By John McLean
January 26, 2006
Part Fourteen: Step, Ball, Change
Terpsichore ain’t a happy camper, as last year wasn’t exactly a great one for movie musicals--but then what year is anymore? Only three live-action musicals were released in 2005, all based on stage plays, to be sure. (Original movie musicals being about as rare as Black Hosts at the Academy Awards.)
The two big musical tent posts, RENT and THE PRODUCERS, both suffered from being tossed into the crowded holiday movie marketplace mere weeks apart. And neither helped their cause by their very predictability, with each picture being pretty much exactly what you’d expect from their handlers--RENT a compilation of gritty, late-80’s style music videos, and THE PRODUCERS a deliberately theatrical, slightly saucy throwback to the last great golden age of movie musicals in the late-60’s.
The third, and by far the best, movie musical of 2005 never even made it to the local cinematoreum-plex. Recently out on DVD, REEFER MADNESS: THE MOVIE MUSICAL was a Showtime Original picture based on a long-running Los Angeles stage musical, with a distant nod at the infamous anti-drug “documentary” of the same name. A madcap musical adventure featuring over-the-top performances from the likes of Alan Cumming, Neve Campbell and Ana Gasteyer, REEFER MADNESS is colorful and energetic from start to finish, displaying an astonishing variety of dance styles--ranging from Bob Fosse to MGM to Bollywood and everything in between. Made for less than the marketing budgets of either of its more celebrated musical cousins, REEFER MADNESS is what movie musicals are meant to be…exciting, toe-tapping fun.
This new year promises to bring us another toe-tapping, fun-ass musical, something called Z: A ZOMBIE MUSICAL. Oh, wait, that’s MY picture! Okay, I love Z and can’t wait to see it myself when it’s done. So shoot me!
And I love movie musicals--which is why I’m making one, duh!--so I’d hoped RENT and/or THE PRODUCERS would produce CHICAGO-sized rentals, thus creating a spike in the demand for the songiferous genre at just about the time we finish our picture. No such luck. We’ll just have to create our own demand by hook or crook or good St. Nick.
Now if you’re new to “Lights! Camera! Zombies!”, or if you simply have the listless short-term memory of an Acting Teacher, here’s a quick recap:
A bunch of us in Austin, Texas are making a feature-length musical about Zombies. It’s got 13--going on 14--songs and a cast of hundreds (okay, over a hundred!) and gratuitous nudity and a Zombie Sock Puppet named Ziggy. In other words, all the standard elements of a languorous Merchant/Ivory drama.
Last year this column followed the long pre-production process and then dove into production proper. The road’s been bumpy at times. We’ve detoured off course more than once, but we continue to ramble and rumble closer to our destination all the time. As the shoot winds down, “Lights! Camera! Zombies!” will focus more and more on the post-production process of creating a movie musical, along with marketing a rare entrant in this once great genre.
Admittedly, principal photography has gone on longer than we anticipated, primarily because of the time-intensive labors of making a picture where Zombies inhabit virtually every single scene…and also because of the requisite recording sessions, rehearsals and lengthy shoots demanded by the numerous song/dance numbers.
The end of the year put a dent the size of Jack Nicholson’s ego in our schedule. We went on a month-long hiatus over the holidays to permit the numerous collegiate members of our cast/crew to do their Academia Waltz, and also to allow everybody time off for visiting relatives and shopping at the mall and all those other frivolous activities that people engage in when not making motion pictures.
Yet the break did allow me time to begin editing some of our hard-won footage. Between Christmas and New Year’s, I opted out of a free trip to New York City in order to cut together the biggest, longest number in the show, called “Zomburbia”.
The set-up for this number is simple. Early on in Z, our Heroines are turned into Zombies and quickly discover an enclave of Zombies living in their own idyllic “Zomburbia”. The song of the same name introduces these Zombies in ones and twos, then catches them all together as they converge on the homestead of the Honorary Mayor of Zomburbia for their regular Friday afternoon Happy Hour, ultimately integrating our Heroines into the mix. It’s seven minutes of nearly non-stop singing and dancing with up to 30 Zombies on-screen at the same time--a deliberately show-stopping number to cap off Act I.
During a coffee-fueled week of all-nighters between Christmas and New Year’s, I discovered that cutting together musical numbers is just about the most fucking fun ever invented--the ass-kicking payoff for many, many long hours of set-up and preparation and work to get the sound and picture in the proverbial can.
Of course, the technique for shooting Musical Numbers is rather different from your standard practice on a movie set, where Rule #1 is that everybody has to be quiet when the camera’s rolling. We didn’t record production sound while photographing the numbers, since we were never gonna use that audio anyway. Instead, we merely set the camera to Internal Mike--so we’d have some reference audio--and played back the appropriate parts of the song through a boom box, which we moved frequently to keep it close to the actors and out of the shot.
Since we weren’t “taking” clean audio, this allowed us to talk (more often, scream and shout!) at the actors during the numbers themselves. Our off-camera exhortations varied from choreographer Amy Jordan calling out dance moves--“hands up…spin, spin…NO, the OTHER way!”--to me or one of the Assistant Directors yelling for them to “sing!”
