How To Shoot A Film Over Zoom

I was scheduled to shoot my final project at school in April 2020 when… well, you know. So I started learning how to make other things at home. I renovated a bathroom, poured candles, built a table, and eventually figured out how to shoot a film over Zoom with my friend on the other side of the country. 

Everything Is As It Should Be is a comedy about a meditation guide living alone in the pandemic.

 

Another pandemic film, for shame! I can see your upturned nose from here. I’ve heard a lot of talk from critics and filmic folks alike saying the same thing: we’re not in the mood for a Zoom film anymore. No one wants your quarantine content, they display in skywriting above my house. And I do get it, really. Lots of us want to solve the Escape Room of these past years and forget it as soon as we exit the strip mall, but our teammates are keeping us trapped inside, insisting the thing on the ceiling is blinking out a clue in Morse Code (that’s just a smoke detector, Ted!) 

For some filmmakers, we were left with no other choice. While productions pushed forward with regulations or restrictions, many creators who are disabled or live with chronic illness simply couldn’t risk being on sets. When you don’t have those resources, what do you do?

This film is an ode to making something out of nothing in a very nothing time. When you can’t use what you want, you have to use what you have.

Here’s what I had.

A Script

The premise was simple: a meditation guide lives alone in the pandemic. We hear the meditation she records as we see micro-vignettes of the past year of her life. I knew it would be one shot, jump cutting through the days. Locked down like us. One actor, one shot, one room… and no crew.

A Friend

The friend came in the form of the otherworldly talent Giselle Bonilla, a filmmaker/actress I did meet in person once at a festival in 2019 so I can confirm she’s not catfishing me, nor I her. With us being on opposite ends of the country, and the world quickly careening on its not-up-to-code roller coaster of doom, we were mostly on an instagram DM basis when she agreed to be on Zoom with me for a weekend. (Hot tip: one surefire way to fast-track a friendship is to virtually assemble a microphone stand together.)

Here’s what Giselle had: two unscripted cats named Macaroni and Pete, a gorgeous and open symmetrical apartment with vibrant orange walls, a willingness to rearrange furniture, and a lot of trust and faith in me. No pressure!

A GoPro, A Suction Cup, And The Internet (the less successful C.S. Lewis novel)

There’s nothing I love more than a research project. And I sure did serve up a nice one for myself: How am I going to DP and direct a film 3,000 miles from the set?

I set off in search of the camera of my dreams. Mandatory criteria for this soulmate included:

• Flexible: Autofocus and auto exposure.
• There For Me In Dark Times: Performs well enough in low light.
• Energetic: Runs on AC power. No battery changes.
• Sees The Big Picture: A wide-angle lens with a wide depth of field.
• Easy to Connect With: Hooks up directly to Zoom.
• Stable: Can’t move. Can’t even think about moving.
• Good Listener: Records audio from an external mic.
• Up For Long Distance: Can be controlled remotely.
• Here For The Right Reasons: This is something they always say on The Bachelorette so I feel like it applies.

Only one low-maintenance camera fit my high-maintenance glass slipper: the trusty, rugged GoPro. 

I took to forums, youtube vids, and emailing helpful vloggers to learn everything I could about this little action camera, which is decidedly not made for indoors or low-light. (And if you ever think otherwise, a man on the internet will promptly correct you.)

But I knew I could make it work. I snagged a GoPro Hero9 during a Black Friday sale and began diligently testing every single variable until I achieved the look I wanted and created the presets I needed for the daytime and nighttime scenes. 

Then, I built a potentially first-of-its-kind complex configuration of GoPro gear. With an HDMI capture card, I could connect the GoPro directly to Zoom and hear and see through the camera while keeping it running on AC power. A Rode Wireless Lav did the trick for audio. And a GoPro suction cup mount that we attached to her window was the secret to the seamless jump cuts. It didn’t budge once.

For weeks before the shoot, I tested and worked through every single detail on my end. There couldn’t be any bug in the system once it was out of my hands on the other coast. I labeled each piece of equipment, created diagrams and a slideshow presentation, and shipped it on its merry way. After the package arrived at Giselle’s door, we walked through the orientation I made, set ourselves up, and off we went.

Google Sheets + Two Patient Pals

Let’s add to the fun that this film spans about 50 different days and we’re shooting over one weekend. Each day needed to feel distinct and there also needed to be a sense of an overall passage of time as the film goes on.

