

There has also been some criticism of all H4 models that the audio drifts out of sync over the course of a long take. Most sound-editing software can stretch the audio file to match the video again, but it’s still a pain. It’s better to stick to short takes, where the drift is inconsequential.

I’ve read before that Zoom keeps changing manufacturers so they can keep the retail price down — but, as a result, you never know if the electronics are actually any good. Some professional Sound Recordists recommend against Zoom as a brand; but then again, at least some part of that is gear snobbery (“If you ain’t got a Sound Devices recorder, you ain’t got nothin’!”).

The shoot

There were basically four locations: the classroom, Stefan’s apartment, Hell, and a park for the ending. We shot for four days, from Saturday through Tuesday — two days at the College, and two days on location at Writer Lauren’s home.

The producers did two good things right off the bat:

• They sent out call-sheets the night before, giving us the schedule for the day. That’s a good — and industry-standard — tactic. People are ingenious at becoming confused, so this told us who was needed, where, and what time. You don’t need people standing around the set when they’re not required for the morning’s shooting.
• They came around in a van and picked us up each morning. That’s a good way to ensure that no one flakes or is late. People can’t blame missed buses or broken alarm clocks when they have a ride from their door to the set. Hollywood studios send limousines for their principal people not only because they want to flatter and pamper their stars.

The first day we shot the “classroom” scene. The set was the actual black-box theatre at the College — black floor, black walls, black ceiling, black seats, etc. Also, they made their puppet theatre black for some reason, instead of the traditional sort of candy-striped Punch and Judy look. You can see that lighting would be a challenge. It’s hard to get any detail when everything’s black.

The day went well. Everyone was enthusiastic and friendly. Director Mike had a shot list of stuff he wanted. He invited a couple of friends to be extras in the class. The Makeup Artist made actors Nelson and Paula look good. They scheduled a one-hour lunch break, and fed us with take-out food from a neighbourhood Indian restaurant — yum! Feed your cast and crew well, and they’ll follow you into Hell.

It was interesting to see how casually they approached some of the technical details. Lighting is one of the chief things that takes Hollywood crews so long. The students said they knew about lighting, but they paid no attention to apparent sources, or relative intensity, or mixing colour temperatures. They just set up a shot, pointed a bunch of lights at the subject from wherever, and played with the camera settings until they thought it looked right.

The way I’ve always been taught to focus a video camera is to zoom way in on an object at the distance you want, focus on that, then zoom out and frame your shot. But that was when I worked in community television, and the cameras had parfocal lenses. On this project, the Cinematographer just eyeballed it: frame up, twist the focus ring ’til it looks right, and shoot. It worked here, but I fear that on-camera monitors are too small to get a good view. For higher-resolution cameras, you really require an external monitor.

And they didn’t consider the needs of recording sound. I always had to horn in and demand a take to set audio levels. And I unfortunately ruined more than one take by getting a mic shadow in the shot. My fault, of course; but miking the shot needs to be

Still, we were done on schedule, and everyone went home with the satisfied feeling of a job well done and a good start of the project.

On Day 2, the schedule collapsed. I don’t know what happened. We had a 10:30 call-time (Nelson and the Makeup Artist had an 08:00 call for his old-age makeup), yet we didn’t make our first shot until almost 15:00. We were on location until 23:00, with an hour’s break for pizza at 16:30. We were all tired and grumpy by the time we were let go.

The “park” scene they shot outside on the College’s grounds. As it’s supposed to be a hundred years later, they had to frame the shots carefully to avoid showing 2010-era cars or buildings. They shot two different endings: one with Griffin and one without.

Unfortunately, the combination of traffic noise and the neighbouring building’s HVAC system made audio-recording impossible. Fortunately, the only sound in the scene was the Punch and Judy puppet show, and the voices were to be dubbed after the fact by another actress. So disaster was avoided there.

I helped carry stuff and set up. It’s never a bad idea on an indie shoot to be a guy who’ll pitch in and help even if it’s not your department. And I managed to lie down out of the way and sack out a bit. Movie shoots are rarely only eight hours — more usually twelve, sometimes sixteen. It’s never a bad idea to grab a nap when you can, so you’ll be fresh when you’re called.

