“Survivorman” is the AV Club’s entry in a video spoof competition that the Discovery Channel is holding.  It has made it past their first round of reviews, and is now in the running for the finals.  So get your TiVo’s ready, because this AV Club production may very well be airing on the Discovery Channel!

It was prepared, shot, and edited in about 2 weeks, and it was an extremely challenging 2 weeks!

Because the deadline for the competition only gave us 2 weeks to create and submit our video, there were a lot of interesting challenges facing this project.

More info after the jump.

This was the first project that I produced, directed, shot, and edited all on my own.  This was not by choice, but out of necessity.  Andy was extremely busy working on preparation and filming for “Found,” (which turned out great!) and a lot of other AV Clubbers were occupied with other projects, or out of town.

Because the shoot was a full day commitment, including driving out to the “wilderforest,” we were not able to find a cameraman who had the time needed for this shoot.  Thankfully the style of the show I chose to spoof did not involve a lot of dynamic camera work.  The real Survivorman is mostly tripod shots.  However, the style of the show also calls for a lot of location shots that I had to capture B roll for.  Most of this was left out to meet the 10 minute time requirement for the contest. 

Because of the short notice of this contest, we also had trouble finding cameras.  Though this type of shoot does call for regular consumer quality DV cams, the main camera needed to be a lot higher quality.

I had been thinking about purchasing a prosumer 3 chip DV cam for some time, and this shoot provided further motivation.  The result?  The AV Club now has a brand-spanking new Panasonic DVX100B.  Though dropping ~$4,000 on a camera is a big purchase, (for me anyway) having this camera on standby is extremely valuable for The AV Club.  We have already used the DVX on a few “Drunk America” shoots, and it will be used on many more projects in the near future.

For this shoot I also used my Sony DCR-HC85 with an added wide-angle lens for all the time-lapse, night vision, body-mount, and low-angle shots.

The next challenge was finding an actor.  Thankfully, Jeff Kriese was available during the time of this shoot, and had the extra time needed for preparation on this project.  Jeff was able to meet up with me for a run to the Salvation Army, where we purchased his costume; a pair of leather dress shoes, a dress shirt, and a jacket.  Jeff was able to take care of the pants and tie at a later date.  We fully intended to destroy every item of clothing during the shooting process, but the carnage had to be toned down due to lack of time on the day of the shoot.  Jeff was also able meet up to review a few recorded episodes of Survivorman, so he could get a feeling for the format of the show.

With costuming, cameras, and the actor squared away, the next big challenge was finding a suitable location for the shoot.  We needed an outdoor location with plenty of natural features, and ideally a location with no man-made objects is sight.

After some research on google maps, I decided that Angeles National Forest would be a good place to look.  So on the same Saturday that Andy started shooting “Found,” I packed up my SUV to go location scouting for Survivorman.  I was joined on this trip by Sam Haber (who also helped during the day of filming, and played the role of the hiker), Terri Irving (His fiancé and my former roommate), my current roommate Mike, and my dog Dottie (who also made an appearance in the short).

After driving for about an hour and a half, we arrived in the Angeles National Forest.  The landscape consisted mostly of valleys and desert brush.  We decided to pull over and investigate a small cove, in the hopes that it may lead us to a good area that was tucked away from the road.  What we found, was an area infested with insects, thorny brush, and sacrificial offerings made by practitioners of Santeria.  On our way back to the car, we ran into a fireman who had pulled off the road to take a break from his patrol, and he told us about the history of the particular cove we wandered into.  The area is often frequented by people making various sacrifices, some times animals, but often just coconuts and cotton.  A couple months earlier he had found the body of a man who had committed suicide, hanging from a tree that I was standing beneath as he told the story.  He went into more gory detail, but I’ll leave that bit out.

Aside from freaking us out with tales of terror, he also told us about an area that we could use for filming.  The area he gave us directions to is a training-ground used for training prisoners to fight fires.  The location turned out to be perfect…  It was a small valley, containing a dried out riverbed.  Either side of the valley had flat banks made out of gravel and river-rock, and in the center there was a small stream.  Because the valley bent around a corner, it helped muffle the sound of passing cars, and kept man-made features like power-lines out of view. 

If you’re out there Mr. Fireman, thanks a ton for your help!  (Though after that bizarre experience, I half-expect that he was actually a ghost fireman who endlessly wanders the countryside eating cheetos and leading stray videographers to their doom)

At this time I had not yet purchased the DVX100B, but I did have my Sony DCR-HC85 with me, so I recorded some location B roll, and a few time-lapse shots, including the day-to-night transition used in the final short.

With the location scouting completed, we returned to LA, and dropped by the beach haus to see how filming had gone on “Found.”  Everyone there looked exhausted, but happy.  We cracked into a bottle of rum I had brought with me, and we watched as Andy captured the “Found” footage to his G5, and the footage looked great.

On the next Saturday, I packed the SUV full of gear, then Jeff, Sam, Dottie (the dalmatian), and I headed off to start the shoot…  and that’s when it started raining.  This was the first time it had rained in many months, so the timing was perfect.  Because we were on a tight schedule, we had to get the shooting done that weekend to allow for editing time.  So we chanced it and drove out to the location, in hopes that the rain would stop.

When we arrived, it was still raining, but not very hard.  We found a nice location under a large tree where we could film the intro, while we waited for the rain to stop. 

