Issues We Had Filming 'The Dog House'

Yesterday I uploaded a short film I made about a year ago, which is an action film about a man who has to confront a biker gang he used to be a member of, so he can get revenge for something they did.

Here's A Link To The Post If You'd Like To Check It Out.

---

Source

---

Problems With The Production

At the time of completing the short, I started the editing process. It was good, but I was supposed to have a few people helping me out with the edit, sadly, one by one they backed out and I was left alone with all the post-production work.

The edit was okay, the rough cut was really rough and showed a few issues we had with the footage. More or less the actual footage was okay, there were, however, a lot of sound issues, that were almost unsalvageable.

With the rough cut in hand, I identified all of the shots that looked good, regardless of sound, and marked them all out for ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) the process of recording replacement dialogue in studio after the shoot.

I needed three actors to come down to our home studio to work on it, but only two could make it. Luckily the third was able to record his own at home and send it over.

---

Audio

In order to add the new ADR - and all of the other audio - I had to work on a finished edit of the film because once the sound was done, any and all changes would just add unnecessary work.

The audio was useable, but we weren't able to make it truly match the natural reverb in the room that was recorded on the day - which was the reason some of the audio was unusable in the first place.

Luckily for me, the audio side of things was covered by my dad, I did help in a few places though. We recorded the ADR, recorded some ambient music for the score, and also some foley. All of the editing of the sound was done by him though. There was only so much that could be done about it, and sadly it was obvious that it was recorded separately.

---

SFX

On the day we had a makeup artist who was going to help with certain scenes that included gore, but because we were seriously running out of time, one of the lads offered to do the blood splatters, wounds, and other things like that afterward.

Sadly though, it became apparent that it was not possible to do that, since we didn't have any markers on the day and most of the camera work wasn't static, which made it almost impossible to track.

---

Missing Scenes

Before the main character walks into the main hall, he was meant to get into a slight back and forth with the doorman of the club, who was hanging out with a few extras. But, a bit of an emergency came up and the actor had to leave early.

There was also another scene where the main character's friend Paul walks in, reveals the AK-47, and barges his way through. There was another more impressive version of the shot where Paul first enters the hall where he whacks the guy with the butt of the gun, steps through, and lets off a few rounds into the ceiling. But, the person providing the strobe light didn't arrive... it would have been cool though, the shot was good in rehearsals. We even had dusty debris stuff that was going to be dropped on him as the shots were fired. Without the strobe, we couldn't do it.

As well as these there were a few other scenes that needed to be cut, and some which were re-written entirely on the day because of some of the issues we were having.

There was also supposed to be a scene with Paul down at the car, where he is building himself up to go in and go wild with the AK-47, and we were going to see the ominous church on the hill in the background of the shot, and also do the famous shot looking up from the boot of the car as he takes the bag of weapons out... a kind of nod to Pulp Fiction. There was also supposed to be a sequence of the main character walking through the graves leading up to the church, which was going to be a kind of eerie time that foreshadowed the deaths to come, and a hint at his own potential death facing the gang.

Why couldn't we film these scenes? A gang of drunk dickheads started talking to us and then sat near the car being loud and annoying. We had no permission to shoot there so we couldn't tell them to leave, and were kind of powerless. We got the first initial scene done and were lucky to have it. They were literally the only takes of the scene that the group couldn't be heard.

That's the problem with gorilla filming things, since you don't actually have permission to be there, you don't actually have rights over any location or public space.

---

Getting Kicked Out

I mentioned that two of the actors used the community hall to spar in, and had the keys to use it on the day of filming... Well, it turns out that they had permission... from someone who wasn't actually a member of the council anymore.

We got to the final scene of the production and only had one more shot to go before we wrapped and were interrupted.

The final shot in the film that hangs on the two characters -John and Paul - ended with the two actors leaving the hall, and as they walked back into the room as I called cut, a man walked in behind them... I just finished reviewing the footage and was about to call action for another take when we were stopped.

This guy walked in, there were two lads in front of him armed with an AK-47 and a Glock, while four leather-clad men lay dead on the floor covered in blood, another panting and injured, while the final member of the gang held a knife. As well as this the place was a mess, and there were parcels of cocaine all over the room.

Needless to say, he was a bit confused by the scene and asked what we were doing there. We lied and said it was a film for a college project, which is an excuse we have used a bunch of times to get out of trouble, this time though he was having none of it. He told us people paid to use the place, and we replied we had no money, he asked if we had insurance, we said no, and he told us to get out.

It sucked, there was nothing we could do, so we weren't able to get the reverse shot tracking Mad Dog as he gives his monologue at the end of the scene. Luckily, the first take of the two guys was flawless and we were able to use the entire thing just to give us an ending.

It wasn't the intended ending for the film, but it worked that way since we lost the right to continue filming.

Re-shoots would have been possible if we weren't caught there, but since we were caught it was impossible. The keys were taken off the lads, so it even interrupted their own use of the location outside of our shoot.

---

What Are The Takeaways

Filming isn't easy, it can be tough to assemble a crew/ actors and find availability for them all to be free at the same time. When getting them together, it's tough to overcome certain obstacles and you have to think on your feet and make changes on the fly sometimes. Even though we had some troubles on this one, we got incredibly lucky, because if the guy had come in just 2 minutes previous he would have interrupted the final shot, and had he done that we would have been left without an ending.

Without an actual budget, it's a tough process, but in terms of actually having money to film you can almost guarantee things will run a lot smoother, for us and this film, it was a passion project that had the potential to be something much bigger than just a short film. Because of how it turned out when all was said and done, we were left with almost no options to move forward, after the fact.