Liars and Lunatics :: Film Blog

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. }}