Short Film: The Fear of Crossing

 

Short Film: The Fear of Crossing

Pre-Production

Why did I choose to do this idea?

Initially, I had a few ideas for a short film but the one that stuck in my head from the start was THE FEAR OF CROSSING, the short is an attempt to replicate an accident I suffered when I was a child growing up in my home country of Brazil. At the age of ten or so, I can’t remember the exact year when the accident happened, I was hit by a motorcycle on my way to a bakery shop. For days after the accident I was scared to cross streets, so I did everything I could to avoid cars, buses and traffic in general. I remember going to school and stopping by the red signal for minutes, looking left and right before crossing the street.

I didn’t know if I was going to be able to replicate the story and the main challenge with it was the accident part itself. I did not have the means to replicate an accident, so had the idea to use hand drawn animation for the middle part of the film instead (the part where the accident would happen).

During the pre-production plan, about three weeks before the shooting date, I started looking for an artist to do the drawings for the animation part. One day at work, I was talking to a colleague and he mentioned that he was doing some homework for his art and design course, he said he likes to draw and so on. So I invited him for a meeting to talk about the project and see if he was willing to draw for the project. He sent me some samples, however, I was not satisfied with the drawings. While I was thinking about the solution for the drawings I considered looking into fiverr.com to contract the services of a designer. The artist I found was excellent and quite affordable, he sent me eight pages of drawings which was enough to finalise the accident section of the film.

• Casting Process

The casting process was another concern to me because I had to find a caucasian boy between the ages of eight and twelve that looked like me (when I was kid) and I had, obviously, to ask his parents' to sign a release form and confirm their presence at the production site.

In a conversation with an actor friend of mine, we talked about the project and he offered his step-son John, who was twelve at the time production, to act in the film. The only thing that concerned me about John being the protagonist was that he did not look like me when I was kid but I decided to film him anyway because he was the only option I had at the time. I scheduled the shooting with John for a Saturday but luckily on Friday (a day before the filming started) I found another actor. Jordan, a nephew of a friend of mine was available and looking at his pictures I noticed that he matched really well with the protagonist's characteristics, so I contacted the production team as fast as I could and scheduled Jordan’s filming for Sunday. In the end I ended up filming two versions of the same story, one with John and another with Jordan.

Both actors acted really well but I decided to use Jordan’s footage for the final version because he resembled me better when I was a kid and also because he took his bicycle on the filming day, which I found that matched really well with the animation part.

Production

• What went well?

Everyone turned up on time, I managed to shoot most scenes that I had in mind, we managed to gather all the equipment needed for the filming, the actors and parents were flexible with timings, the weather was alright (did not rain), we had a replacement for a crew member that was released and after we finished the second day of filming we have a week to shoot B-roll footage and do edit. I managed to go to Jordan’s house during that week and record the voice-over with him and that worked really well in the storytelling. 

• What did not go well?

I decided to have a third camera (on the first day of filming) to use for B-roll footage and as a third camera operator, however that just complicated the production/directing and so on. In the end (for Jordan's filming) I worked with only two extra camera operators. A few days after the filming was finished I decided to take my own camera and return to the filming site to get aditional B-roll footage.

On the first day of filming, something that turned out to be quite inconvenient was that I forgot to check the time that the traffic lights would change (between green and red) with short breaks of a minute or so. As a result, when we filmed at the pedestrian crossing we had to be really fast before the lights changed.

The weather proved to be another inconvenience, the sky was clear, but because we filmed during the winter the day was getting dark too early (at around 4:30pm), meaning that we had less time to shoot with good natural lighting.

 

Post-Production

• Editing process

My editor committed a few mistakes and deleted the original audio of the footage, so I had to spend a few hours creating a new timeline and correcting the audio track. Because I had to spend extra time on the editing to correct things, I had to run against the time to finish the final version before submission.

• Voice-over process

Jordan was really helpful while recording the voice-over, he recorded a long list of lines (in first person and third person) he was patient and did everything I asked. His mother Elila and his brother Italo helped to direct him and also helped by recording a few lines I wrote for them as well.

Feedback

In regards to some feedback I got from people. One mentioned that the font style I used was too gothic for the film, maybe that was true, however my justification was that I was looking for a winter like font style or a font style that matched the sadness of the story.

Another person mentioned that the drawings worked well to tell the story but the child in drawings did not look like Jordan (the protagonist) and that is true because the artist used the pictures of myself (when I was a kid), not the actor. I did not know which actor I would use for the final version (John or Jordan) and I found Jordan too late (2 days before the shooting) when the artist had part of his work already completed.