The Insane History Of My Student Film: ‘OUIJA’ (2004)
– Part Two –
Commentary about the student film’s troubled production from the director himself!
(February 28th, 2004)
Two weeks ago, I wrote the script for ‘OUIJA,’ which was to be my final project for my video production class. It took me two days to write it, which resulted in an approx. 30-page script full of odd characters, funny lines, and some weird scenes that I had talked about in my class the whole trimester. I had a group of about 10 people who said they were interested in joining the project. This got me very excited. Liz Stafford, who seemed enthusiastic about it, said we could film at her house. I graciously accepted the offer.
There were only five different characters in the original script, so I simply cast four classmates and myself. They all agreed and seemed willing to do it. I assembled the rest of the interested people as my crew. From there, I tried to plan a day when all of us could meet and work on it. That was the first hurdle. The only day that fit all our schedules was Thursday after school. So, I told them, “Okay, we’ll do that. 3pm to 7pm. Alright? And then all we need is probably one more day after that and we’ll be good.” They all unanimously agreed.
When Thursday came, only the cast members showed up at Liz’s house. None of the crew were there, apart from Liz (I mean, it was her house). She was going to be the camera operator whenever I was on screen. So, although she was the only crew member there, I still felt relaxed and confident that it would be fine.
Wrong.
After only a mere hour, suddenly one of the cast members announced that she needed to go home because she had to look after her sister. She left, then we tried to film around her scenes. That didn’t last very long, because then another cast member said that he had to go home too, for some random reason. At that point, I said to everyone, “Look, you all realize that we are being graded on this. Your grade, and mine.” The guy still left, anyway. So, at that point I called off the rest of the shoot for the day. We were there from 3pm to 5pm and had only shot about 10 minutes’ worth of unedited footage. It was basically useless, especially after rewatching it.
We all thought it was best to reshoot it later. It was decided that due to everyone’s somehow flippant schedules (no one has jobs!), we would shoot for just one day. An entire day devoted to the movie; a day when no one would have to leave for sure. So, we all decided to shoot on Sunday from 11am until it was completed. The cast and crew all agreed. We knew that it had to be shot by Sunday, because it was due on the following Friday. That gave me less than a week to edit it.
Saturday came, and suddenly I got all these calls from the crew. To summarize: only one of them could come; but only for an hour. This worried me initially, but I knew Liz would be at her house, obviously. If I still had my cast, I could still pull it off.
Come Sunday morning… everything went out the window.
I began to get some calls from the cast. Here are some of their “greatest hits” of what was said:
“I’m sick and have to go to the doctor.”
“My tire went flat, and I need to fix it.”
“My family came to visit.”
“I just woke up at a friend’s house, sorry.”
In short: none of the cast could (or would) show up, except me. 5 scripted characters + only 1 cast member + only 1.5 crew members = PANIC ATTACK.
I called up Liz and told her what was going on, and she was just as angry as I was. She told me, “Well, we have to film something! It’s for a grade! Maybe we can make up a new project, and just film us running around like ‘The Blair Witch Project?’”
“No,” I told her, “We can do this! I can save this movie; I know I can! It just needs to be changed around a bit. I am still going to be at your house at 11am and we will shoot this film in some shape or form. Be ready when I get there.”
I then hung up the phone, went to my room, took out my script, and skimmed through the whole thing. I felt like I was going insane, but the adrenaline took over. I looked at the clock: I had to be at her house in an hour. Then, an idea came to me.
I took my favorite scenes from the script that I thought could be done in one day, then cast myself as two different characters (and would dress in completely different clothes, wear a hat and glasses for one, etc.). I had to cast Liz as one character by condensing lines from all the remaining characters and giving them to her. The plot was then abridged to fit just two characters around the “dramatic” bits I wanted. However, I had no time to rewrite anything, really. It was just me rearranging things, mostly in my head. We would loosely follow the original script, save for the “action” shots that were needed, and perform dialogue in an improv-like state.
Liz really didn’t want to be filmed on camera, but she agreed with the idea. We really didn’t have a choice. As for who would now operate the camera, I told her that one crew member could do it for the first hour until he leaves, then I could film all the scenes I am not in. I was, however, stumped at how we would film scenes we were both in after he left. Liz then revealed that her younger sister, Kim, was home and could do it. Unfortunately, she had never handled a camera before. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it would have to do.
