This week a guest blog from Lexy Anderson on her experience writing, shooting and editing a short mockumentary.
“Reality Bites” - 1 Day. 1 Shoot. 1 Film
Filmmakers starting out seem to all have the same problems: What equipment do I use? How do I gather crew? What’s a worthy script look like? But for us, these limitations aren’t problems. In fact, if you accept them, the answers become pretty clear, pretty quickly.
What camera do we use? The one that we’ve got I guess.
How do we gather crew? We’ve got each other, how many favours can you call in?
What’s a worthy script look like? Well, does this make us laugh?
We (Lexy Anderson and Ben Murray) are a filmmaking duo based in London, currently freelancing across the UK film scene. We’ve started regularly collaborating a number of short projects, all written, produced, directed and edited by ourselves.
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| (Left to Right; Filmmaking team, Lexy Anderson and Ben Murray) |
Our most recent film has just launched online, “Reality Bites” - a short mockumentary following the marriage of a young woman and a zombie, and the challenges they face in that relationship - so we want to share how we managed to use one day, to get through one shoot, and come out with one complete film, that we’re both very proud of.
The Script
On a dark, cold night before graduation from UCA Farnham (a small arts-campus in the depth of Surrey), we found ourselves panicking about Post-Uni life. As you do.
To distract from our impending future, we decided to plan some scripts. Writing with another person can be difficult, but at this stage, we were just riffing ideas and after a night of basically talking nonsense, we conjured up a collection of concepts, one of which was “Reality Bites”.
TIP: The story for “RB” came from us asking “What if” about various scenarios - for example, what would life be like if you married a tame zombie? The fly-on-the-wall documentary style seemed like the right way to explore comedic elements. Once we got more specific with “what if” questions, we managed to write it overnight. Turns out, it’s a pretty efficient way of writing.
Pre-Production
The preparation for “RB” was all done about twenty-four hours before shooting. We’d initially planned to shoot another script, but some last minute cancellations threw the handbrake on that production.
But we had booked the day off work. We had crew on standby and cast ready to shoot. Giving up wasn’t an option. We decided to pull one of those dark-cold-night scripts from our archive, and make that instead! Thankfully, our incredible actors, Bridgette Wellbelove and Jorge Andrade, were game for a last-minute-switch-a-roo.
“How the hell do you make someone a Zombie?” After an immense amount of searching and spamming posts on filmmaking Facebook groups, we found an MUA (makeup artist) at the last minute who agreed to Zombify Jorge in “Michael”.
TIP: We can’t recommend Facebook groups enough - if you can manage to advertise a position as “Paid”, no matter how low that is, you’ll usually attract a higher level of candidates to your radar.
With some quick sourcing of props and minor adjustments to the script, we were ready to shoot.
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| (Actress, Bridgette Wellbelove, slating a scene) |
The Shoot
The shoot itself was very relaxed. We shot in one of our own flats, so no location restrictions there - the schedule was spread out nicely through the day. We were also right at the heart of Central London, so everyone could easily travel in and out.
We brought both actors in at the same time to give make-up an hour to prepare “Michael’s” zombie-look, while we cracked on with shooting “Jane’s” talking head shots. Part of that was scripted, part - a lot actually! - was improvised.
TIP: Usually actors arrive staggered, so they’ve time to get makeup and costume on, but if one’s preparation will take significantly longer, you can overlap their arrival and begin shooting one character while the other is readied in the green room.
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| (Ben’s incredibly “fierce” collection of batteries) |
A lot of the scenes we originally wanted were adapted or improvised during the shooting, due to logistical reasons.
TIP: Everything shot in the apartment was either tripod or handheld, and all of our lights were small battery powered LEDs (I’m fiercely proud of my LED collection!) A really simple and lightweight shooting kit makes it easy to do more flexible, improvised work without worrying about clunky or difficult setups - especially as you don’t need mains power or cables.
For example, a scripted scene had Michael accidentally throw his hand down a bowling alley. This later became a quick scene of skipping pebbles by the Thames, with a lighter, less on-the-nose joke. Being ready to adapt and discover alternative moments with actors was really useful, and a lot of fun too. For us, it was good practice as aspiring directors, to be flexible. Out on the streets, we shot with a very straightforward setup - using ambient light we could find, a single handheld camera, and a small, discreet sound system.
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| (Top to Bottom: Street gear set up using ambient street light on actor Jorge Andrade, screenshot from film) |
TIP: If you are a small crew, five people or fewer, and you’re shooting handheld, there is little to no restriction to filming on London’s public highway (tripods are considered an obstruction to pedestrians or roads, so that’s a little tricker, as far as finding permission goes). However, from experience, it’s still best to choose quiet and rural estates for general safety.
The Edit
The challenge of the edit was, much like in an actual documentary, dealing with those unscripted and improvised moments, so structuring the material to the original script became almost impossible. Instead, we sifted through the footage as though we’d never seen it before, to identify the shots and moments we could use to building a story with a similar structure. This was actually the slowest part of production, as we had to balance post-production with our working lives. It took around six months to cut, grade, and sound design the short.
What next?
You can see the film, “Reality Bites” and make up your own mind here: https://vimeo.com/255810185
Ben’s in the middle of post-production on a new fantasy short, “Taboodisobis” to be released later in the year, and Lexy’s in pre-production for a new comedy “Kill Norwood” about a gamer-obsessed kid.
To find out more, get involved or just get in touch, contact us on our respective social media accounts:
Instagram: @lexy__anderson @benthemurray
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