Enter two more friends, the wonderfully smart and patient Camila and Frances, who produced the project alongside me. Our Zoom meetings kept me organized and motivated during the daze of the past year. Together, we organized all the scenes chronologically in Google Sheets, creating columns for different production design elements. These were parts of the room we identified that we could change between scenes to ensure the days felt different. 

Columns included: coffee table, blinds, fireplace, mantle, couch, lighting, furniture, puzzle status, cat tree, and more. We tracked longer continuity threads like when the puzzle appears to make sure that overall passage of time came through, and put it on top of a frame for easy carrying in and out.

I also made sure to vary Giselle’s relationship to the camera: foreground, mid, background, as well as the time of day. We then carefully reordered the rows, grouping non-sequential scenes with similar elements together so there could be the least amount of production design and wardrobe changes between them, hopefully sparing our solo PD/wardrobe Giselle as much pain as possible. If I shot the 3rd scene and 28th scene with the same position of the pillows or the same shirt, that would be fine. But the 3rd and 4th, not so much. You know how numbers work! 

Some Good Old-Fashioned Resourcefulness

The shoot was just me in NJ and Giselle in LA. So how do we film a scene like: She scoops icing out of a can with a pretzel, watching an ambulance siren outside her window.

Despite consuming all 17 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy this year, I still have not been able to conjure an ambulance at will. With the computer monitor just below the GoPro, we pulled up a youtube video of a siren, put the screen brightness on high, and voila: ambulance a la iMac.

When Giselle is on the phone with her insurance company, she actually just called my insurance company and tried to get through to a human. What’s in the film is that exact call word for word, showcasing what critics are calling “almost inhuman” comedic timing from the automated attendant. But following the tragic footsteps of Samantha Morton being replaced by Scarlett Johansson in Her, we later dubbed over the robot with a voiceover actress to evade any possible legal action. (I wish them the best of luck in future projects.)

What was originally going to be an offscreen beetle that Giselle traps became an onscreen daddy long legs that she found in her shower and bravely wrangled for its big debut. She improvised one side of a Zoom birthday call, and later we added in the audio of Frances’ family to fill in the gaps. One of my homemade candles even makes a cameo! 

And an important disclaimer: no N95 masks were harmed in the making of this video. I sent an old broken mask of mine and hot glued one strap so she could hold down the other and release it to make it look like it snapped. The hot glued strap just decided to break on its own in the take I used, which I welcomed as I always encourage improvisation from all my props. 

We were just two people alone in two rooms on the opposite ends of the country, using what was on hand. We danced together, did yoga together, and argued about Robin Wright together. It was a good time. And it was possible because I had the best gear.

The Best Gear

The best gear is the gear that’s best for you. It’s not the most expensive lens, the sensor with the maximum number of K’s, or the camera Chet Hanks uses for his front-facing videos.

A GoPro is not meant for indoor, low-light shooting (and trust me, a man from the internet will tell you this if you don’t believe me) but it gave me everything I needed for the experience I wanted. 

This film is all about being in the present moment. I didn’t want anything to get in the way of that. I worked through every detail ahead of time, so when it was all set up and it came time to actually shoot, any technical concerns were behind us. I wanted Giselle to be able to press a button and forget about it.

I don’t believe that people are thinking about the camera when they watch the film. I hope they are able to just be there with Giselle, living the days with her. While so much of that comes down to her natural talent, the way we made the film certainly doesn’t hurt. We get to be alone together, with very little coming between us.

The best gear is what’s going to make the process of making your film the most rewarding and enjoyable for you. Most importantly, it’s whatever’s going to get your film made. While we’re still in the Escape Room, berating Ted (who is now whittling his own key for the door because he “did his own research”) we can look around and see what we have. What we have is enough to make something great.

To quote what I can only imagine is going to become a very popular turn of phrase, suction cup your GoPro to the window and get to it!

Did You Know?

• Raindance Film Festival is considered one of the top fifteen film festivals in the world?
• Raindance has a Higher Education programme offering HND, BA and MA in Filmmaking and Screenwriting?
• Raindance members support indie film, and enjoy a range of benefits
• Let Raindance guide you on your filmmaking pathway. call +44 (0) 207 930 3412 or email filmschool@raindance.ac.uk