Human Skin - The Process
The Back Story
- original music written and performed by scott nason & chip chilton
Chip and I spent the better part of a year working on his Route 66 bike trip, "25 Days With a Smart Mouth". It was our first project together and neither of us had any idea how it was going to turn out. I was new to digital editing and needed a vehicle for test driving the equipment. And this project fit the bill - maybe a little bit too well.
Through hours and hours of general protection faults and "your program's performed an illegal operation", we endured and grew callus to the monster machine (Remember, this was the late nineties - no iPhones just yet). Upgrade after upgrade, new driver after new driver--even a new OS every weekend--until finally, I had a system that was almost usable.
But through all the turmoil, it was a lot of fun. So after it was all over, we wanted to try our hand at something new . . . a feature length, no budget film. How hard could that be?
So with the trusty Canon XL-1 in hand, we set off to shoot the raw footage. Did somebody say continuity? Lighting? "What do you mean you forgot to plug the mic in?"
The Script
Or lack thereof.
Chip kind of had this "idea" floating around in the back of his head about 2 guys going through a writing session to come up with songs for this utterly ridiculous idea for a stage production. He'd even gone so far as to come up with ideas for all the parody songs that were worked on during this session.
So I jotted some things down in a Word document and we worked back and forth a bit to come up with the "finished" script. Which was really nothing more than an outline of the scenes we were going to ad lib!
Continuity
Although I was familiar with what continuity was and how to spot it in films, I had absolutely no clue how enormously difficult it was to achieve!
It was difficult enough from scene to scene keeping track of where the silverware was and did I have my glasses on my face or my head? But then you add that confusion to shoots on the same scene that spanned multiple days (or even months in some cases), and you have a true recipe for a cluster.
Film Making 101
Although we understood, roughly, the mechanics of filmmaking, we just didn't have a grasp on the scope of what we were getting into. This is difficult stuff and I we certainly learned some painful lessons during the ordeal. Movie making is a very structured, meticulous and disciplined process . . . while trying to maintain a free flowing and creative thought process.
I'll say this for sure, the idea about ad libbing the scenes completely failed us when we got down to editing the takes together. It was hard to find takes that even halfway looked like they belonged together.
And in that simple lesson lies the major complication in filmmaking: How do you create and maintain absolute control at the same time? It's tricky to find that balance.
We spent the whole film looking, in vein, for it!