The Monkey: Dealing with Coronavirus

Our plans to reshoot the movie at Corey's apartment on Saturday, March 14, 2020 were derailed due to the rising concerns of coronavirus in our county. The week leading up to March 14 seemed pretty normal. We were already planning what we were going to do differently on the second night of shooting. Ethan and I had arranged for our friend Joel to act in the movie to replace Ethan's role in the rough cut. Joel has had prior experience acting, and we thought he would bring some more weight to the film's opening. In addition to this, I had negotiated with our school's dram teacher to borrow some makeup to make a wound on Joel's throat in the final shot. I was also researching how to do this style of makeup.

Everything seemed like it was going to work out, but on Friday, March 13, in true Friday the 13th style, everything came crashing down. Our principal announced that schools would be closing and we would have to start taking virtual classes from home the following Monday. In addition to this, our county was deemed the epicenter of the pandemic in Florida, with over 20 cases diagnosed at the time.

An email to all students and parents of our school from Principal Gary Springer regarding school attendance during the pandemic.

An article via WPTV5 in West Palm Beach regarding Broward's leading number of cases.

The crew was still willing to shoot, albiet cautiously, but on filming day, Corey informed us that his mother wasn't comfortable with us coming over due to fear of spreading the virus. This meant that moving forward, we would have to work with what we had edited in school with the footage from the first night.
The following Monday, I went to school to retrieve what we had edited on the school computer. We were working in school with Final Cut Pro, a fairly high end editing software. Since we only had access to iMovie at home, we had to export what we had edited as a .mp4 file and not a project so we could transfer the workload in between softwares. Below is the unfinished rough cut, as of Monday, March 16th, 2020.

The Monkey: Test Shots

During our first night of filming, we utilized test shots to plan out the staging and camera movement in select scenes.
In the first shot, in which the camera slowly moves in on Ethan's window, I had to demonstrate what I was looking for in the shot to our cameraman, Liam. I used my iPhone to show him the angle and camera movement I wanted, and the final shot turned out perfect.

In the next couple shots, the camera was stationary, so instead of videos, I took pictures of the specific angles I wanted so that Liam could shoot the film how we wanted. Once again, the test shots helped us in framing and communicating our ideas to our cameraman.

After my character was no longer in the scene, I took over the camera work. For the shot of Ethan walking down the hallway, I took a couple test videos to get the angle and the positioning just right so that the camera could capture what was going on through the gap in the doors. Once perfected, we filmed the shot, to satisfying results.

We utilized a test shot once again when filming the shot where Ethan opens the closet. To demonstrate what I wanted out of the shot, I set up the camera where I wanted it and utilized the front facing camera of the iPhone so I could see what the camera was shooting. After hitting record, I closed the closet door and showed Ethan how the scene should look. I played it back for him once we finished the test shot so he could practice his acting in the shot.

Overall, the use of test shots in our production process was incredibly helpful in communicating and refining ideas with our cast and crew.

The Monkey: Costuming

In our film, we needed to make four costumes: one for Corey, Ethan, and Garrett's normal characters, as well as "The Monkey."

We started with the designs for the primary, non-killer characters. We took a lot of inspiration form the popular Netflix series "Stranger Things." The show takes place in the 80's, and devotes a lot of its time to developing the mise-en-scene of its era through costuming, sets, and sound design. We made the costumes out of things that were in our closets, and didn't end up having to purchase any other assets.

The main cast of Stranger Things 3 (2019)

 Ethan's costume was a simple pair of faded, 80's style jeans with an MTV shirt. The MTV shirt, which alludes to the popular television station Music Entertainment Television, helped compliment the 80's aesthetic we were going for.

Garrett's costume was a pair of light jeans with a tucked in, child-like t-shirt. With this costume, we were trying to emulate the popular jeans and tucked shirt style that we saw in a lot of 80's material.

An image that served as the main inspiration for Garrett's costume.

The finished products of all three costumes.

For Corey's costume, he went with a pair of white pants, a black jacket, and a pair of Jordans. The Air Jordan brand was an extremely popular emerging brand in the mid-80's, so they perfectly fit our scene.

The last costume we had to worry about was the killer's costume. We had rewritten the script to describe the killer as wearing a monkey mask instead of the white, Michael Myers inspired mask that we had originally described. This was mainly due to Corey's insistance for his killer character's name to be "The Monkey." We went with a simple pair of black pants and a black hoodie for the clothing, which emulated other popular horror movie killers like Ghostface and Hush.

Ghostface in Scream (1995)

The Hush Killer from Hush (2016)

For the mask, we struggled to find a monkey mask for the first night of filming, so we instead used an old clown mask that Ethan had in his garage. When we reshot the film the following weekend at Corey's house, Ethan would come equipped with a monkey mask that he had ordered online.

The Monkey: First Night of Filming

The first night of filming presented us with several challenges. I had arrived at Corey's apartment at 6 to film, but there were two problems: Ethan could not find a monkey mask to film with, and Corey's mother had guests over that night, so filming conditions wouldn't be ideal. So instead of filming at Corey's apartment, we decided to film nearby at Ethan's house. Ethan's house had a similar layout to Corey's house, so we didn't have to do much in terms of rearranging the shots.

Filming went smoothly. We used my brother Liam's iPhone 11 Max Pro for filming, as it would give us the best raw quality for our footage, even if we knew we would down grade it in post to make the film feel more gritty. The iPhone doesn't have the ability to natively film video in 4:3, but it does however takes pictures by default in 4:3. We used the photo camera boundaries and marked them with tape so we knew what would be inside the frame once we switched to video filming. It wasn't the flashiest setup, but it got the job done.

