Making a Nudist Comedy: The Visual Challenges of Act Naturally

My previous post focused on the very start of production and how the current roster joined the Act Naturally family. Thanks to all of you who read and commented — it’s motivated me to keep this walk down memory lane going. This resembles a New Yorker article or a novel more than blog entries!

Sharp as a Tack

I mentioned that the hot tub scene was a particularly stressful night. From waterlogged actors to barely finding enough power for my lights, it wasn’t the highlight of production. In moments of high tension, comedic relief is invaluable. Such a glorious moment came when David Lassiter — who primarily gaffed but was helping with focus pulling that night — hit the Focus Assist button on the HVX. For those who don’t know, it’s a pixel-to-pixel viewing mode where the camera zooms into the center of the image to check focus. The camera unintentionally zoomed way into Courtney’s bare breast. Without missing a beat, David remarked, “sharp as a tack.”

We burst out laughing while everyone else looked at us like we were crazy. It’s hard to decide what was funnier: seeing a breast fill the entire LCD or David’s delivery. Either way, that was probably the most memorable night of the entire film: filled with equal parts highs and lows.

The Visual Approach

Given the subject matter, JP and I wanted the film to have a very natural look from top to bottom. We didn’t want the cinematography or exposed body parts calling attention to themselves. Silicone parts and highly stylized light could pollute the story, so we avoided both. The lighting stayed relatively soft throughout, avoiding high contrast whenever possible.

The main exception is the fight between Lauren and Leah — which includes another one of our favorite lines from the film (I’m going to censor the final word to protect you from a minor spoiler, even though it sounds really dirty this way): “don’t fuck my ___!” While it’s the edgiest lighting in the film, it’s warranted given the aggression in that scene.

Thankfully I was rolling when Courtney told Katie about her displeasure with my lighting scheme. Actors often assume a light is unflattering when it comes from below — but the window beneath her was exactly where her natural key light was coming from, and I was simply supplementing it. In the context of the scene, she’s a villain, and having the key from that angle subtly reinforced that.

JP wanted every shot after Leah discovers her father is dead to be handheld. Unfortunately, that wasn’t entirely possible — I didn’t have a tripod when I shot the Miami exteriors (more on those in Part 3). I did my best to keep those shots steady, but you can’t fake a tripod. As for the moment Leah hears the news, JP encouraged me to get really wild with the camera.

You may have noticed that all of the flashbacks feature zooms. A few reasons: we shot them piecemeal using JP’s personally owned gear to save on rentals, which meant the Tokina AT-X 270 28-70mm and the SMC Pentax-M 75-150mm were our workhorses. We also wanted a clear visual cue to differentiate the flashback footage from the present day. And frankly: zooms are cool.

The Nudity Arc

JP and I also constructed what we called a nudity arc as part of our visual approach. We wanted a lot of nudity at the beginning to show how startling the experience is for the girls, with progressively less as the film goes on. It seemed like the best way to approximate how one actually feels arriving at a naturist resort for the first time: you can’t help but notice the abundance of flesh surrounding you. Gawking is almost involuntary. After a short while, it slowly becomes second nature and you hardly notice it. Implementing this turned out to be more difficult than we imagined.

First, we needed our actors on board. Some were fine with full frontal, while others had that prohibited from day one. No shade, not everybody has the courage of Jason Segel. We also had contractual limitations on the duration of shots involving nudity, which made coverage tricky. We quickly learned that framing out breasts required a medium close-up or tighter. Needless to say, executing our visual game plan had numerous unique challenges!

To avoid a movie filled with extreme close-ups, we got creative with blocking and camera positions. Our go-to tactic was props used in unconventional ways: Sadie’s newspaper at the gift shop, a yoga mat, Josh carrying a toolbox to the cabin (held higher than normal to do its job), and Rob fluidly working a laptop before swapping it for a manila folder. Rob put on an absolute clinic when it came to effortlessly shielding his junk from the camera. There are a few instances where the presence of such objects feels slightly staged, but they were a necessary evil. Yes, we resisted the temptation to pay full homage to the legendary Austin Powers scene. Even simple acts like entering and exiting a frame were complicated when we didn’t want actors flashing the camera as they sat or stood.

From a technical standpoint, shallow depth of field was both an aesthetic choice and a practical one. Having naked people roaming the background of a scene are more likely to steal an audience’s focus in more ways than one. There is also something slightly comical about fleshy bokeh. Our lens adaptor system meant we had to stay almost entirely wide open on both the camera iris and the attached lens, which presented constant challenges with exposure and focus. Cinema lenses have generous spacing between focus marks so you can easily differentiate 5 feet from 10, but our arsenal of still-photo lenses made that distinction nearly imperceptible. We kept a set of ND filters on hand at all times and I stayed at 0dB for almost every shot, bumping to +3dB only on a couple of wide night exteriors.

In many ways, the newly released Canon 5D Mark II would’ve been a much better option for camera. The large format sensor makes shallow depth of field more achievable, we could natively mount high quality lenses without a clunky adaptor, and the working ISO would’ve been much higher. However, I was very against using DSLR’s as motion picture cameras at the time and we needed to use JP’s gear for efficiency.

Film, Flashbacks, and the Phantom Editor

While 99% of the movie was shot on our video rig, there are a few shots of Super 8mm and 16mm in the final cut. JP and I both share an intense love for celluloid and if we could, we would’ve shot the entire film on Super 16mm. The most logical scene for the nostalgic Super 8 look is where Kristi (Susan May Pratt) tells Charlie (Liz Lytle) the origins of her burns and why she runs Bear Lake Resort. I was happy to let the camera do all the work so it would authentically replicate home movies of the early ’70s — and yes, there are zooms. For clarity’s sake, only the first two shots of that flashback series are actually film.

Speaking of the flashbacks — I ran into funny man Dan Foster at a party recently and he asked if any of his jokes made it into the film. We laughed about how everybody knew the scene would be silent in the final cut. It felt shameful to waste the talents of our brilliant improvisors, