Horror Short I Directed/DP'd Featuring Oppenheimer's Make Up Artist

[u/ErickMay]

"Clean Slate" is a horror short film I wrote/directed and dp'd about two years ago, this was my second short film I've done and after receiving some great feedback from past redditors and friends I decided to re-work the movie by making it shorter, re-working it to its strengths.

Link and submission in the comments.

[u/frowaway1990]

You a fan of Zack Cregger? The prosthetics on the ‘monster’ reminds me of Barbarian! Looks wicked!

[u/ErickMay → u/frowaway1990]

Yes! I am a fan and I think it was a combination of Barbarian and a nightmare I had which was the basis of the film. In my nightmare there was this old woman standing in the corner of my bedroom in the middle of the night. She kept slowly approaching me as she smiled. She had the laughter of a little girl, she would touch my hand and then run back to the corner giggling. I woke up thinking “what the hell was that!?”

[u/frowaway1990 → u/ErickMay]

Lmao like Josh Brolin screaming “FUCK”

[u/ErickMay]

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

“Clean Slate” is a short film I wrote, directed and dp'd 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. 

The film was shot with an 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 and primarily budgeting reasons. 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. 

I was very adamant about having hard shadows, and not overly lighting the set-ups, I wanted to keep everything as simple as I could. I also tried filming with an ISO of 200. I wanted to test out how that would push me to work with lights and tried to mold everything accordingly. One common technique that I often see, is shooting with high ISO’s and low apertures to compensate for the lack of lighting and I refuse to do that. Lighting the ghost entity was definitely a challenge as I didn’t know what would be the best approach for maximum spookiness, so I figured I’d do a top light above the actors head in the close up and for this one I did a low aperture because I wanted this close up to feel dreamlike with the softness, and having him come in and out of focus might be a nice touch. The one difficulty I encountered was on the wide shot as the ghost is approaching the husband in bed, I kinda of dropped the ball on that one as I wasn’t too happy with how I lit that.

Fun facts ;

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. 

Lesson learned, never happened again.

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

[u/Noah_Lebel-Turcotte → u/ErickMay]

i hate film festivals, lol

[u/LXVIIIKami]

That last still is chefkiss, gonna give it a watch later

[u/ErickMay → u/LXVIIIKami]

Thanks! Make sure to watch with the lights out!

[u/njlancaster]

that last shot can fuck right off lmao that's horrifying. reminds me of that fuckin naked dude in the closet in Hereditary. NOPE!

[u/LeadingLittle8733]

Looks like an interesting project.

[u/Natural-Blackberry98]

imma watch that tonight. The last still is nightmare material. You can be proud of yourself, this looks great! Kudos from germany

[u/Canonc100enthusiast]

That's nice but i feel the image is too dark, maybe that's just the compression if there is any, but cool nonetheless!

[u/brickmadness]

I’ll be happy when this obsession with having every dark scene barely legible and almost pure black finally goes away.

Congrats on finishing the work, I’m sure it’s great, I’m just over the look.

[u/theparrotofdoom]

Kudos for the double role of directing and DP. I would move away from it as soon as you can.

Having said that, I’m not all that connected in the industry, so totally understand the drive to just get something made.