Another problem came once we realized started to set up the TV/NES. Ethan's NES was a newer version which only used HDMI outputs, which obviously wouldn't work with a CRT television from the 80's. To work around this, we burnt footage of the NES game Rampage onto a DVD so we could play it through the TV, and use the NES controllers to pretend like we were actually playing. This seemed like a perfect solution, until we realized that the only input the CRT TV had was only compatible with cable boxes. After this, we decided to scrap the idea of us playing videogames, and instead used Ethan's recording of The Breakfast Club to develop the scene's mise-en-scene and the characters' friend dynamic.

After all these dramatic changes, I suggested to the group that we use this night's filming to make a rough cut of the movie that we could use to pick out flaws in our process, and refilm the movie the following week at Corey's apartment when we were more prepared. 

Nonetheless, we continued the filming process. Since I was starring in the first couple shots, I had to direct Liam's cinematography work. I did this by setting up some mock shots, which I have displayed below. I also had to switch around a couple of the lines of dialogue in the script to fit the new changes to the scene.
For the next shot, we weren't able to pull off the original one shot take of Corey walking from his room and into the kitchen due to the layout of Ethan's house. Instead, we decided to film Ethan walking down the hallway from inside a closet to convey the sense that he was being watched by the same presence from earlier.

In the shot where Ethan was supposed to be cutting up chicken, we realized that we had forgotten chicken from Corey's house, so we had to improvise. We replaced cutting chicken with eating pizza and now Ethan would feed pepperoni to the dog, Snowy.
The scene progressed normally from here until Ethan had to go investigate the closet at the end of his hallway. Due to the house's lighting and the colorful contents of the closet, the opening appeared vibrant instead of dark and ominous. To combat this, we hung trash bags from the top of the closet door frame so it look completely black from the inside.
In the final shot where Corey had to stab Ethan, we encountered a couple staging and acting issues. The cramped nature of Ethan's room made it hard to film our desired angle, and his closet was tinier than Corey's closet, which made it hard for Corey to simply walk out of it. We decided that it would be best for Corey to hide inside the closet with the door closed, and then bust out when he needed to.
We had to refilm the shot a couple times because Ethan kept blinking when he was supposed to be dead. After reinspecting the footage, we also realized that we would need to hire a makeup artist to make it appear as if Ethan's throat was cut, because as it was, it appeared that Corey had merely whacked Ethan with a knife, and had not stabbed him.
After the first night of filming, I definitely knew that we had to reshoot everything again a Corey's house, but the "Ethan's House Cut" gave us experience and brought things to our attention that previously had not been. With a night of filming under our belts, we knew we would be prepared to reshoot everything the following Saturday at Corey's house. 

The Monkey: Peer Review

The sheet of paper that Hafsa put her feedback on. 

Our first peer review session was with Ethan and I's mutual friend, Hafsa Khan. She singled out the naturalistic acting as one of the highlights of our rough cut, but criticized Corey's costuming and some staging issues.
When filming the final cut, we used this feedback to plan out a new costume for Corey and staged the opening shot a little bit differently. To tailor the shot to Hafsa's feedback, we made sure to convey a sense of camaraderie between the main characters while we played video games.
Overall, Ethan and I appreciated the feedback, and decided that we would try asking for more once we entered the editing process for the final cut.

The Monkey: Cast and Crew

For casting, we had a fairly simple process. In terms of the main three characters, Ethan and I wrote the script around us and our mutual friend Corey, and we were inspired by our real life friendship dynamic. We decided that it would be best for us to star as ourselves, just because we had already written ourselves into the script, and we were all communicative and generally on the same creative page, thus making the directing process easier.

We did reach complications with Corey's initial character however. We had originally written Corey into the plot as the main character for the sole reason that our filming location was his house. His role demanded a lot of screen time and emotional acting, which he told us he was not comfortable with. To fix this, we switched around the roles, and gave the lead role to Ethan.

On the crew side of things, we hired my brother Liam to be our cameraman/cinematographer. Liam studies film at the nearby Lynn University, and he and I have worked on past films together, including the fake 90's PSA, "Teen Zone," which I have linked below.

With our cast and crew figured out, we set our filming date for March 7, 2020 at the Coral Falls Apartment Complex.

The Monkey: Sound Design

For non-music sounds in the movie, we really wanted to focus on separating sounds during filming so we could have maximum control over them in the editing process. For example, in the film's second shot, where we see the friends playing a video game, we knew that in the editing process, we wanted to have the audio coming from the game be lower in shots of the characters, and louder in the shots of the actual game.

To accomplish this, we filmed the shots featuring the characters with the video game volume turned all the way down. We then recorded two minutes of the actual game footage with the audio on. This way, we could take the game audio and separate it from the footage, and use it as background noise for our character shots.

We also separately recorded the sound of the door opening and closing once Garrett and Ethan leave the house. This would be offscreen anyways, so syncing the sound up with the footage would not be a problem. In the edit, we made the volume of the door sounds low and added a bit of reverb to help it fall back in the mix and make it sound natural within the scene.

The next sound we had to make was Ethan’s footsteps as he approaches the closet. Ethan would be walking around in socks on a tiled surface, so the sound would without a doubt be a bit flat and punchy. To match up the sound with the footage, Corey watched the scene and stepped in sync with his onscreen movements. We put our microphone on the floor while he stepped to catch all the nuances of the sound. In the editing process, we elevated the volume of his steps, and made each step become louder as he approaches the closet to create tension and build up. 

Another offscreen sound we made was the sound of Snowy's neck snapping. We got a bit creative with this one, and record the sound of sticks snapping. For other dog sounds, we found a stock video on YouTube.