Liars and Lunatics :: Film Blog

Check out most filmmaking books, and they’ll tell you the importance of good sound.

Well, we found out how true that is… on a day that probably caused us some of the most anxious moments during the filming of Liars and Lunatics.

Yep! That was the day we discovered the importance of a battery. That not only was the battery in our boom mic dying, but that same battery was so rare that no store had a replacement! We tried other microphones, only to realize how good the boom mic really was–when the battery was working, that is.

That day was enough to make us wish we were back in the days when films were silent!

And speaking of the silent film era, there’s a story about Charlie Chaplin’s first visit to a sound stage. This is what he observed:

“Men geared like warriors from Mars sat with earphones while the actors performed with microphones hovering over them like fishing rods. It was all very complicated and depressing. How could anyone be creative with all that junk around them?” (from Movies and Money, by David Puttnam, p.110)

Okay, so maybe it just takes some time to get used to, Charlie. You really can be creative with all the “fishing rods” and “junk” around. (But, come to think of it, this is coming from some guys called the Moon Brothers. Hmmm… Moon Brothers… Men from Mars with fishing rods… )

Well, in any case, sound doesn’t have to make things all that complicated and depressing. At least when your batteries are behaving…

{{ Photo :: Working with the boom mic on the film. }}

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. }}

Ah… the Liars and Lunatics gala! A week ago, we were preparing for it. And for those of you poor souls who couldn’t make it, you missed being part of a great audience! We were very pleased with how everything turned out… despite the rain. 

Although, at 6:30 pm on Friday the 26th, things didn’t look quite so rosy.

In fact, we had a bit of a scare with the surround sound system at the Helen Mills Theater. We brought the DVD, newly burned and tested. Before letting in the big crowd gathering outside, we did a quick test on the sound system. As we watched the opening sequence, something seemed amiss.

There was music. There were sound effects. But, wait! Where was the dialogue?

How could we have missed that when we tested out the DVD earlier?

Well, after the initial panic (some of us were more panicked than others), we realized that the center speaker wasn’t hooked up properly. So, after some fiddling, we got the surround sound up and working properly. 

And, thankfully, our worst nightmares were not realized!

(More on the gala later, including photos galore…)

Well, we’ve locked the movie…

Oh, except that we decided to work on the surround sound a bit. For the Gala on October 26th.

Guess it’s true that you never really finish a movie. You just abandon it at some point.

 

New York City seems to be revising their plans a bit regarding the whole film permits thing. After all, they are trying to bring people to the City to film, right? Isn’t that what their ”Made in NY” incentives are all about?

…Yep! To try to keep filmmakers here in New York, and away from the West Coast or the Frozen North!

When we lived in Toronto (we were doing theatre back then), there always seemed to be movies in production…just in our neighborhood alone! You could always tell when they tried to make the setting look like New York City. They’d put up a blue mailbox (in Canada, mailboxes are… red) and add graffiti all over the place. This was supposed to make you think the setting was New York. (But sometimes, if you look closely at these films, you might catch a glimpse of the CN Tower in the background!) 

Last summer, we shot our feature film Liars and Lunatics in New York City. Queens, actually. Interestingly enough, there seem to be very few films shot in Queens. Did an internet search and here’s the list of movies…

Coming to America (1988), starring Eddie Murphy and Arscenio Hall (Hey, “Queens” is part of the whole premise. They better have shot some footage in Queens).

Spider-Man (2002) & Spider-Man 2 (2004), starring Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst (They shot some footage in Forest Hills)

Raising Helen (2004), starring Kate Hudson (Shot in Forest Hills, Woodside, and Sunnyside)

And that’s it… The results of our search on the subject.

Hey… so why don’t more movies shoot in Queens? Well, our biggest problem with shooting Liars and Lunatics in Queens came from a place called LaGuardia Airport. The faint drone of the aircrafts coming in for a landing, or taking off, became a familiar sound on our set. We’d have to pause more than a dozen times an hour for sound purposes alone.

Maybe that’s the answer to the question above. Queens just has too many airports–LaGuardia at the north end and JFK at the south end. But Queens is a big borough. Forest Hills seems to be kind of popular. Maybe they have less air disturbance in Forest Hills…

Or, maybe if we all went back to the silent movie era, we’d all be fine!

We can safely say that no animals were harmed on our Liars and Lunatics film shoot…

Oh… Hmmm… Except… Maybe… One.

Ooopps! Guess we can’t use that statement after all in the film credits. Because, to our knowledge, at least one animal was harmed during the film shoot. And not only harmed, but brutally massacred. Killed. Dead. Gone.

That’s right. A poor house fly lost the battle in the ruthless onslaught against its life.

Here’s what happened. We were filming in “James’ Library”. There was fly buzzing about. Now, that might not seem like much, but to the sound guys, this was the end of the world. We needed to get rid of that fly. Quick!

Unfortunately, we were not properly equipped with the right weapons for the mass destruction of flies (Some people like to call these weapons “fly swatters”). So our boom operator decided to take matters into his own hands. Literally. He smacked the fly with the palm of his hand. The fly was dead. But what our boom operator didn’t realize (before committing this rash act) was that the fly would have his revenge.

That clever house fly was sitting on a cement wall. And if you’ve ever smacked your hand against a cement wall, you might find out what our boom operator found out. Your hand gets sprained. He had to keep ice on the hand for days. Not easy to do when you’re trying to hold up a boom microphone. All because of a little sound problem called a fly…

Hmmm. Maybe we can put:

“No animals—except one house fly—were harmed during the filming of this motion picture.” 

{{ photo :: No, it’s not the fly. But perhaps it’s a close relative of the slain. }}