Shooting Windfall (2016)

Written by Jonathan Alexander, Darren Mann, and Rick Tae; directed by Rick Tae. With Hunter Dillon, Chris McNally, and Darren Mann. Drama, 2016, 14:00, colour.

Len’s downtrodden life takes a turn when he wins the lottery. He struggles to better his life with his newfound fortune, but secrets from his past unravel to challenge what windfalls can do for one man.

By DTL
Posted March 11, 2015

Last month, I was invited by actor and producer Tyler Burrows to be on-set Sound Recordist for Windfall, a short movie by some pals of his. I have worked with Tyler several times before, starting with Here For Scarlett (2014) in April 2014. I like Tyler; he’s fun, friendly, ethical, and a hard worker. He vouched for the project, so I agreed to do it.

Lesson 1: When it comes to getting gigs, it’s not who you know — it’s who knows you.

Windfall was directed by Rick Tae, who more often works as an actor. The Cinematographer was Michael Martell, who is more often a Gaffer. Darren Mann — who came up with the story, co-wrote the screenplay, and played the supporting lead — is more usually an actor. Other individuals took on whatever jobs needed to be done, without regard to what department was technically responsible for that job. Everyone pitched in to do whatever needed doing.

Lesson 2: Independent projects can offer you a chance to stretch yourself — to take on roles you wouldn’t qualify for on an industry production.

The movie was scheduled to shoot on the first two weekends of January. Most people who work on independent, micro-budget projects such as this have to work a day job to afford this expensive hobby, so shooting on weekends when people aren’t working is good.

That’s fine for a short movie, where you’re talking only a couple of weekends. It’s not a good way to shoot a feature-length movie, though! I’ve known a couple’a dozen people who tried to shoot features over six months of weekends, but I’ve known only three who’s managed to complete such a project. Life intrudes: people land paying gigs, they need to spend time with their families, they take holidays, they move away. The air can go out of people’s tires if a project drags on and on. If they find themselves working all week at their day job, and then working all weekend on the movie, they’ll start to yearn for a day off, a day to themselves. The longer the shoot drags on, the less likely the movie will be finished.

Lesson 3: If possible, schedule your shoot for a contiguous block of days.

The first weekend of the shoot coincided with a “winter-storm warning” from Environment Canada. We were told we might expect heavy rains (and in Vancouver, that’s saying something) and perhaps even snow. Snow!

Fortune smiled upon us the first day. Although the sky was grey and overcast, it never actually rained. Overcast skies are actually good for shooting — all that diffused light everywhere makes everyone look beautiful. Of course, the sky itself doesn’t look so good . . . but you can’t have everything. It didn’t matter much anyway, as most of the day we shot indoors, in a house owned by some friends of Darren’s.

Alas, the second day the heavens opened! It didn’t snow, but the rain was constant all day, and varied from moderate to heavy. And wouldn’t you know it, we were scheduled to shoot outdoors all day. In hindsight, we should have reversed the days; that way, we’d have been outside most of the dry day and inside most of the rainy day. But of course, we couldn’t have known which day would be good and which bad.

Lesson 4: When you’re shooting exteriors, have a back-up plan — something else you can shoot indoors, in case the weather turns bad.

Alas, we didn’t have the choice; we had to do the best we could. We mounted umbrellas in grip heads on light stands to protect the cameras, and kindly crew-members held umbrellas over the heads of the actors until the cameras rolled.

And there was no way I could record audio. I wasn’t willing to risk damaging my gear (something I warned the Director and Producers about at the time) by holding a microphone over the actors’ heads in torrential rain. Even if I had clamped an umbrella to my boompole to shield the mic, we’d still have picked up the spatter of the rain on the umbrella. We tried pulling a car near to the action so I could shelter inside it, and even put a blanket on the roof, but the audio was still no good; it sounded like the actors were speaking at the other end of a hallway, and between them and us somebody was hammering nails into softwood with a rubber mallet. All the dialogue will have to be re-recorded — particularly regrettable, as the day featured the most emotionally-fraught scene of the movie.

If I had had a rain cover for my mic, I could have done a better job. Something like the Rycote Duck Raincover will protect a mic from moderate rainfall, and will also shield the mic from the pitter-pat of direct rain noise.

Or if I had had wireless lavalier microphones, I might have recorded usable audio. If the actors were actually wearing the mics hidden under their clothing, the mics would be protected from the rain and would always be close to the actors’ mouths. Wireless laws have a lot of problems, but when you need ’em there’s no substitute. They’re on my shopping list, but I don’t currently own any. I might have been able to arrange for some (for money, of course . . . ), but we didn’t have the budget.

Lesson 5: Plan the shoot in advance with all crew members, so you can be sure you will have the gear you need. (Soundies, make sure you have the means to record in inclement weather.) And have an alternative plan in place so a derailment like this doesn’t hold up the whole shoot.

On the third day we shot in a house, dressed to look like a trashy apartment, and in the alley behind the house. The homeowners were amazed that their nice ground-floor suite could be made to look like the slum bachelor apartment of a down-and-out alcoholic.

The alley location was very picturesque: a lane bordered by garages and apartment buildings. There was even some graffiti spray-painted on a wall, adding to the realism. Unfortunately, the location was right next to the HVAC unit for a large apartment building. The constant whirr, rattle, and hum of the ventilation system was unavoidable. The alley was also half a block away from a major arterial intersection; not only was there constant traffic noise, but the beep-beep-beeping of delivery trucks backing up was a frequent occurrence. There was no hope of recording acceptable audio.

I fear that this project will need to re-record perhaps 50 percent of the dialogue, including the key emotional scene of the whole movie. That would have been avoidable had the production paid more attention to the audio needs of the project up front. That’s often the trade-off: more attention in pre-production means less attention in post-production, and vice versa.

Lesson 6: When you scout your locations, consider the needs of recording the audio as well as the needs of shooting the video. Better yet, take both your Cinematographer and Sound Recordist with you on location scouts.

The fourth day of the shoot seemed to go well (at least as far as I could tell).

I hope they captured the footage they need for editing, and I wish them well with post-production. I look forward to seeing the finished movie.

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