Val Makes Movies: Postmortem: "Maternity Ward"

For part 3 of this series, our Cinematographer and Editor, Craig Morris, waxes poetic about his first time experience with shooting video with a DSLR and his trick for saving the day when the lights went out....

Shedding Light on "Maternity Ward"

Well, this was certainly an interesting experience. As we started planning the shoot for our short film, "M IS FOR MATERNITY WARD," (our entry into the "ABCs of Death, Part 2" contest) I felt that this would be a great opportunity to finally give DSLR filmmaking a try. We normally shoot with a Sony HVR-Z5U pro cam, but I've seen enough DSLR footage to know that it was time to see how the Canon 60D I already had would work for video.

Craig (Cinematographer) getting the light just perfect

We had the privilege of shooting at a local haunted house, HauntedWeb of Horrors. Their set designers are absolutely top-notch, with Disney-level attention to detail. We've shot two commercials for them before, so they graciously allowed us to use their facility for this short. Without this location, this short would not have been possible.

I then started to light the set with the help of my trusty pal and Cinegore crew regular, Roger Cotton. We've been friends since high school, and it's always comforting to have him on set. He can pretty much read my mind now and knows exactly what I'm trying to accomplish with the lights. My plan was in place and we started to set up the lights.

And that's when disaster struck. Within 2 minutes of turning on one of the 600-watt lamps, the bulb burned out. No problem, I have spares. That's when I realized that the spares we ordered were all the wrong bulb. The boxes they came in were labeled as the correct style we needed, but the bulbs themselves were different. Argh! That will teach me to inspect things a bit more carefully. I'm such an idiot.

So, I grabbed another 600w lamp and that bulb burned out immediately too. That left me with one 600w lamp and a bunch of spare bulbs that didn't fit. Ugh!

Suzanne Ramsey ("Mary") and Craig

The set is fairly large, so I was getting concerned. My only other pro lamps are two Arri 150s. Great lights, but not a lot of coverage. I got these in place and stuck the last 600-watt lamp behind a huge diffusion panel. That gave me enough light for the most part, but still needed some fill here and there. Once again, my trusty $6 aluminum scoop lamps from Wal-Mart came to the rescue. I bring these on every shoot as a backup, and I'm very glad I did.

The results were spectacular. I could not believe how great the shadow detail is on the 60D. Very smooth gradations into black, unlike the harsher cut-off I get with the Z5U. I was amazed.

I mostly used my favorite lens: Canon 50mm f/1.4, Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro, and a Canon 70-300mm IS USM zoom. And for two shots, I slapped on the Canon 10-22mm wide-angle lens. Couldn't have gotten these two shots without it.

Suzanne and Craig shooting a scene

With shooting wrapped and editing completed, I began on the soundtrack. Now, I have had zero formal music training, and have never even attempted to write music for a film. I sat down in front of Logic Pro X and just started trying any and every thing I could. Found a nice buzzy synth that seemed to work, and then just started playing notes using a vibraphone synth until I found something that sounded soothing for the mid-section of the film. Once that was in place, I plugged in the Fender Strat and just hammered out some basic power chords for the first section. Plucked the bass line on my Ibanez bass and added drums. The score was coming together. It's not a grand piece of music, but it was a good start I think. Learned a lot in a short amount of time.

I am very pleased with how the film turned out. Considering it was conceived, written, shot, edited, and scored in around three weeks, I'm very satisfied. Our actress, Suzanne Ramsey, did a remarkable job. And my beautiful wife, Val, did an awesome job at handling the directing and producing duties. It's such an honor to work alongside such a great cast and crew who are all passionate about making films.

See our film on the ABCs of Death website and give us a Facebook "like" to vote for us. Thank you!