#supermom, #publicaccesstv, #thelongmontchannel, #frontrangefilmfestival, #moviemakingmarathon, #momfilmmaker, #ziggiscoffee, #simplybulk, #projectnerd
Flashback to 2016
It was February and my husband, son and I had just welcomed our daughter into the world when one of the producers from The Longmont Channel, where my husband often volunteered, mentioned that the Front Range Film Festival was having a filmmaking competition and suggested that we enter. She then said that we could check out any equipment we needed from the TV station to use for the film since the finished films were going to be used to promote Longmont, Colorado.
I had ALWAYS wanted to make a film but was super anxious about pulling the trigger. In fact, because of my anxiety, I had come up with loads of excuses for not shooting a film. I hadn't even realized that I was creating obstacles as a way to avoid confronting my anxiety and fear of failure. I told myself and anyone who would listen that my biggest obstacles were that I never had the right equipment or budget to make a film. I still didn't have a budget, but being offered cameras, mics, tripods, etc. for free took away my biggest excuse and because we were flat broke at the time, I had mastered the art of making something out of nothing.
I knew I'd have to break out of my comfort zone and turn to friends for help making this happen, but after spending 6 weeks on partial bed-rest while pregnant with my daughter, I was itching to get out of the house and do something creative, with adults, something beyond resting, nursing, cooking, cleaning, changing diapers and trying to stay awake while entertaining my son who was, at the time 5 years-old.
Clearly delirious, sleep deprived, and with a two-week old baby permanently attached to me, I decided now was the perfect time to make my first short film. My husband thought I'd lost my mind, but he, too, was itching to do something fun, something creative and outside the box, so he leapt in with both feet and decided to attend the informational meeting, "just to see" what the competition was all about.
We also agreed to make a decision afterwards the meeting in terms of whether or not we felt like we could accomplish learning how to operate the cameras, mics, etc. while making a short film in three weeks, but only shooting on one weekend (because of work schedules), with a newborn and a 5 year-old and no childcare.
Before the informational meeting, during those rare moments of lucidity, self-doubt and anxiety crept in and made me wonder what in the hell I was thinking. I couldn't do this and I wanted to bail before we'd even attended the informational meeting, but I just kept thinking, it's not every day you get to learn and use equipment for free and I worried if I let this opportunity go, I'd never get another one like it. No excuses became my mantra.
With my daughter in the Snugli and my husband and son by my side, we attended the informational meeting, met the other filmmaking teams (none of whom had kids in tow) and learned that the film had to be written, produced, directed, and in the can and ready to screen at the Front Range Film Festival in 3 weeks. Not only that, but we were required to obtain permission to shoot in a minimum of three different business locations in downtown Longmont and we were also required to shoot in three exterior locations as well, to showcase the town.
It was a LOT, but the energy and comradery at the meeting was so intoxicating it hijacked the rational part of my brain, Justin's, too, because before I knew it, we were filling out the official entry form. I told Justin I didn't just want to enter, I wanted to win. This wasn't a narcissistic statement, it was the anxious, overachieving perfectionist in me talking, the woman with a crazy, undying need to prove to the world that she and all women really can achieve anything they set their minds too, even while dealing with the insane demands of motherhood.
While Justin worked his full-time job (plus some insane overtime) I juggled motherhood and marketing one of my feature-length scripts while concurrently working on the script for SUPER MOM. Typing and nursing, nursing and typing with my son crafting or playing with a mound of toys on the floor behind me.
Battling extreme fatigue, pausing to change dirty diapers and onesies and make meals and snacks, I wrote and rewrote the script, incorporating myself, my husband and both of our kids into the story along with a handful of other characters. When I finished the script, I proudly gave it to Justin to read. I hovered and watched him laugh out loud. He loved it, but when he was done, he looked at me and said, "You're crazy!"
I don't even remember how many scenes I'd written, but it was a LOT. I had one day to film, three kids, ten actors, stunt sequences, three interior locations and ten exterior locations in the middle of winter in Colorado, while knowing I'd have to stop at least every two hours to nurse my daughter, change diapers and keep my son fed and occupied. No excuses. I looked at Justin, smiled and said, we can do it, but I knew he wasn't so sure.
I had no budget for the film and money was super tight at the time and I hate, hate, hate asking people to do things for free, but again, no excuses, so I swallowed my pride and my anxiety and called upon my friends to act in the film and, through the grapevine, even managed to nab a couple of legit actresses who were happy to work for coffee, treats, film credits and set experience.
