I Punched My Dad in the Face
But something was missing.
No new story this week because of the holiday, so please enjoy this one from the archive. I’ll be back next week with a brand new story. Until then, happy 4th!
There was my dad, lying in a heap on the floor. I stood frozen, a stunned expression on my face. My right hook, which I was supposed to pull up short for the sake of my movie, had landed right and true directly on his jaw. And there were no excuses to be made. All of it had been captured on camera. My superhero movie was placed on indefinite hiatus (“Unsafe working conditions,” the trades said).
A lot of my early movies involved punches, foot chases, car chases, stabbings, shootings, explosions, and other various kinds of mayhem (Did I mention I was a child of the 80s?) Basically, they included a lot of things I didn’t really have the resources nor the budget to pull off.
When I started screening those movies, it was blatantly obvious that something was off. A punch just didn’t seem like a punch if there was no accompanying sound effect. I learned very early the importance of good audio and good sound design.
First lesson: Always invest in good audio. An audience will forgive subpar visuals. They will never forgive bad audio.
It wasn’t easy for me to add those kinds of things into my movies (Remember, this was before the Internet, so there was no easy access to stock resources like FreeSound.org). But I knew my movies needed it if I wanted to elevate the quality of my work. I was just forced to do it practically. When my friends and I produced our own short Unsolved Mysteries episode and it came time to film the scene where the criminal shoots the victim, I clapped two pieces of wood together off screen to simulate the gun shots.
Actually, it was kind of fun over the years to think up creative solutions to our many, many production limitations.
When I was in 10th grade and I produced an adaptation of Julius Caesar for my English class, my friends and I had to figure out a way to film Caesar’s ghost as it appears before Brutus in Act 4 Scene 2. Oh sure, I could’ve leaned into the comedy and simply placed a sheet over our actor’s head, but by that point I was much more professional.
My friends and I put our heads together and came up with a plan:
We set up a piece of plexiglass at a 45-degree angle in front of the camera lens.
We placed Brutus in front of the lens, but placed Caesar off frame, to the right of camera.
We shined a bright light on Caesar, whose reflection subsequently appeared in the plexiglass.
The camera picked up the reflection and it appeared as though a translucent figure was floating right beside Brutus in the frame.
Throughout it all, I was constantly dissecting the work of professional filmmakers and then trying to figure out how to make my own movies better, even if those improvements were very incremental. We should all strive for that, no matter our age; no matter our role.
Hopefully you won’t have to punch your dad in the process.