72 Hours of hell......

So in a fit of complete insanity, last weekend I decided to enter a 72 hour horror film challenge put on by the Eugene Film Society. In stop mo. In 72 hours. I really should have my head examined. It was hard, easy, fun, frustrating, impossible, and one of the best things I have done. The resulting film is ok, considering what it is. I see all the flaws that could have been fixed if I had more time and fewer hiccups. But anyway, I decided to write about my experience here, to get it out there, to maybe perform some post mortems, and to help me decide where to go next.

The competition was announced several weeks beforehand, but I did not make the decision to do it until a week before. Considering we were not supposed to do anything for it beforehand, I guess that was best. I tend to overthink things. I opted to sign up for the screenwriting workshop that happened the Saturday before. It really didn't help much as far as writing tips, but it did get me into thinking about what makes a good horror film, and what elements would be feasable in stop mo in such a short amount of time. I knew I was not going to have any time for fixing or adding in post, so I needed to decide what would work easiest on camera as shooting happens. I wrote out 3 loose premises that I could base my movie on, and thought about which elements would be needed for each. I did do some set building beforehand, cause that was not specified in the rules. And well technically I built my puppet beforehand too, as I used Wade.

This is where I started. I pulled out everything I had, took a look at what I could do with it. My dining room looked like a craft tornatoe hit it the whole weekend. I decided to spraypaint the backboard you see in this picture. It was meant to be a base to attach backgrounds to, but I didn't have time to worry about that, so I spray ed directlyonto it. I can still attach other things to it later.

I also figured out I needed to do some surgery on Wade. He had several joints that were broken that needed to be reglued. Here is Wade waiting for surgery. I had to reglue his arm into the shoulder joint. He is made with square tubing in the torso, with matching but slightly smaller square tubing glued to the arm at the shoulder so that it is removeable. The glue in his shoulder totally broke so his arm wouldn't stay in place. turns out I should have also fixed his leg joints, but that happened later.

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That is pretty much all I did beforehand. Thursday night October 22 was the kick off party. I am not good at parties, and had no one to go with me, so I was kind of dreading this part. But they made it manditory in order to get the required line of dialog and the required prop and the rest of the guidelines. I had no need for actors, most people there were there for thier own moves, and no one waanted to do voiceovers. Every actor who attended was looknig for on screen time. And when I requested help with Foley, no one knew what I was talking about. Now actors I can kind of understand, even though some of them claimed to be film students, because that is not an actor's job. But the filmmakers....most of them didn't know what I was talking about either. Foley....one of the most important pieces of any film, especially horror, and no one knew what I was talking about. In case you don't know, Foley is the souunds that are added in post to make it sound realistic. Foot steps, snow crunching, fabric swooshing....all that is Foley. In live action it is generally added because the mics usually only pick up the actor's voices, and in order for it to sound real it needs to be added afterwards. It is also used to add emphasis. If all of a sudden you hear water dripping really loudly, generally that is your Foley artist's work. It is good in live action, but essential in stop motion where there is no ambient sound recorded as you film. I did not find anyone to help me with Foley. I did however find someone to record a voiceover for me. He also did on camera work. Cause not being an idiot he knew he could do both. :)


I really wish they hadn't made that party mandatory. It was very pointless for me to be there. It was at Level Up Arcade, which is a traditional quarter sink arcade with a bar. It was too small for the volume of people...we could hardly move or hear each other over the din of other people talking and video games being played and music playing. I found a couch in the corner, and chatted with anyone else who wandered over there. I read my Facebook. I sang along loudly with Creep when it came on. When it finally came time for the "reveal", people who were customers of the arcade and not with the party continued to play video games, and the crowd was so large I ended up at the back. I heard NOTHING that went on. We stood there for a good 20 minutes listening to the incoherant wah-wah of the peeople talking at the front before they finally just gave us the thumbs drives that had everything they were saying in a documment and was the required recepticle for submission. Needless to say I was glad to get out of there and start working. I was more than slightly annoyed though that they wasted so much of my time.

When I got home I started on the backgrounds. I had decided on the way home to do premise number3....Wade falls off a cliff. Here is a pic of the backgraound, the platform I was going to glue trees to, and the ledge for him to hold on to. While I was out there a neighbor's kitty kept getting in the way. It was funny and annoying at the same time. This cat has decided I am there for her, so whenever I am outside she feels I should be paying attention to her.

I had decided if I go with the cliff theme, I needed to have trees in the background. I did not have a ton of room in which to work, so I thought if I reconstituted the model railroad trees I had sitting around I could glue them to that platform thingy and put them on the floor below Wade on the cliff, so it looked farther down than it really was. Challenge #1....while those tree armatures look great, getting anything to stick to them was nigh on impossible. I spent a good 2 hours on this before I gave up for the night. Those trees were the bane of my existance at that point. Once the backboard, cliff and tree platform were dry, I brought them in the house and went to bed.

