This post is a behind the scenes look at the making of our latest video release, “To Catch A Congressman“. This video went from idea to script to filming in just about 24 hours, our fastest turnaround yet. The idea came from an IM conversation about the whole Mark Foley scandal, and the script was hammered out over AIM throughout the day. The shoot was the same Thursday night that I was trying to prep the big weekend of shooting that we had three weeks ago, so I did not set up or direct this one. I did help cast it, and failed to get anyone in time to play the ‘bait boy’, so that is yours truly performing the role. Chris plays Denis Hastert at the end, we didn’t get any good clear shots of him I found out in post, but that’s him.

In all honesty this shoot was a totally frantic mess for me personally. One of the cameramen was Andy W, and in between takes he and I were trying to figure out the schedule for the weekend; I was very much torn in two directions and had a lot of trouble focusing on either. The shoot went well, more takes were shot than I would have liked from an editing standpoint, but it was shot in about three hours start to finish. Every take except for the alleyway was covered from four cameras, some manned, some not. There was a bit of improvisation in every take, but for the most part the shoot followed the script. Once filming was done I was unable to edit anything for over a week due to filming and work and a long weekend, so even though it was an easy edit it took me two weeks to get this short out the door.

In post, I used the multi cam function in Final Cut Pro to quickly sync all of the takes up, and I used the widest angle and clearest audio track to assemble the takes into a workable story. Once all of the takes were in order and the story flowed properly, I chose which camera angles I wanted, stole footage from other takes to hide problems or to get better performances, and, fixed up the audio as best I could. This short was filmed at the Beach Haus, which is unfortunately close to the airport, so every single take has airplane noise in it at some point. Finding good or even usable audio was rough, but I also didn’t need to make it look like a final polished piece, so I did the best I could. For the final ‘make it look like crap’ phase of editing, I color corrected everything roughly to the worst of the four cameras and boosted the brightness of everything. Then I transferred it to D8, to VHS, to D8, and back into my G5. During the last transfer, I shook the VCR and I rubbed some RCA cables that were plugged into a TV over the connections on the VCR to produce little power spikes. The end result was degraded as all hell, and the brightness was back where it should be (dark). I actually finished the short in three somewhat relaxed nights of work total, but wanted to release it at the start of a week rather than at the end, so I sat on it for a few days until yesterday.

So that is the quick peek look at the making of this video. I am currently editing a fantastic short, the one we shot a few days after this one, and cannot wait to launch it soon! Stay tuned…