The second part of the day went better. They built “Hell” on the stage area of the College’s theatre — mostly red and grey, with some gruesome details like a pile of skulls and a dead baby hanged in a noose. Here they lucked out: they were able to use some of the lighting instruments already hung in the theatre.

Overall, several things could have gone better with a bit more forethought. For example:

• They couldn’t balance the GlideCam 4000 Pro that Mike wanted for one shot. Operating any kind of SteadiCam-style system is a specialized job, and I fear the students didn’t practice enough before the shoot.
• The scene in Hell might have been more dramatic with some smoke, and the College does have a smoke generator. Alas, it will set off the smoke detector and the sprinkler system, so using it requires prior arrangement with the building-services guys.
• Lighting the studio itself might have been easier if we had used the overhead grid. Alas, the College requires that users be trained on the lighting board in advance. That could have been done if it had been thought of in time.

Day 3 went somewhat better, although it was an 08:00 to 22:00 day. They bought us hamburgers and sandwiches for lunch.

The original location fell through the week before shooting, so the “apartment” scenes were shot in Lauren’s ground-floor suite in her parents’ house. The low (seven-foot) ceilings meant that we couldn’t position lighting instruments overhead. Recording audio would also be a challenge, because the small, square, hard-walled room reflected back every sound. I feared the soundtrack would have some echoes.

The scene where Stefan and Griffin start making out wasn’t working. Although there is no nudity in the movie, Paula did have to strip to her undergarments, and I think she felt a bit uncomfortable being barely clothed in a room with half a dozen boys. Mike banished us all to the bedroom, and worked alone with Paula and Nelson to capture the scene. It’s good to make the actors comfortable, so they can concentrate on the performance.

Day 4 we shot with only Nelson: Stefan wakes up and realises Griffin is gone, and then confronts the puppets. Paula wasn’t called at all, and went off to act in another group’s movie.

The organization of Day 1 returned somewhat, and we proceeded through the set-ups. Everyone was kind of tired and goofy. Lunch was bacon, carrots, and peanut-butter crackers; craft services sort of declined over the course of the shoot.

But we were done and wrapped by 17:00. I think that Mike and Lauren slept for about 16 hours — then went right in as crew on the next group’s shoot.

The screening

And last night, I went to the College to see the finished movie. It was actually part of a programme of all the groups’ shorts, presented as an evening’s entertainment — “Unlock the Vault 2010”. It was good to feature all the students’ hard work in one sitting.

I arrived at the campus shortly before 19:00, and easily found my way to the venue thanks to the extensive and clear signage. Good job, whoever did that! I’ve been to some screenings where you wind up blundering through the sewers before (maybe) happening upon the theatre, so this was most welcome.

A bulletin board displayed photos of the students, all dressed in a 1940s look: the gentlemen in fedoras and ladies in gowns. It was a good idea to give all the photos a consistent theme. I’ve seen some press kits where the graphic designer obviously just used everyone’s head-shot, and it looked like a dog’s breakfast.

I liked the posters for each movie, too — one-sheets displayed on another bulletin board. And an usher handed me a small, nicely-produced programme listing all the movies and their principal credits. I would have liked to see the posters in the programme too; this will be our only memento of the movies.

It was good to see such a large crowd attending the screening. I’ve been to plays where the actors outnumbered the audience, and that’s just the worst.

Of course I expected to enjoy Puppet Magic!. I noticed the absence of several shots I remember us working on, but I thought that the final edit was nice and tight. The whole “100 years later” scene was gone; it ended with the revelation that Griffin was in league with the Devil the whole time, leaving Stefan in Hell. The audience seemed shocked by Griffin’s betrayal at the end — which is good; they were surprised, but it made sense. It got the biggest laughs of the evening, and from that point the whole programme seemed to proceed at a higher level.

I thought it was a worthwhile evening, and I’m glad I went.

The aftermath

All in all, I’m glad I was able to participate in this shoot. It’s good to help students with their educational projects. And they are tomorrow’s movie-makers, so we might do each other some good in the future. And it gave me further valuable experience as Sound Recordist.

Director Mike submitted Puppet Magic! to the Whistler International Film Festival. Let’s hope it does well there.