The Making of 'The Nighthag' short film

So back in April I directed my first short film. It was a script I had written at Uni in 2015. I went over it and changed a few things to make it possible for filming with a small budget.

I started planning towards the end of February, kicking things off with the final draft of the script. I got in touch with some Uni friends for crew positions and then with a work mate who would act as the main character.

Even for a short film, a lot of work goes into pre-production. Originally the script was longer and set over a few locations with 4 characters. I changed it so there was only 1 location with 2 actors. I wanted to film everything in 2 days which was not a problem since it was at my apartment, but I had not worked on a short film since 2017. So I had to re-educate myself on what was needed and how to get everyone on the same page as me so we knew what we were aiming for come filming day.

Being a small budget, all the funds went into the makeup fx as that was the main focus of the short film. The Nighthag is a horror film and we needed to create a malevolent being. We got my work mate's friend to fill the role of the Nighthag and started visualisation of what it would look like. Working with a small crew of only 7, I took on the position of Producer and editor as well to speed up the process as we were working with a tight schedule. I was going overseas at the start on May and it was March. I wanted to film at the start of April, so that left us with a month to edit but also a month to get pre-production done.

For anyone who doesn't do film, pre-production work consists of:

- Script

- Script breakdown

- Storyboards

- Camera plot

- Character profiles

- Makeup, wardrobe and Special FX

- Moodboard

- shotlist

- props

- score

- set dressing

- edit pre-vis

- callsheet

There is more that goes into pre-production on larger shoots, but these were the main areas we had to cover before getting to Production.

For the special FX and Makeup, my makeup artist and I worked closely so we knew what we needed and had everything ready for the shoot day. We needed to do a life cast with our actress so we had all the right measurements and face-molds for all the effects.

Once that was done, we purchased all the items and ingredients and worked on the look of our character.

Since the budget was less than $350, we used what we already had. Callum had the best camera out of us all, as well as some lighting gear, so we used that on set. Seb had a lot of audio gear we could use, and everything was mainly sourced from each other. The only things that I had to buy other than makeup equipment was the Nighthag costume and wooden planks. We had to create a makeshift camera rig for our Birds eye shots. So I got Brock to use his woodwork skills and put together a rig that would fit the camera in the centre and be able to have 2 people hold it on either side.

It got to the shoot date 6th April and we started at 9:30am. Callum acted as the role of 1st AD, which meant he would keep us on time and to schedule. He and I went over how to lay out the callsheet for the 2 days, and we decided on the first day being all the shots of Lachy's character on his own, and the second day being all the shots with him and Freya's character. This worked out best because the makeup department needed at least 2 hours to put everything on Freya, so one day of that was best.

The first day went pretty well. My apartment I had at the time was pretty small, so putting 8 extra people in there, with all the camera gear and makeup supplies really made it crowded.

The second day was an earlier start of 7am for makeup prep. Everyone else arrived at 10am. We had less shots to shoot since they were just scenes with the Nighthag in them, but was probably the bigger day since we had all the makeup and the main scenes to do. We wanted to get them right as it was the only day we could do them. We shot until 7pm and then cleaned everything up and put back in place. I had 2 house mates at the time so I wanted to give them the place back for use since I pretty much took over the living room and kitchen for the 2 days of filming, but that didn't end up happening.

With the editing, I took over the living room again. My desk broke while we were shooting so I connected my computer to the TV and spent most of my days editing. I really wanted to get the edit finished by May so I could share it with everyone. I got a locked off cut and the only things that needed to be done was the proper score and the visual FX but didn't get it on time. I went overseas May 2nd and couldn't edit since my laptop I had with me did not have the power capacity for editing. So when I came back at the start of September, I spent the whole month tweaking and re-editing. I got the FX from Callum and the score, and finally put everything together.

The short film is up on my YouTube page. You can watch it below.

Thanks for reading!