I’m pretty damn sure there’s nowhere that actors (and regular folk, too) feel more exposed and vulnerable than when they’re singing out loud in front of a group of people. Hell, even the vulnerability of on-screen nudity pales in comparison, since when you do a nude role, you can always withdraw into yourself and hide, as it were, and nobody really notices. (Well, unless you’re a guy and they stare too closely at your private bits…but that’s another story!) However, when you sing, you gotta SING, and everybody hears it and judges you immediately. (Seriously, if you ever watch “American Idol”, how long do you give most singers before making the harshest of judgments about their “talent”--cringing and turning your thumbs down and chortling in sadistic agreement at the caustic pronouncements of Simon Cowell & Co? If you’re anything like my household, you give ‘em about three to five seconds before damning the hapless person to an eternity of never singing again.)
So, in this gladiator-esque environment we were constantly imploring the actors to sing. Because, for the most part, they don’t WANT to sing! Yet if they just “lip synch” or pretend to sing, it looks utterly false. The only thing that LOOKS like singing is ACTUAL SINGING! And, hands down, one of the biggest challenges of shooting a Musical Number is getting the actors to sing all the words, out loud, on each and every take.
Even the smaller numbers often had 3-4 people singing and dancing at once. With blocking and choreography and framing and camera moves and numerous other distractions for those of us behind the camera, we couldn’t always watch every single actor’s lips on every take and make sure they were singing…we just had to yell out reminders when we caught them not singing. And, believe me, if you don’t say anything, the actors will sing softer and softer on each take, until they’re inaudible, until their lips barely move at all…and then the effect is lost.
Which is one reason why song & dance numbers have to be photographed again and again, from so many different angles. The other reason, of course, is to give yourself plenty of options to create the poetry of that particular number in the editing room.
Since I’d set the camera to Internal Mike, I had Reference Audio to use later, which is invaluable in synching up the pre-recorded song with the picture. In the editing room, I’d start by importing the final (or at least latest) version of a song off a CD from our audio engineer into Final Cut Pro 5, laying it down on Audio Tracks 7 & 8. (Audio Tracks 1 & 2 are reserved for the reference audio, with 3, 4, 5 & 6 used for the most important foley/ambient sounds in the song.)
During the first blush of editing a musical number together, I go ahead and keep the reference audio in place, so I can match it up with the finished song. I’d play both pairs of audio tracks at the same time so I can hear immediately if I was close to synch or not. Even then, I often have to tweak the picture track forward or backward a frame or two, to account for the “lag time” on set for the audio to get to the performer and their image back to the camera again. Then I look for big, obvious vocalizations to check my synch. The next step, of course, is to delete out the reference audio.
As I say, when we were shooting dance numbers, we covered them from as many different angles as possible…but, of course, it was never enough. There’s always an angle or a bit I’d wish that I’d caught. On my next musical, the one thing I will do differently is plan for an additional hour on each song just to record on-set foley.
Only once did I have the leisure to get the dancers to go through the entire number, without any music playing to sully the audio, and record their footsteps as they danced. On all the other songs, I’m gonna have to reassemble a few actors or crewmembers and have them re-create the dance in a location similar to the one where we shot, just so I can add those few touches of foley that make it seem like the singing and dancing is actually taking place live, in front of the camera.
Even without foley--and you don’t need much of it, frankly; in a typical movie musical number, just a few references to the audio on the set are enough to sell it as happening live--the “Zomburbia” number came out bad-ass, and we’ve been showing it to cast and crew and others around town to great response.
In the cracks of my schedule, I’ve started playing around with a few other musical numbers, but over-focusing on those causes its own problems. It’s not necessarily a great thing to fall too much in love with the musical numbers. Of course they’re fun and memorable and the highlights of the picture, but they account for only about 30 minutes out of a 90 minute experience. So I can’t avoid or skimp on the “talking” portions, where a lot of the plot and a great deal of the comedy emerges.
When you think about it, a musical is little different from an action picture. If you simply string a bunch of action set-pieces together, one after another, the audience will eventually grow bored and impatient. They need to take a breath, digest the action, regroup, and then plunge into the next action-y bit. The same rule is probably also true in pornos, which is why you sometimes happen upon some gratuitous bit of talking between the sex scenes. (Or so I hear.)
Although most of the production is now complete and we’re increasingly focusing on post, we do still have several long shooting days (or nights, as the case may be) ahead of us and I'll continue to share the lessons we’re learning along the way.
Foremost is that it’s simply amazing what you can get for your low-budget picture by simply ASKING. Z is an ambitious, sprawling picture, with dozens and dozens of locations, not one of which has ever cost us a dime. (Entirely, I should point out, because we never had dime one to spend on locations; if anybody ever breathed a word about charging us, we simply moved on to the next available choice!)