The next morning I decided how to construct the ledge and how to film the first part. The first part was him running away with sounds of the monster chasing him in the background. However I still don't have a good way to anchor Wade, and so getting him actually runningwas going to be a challenge. So I decided to just film him from the waist up, and make the background move back and forth and him go up and down and looking back over his shoulder to look like he was running. It worked....sort of.

After that I went back to my tree problem. I still couldn't get the foam to stick to the tree armatures. I decided to stop wasting time, and run down to Eugene Toy and Hobby. They have a huge model train section, with experts. Surely someone there could help me. I ran to the bus stop, where I learned I had missed the bus by 5 minutes, so I ran-walked the 1.5 miles there. By the time I got there I waas red faced, sweaty, and not all that coherant. I am sure they all thought I was crazy. Fortunately this is not the first time I have had a wierd request for them, so they took it with grace. The guy behind the train counter handed me some ultra strong super glue, explained how to use it, all the time looking at me like I was a moron for not being able to do this on my own. I am sure that as soon as I was out the door they were laughing at me. Ah well...that is what this is all about right? Entertainment?

I got to the bus station to find the next one was not for another 30 minutes. Don't let anyone tell you differently...Eugene bus system sucks. On Saturday the ones to my house generally run once an hour. So I ended up grabbing a juice and doughnut from the Kiva and run-walking back home. At least it wasn't a wasted trip.

I think they turned out pretty good, for all that. The super glue he gave we was quick drying, so basically all I had to do was put some glue on the armature, take a clump in my hand and press it over the branch for the count of 3. Of course, you can hardly see them in the final shoot, as I opted to go for spotlight lighting. I figured if I did that, it would put the emphasis on Wade, use the blank space for tension, and I wouldn't have to worry about the details on the rest of it as much. They do kind of show up, but they are not obvious. Which is fine. I don't feel I wasted my time making them.

After making the trees I built the cliff and set up. As you can see, it wasn't easy. The tripod is literally lashed to the chair to stay in that position. The iPad was tied into the frame to keep it from slipping out. Wade could not support his own weight, so I ended up taping a metal ruler to the set. He has magnets in his feet. that allowed me to use his legs to keep him from losing his grip on the ledge. It worked pretty well for a while. The biggest issue I had with this was lighting. I have a small clampylight that worked well for the spot, but it did not want to stay in the same spot. While I did test shots it stayed just fine, but once I staarted shooting it insisted on sagging.

Once I finally got everything set up, I started shooting. I have a bluetooth keyboard for my iPad which allows me to remote trigger. What you can't see in this picture is that the screenof my iPad is cracked, which s why I haven't done much shooting lately. One of the cracks is right down the side, right where the frame puts presure on it. I worried I would totally kill my iPad using it. However at thhe moment I don't have an alternative camera, so it would have to do. I managed to not break it completely, so I am hoping by not having the iPad resting directly on the frame it helped.

In the middle of shooting I ran into more Wade issues. This guy would not stay together. His legs kept falling off. The glue had brokenn from his pelvis, so the legs kept falling out of the square tubes. I tried moving the ruler up a bit, but that didn't help. I finally took the legs off, which actually made it easier for him to stay attached to the cliff edge.

Ok...this is gratuitous kitty pic. At that point I was tired, I had been dealing with a lot of issues, and I needed a break. I stepped out on my front porch and sat down. This little black cat curled herself up in my lap. She is the same kitty from the other night. I guess my lap was there, so it was hers. As I sat petting her, she purred really loudly. I must admit, that short break probably went a long ways towards keeping  me from losing it completely and destroying my set.

After kitty break it was time for rendering and editing. This took the longest time. I ordered pizza, turned on the tv, and went to work. I used Osnap app to take the pictures on my iPad. Osnap has a wifi utility that you install on your PC that allows you to pull all those pics to your PC. I do not know how else I would be able to do that, as my iPad does not play well with my Windows PC.

But I got them all pulled over, and spent hours pulling them into Pinnacle, setting the frame length for each pic, trying to watch it and adjust accordingly. However, Pinnacle and my PC did not want to cooperate. My computer overheated several times. I ended up having to compile each segment sepaerately then add them together. The frame rate I set was 24 FPS, but it would only let me export it in 29.9, which made it loook way different. I spent many frustrated hours trying to fix it. Then at one point it would not let me add pictures into my timeline. Turned out Microsoftt had decided to run updates, even though I completely turned off updating while I was working. I could not get that setting to stay off. I finally had to do some rebooting.

But after all that, I finally got it done. I finished at 6pm, which didn't leave me much time to get it in. The bus wouldn't get me there on time, so I tried getting a cab. I called 4 cab companies....all of them were at least 45 minutes out. I finally texted my frined who drove me over there. I got it in by 6:30, well within the time alloted. Whew. That was long, hard, and completely insane. 

If you want to watch it, you can see it here: GARGOUILLE.