The Wild True Story of the First Movie Made Entirely During Quarantine
Baines helped put together the filmmaking kits and shipped them out to all the actors. “My entire apartment looked like Best Buy,” he said. “We had to test everything, make sure everything worked, and then essentially make up little boxes that were delivered to everybody contact-free because at that stage, we were very much in a lockdown and we didn’t obviously want to get anybody sick. We wanted to abide by all the rules and make sure we were complying with SAG and what they wanted.”
Each package held cameras, lights, reflective bouncer screens, makeup and hair materials, and lots of extra batteries and gaff tape. “We had to think of every single thing that could possibly go wrong,” Simon said.
What’s gaff tape? That’s the filmmaking version of duct tape, a substance that can be used for anything and everything. “You would use it for the mic. We used it for light boxes. There were moments when we were taping the cameras to the computer,” Simon said.
“If it was daytime and the scene was set at night, they’d gaff-tape blankets onto the windows so that it looked dark,” Baines added.
Stefanie Terzo, the head of hair and makeup, sent out video tutorials so the actors could do their own bruises and wounds. Meanwhile, action consultants Shara Kim and Anita Nittoly helped choreograph the actors’ fight scenes without ever being in the room with them. “The spirit attacks the actors, [so there are] invisible forces throwing them, or the actors hitting themselves uncontrollably,” Baines said. “They pre-taped themselves performing the choreography and then did step-by-step tutorials to explain how to achieve the desired action.”
The actors also learned to rig lights and activate cameras, while cinematographer Kevin Duggin would study the setups via the conference call, making adjustments just before shooting started. “It was quite extraordinary, not only Kevin’s patience, but his ability to amazingly see and understand the light without physically being in the room,” said Cornelius. “He’d be like, ‘Is there a window in the back to your right?’ And they would say, ‘Yeah.’ He'd be like, ‘Can you go close that? Put a blanket over that?’ It was extraordinary to sight his talent in working, and the videos and workbooks that he and Luke had to create as tutorials for all of the actors.”
This was all new to the performers, who were used to walking on set and simply playing their parts. “Every one of these actors, in their own right, is a lead of their own Netflix show or something,” Simon said. “These are the type of actors who are constantly getting everything done for them. Here they had to light themselves, mic themselves, shoot themselves. They did everything themselves. As a director, I guess I would sit back and really just direct it like a play.”
The film also had a shockingly fretful shooting schedule. “We were doing 20 pages a day. We shot the whole movie in seven days because once we got everything set up and rolling, we could just keep going,” Simon said. “The actors really knocked it out above and beyond anything that I expected. Afterward, they had to upload all their footage so we could start editing and start looking at everything and make sure it all went through.”
While a phantasm menaces the characters, the off-screen villain of the production was noisy neighbors. “So many lawnmowers!” Stabile said. “We were talking about how lucky we had been with that, because we recently did a pickup shoot with one actor and it was the first time that we were repeatedly interrupted by lawnmowers and fireworks and all that."
Each package held cameras, lights, reflective bouncer screens, makeup and hair materials, and lots of extra batteries and gaff tape. “We had to think of every single thing that could possibly go wrong,” Simon said.
What’s gaff tape? That’s the filmmaking version of duct tape, a substance that can be used for anything and everything. “You would use it for the mic. We used it for light boxes. There were moments when we were taping the cameras to the computer,” Simon said.
“If it was daytime and the scene was set at night, they’d gaff-tape blankets onto the windows so that it looked dark,” Baines added.
Stefanie Terzo, the head of hair and makeup, sent out video tutorials so the actors could do their own bruises and wounds. Meanwhile, action consultants Shara Kim and Anita Nittoly helped choreograph the actors’ fight scenes without ever being in the room with them. “The spirit attacks the actors, [so there are] invisible forces throwing them, or the actors hitting themselves uncontrollably,” Baines said. “They pre-taped themselves performing the choreography and then did step-by-step tutorials to explain how to achieve the desired action.”
The actors also learned to rig lights and activate cameras, while cinematographer Kevin Duggin would study the setups via the conference call, making adjustments just before shooting started. “It was quite extraordinary, not only Kevin’s patience, but his ability to amazingly see and understand the light without physically being in the room,” said Cornelius. “He’d be like, ‘Is there a window in the back to your right?’ And they would say, ‘Yeah.’ He'd be like, ‘Can you go close that? Put a blanket over that?’ It was extraordinary to sight his talent in working, and the videos and workbooks that he and Luke had to create as tutorials for all of the actors.”
This was all new to the performers, who were used to walking on set and simply playing their parts. “Every one of these actors, in their own right, is a lead of their own Netflix show or something,” Simon said. “These are the type of actors who are constantly getting everything done for them. Here they had to light themselves, mic themselves, shoot themselves. They did everything themselves. As a director, I guess I would sit back and really just direct it like a play.”
The film also had a shockingly fretful shooting schedule. “We were doing 20 pages a day. We shot the whole movie in seven days because once we got everything set up and rolling, we could just keep going,” Simon said. “The actors really knocked it out above and beyond anything that I expected. Afterward, they had to upload all their footage so we could start editing and start looking at everything and make sure it all went through.”
While a phantasm menaces the characters, the off-screen villain of the production was noisy neighbors. “So many lawnmowers!” Stabile said. “We were talking about how lucky we had been with that, because we recently did a pickup shoot with one actor and it was the first time that we were repeatedly interrupted by lawnmowers and fireworks and all that."
Sincery All Tips collection
SRC: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/the-first-movie-created-entirely-during-quarantine
powered by Blogger News Poster
0 Response to "The Wild True Story of the First Movie Made Entirely During Quarantine | Vanity Fair"
Post a Comment