Case in point, just before we went on our Holiday Hiatus, we needed an interior gas-station/mechanic’s garage type of location for a cool, creepy number where our Heroine, Faith, meets the erudite Philosopher and his ensemble of lonely, male Bookworms. Co-Producer Dan Eggleston secured us the perfect location by dint of simply asking his long-time mechanic if we could use his garage--a sprawling space fully two stories high with an elevated section at one end accessible by stairs that would allow us to shoot from a nice overhead angle. Dude not only said yes, but came out early on the day to move cars out of our way and clean up the space. He even brought both his wife and his octagenarian mother along to watch the whole shoot.
Back before the start of Principal Photography, we invested basically our entire Craft Services budget in a dolly track and Cobra Crane. While our cast & crew have stoically starved themselves on many an occasion, at least we’ve gotten tremendous production value out of these toys, employing them on all sorts of scenes--esp. dance numbers.
Let me interject an important point about shooting musical numbers--you really want to avoid making every single number look exactly the same. (Again, this same rule is also likely true for both action movies and pornos, where varying the look and feel between the money scenes makes more difference than you might first imagine.)
Each musical number has its own tone and energy that informs the way it should be photographed and, ultimately, edited. Some numbers support frenetic cuts, others need to be seen more from a Master and allowed to develop slowly. And some require a different approach altogether.
On the day when we were shooting the song/dance number in the mechanic’s shop, we brought all our gear and toys, along with a detailed plan on how to shoot the song. But then we became opportunistic, discovering that the garage had a smooth, polished cement floor and that there was one of those standard-issue, wheeled office chairs sitting around.
So we decided to try using the chair for a camera platform. We put a camera operator in the chair, and then myself or Jessica Blanco, our 2nd Assistant Director, ran behind the chair, pushing it along. As the musical number unfolded, we kept the chair moving constantly…swooping and swirling and circling around the two performers as they sang and danced, while the owner and his wife and aged mother looked on as if we were crazy. The fortuitous result was a musical number that we photographed like no other in the show--with a fluid motion that perfectly went with the tone and tenor of the song.
This is just another example of the flexibility possible on an independent production. If we’d possessed even the few million dollar budget of say, REEFER MADNESS, we’d have shown up on set with all the appropriate toys for the day--perhaps including an expensive crane rental, which we would’ve then felt almost obligated to use. Whereas a simple rolling office chair provided all the motion and dynamics in the photography that we needed or could’ve hoped for.
Another incredible location found by the ubiquitous Dan Eggleston was the interior of a Church, which we needed for a dark scene deep in Act II when our Heroine is confronted by a wayward Priest, Nun and a pair of sexy Altar Girls. Dan got the space by the time-honored method of asking for it and they immediately said yup. (Fortunately, the good people running the church gave Dan a key to the property and weren’t subjected to our madness during the actual shoot!)
Big interior spaces are notoriously hard to light, especially on a budget. But fortunately this Church was decked out with all kinds of lights on the inside, most of them on their own dimmers--so we could control the lighting almost with the precision of a theatre. (And what IS a Church but the ultimate setting for longest-running, Sunday’s only, attendance-mandatory show in way, way-off Broadway history?!)
Again, I wanted a different look to this section of the picture--varying the look of the “talking scenes” of our Heroine’s dark journey through Act II being no less important than mixing up the dancing bits. So for the rogue Priest/Nun bits, we shot everything hand-held, to give it an immediacy and rough-around-the-edges feel that was appropriate to their unsettling characters.
We threw up a few atmospheric lights of our own to supplement the lighting in the Church, and the result was some great-looking footage in a unique location that, once more, cost us precisely nothing. (Well, except perhaps putting our eternal souls in jeopardy, but we’ll deal with that expense on another day!)
To be perfectly honest--and what else can I be but perfect AND honest?!--working with such a limited budget isn’t always fun and games.
For example, I borrowed our “Zombie Bus” from a good pal of mine for the Heroines to drive around in. As described in a previous column, it’s the perfect Zombie Bus--a 1978 lime green VW Bus with a shades-of-green interior and a camper top that pops up to allow light into the vehicle and the DP to shoot from interesting angles not usually available in picture cars.
We just have one little problem with the Zombie Bus, and it’s kinda keeping us from shooting several critical scenes at the end of Z--viz., the dude who owns the VW Bus decided to move home to Nebraska over the holidays! And naturally he drove the Bus back there when he moved. If we’d simply rented a vehicle, we could go back and re-rent it when we needed it. Now we’re gonna have to wait on my friend’s whims for his return to town long enough for us to use it. (And anybody who’s living in Austin, TX and decides one day that Bumfuck, Nebraska is a better place to hang his hat is a guy who’s ultimately guided by the most capricious of whims!)
Thankfully we have enough scenes left to keep us occupied for several more weekends, including some new bits with late addition, Ziggy, the Zombie Sock Puppet--who’s proven to be such a crowd favorite that we’re expanding his role slightly in the picture.
That's all for this time. As always, if you have any comments or questions, or if you just wanna send some nude pictures of yourself, feel free to drop me a note anytime.
Until then...
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