David W. Richardson
Chapelgrove Films
Top 10 Questions asked of writer/producer/director David W. Richardson...
#1. How were you able to shoot "Tangled Web" in just three days? And why?
Starting with the second question first – why? To save money! The shorter your shooting schedule, the less it costs to make the movie. So my goal, when I started writing the script, was to design a movie that could be shot in the shortest possible time and with the smallest possible budget, and still have great actors, a compelling story, and a quality movie in the end.
Now the ‘how’. It starts with the script. The goal was to design a movie that could be shot FAST. So I came up with the idea for a story seen entirely from the point-of-view of people’s webcams – because webcams never move. They don’t follow a character around. They don’t go from room to room. They stay put. That meant the cameras I was shooting with didn’t have to be broken down and moved from place to place. Same with the lights. The more you have to breakdown, move and setup equipment, the longer it takes. This way, I kept the cameras and lights all setup in the same place for the whole shoot. All I had to do was adjust the lights to depict the time of day of the next scene. By doing this, I was ready to shoot the next scene before the actors had even changed wardrobe.
#2. But in the main part of the movie we see three different rooms. How did that work?
I used three different rooms in the same house. Each room was dressed for a different character, and each had its own camera, microphone and lighting setup. In front of each actor was set a TV – which served as a prop computer screen. By interconnecting all the TV’s, cameras and microphones (via cables strung all over the house), all of the actors were able to see and hear each other, which made it much easier for them to do their scenes. And I watched everything on TV’s setup in a fourth room, from which I did the directing. It was really quite amazing!
#3. Was it hard for the actors to do an entire movie in such a short period of time?
Of course it was. It was brutal. You have to remember that on a ‘normal’ movie shoot, the actors only need to memorize their lines for, usually, a single scene on any given shooting day. Sometimes maybe two scenes. With Tangled Web they had to have the whole movie committed to memory on Day 1. Talk about pressure!
Adding to that is the fact that many of the scenes are one-take scenes – there are no cuts, no cutaways, none of that stuff. So if an actor flubbed a line or missed a cue, I had to re-do the whole scene from the beginning, I couldn’t just pick up where they left off and fix it in editing. But these folks are pros! They had it down cold. I was extremely impressed with their skills and commitment. They rarely made a mistake. So rarely, in fact, that I had to actually engineer a funny flub so I’d have something to use for an outtake. (If you want to know more, watch the movie to the very end of the credits.)
#4. So isn’t it boring to watch, since the cameras didn’t move around?
That was certainly a concern as I was working things out. In most movies, not only do the cameras move, but you also get a variety of shots – the main overall shot (called the ‘master shot’), closeups, over-the-shoulder shots, establishing shots, cutaways, etc. The purpose of getting all of these shots is to give the editor something to play with, in order to keep the scene interesting and not stagnant. But getting all of those shots takes a lot of time. You have to keep re-shooting the same scene over and over from different camera positions. More time means more money. So I had to do something different.
I tried to keep things visually interesting by moving people closer to and farther from the camera – sort of creating closeups. That helps some. But my greatest assets are a compelling story and some truly great actors who can keep the audience so riveted in the moment that they forget to notice the lack of camera movements and cuts. Judging from audiences so far, it seems to work.
#5. Did you use real webcams?
No I didn’t. A real webcam wouldn’t give me the resolution I needed for someone who might watch the movie on his 52" plasma TV. It would have looked terrible!
Instead I used a high resolution 3-CCD professional camcorder – the Panasonic AG-DVX100a. This camera has been used on a number of independent movies, including November which stars Courteney Cox and was released in theaters. It produces excellent quality images and was perfect for my needs.
#6. How did you record sound?
I used a combination of devices. As I said, I had to record sound on each of the actors sitting at their ‘computers’. That was easy – I just mounted a microphone beside the camera. But I also needed to be able to record dialogue from actors who were out in the room, away from the ‘computer’, having conversations. That was much harder. The shot I used was a static wide shot. There was no place for a boom operator to stand and hold a microphone over people’s heads, and no place to hide a microphone within the shot. I didn’t have the luxury of wireless body mics, and even if I had there are certain places in the story where I couldn’t have used them.
So to capture dialogue in the room, I used a Zoom H2 digital recorder, mounted on the boom arm of a microphone stand, suspended out into the middle of the room. The H2 has built-in mics and did a pretty good job of capturing the dialogue. I had to work with it in editing to improve the overall sound quality, but in the end it worked out quite well.
#7. Where did you find your actors?
I found them all via the Internet.
I posted casting notices on two major casting sites – NowCasting.com, which is based in Los Angeles, and NYCastings.com, which is based in New York City. Now keep in mind the shoot was in Gastonia, NC – quite a distance from L.A. and NYC. And I made it clear in the casting notices that I was NOT able to pay for transportation or accommodations. With that in mind, I got something in the neighborhood of 500 submissions for roles in the movie! Many of those people were very talented and experienced.
Luckily, one of them – Rebecca Morris – lived only a few hours away. I took a look at her online demo reel and knew immediately that she was my ‘Shannon Hunter’. Excellent actress! Two of the guys – Jeff Clayton and Austin Herring – were both living in Charlotte, which is just down the road. Austin actually met me in the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts and auditioned right there on the spot. He fit the bill perfectly as the romantic lover for ‘Shannon’. The others came to me via emails or past contacts. The hardest roles to fill were Shannon’s two kids. I got VERY lucky to discover Hunter and Ashley Rose Ballard – brother and sister who are both actors. They were great!
#8 What was the biggest challenge with shooting a movie this way?
The hardest part was the technical side – getting all the cameras and microphones and TV’s connected together and working. I used a LOT of cable and splitters and things like that. Remember that I was working on an extremely tight budget. If I’d had the money, I could have gotten a video processor that would have let me run multiple camera feeds into a single monitor. That would have helped. Instead, I had to do it ‘old school’.
And being too cheap to buy actual A/V cables in the extreme lengths I needed, instead I bought speaker wire in 100’ rolls. I soldered phono plugs on the ends and made them the length I needed. Thought I was ready to go.
But the day before the shoot – which was tech prep day – Jeff Clayton, John Jenrette (one of my executive producers) and I started setting everything up. The last thing we did, once everything was in place, was to run the cables. That’s when I found a number of the cables didn’t work! Panic time!
I eventually discovered I’d connected the phono plugs backwards – meaning I’d soldered the leads to the wrong terminals, reversing the polarity. Polarity is important! So I had to fix all of that, which ran us VERY late that night. We finally got it all working about 2 hours before the cast was supposed to start showing up. I was a zombie that day, but everything went surprisingly well.
#9. So what’s next? A sequel?
Yeah, maybe. Sort of. Not really a true sequel, but I have another webcam-type script I’d like to develop into a movie. It’s about a bunch of people chatting in an online video chat room when suddenly….
Nah…..guess you’ll have to wait for the movie. J
#10. If you had it to do all over again, what would you change?
The budget. If I’d had more money, I could have made it look and sound even better. But considering the scant resources I had available, I was fortunate to get a great cast and crew, and together we made a tense, suspenseful, totally enjoyable movie. Can’t ask for more than that!
"Tangled Web" is available on DVD for as little as $4.99 (shipping included). Check it out at www.tangledwebthemovie.com