The Pact | Short Film

[OddGinger]

A group of friends, not wanting to expose their secrets, face questions from a detective about the disappearance of another friend.

Written by Nicole Keith as a part of her Divine Legacy Conservatory advanced acting class. This short film serves as a conceptual piece for a much larger project. Filmed by a minimal crew in Huntsville, AL.

Directed by Josh Harbin (Odd Ginger Films) and produced by Princeton Drake (executive director Divine Legacy Conservatory).

 

[Rayandmigdalia]

When you do your next project, be careful how you mic your dialogue. You need to get your microphone(s) as close to the actors as possible.
You can do this by using a boom pole with a microphone attached to it, or investing in a set of wireless lav mics which can be hidden in the
actors' clothing. In THE PACT it sounds as if you recorded the dialogue using your onboard camera mic, which rarely produces acceptable
audio. If you did use a fishpole, it was not close enough to the actor(s) who were speaking. If several actors have dialogue, the mic has to move closer to whoever is speaking. You can't simply keep the mic in one spot. If necessary, shoot each actor individually.

 

[OddGinger]

When you do your next project, be careful how you mic your dialogue. You need to get your microphone(s) as close to the actors as possible.
You can do this by using a boom pole with a microphone attached to it, or investing in a set of wireless lav mics which can be hidden in the
actors' clothing. In THE PACT it sounds as if you recorded the dialogue using your onboard camera mic, which rarely produces acceptable
audio. If you did use a fishpole, it was not close enough to the actor(s) who were speaking. If several actors have dialogue, the mic has to move closer to whoever is speaking. You can't simply keep the mic in one spot. If necessary, shoot each actor individually.

Ray, thanks for watching and replying. I agree with everything you said. Unfortunately, I was pretty much completely alone behind the camera. This short, and two others I directed, were a part of an acting class to help showcase their growth and talent.

We also failed to acquire our original location and ended up in an office building. We found out the day of shooting that a gamer event was happening at the same time. The heat was running most of the time and the building had a furnace that was insanely overwhelming. We had no way of turning it off in our area (we found out on day 2 that we could, but the sound of the furnace was still insane coming from other areas). This was the last weekend we could shoot before their end of year showcase, and since they wanted this to be a part of it, we went ahead and filmed.

In my non-professional sound testing the day of the shoot, I felt the sound was better with my mic mounted on top of my camera connected to my recorder, also mounted on my camera. The air was hitting more of the side of my microphone than if I mounted it from above. Things had to go quickly and I felt like I could clean the sound up more in post since I used to know how to do a decent job more than a decade ago. Turns out, I don't know what I am doing there any more.

Thankfully, a couple of local guys that have experience running a boom have stepped forward and said they are willing to help with these projects in the future.