Demons: The Importance of Planning Your Shoots

Demons was without a doubt the biggest let down for the team in 2019. The script was promising and we were all pumped to be on our second production of the year by January of 2019. There was a lot of hype as well as this story was an adaptation of a written story by Siddhant Singh which proved to be very popular already. We definitely had high hopes for the release but, unfortunately, due to a multitude of reasons, the film flopped upon its release.

Demons is available to watch on YouTube

Now don't get me wrong, a lot of us here are still very proud of the production, so much so we decided to expand upon its story into a trilogy for a proper redemption and a remastered version is due to come out in 2020. The story was meaningful and hit quite close to home for a lot us on the team, especially Siddhant Singh, who not only wrote the original version but joined the team to play Oliver and serve as an editor and assistant director. But the production taught us some vital lessons we needed to learn the hard way for our future productions.

The production fell apart due to a number of core reasons and it was definitely one of the tougher ones to shoot, testing the endurance of the entire team. But it had nothing to do with the nature of the film, it was more like a combination of poor planning, the sacrifice of artistry for speed and hints of bad luck that made this one as gruelling as it was.

Pre-production

This film taught us the importance of pre-production. Of course, we planned our locations out and had a rough shot list together and made sure we were happy with the screenplay adapted from the original, but as we had to complete the film in a quick manner to meet deadlines, we glossed over quite a lot of the estimations and planning during the pre-production stage.

Due to the skimmed pre-production, we poorly misjudged the difficulty of executing our shot list. This became evident after Shoot Day One where we only shot about two-thirds of what we had planned to shoot. After the 2-day shoot became an 8-day shoot, we could finally wrap principal photography, but that wasn't the end of our woes.

This was the first production where I was both in front of and behind the camera which left Michael Lewis-Mat Nor to come into his own as a director.

Better pre-production would have also ironed out our story, as we had a change of direction midway into principal photography. We had recorded all of our original VOs prior to shooting so we could better time our shots with the VOs that were supposed to go over them, however, after a couple of days of shooting and listening to the VOs playing over our footage, we realised that it wasn't in the tone that we were going for, so we had to redo the VOs to better fit our new direction. Now if you've watched the film, you'll notice how most of the story transpires through voice-over and narration from the lecture hall scene, but what we didn't account for the major audio continuity issues we would have as we recorded all the voice-overs (VOs) in a studio prior to shooting the lecture hall scene. So when we finally got around to shooting the lecture hall scene, and we realised that the audio simply did not match, we had to redo the VOs... for the third time. This prolonged the whole production and also dampened spirits a touch.

Those weren't the only audio issues we had, as the mic we had been using was rather cheap, so the quality was pretty poor. So poor in fact that all of the outdoor shots were barely usable, but the seaside scene was simply unacceptable and we had to instead use a method known as Automated Dialogue Recording (ADR). This was only the second time I've used ADR so it really wasn't that well done, as is evident in the finished product. I am also still learning how to properly mix sound. We had this awesome soundtrack composed by Jonathan Yang but unfortunately, it does overpower the dialogue a touch, which is my bad.

Onset at Kennedy Town Seaside, a place we would come to hate due to the high winds causing poor audio quality, resulting in a number of reshoots.

The Hint of Bad Luck

After the whole process of shoots and reshoots and the ADR, it finally could be stitched together in editing. However, just about a week or two before the film was to be released I had to be rushed to the hospital in a medical emergency. The film, unfortunately, did not meet its original release date and missed the deadline for the competition it was supposed to enter, which was how the film got funded in the first place. The executives were understanding of the situation, but at the same time was a massive blow for the project.

The Sacrifice of Artistry for Speed

I got back to the editing suite as soon as I could ignoring my health conditions. At this point, after all the setbacks and hurdles we had to jump over, we all just wanted to get the film out there. The film had to be a specific length of 7 minutes to qualify for a lot of film festivals, and because we were in such a rush we simply sacrificed every creative decision in favour of making the video the right length. This meant that we paid little to no attention to how watchable the film actually was, which was the biggest downfall of the film.

The Lesson?

It's pretty clear, as the title suggests, plan your films. Planning, PRE-PRODUCTION, is a key element in how successful your film will end up being. Pre-production allows you to make sure that the story is exactly how you want it without the sudden urge to change it halfway through production; it allows you to plan out your shots to make sure you get all the right ones when it comes to shooting; it allows you to make sure your cast and crew go home on time; it ensures that you will never have to sacrifice your artistic and creative ability for speed.

Of course, it won't eliminate all of the issues that could come with film production, it's simply impossible as films are fluid, problems can arise out of nowhere without warning. But if you are prepared enough, even when these problems arise, you'll already have the solution in your back pocket.

Shooting in cramped spaces like this was also common due to Hong Kong homes being so tiny.