By Wednesday, I had broken down the script, cast the film, sent and received the necessary release forms, sent my actors the script, contacted three local businesses, secured a day/time for filming at each location. I then scheduled the actors, reserved three cameras, lavalier and shotgun mics, tripods, etc. created shot lists for every scene and made and purchased snacks and food for the shoot on Saturday. I also made lists, lots and lots of lists. Shot lists, equipment lists, infant needs lists, 5 year-old needs lists, food lists, drink lists, tool lists, cold weather clothing lists, costume lists, props lists, makeup lists, accessory lists, etc. I knew to pull this off, we had to be as prepared as the National Guard during an emergency response.
Friday, I went to The Longmont Channel with two kids in tow and picked up all of our camera equipment so that Justin and I could familiarize ourselves with it before the shoot. Between nursing breaks, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, changing diapers, reading and playing with my son, I managed to get all of our props and makeup and costumes ready to go. But then Friday night, a snowstorm rolled in and one of our actresses bailed last minute.
Cancelling wasn't an option because we were scheduled to shoot at Ziggi's Coffee on Saturday at 6:30 AM and this was going to be our one and only opportunity to shoot there. We tried to find someone, anyone to fill in last-minute, but thanks to the storm and having less than 12 hours' notice, we were out of luck. Rather than nix the shoot or get discouraged, Justin and I decided we'd greenscreen the footage of me playing one of the characters so he could composite the green-screened me into the film in post (something he'd wanted to learn how to do anyway). We knew how this worked in theory, but neither of us had ever done it in practice. We were pretty tech savvy and decided we'd figure it out.
I grabbed a wig from our Halloween bin, my reading glasses and some green fabric and tape so we could make a green screen, but because of my post-partem body, I didn't have a lot of shirts that fit. The few I had were maternity shirts and either looked like maternity shirts or they made me look like I was still pregnant, so my wonderful friend and co-star, Jody DePaemelaere, grabbed a couple of shirts from her wardrobe to pick from for costumes. The red shirt in the picture is hers. It was perfect!
In the days before the shoot, I took the kids all over town scouting exterior and interior locations, making notes, taking pictures, creating shot lists. We bought goodies from Simply Bulk Market, one of our interior locations, and had a great conversation with the owner. Then, we went to Larry's Guitars and had another wonderful chat with the owner (who, we found out later, wouldn't let any other group film in his shop). I made shot lists, found bathrooms at each location and communicated exactly what we were going to do with both shop owners and how we were going to do our best not to be in the way for too long. Finally, we headed to Ziggi's coffee to scout the final interior location.
While my son sipped on dairy-free hot chocolate and made a craft out of the cup holder, I nursed my daughter and decided where to set up the cameras and how to shoot the scene. I found a bright and cheery nook by the front window, gorgeously lit with natural light, which was imperative since we didn't have any lighting equipment whatsoever. I was nervous, but incredibly excited at the same time. By the end of the week, I was as prepared as I could possibly be for our Saturday shoot.
We arrived at Ziggi's, our first location, well before call time on Saturday morning in the hopes of securing the cute nook before any customers arrived. Dressed in bulky winter clothes, I was lugging an infant in a car seat, a diaper bag and camera gear, heading straight for the nook when suddenly, a regular, armed with a notepad and pen, elbowed her way in front of me, threw her stuff on the table, sat down and growled at me with a scowl.
I could have asked her nicely to move, offered to buy her a coffee, explained what we were doing, but I got the clear vibe that she wouldn't have relinquished her table for a million bucks. Not only that but begging for the spot we were unlikely to secure would have cost us precious time. It was time to move on to Plan B. The coffee shop was filling up fast, so I jumped on the only other available table that could work for the scene. The lighting sucked and there was an ugly electrical box on the wall taking center stage in my shots, but, like everything else, we'd make it work.
We quickly set up three cameras, mic'd up and put my son on sound duty and went to town while my freshly nursed daughter slept in her car seat on the table adjacent to ours. With a coffee shop full of curious onlookers, we banged out take after take of the scene. Being watched by onlookers, having a tight timeline and playing multiple roles wasn't as easy as Jody, Justin and I had expected, but we were getting the job done.
