behemoth
A short lyrical journey into the void.
"BEHEMOTH" is a short lyrical exploration into the mind of an alchemist, fighting against
the forces of Death and creation itself. It's a short character piece following a story of a medieval
alchemist and told through his monologue addressed to the universe and beyond.
This film is a labor of love and we thank all of the people that were involved in the making of this picture.
BREAKDOWN
Below is a collection of chapters that tell the story of how we produced the film along with some
challenges that we faced and the takeaway that we learned from this experience. This will hopefully
become useful to the reader if they decide to embark on a similar journey of producing a film purely
on the basis of passion.
Special thanks for these awesome film frames to Majd Mazin @majd_m
conception
The film was inspired by an ancient Chinese poem titled "The Bones of Zhuangzi" by Zhang Heng (73-139 AD).
Although the poem doesn't speak of alchemy, the imagery and subject matter of the poem started a process
in my mind that grew into Behemoth.
The ideation phase started with meeting with my good friend and frequent collaborator
Christopher Soren Kelly @christophersorenkelly. We started discussing philosophy and adjacent
metaphysical subjects in order to understand what are the sort of themes we wanted to pursue.
After a few hours of sharing abstract ideas, vocalizing what feelings we aim to convey and sketches
of scenes, and knowing Chris' ability for lyricism, I asked him to write me a monologue.
Shortly, he was able to put together a poetic monologue that really spoke to me and I was able to create
even more specific imagery in my head and I knew the direction we could take with the story.
The monologue fell quickly and naturally into it's place on the pages of the screenplay.
Tips & Takeaways:
It is really important at these stages to identify as
specifically as you can what you want to see on screen at the end.
+ come up with vivid images of your setting and character, it could
be bits and pieces, but they must be evocative and powerful to you
+ at these early stages, understand what is the story you are trying
to tell, what is the character going through when you picture them?
What forces are they fighting and why?
+ grip to that powerful visceral feeling you experience when you see
those images and that sensation will drive you forward in the hardest
moments of the production and will serve as your creative compass
pre-production
As soon as we knew the film was going to become a reality, I wanted to get Ion Beroiz @ionberoiz onboard -
a longtime friend and creative partner who happens to be an ace at running a lean production.
LOCATION
We quickly realized that one of the main requirements to make this film work would be getting the right location.
It can be quite difficult to find that perfect location in the TMZ(Thirty Mile Zone) in Los Angeles, because the
landscape is generally highly recognizable as SoCal, so we visited quite a few parks and recreational areas
to try and escape that.
The first location we were really attracted to was Palomar National Park.
When doing a location scout I always try to get as close to the final shooting conditions as I can,
that's why we came down to Palomar early in the morning, just before sunrise to get that favorable blue light.
You can see how I'm already starting to find textures and subjects through the viewfinder of my camera.
Over the past couple years I found a camera setup that allows me to get close enough to the final
look without bringing a heavy rig everywhere.
My setup includes a Fuji X100f or an X-T3 with an anamorphic attachment and usually a pretty wide lens.
I found that these cameras have really great film simulation modes and the 1.33x anamorphic attachment
helps to recreate that cinescope look to get as close to the final images as possible.
I usually desqueeze the frames and do a quick grade in VSCO on my phone which just gives me the speed
and flexibility in checking the look of the work pretty much on the spot.
We created some frames that featured Ion as the main subject to explore framing and test lighting conditions.
Based on this information, we could start planning the logistics of the test shoot.
When it comes to your production, it's paramount to understand what could be your potential pitfalls.
In our situation, we knew that we only had a small amount of time to get the shots we wanted due to
the lighting conditions. We had about three hours or even less of actual usable light, so we planned that
we would need to start rolling the camera by around 6am, which meant that considering the time to prep,
the call time should be around 4:00 am.
SCREEN TESTS
Being a low budget production, we knew that the only way to get exactly what we wanted on the day of the shoot,
was to come out to the location for camera tests one morning and experiment with different looks and camera
techniques.
I can't recommend doing live tests like this enough, because they give you an opportunity to try your vision
against reality and identify early on, what worked and what didn't work.
For the final shoot, we had about 15 crew members, lots of equipment, a big location and very limited time.
In a situation like that you better know exactly how you are going to achieve your vision.
One very early morning, we came to Palomar once again, but this time with an Arri Alexa, Chris Kelly
in a test outfit and some props. The outfit was picked up from Sony Wardrobe rentals and the props came
from HPR, one of my favorite spots in LA.
TECHNIQUES
This test was an excellent way to really see what would a shooting day look like. The screenplay ended up being
about a 7 minute monologue in runtime, so we knew there would be challenges with doing long, intense takes.
When making a character piece like Behemoth, you want to accommodate your actor and make sure you create
an environment for them to unleash their talent fully. For this film it meant that we could shoot only a handful of
takes of the actual monologue before Chris would start to lose his voice, due to the intensity of the performance.
Aside from that, these tests were vital for me personally to figure out how to operate the Arri Alexa Mini and
execute some fun techniques I wanted to play with for a while. We wanted to shoot the monologue in a way
that intercuts between three different versions of it, creating parallel timelines of the same exact monologue.
In addition to that, I wanted to learn a technique I've seen used recently by cinematographers like Khalid Mohtaseb
@khalidmohtaseb and filmmakers like Salomon Ligthelm @salomonligthelm that involves a fast motion effect with
a quick-paced editing style.
Getting a chance to test your looks & techniques and try to get as close to the final result
as possible is invaluable because it helps you to avoid potential pitfalls and inefficiencies
during the very intense production days.
We ended up using a few shots from the test day in the final cut of Behemoth, so it's also
beneficial because you are getting a lot of extra time to shoot b-roll.
Tips & Takeaways:
I think the primary goal of the pre-production period for a director
is to figure out all of the creative techniques and tools way ahead
of the production.
+ R&D and experimentation is what makes for a better artwork,
so treat your tests as you would an actual shoot and you will
walk out with an invaluable experience
+ use Sun Scout or similar apps to predict the position of the sun
at various times during the day, it's going to help you avoid
unwanted surprises. Also consider that the sunrise and sunset
times change everyday
+ try doing an edit with your test footage to pre-visualize your work
and see if that's what you were envisioning in your mind
+ in our case, it was crucial to understand how long would recording
a full monologue would take and thanks to the pre-production stage,
we figured that it would take quite a lot of time so we planned accordingly
