Make a short feature film

“Our biggest setback by far was audio. We shot in a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn, and every car honk, siren, and floor creak made it into the audio. We can’t emphasize enough how important it is to have solid audio equipment and a good mixer for post-production. At one point, our lav mic completely stopped working, so we had to switch to a shotgun mic and ended up looping a few lines using iPhone voice memos. Surprisingly, we managed to make it work using noise reduction plugins, but it was definitely a challenge. Continuity was also tough—we were trying to shoot everything in just three days, and that meant rushing through setups and pickups. Still, we embraced the imperfections and kept pushing forward.”

“I wanted to utilize what I had to the greatest effect. [...] But I also had to plan the film around what I didn’t have. Namely, a cast or a crew. This required me to be the cast and thus meant doing all the shots using a tripod, where I could set up the camera, hit “record” and then get into frame and do the action of the shot. This also meant a short centered around just one person [...] It took me about 4 hours to shoot the film and put together the final edit [...] The following evening, I spent another 4 hours making tweaks but mostly, adding a lot of the folly sound effects and finding some good music. And these made a world of difference in building tension and putting you into the scene. Much more than I expected.”