During the previous week, we were at that location for about 5 hours, and in that time, maybe 3 cars drove by.  But for some reason, this Saturday was different.  The road was full of cars, and the hills were full of deer hunters.  Every time Jeff was 3/4 the way through the intro, he’d either be interrupted by a car driving by, a group of hunters wandering down the hillside blowing their deer calls and rejoicing in Spanish about their successful hunt, or the sounds of gunfire.  Unfortunately, the next car to drive by was a member of the police department, who decided to harass us and attempted to shut down our shoot. 

In LA, many retired police officers supplement their retirement by working security on permitted film shoots.  So any time they see a shoot that is operating without a permit, they (understandably) see it as a threat to their retirement.  When we explained to the officer that we were not making, but rather losing money on this shoot, he left.

Shortly after the officer wandered off to fight crime and save lives, the rain let up.  We quickly unpacked the car and headed down to the location where we would film the rest of the shoot.  By this time we had lost about 4 hours of light, and what light we did have was heavily diffused by a thick cloud layer.  We were just thankful that the rain had stopped, and that we still had a chance to salvage the shoot.  Thankfully, that was the last of the rain, and the rest of the day/night was nice and dry.

I had written out a rough structure for the shoot, which covered the individual days & nights, including the events that would take place for each time period.  Aside from the intro, the entire dialog was improvised.  That is one thing that makes working with improv actors a lot of fun.  They can think on their feet, create a solid character, and find ways to make each scene work best for the character they created.  This did create some challenges though. 

Not having every scene’s dialog planned out ahead of time meant that we had to play through each scene a few times to get the right feeling and structure, then we had to record a couple solid takes of it before we could move on.  With so many individual scenes, all of which taking place on a timeline of 3 days and 2 nights, that meant a lot of footage, and a lot of takes.  We also had to allow time for costume changes, set changes, location changes, makeup changes, audio level adjustments, and setting up multiple cameras.  Thankfully, Jeff is not only dedicated, but quick.  Having Sam there to help was also a life saver.  There was a lot to do, and very little time, so having someone to help move gear around and contribute ideas was fantastic.

Once the shoot got started, it went really well from start to finish.  Because we had lost some time due to weather, we did have to cut a few time consuming aspects of the shoot.  Initially we were going to use a makeup gag to have Jeff slowly get a severe sunburn as the days progressed, and his clothing was going to slowly become more and more tattered.  This was made difficult because we had 1 day to film scenes that took place over 3 days and 2 nights.  Since we only had the one costume, Jeff could not get all tattered up during the day and then look normal again for the night scenes, so we had to be creative with how we destroyed the costume.  We ended up just removing the arms of his dress shirt, so he could wear the jacket in the night scenes to cover it up.  We did still use some makeup, but that was just to make Jeff look dirty and tired.

The final edit was really challenging for me, because it was the longest project I have ever edited all on my own.  (Though Andy did offer lots of great advice) There was a total of 5 DV tapes worth of footage, from 3 cameras, with about 5 takes for every scene, all of which needed to by synced for audio and laid out in order.

To meet the 10 minute time constraint for the contest, I had to edit out a lot of footage, which is one area where I learned a lot.  The structure I had created, and the dialog for the intro, was way too long.  Entire chunks of storyline, and many full scenes were dropped, and the end product still feels a bit long.  With all the scenes in place, the final edit was actually closer to half an hour, so editing it down to 10 minutes was a slow process of figuring out which scenes could be dropped, while still matching the theme of the original “Survivorman” and keeping our storyline intact.  Andy described the process as “killing babies” (a term he learned in film school) which is really appropriate.  You have a perfect scene, that you truly love, and badly want to keep, but for the sake of the overall project you have to discard.  It’s a tough thing to do, and one of the many things I learned on this project.

The final edit is extremely rough; because there was just not enough time (for me) to properly edit it before the submission deadline.  I had planned to have a lot of graphics, titles, and locations shots peppered throughout the final short, but in the end, I did not even have time to color-correct the footage.  I learned a lot while editing this project, but the time I spent learning took away from the time I spent polishing the final product.  But I’m extremely glad that I had this opportunity to learn, even if it did hold back the quality of the final product.  You have to start somewhere, and this was definitely a trial by fire!

Audio was another big challenge.  The main audio source was a shotgun mic mounted to the DVX.  Even with the sound dampening mount, the mic was picking up mechanical noise from inside the camera… and then there’s the wind.  Wind has been a big problem on many of our shoots, mostly because we do not currently have a windscreen to cover the shotgun mic, which was on loan to us from a friend.  One of my next big purchases will be a decent quality shotgun mic, complete with windscreen. (~$1,000)  The shotgun mic is also extremely sensitive.  It was picking up noise from passing aircraft and cars that I did not even notice during the shoot, so many takes were lost just because of audio.  But that is my fault for being so distracted with setting everything up and trying to follow the scene to make sure we have everything we need.  It’s really hard to try and run a camera and direct at the same time.  And sadly, I did not have the time (or ability) to properly clean up the final audio.  With such a short deadline there was just no time to pass this project on to a proper editor or sound engineer, so sticking with the theme of the AV Club, I moved forward and did the best I could with what little time and resources I was given.  It was a lot of hard work, a lot of fun, and a fantastic opportunity to learn a great deal about many aspects of production/directing/shooting/editing.

Big thanks to Jeff Kriese for his hard work and dedication on this project, and to Sam Haber for helping out during the shoot, as well as playing the role of the hiker.

In the near future, I hope to release some of the deleted scenes from this project, so stay tuned!

/Chris