Toilet Texting: The Movie

Sometimes the funniest movie ideas come from the most embarrassing moments. Not that I'm saying this movie was inspired by actual experience, maybe it did, maybe it didn't... Anyway moving on, a couple of months ago I was "inspired" with an idea for a short film and wrote the script (BTW, I use Celtx to write scripts, it's free, compatible with Mac, and there's an app for that). I showed a few people the script and they thought it was hilarious! I figured the short film would be easy to make, I mean it's almost all in a bathroom stall.

Lesson #1: For comedies, write a good script and if people laugh while reading, you're on the right track.

Before production I set a goal to accomplish three things:
1. Learn how to use Apple's Color program.
2. Learn how to track motion and apply it for objects to follow.
3. Make a higher quality video than I've ever done before.

So, to begin production I got a couple of friends together, one of them is my best friend and someone I've used as an actor in all my high school movies. It was a fun reunion!

The production only took two hours; however, I didn't draw up a storyboard because, frankly, it's to much work for a short and I intentionally wanted a lot of different angles. I figured I would wing it. But at the last minute I decided to at least have a shot list. Looking back, I wished I was more detailed because I missed several shots and things I needed the actor to do, but luckily I'm an okay editor to fix all of those issues.

Lesson #2: Write a detailed shot list with some acting notes (what you want the actor to do).

After getting home and digitizing the footage I can't tell you how many times I've cursed myself for many production mistakes. Notably, white balance issues. Keep in mind that I was a one man crew and that definitely caused me to forget a few technical things. Some shots were beautifully white balanced, others had too much blue. That's okay though, I wanted to learn color correcting with Color anyway.

Lesson #3: Avoid doing everything yourself, I'm sure there is a friend or two who would love to learn how to do this stuff!

I hit a snag, motion tracking was easy using Mocha but there are so many tutorials out there that were different! So I tried them all until I understood Mocha pretty well. It took about 8 hours to figure out how to do the first text message. Then things went smooth until I wanted to use a text bubble with the message being typed like a typewriter AND motion track it. There wasn't a tutorial for that but luckily I've tried all the tutorials I could and had just enough knowledge with After Effects to pull it off.

Lesson #4: Use online resources or books to learn tricks. Don't go to school to learn a software (go to learn principles).

Color was an interesting program, when I first opened it I had absolutely no idea what to do. The program felt like it was designed by color nerds who made it for themselves, not for the students. Thanks to some tutorials I was able to figure it out eventually. It's a pretty powerful program and with it I was able to match colors across all clips.

About a month later (working on it a few hours a week) I finished it! I'm pretty happy with the results and appreciate everything I've learned from a simple two minute video. Sure, there are mistakes, even Hollywood makes mistakes! I had a friend tell me that he thought there were too many feet shots but others tell me the feet clips were their favorite parts. I may have even offended some very private people who don't like bathroom humor. Oh well.

Lesson #5: You won't be able to please everyone, so don't try. Otherwise your movie will never finish.

Wow, you actually read this far down, thank you! I hope that my mistakes will help you or someone else avoid them.

Lance