I finally arrived at Liz’s house, with the one crew member already there, and we started filming immediately. Although most of the movie took place indoors, there were a few outdoor shots needed. Since this was a horror movie of sorts, I was hoping the sky would at least be a little cloudy and dark that day in my desert town. I managed to get more than that: it rained. It hardly ever rains here. So, I got to film a great rainy and cloudy opening sequence which I thought would never happen. It was a great way to start the shoot.
To summarize, most of the filming went by remarkably well from there. It took some time to tell Kim how to use the camera and position it how I wanted, but it didn’t help that Liz and I kept screwing up our dialogue so many times! Pretty funny, though. I got to film nearly everything I really wanted, save for one sequence.
Originally, there was a scene where Liz’s character gets attacked by seatbelts in her car when she tries to leave. It was to be done with reverse photography, but because of the rain we realized it would be too hard to pull off without getting the camera wet. It also would have been too difficult to film with just the three of us, now. This is why she just goes outside, says her car is gone, barely tries to enter the nearby truck, and simply runs back inside. Oh well. Maybe I’ll add some extra rain effects in post-production to make it seem like the weather also got worse? Another reason for her to go back inside.
Anyway, we really did shoot the film in just one day! From 11am to 7pm (for 8 hours, with only a couple of 15-minute breaks). Despite the complicated rush in the beginning, the filming itself was a lot of fun for us. But we were definitely exhausted. I had a headache for three days after that.
When Monday came and I arrived at the video production class, I didn’t talk to the cast or crew that were meant to show up. I was mad, as I had every right to be. The footage was ready to be uploaded to iMovie4. I hooked up the camera to the computer and began to transfer the footage… when I almost dropped dead.
There was one thing about iMovie that the teacher didn’t ever point out. I had shot the film in widescreen (wanting to be as cinematic as possible), but apparently iMovie4 doesn’t import widescreen footage properly. Instead of getting the original aspect ratio of the footage imported, the image was vertically stretched, making everything appear tall and skinny. In other words: unwatchable.
This began to freak me out. All that work, for nothing. iMovie did have a “letterbox” feature, but all it did was add black bars to the top and bottom of the picture. The actual footage remained stretched. I tried to find a real solution, going through the official iMac site, search engines, etc. It wasn’t until Tuesday that I found a site that made plug-ins for iMovie, and one of them was the “16X9 Converter.” According to its description, it would instantly solve my problem! It cost $25, but I had to get it!
On Wednesday it was purchased, I tried it out, and it worked! Thank God! But then another problem arose! For some reason the footage was now skipping frames at times. It hadn’t done that before. The computer was glitching and I was told I’d have to wait to use another one instead! Ridiculous! It wasn’t until after school that day that I was finally able to offload all the footage to a different computer.
Thursday swiftly arrives, and I’m finally ready to edit the movie. It was due the next day! I clicked on the file where my footage was uploaded, then got a message: “Access Denied”. Some other student had apparently messed with the computer’s permission settings! Being a Windows guy, I had no idea how to fix an iMac. I tried to get the teacher’s help, but he was constantly busy with other students. By the time I got a hold of him, and he fixed the problem, there were only 10 minutes left of the period.
At this point, I was completely gutted and depressed. I approached the teacher and told him my entire story of the film’s pitfalls to that very moment. I finally said, “I just don’t think I can have all of this done by tomorrow.” He then replied, “Don’t worry about it.”
Finally, a break! He extended the deadline for my film, but wanted it done before the trimester was over. That gave me an extra week to complete it! According to him, I had the most technical difficulties of any student he ever had. I told my teacher, “It must have had something to do with the Ouija board.”
Maybe.
It’s Saturday now, and yesterday I finally edited the first 5 minutes of what will likely be a 20-minute film. There’s about 40 minutes of footage to go through, so it will take some time to finish. I think I’ve got it, though. Hopefully it will be great. It won’t be exactly how I intended it, but it will still be entertaining to watch and will have most of my favorite moments.
The teacher says I already got an A before it’s even finished. Don’t tell the other students that. He believed I had the most prepared pre-production of any student and the most intelligent ways of working around my problems as best as I could. Most students would have simply given up.
However it turns out, I hope you just sit back, relax, and enjoy ‘OUIJA.’
You cared this much to read both parts of my article, including “teenager Derrick’s” thoughts? Well that means a lot! If you still want more, check out the actual script and/or an excerpt of the unfilmed “seatbelt scene!”
“Part Two” of this article was written & assembled by Derrick Davis on February 28th, 2004 & revised on April 13th, 2024 exclusively for Derrick Davis Media.
Derrick Davis Media 