Liars and Lunatics :: Film Blog

When you work in theatre or film, you become expert in the art of cleaning up. And if you’re really good, you become expert in the art of cleaning up quickly and efficiently.

Especially if you don’t have a whole lot of money to waste.

One day, during pre-production of our film Liars and Lunatics, we were doing some tests at one of our locations. Testing for sound and lights. We were in the church building where we were to shoot the courtroom scenes. Well, quite frankly, we had made a mess. There were tools and equipment everywhere. Blankets were hanging up on the walls. 

It looked like a mini hurricane had hit New York City.

And then who should walk in… but one of the church people! He was there to open the door for the organ-tuner. Needless to say, we were a bit embarrassed at the state of our mess in his church. So we decided it was time we were finished with our tests for the day. We’d better clean everything up…

And fast!

Well, fortunately for us, we’ve had good practice striking sets from our work in theatre. So, in less than a half-hour, the church sanctuary was neat as a pin. In fact, we probably could have taken those before-and-after photos!

We never did find out what that member of the church felt when he came back later in the day to lock up after the organ-tuner left. In any case, the whole clean-up drill certainly was good practice since we would have to dismantle “our set” at that location several times during the course of shooting the movie. Especially for Sunday morning church service…

{{ photo :: The blankets act as a sound buffer in filming. }}

Well, it’s a new year, folks. Time to get back to work…

Which brings us to all the problem solving techniques required to bring a film to life.

Which then brings us to remember the blankets. 

Those blankets gave us some great sound for our film, Liars and Lunatics. But before that could happen, we had to sit down to figure out how to make these blankets work.

We decided to use grommets—you know, those little metal eyelets. We scoured every shop we could think of. But apparently, grommets must have been going out of style that summer (either that or they were very popular). 

We had someone go down to the fashion district in NYC, but unfortunately those grommets were too small our use.

Fortunately for us, we did find enough grommets. And actually cleared off some store shelves in the process.

But then came the labor-intensive work of attaching those grommets to the blankets. Mary, one of our production assistants, proved herself time and again to be the Amazing Grommet Girl. (Perhaps, one of these days she’ll have her own comic strip to follow the adventures of this superhero.)

Well, we were able to string the blankets together (using the new grommets, of course) and hang them as sound dampers on ceilings, on walls, wherever they’d be out of sight of the camera’s eye. Up and down, those blankets came.

And they sure worked. We have the sound to prove it!

{{ Photo :: The film crew attaches our “sound blankets” to the ceiling. }}

Problem solving. That was one of the things necessary when working on a film. We’re still in the editing room fixing “problems”.

Problems are inherent throughout the filmmaking process. Thinking back to when we were preparing for principal photography of Liars and Lunatics in the summer of 2006, we were always testing out ideas on how to make things work.

One of the biggest challenges was filming in a church. With the high ceilings, we needed to minimize the echoes and such for all the dialogue scenes. Our solution: blankets.

Yep! We put a “casting call” out for blankets. Anyone getting rid of a blanket? Give it to us! By far, the best blanket donation was from a hotel in New York City. They were getting rid of about six big blankets. They were relatively light in weight. They had that pink floral pattern that many hotel blankets began using in the 1980s and 90s. Not really quite in the style of the Moon Brothers…

But we snatched them up. Hey! They were free. How could we turn them down?

It was like getting a Christmas gift (in July)!

And with that… May we wish everyone a very Merry Christmas… from the Moon Brothers… 

{{ photo :: One of our grips, Nathan, takes a break during the film shoot. You can see the blankets hanging behind him in the background. }}