Business Trip

SYNOPSIS

Barry, a freelance journalist, takes a trip to obtain classified government documents from a whistleblower, but when he tries to leave his motel the next morning, he finds himself trapped inside. Now he must find his way out.

BEHIND THE SCENES

This was one of the fastest film shoots we had done in a while. Shooting was to take place over a span of three days with a final deadline being the end of the month. Although the shoot went fast, there was a lot of prep work done in the months leading up to make everything smooth.

PREPRODUCTION

A living room covered with plastic sheets. A camera and lights are set up in the room. A mattress with a pillow lays in the center of the room under the sheets of plastic.

Before we got to shooting the film, there was one main practical effect that would need rigorous testing beforehand. In the film, the main character, Barry (played by Travis Wesley), wakes up to find himself being probed by the alien. The probe is removed from his stomach and a viscous black ooze explodes from the tube.

To pull off this effect, I got about 4 feet of acrylic tubing from the hardware store and attached a small CO2 powered bike pump to the end of it. This simple squib was very effective, but where the ooze would shoot was unpredictable. As precaution, Dora and I covered our living room with plastic sheets to keep us from painting the walls black during testing.

The next challenge was getting the ooze to the level of viscosity we needed for the shot. If it was too watered down, then it wouldn’t look right in camera. If it was too thick, it wouldn’t come out of the squib. After several tests with different ratios of cornstarch, fake blood, and black food coloring, I managed to get the right consistency.

After we had our successful tests of the squib in action, it was time to dress it up. In the story, the alien is feeding on Barry. The tube is supposed to be the alien’s proboscis, so we needed to make it look like some sort of organ. I reached out to my artist friend, Skinner, to help with this process. To start, we used liquid latex as a base to create a fleshy material. On top of that, Skinner did some passes with the hot glue gun to create veins and organic shapes on the tube. To keep it all encased, we did another pass with liquid latex, and then Skinner airbrushed it red. The final proboscis was exactly what I wanted! It was a strange almost intestine-like thing that was perfect for this sci-fi horror short.

Luke Kreger taking a photo with a 35mm film camera of his monitor. On the monitor is a silver UFO.

Another integral part of the story, the film strip, also needed to be prepped. To create this film strip, I went out to the naval base in Alameda and photographed some of the strange old warehouses with my Nikon 35mm film camera. I then printed out old CIA documents and took photos of them too. For the actual UFO on the film strip, I had made a UFO in Blender that was going to be used for the final abduction scene and created some mock up images. I then photographed those off of my monitor with my film camera. When taking these photos, I had to be cautious about the order of which I was taking these since I wouldn’t be able to rearrange them in the film strip.

PRODUCTION

Hubert Tai holds a boom pole with Tiffany Chen holding an audio recorder. Between them is Luke Kreger giving a finger gun to the camera

The majority of the film takes place at the Ocean Park Motel in San Francisco. This is the very first motel to pop up in the city, and over the years there hasn’t been too many changes. As cool as the old aesthetic was to shoot in, it posed its own set of challenges to the shoot. For one, this was a room with three beds, but everything was surprisingly cramped. Getting all the lighting and blocking done in such a tight space proved to be time consuming. This room also had no A/C. During the day, it would get unbearably hot, so plenty of water and breaks were necessary to power through the shoot. Another issue with the location was that it was on the second floor. This meant that we were unable to get a light to shine through the window for the night portions. Although we had these challenges, the team quickly collaborated to work through all of them.

To kick off the shoot, we decided to film the proboscis scene first. I knew there was a lot that could go wrong with this shot, so I wanted to allow a backup night to film this portion in case the first attempt went horribly. Luckily, the squib did what we needed and we only had to do two takes. A lot of our success with this shot was due to our preparation.

After two days at the motel, it was time to wrap it up and move onto our final shooting locations. We all met up in Alameda to shoot the opening scene at a park that over looked the bay. To make it easy, we decided to have it be one shot with no extra coverage. Dora and I worked on the camera movement and the timing until it was perfect. We wrapped up that portion in about a half hour.

Three people standing in a park that overlooks the bay. A man is seated on a park bench by the water.

To shoot the final abduction scene, we headed over to Dora and I’s studio to shoot on green screen. The shots we needed were of Barry being pulled from the motel room. We needed two different angles; a profile view and a straight on view with back lighting to mimic the glow of the UFO. For the profile view, we had Travis balance himself on a chair that had green screen over it. Luckily Travis had some pretty strong abs and was able to hold the pose for a long duration. For the front facing shot, I just had him throw up his hands and look almost dead. I haven’t had to really shoot anything on green screen with dynamic lighting before, so this was a great experience on how to go about it.

POST PRODUCTION

Immediately after the shoot, I started working on the edit. I got a basic cut together of the film and then worked with Chris Grande (Gilderil) on the score. The whole film is supposed to have a John Carpenter feel, so I sent over some reference material for Chris to work with. Gilderil delivered just what I asked for. The score to the film hits at all the right points and the droning synth’s were instrumental in creating the Carpenter vibe I wanted.

With the score in place, I got to work on the sound mixing and editing. Hubert Tai did a great job recording the majority of the sound which made things a lot easier to work with. He also popped by the studio to work on some of the final sound mixing.

To wrap up post, I started working with the green screen shots and the UFO I had built in Blender. The parts of Travis on the green screen chair were a bit tricky to work with, but fortunately the whole scene was taking place in space. Any VFX shots are a lot easier to pull off if the scene is dark. I used After Effects to comp in all the individual assets; the UFO, Travis, the light beam, and outer space.

THAT’S A WRAP

Luke Kreger applying a prosthetic to Travis Wesley's stomach.

For the amount of time we had to shoot this film I’m proud of how it turned out. The cast and crew created a really positive set experience that brought me back to my early days of making movies with my close friends. This film also taught me some valuable lessons on staying committed to my creative vision and doing everything I can to keep that stylistic integrity. In reviewing the film after it’s been published, I’ve determined that I want to keep expanding the crew and making the shooting process as smooth as possible.