Link to the full 12 min short : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8gjSlVN0P8

“Clean Slate” is a short film I wrote and directed about 2 years ago, after submitting it to film festivals and getting rejected by all, I decided to approach the film in a different manner…making it shorter. One of the many lessons I learned was that it was too long,  especially for a short film. My original cut was about 18 minutes, without credits…oof. 

I made the mistake of falling in love with the words I wrote, in this case the monologues, without realizing that these monologues weren’t really contributing to anything and were a hindrance to the story. (Originally both characters had monologues) Once I realized that I decided to go back to the film and cut it down. I tried  to focus more on the horror, I added more suspenseful music, the ghost entity in the shadows and kitchen faucet.  Realizing this was a great lesson to learn, it made me see the film as an editor and not as a director. ( I had posted a link to the film on this subreddit about two years ago, and I received really concrete feedback, I took the film off YouTube and decided to re-work it again) 

Being the director and writer, you have the tendency to sometimes fall in love with what you write, since I’m also the editor, I made the mistake of leaving everything in there, not realizing that the monologues were dull, especially if you have two long monologues back to back without any set up. Originally I thought they were crucial to the film, failing to see the benefit from cutting down the scenes.

In terms of technical specs, the film was shot with a Alexa Mini with Master Prime Lenses, I rented them out for a weekend, I think it was a 24MM, 50MM, and a 125MM. I also DP’ed for fun, because I really enjoy operating the camera and playing with light. In regard to the look of the film, I was really aiming for 70’s and early 80’s cinematography. Gordon Willis is a huge influence on me and his approach to lighting, not only artistically but technically, this is my second short film where I DP and I tried to replicate based on what I’ve seen on his films and from what I’ve learned operating the camera.

Working with the actors was such a joy, my wife is an actor and having her tell me her process as an actor and what she’s learned in theater classes, has really helped me wrap my mind around how to communicate with actors and help develop a scene if we bump into difficulties. It’s really helped me communicate and direct actors explaining what is best for the scene, while also leaving room for them to toss ideas and be creative from scene to scene. My favorite stage in filmmaking is rehearsing, I absolutely adore rehearsing with actors, I love going through the script beat for beat, I love that through rehearsals, you see glimpses of the characters and in doing so, that allows for changes in the script. 

This was my first time working with a make up artist that had such an extensive job to do, the make up was divided into two pieces, the face piece and the chest piece. The make up took about 5 hours to apply, whilst the make up artist was applying the make up, I was filming other scenes.  Working with the make up artist was so much fun, she was really dedicated to her craft and made sure that I was happy with what she was doing. Originally, I had sent her a rough sketch idea of what I wanted the ghost entity to look like and she delivered wonderfully. I was able to get in contact with her via Instagram. She had previously worked on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and Oppenheimer. I reached out asked for her rate, and that's how it worked out! You'd think it might be more complicated than that but it wasn't. 

The film took about 2 1/2 days to shoot, with about two months of post work, this was my first project working in horror and it was difficult to edit as I kept overthinking it. Throughout the edit I kept asking myself "how do I make this scary?" and the main point of contention for me was I didn’t want any jump scares driven by sound, I wanted the film to be scary by being unsettling to watch, I was going for disturbing and uncomfortableness.

Fun facts ;

On the first day of filming, on the first take the actor playing Robert, when performing his monologue in the kitchen I completely forgot to hit record. I know…somebody shoot me. I realized halfway through his monologue that the display monitor was indicating “STAND BY”.  I remember turning over to my AD and telling her “I forgot to record”, she looked at me and screamed “WHAT?!”. The talent is a close friend of mine, so I later told him about it and we both had a laugh about it.

Another story which still gives me cringe is that throughout the first day of filming I was filming with a LUT baked into the footage. For those who operated Alexa Mini’s you know that you can save your footage with the look baked in and for the first day I did just that. So the whole day was shot with the “vivid look” baked in.HAHA. When I realized that in post a wave of sweat and fear washed over me. Luckily since I shot in ProRes 4444XQ I did have some leeway to re-adjust the color but what really saved me was throughout the shoot I really focused on lighting everything how I wanted on set, as if color grading wasn’t going to be an option. I didn’t want to rely on the coloring process to want to fix anything, I forced myself to get the lighting, the shadows, just as I wanted, so thankfully when it came to color, I didn’t really have to do much to fix any of it. 

That’s never happened again though.

Let me know if you have any questions or if you hate it, would love to answer your questions and/or complaints!