In fact, things were going smoothly until the batteries died in one of our lavs. No problem, we had packed a ton of spare AA batteries. However, little did we realize that we managed to check out one mic that took AA batteries and another that took a 9-volt battery. We didn't have a 9-volt battery with us and neither did anyone in the coffee shop and trying to find one at 7:00 in the morning while on a shoot that had just 30 minutes remaining wasn't going to happen. I felt so stupid. How could I have missed something so simple, so obvious?
We decided to keep shooting with one lav mic and the shotgun mics on the camera. It was less than ideal, but because we had failed to check the batteries in ALL the mics, we had no choice but to roll with it.
It was an exciting, but exhausting day. We shot at two more interior locations and somehow managed to get all of the primary shooting accomplished between nursing breaks, potty breaks, snack breaks, hot chocolate breaks and crew moves. My friends were amazing! Most of the time, there were just three or four of us schlepping all of this equipment all over town. Justin and I did all of the setting up and tearing down. When I was directing, I wore my daughter in a Snugli or let her sleep in her car seat in the stroller. When I was acting, Justin had her in the Snugli or in the stroller or the car seat while he was operating two cameras and monitoring audio while and my son (remember he was only 5) was operating the third.
After a long and very, very cold, wet day of shooting, we said goodbye to our cast and went on to shoot the remaining sequences as a family. It was intense and I was so proud of my son. He endured a 16-hour day of shooting and acting and he did it without complaining.
Sunday morning, as soon as we had light, Justin and I were out the door with both kids to shoot the stunt sequences. I was beyond exhausted. My post-partem body hurt and I had developed a fever thanks to mastitis. It was a COLD morning for exteriors and it seemed to take forever to get set up for our first shot. We were all moving like slugs, but finally, after what felt like an eternity, we finished rehearsing the stunt sequences and had just started rolling camera when suddenly...
"I have to go potty," our son announced mid-scene.
"Okay, no problem. You can use the yogurt container in the truck," I replied.
He'd, scratch that, all of us had been using the yogurt container as a potty that morning because none of the nearby shops were open for business and we didn't want to waste time driving to and from a location just to pee. With kids, every "quick" task takes at least an hour. It also wouldn't have been professional or appropriate for any of us to cop a squat in the parking lot downtown while filming.
"But Mommy," he protested, "I have to poop."
Crap! Production skidded to a halt. Worse, I had to move all of the camera equipment we'd worked so hard to set up back into the truck since the parking lot was open for businesses and I was planning on nursing our daughter while Justin took our son to an open coffee shop several blocks away to do his business. It was so frustrating, but after what felt like an eternity, Justin returned with our son, we set everything back up again and started shooting.
We borrowed a mini trampoline for the stunts. I hadn't officially been cleared for exercise yet, but here I was running, well more accurately, waddling after Justin, jumping on the trampoline and leaping over a construction barricade fence and then jumping on the trampoline some more to get the height I needed for my flying karate kicks, all of which were landed on the cold, hard asphalt to create the action sequences I needed for the film. Every muscle, tendon, joint and ligament in my floppy body HURT, but I was driven and knew the end result would be so, incredibly funny and so incredibly worth it. Or at least I hoped it would be.
Surviving on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and veggies, we shot for 14 hours that day, lugging around 3 cameras, 3 tripods and various mics, just me, Justin, our son and infant daughter. By the end of the day, we were beat and the final sequences where I tackle Justin on the ground were particularly brutal, especially thanks to the mastitis and thrush, but we made it. We wrapped just after sunset. Cold, tired and hungry we went home, lugged all of the gear back inside and crashed. I had been operating all day with an increasingly serious and excruciatingly painful mastitis infection that had caused my temperature to soar to 104.5 degrees. How I was even remotely functional, I will never know.
The following day, I offloaded the footage from all three cameras and began editing the film, partially as a distraction to the incredibly painful mastitis and thrush infections until I could get into urgent care. I was in agony and still had a massive fever, but because of my excitement for the film and the short time frame for completing it, I was flying high on adrenaline.
I spent the next two weeks editing the film. Justin spent every, waking moment attempting to composite my second character into the two scenes into which she needed to be composited, but without a greenscreen, this was really tough. And with the second scene, the camera had been handheld and trying to composite anything with a handheld camera is a nightmare. But the camera had to be handheld due to how the shot was set up and the fact we didn't have a dolly or any other way to stabilize a moving camera. So, Justin was literally going frame by frame trying to get it to work.
I, meanwhile, was having a bear of a time with my editing software crashing. Every two minutes, the software was crashing on me and I was pulling my hair out by the roots. Turns out I didn't realize it was necessary to convert the Cannon cameras' raw footage to MP4s before editing. It was a rookie mistake that cost countless hours trying to figure out and cost us time when we needed to render (keep reading).
I was finally able to get a version to render and it looked good, but then Justin was having all sorts of trouble with his compositing scenes. The lighting in the coffee shop was horrendous and so he was literally pulling all-nighters to get it figured out. In the scene where three of us are walking down the sidewalk, Justin had to composite 2nd me into that scene and he was literally going frame-by-frame with the keyframing because image tracking wasn't working. In fact, it was making me float all over the screen.
He was so frustrated! When we shot, we didn't have the camera stabilization (a dolly) or a greenscreen to seamlessly integrate the composite version of me into the master clip of Jodi and I walking down the sidewalk. Justin worked his magic, did his best and got the job done, but he was anything but happy with it. Despite his best efforts, it looks like the "me" with the wig in on is sort of floating/moonwalking down the sidewalk with the other two characters.
We were out of time and, after getting this far, we had to decide, do we keep it or trash it? Do we pull out of the competition or just cringe when that scene plays. We had worked so hard and had such a fun film that we decided to go with cringing.
Finally, it was time to upload the film for the competition and we went to render the final version and the thing just would not render. It kept crashing. I can't tell you how frustrating it was to have a finished film that we could not deliver. Justin pulled all-nighters troubleshooting and babysitting the renders, but they just kept failing. The night before the competition, Justin contacted the festival organizer and explained the situation and they were so understanding and gave us until the next morning, the day of the festival, to get a jump drive to them.
I'm not sure what we wound up figuring out, although I think it had to do with not converting the camera's native files to .MP4s or something stupid like that. It's all a haze at this point, but somehow, with the help of some people at the festival, we solved the problem 30 minutes before we had to get the drive to the festival organizers for judging. We literally rendered the film, loaded everyone into the car, grabbed the diaper bag and raced to the festival for the screening.
The festival was a hoot, an absolute hoot. I was so, incredibly nervous for the screening. The room was standing room only. I'd never made a film and here I was with my first film premiering in front of a sold-out crowd of mostly strangers. It was intense. But it was also the most amazing experience. Watching the audience react to the film, hearing them laugh and cheer was so empowering. And to top it off, nobody said a word about the crappy compositing. I was flying high for the rest of the day.
Later, we attended the awards ceremony. SUPER MOM, my first film, took first place in the Front Range Film Festival's Movie Making Marathon and it was the talk of the town! It was incredible and I was so grateful for my wonderful husband and kids and for my friends, who'd supported me in this crazy journey and received nothing more than hot chocolate and snacks in return. I was also glad I had decided to pull the trigger and make and finish this film despite all of the obstacles life threw at me.
I wanted to share this story as an inspiration for all of you to stop making excuses, get over your anxiety, negative self-talk, use whatever camera you have, get out there and make your films!
Be sure to check out my SUPER MOM interview with Project Nerd.
Lessons Learned:
Always, always, always have a Plan B, a Plan C and a Plan D!
People will bail, especially when working for free, especially when the weather is iffy. Find an understudy or two willing to show up last-minute.
Double-check all equipment to ensure you have the correct batteries, cables, etc.
Carry every spare battery under the sun and then some, just in case.
Be flexible and willing to improvise.
You can survive on way less sleep than you think you need.
Make lists, lots and lots of lists. Check them multiple times to ensure you don't forget anything.
When planning to shoot with kids, plan on everything taking 5-10 times longer than expected.
When shooting with adults, plan on everything taking 5-10 times longer than expected.
Always carry snacks, lots of snacks and water.
Research file format compatibility in editing software packages in advance so your software doesn't continually crash and you don't run into render issues.
Find a PA and cast and crew willing to help with setup and cleanup.
ALWAYS be nice, even when stressed or frustrated. Staying calm and buying your cast and crew hot drinks and having a steady supply of snacks on hand keeps everyone happy.
Wear cargo pants with lots of pockets. Fill the pockets with tissues, NSAID pain killers, a multitool, duct tape, pens, notepad, the script, shot lists, hand sanitizer, snacks, water bottle, cash, credit cards and ID.
Invest in walkie-talkies for quicker, easier communication with cast and crew.
Don't be afraid to ask friends, family, strangers for help or props or costumes. People love movies and love being part of the creative process.
Send hand-written thank you notes to EVERYONE including all cast and crew AND all location contacts.
Remember to have fun!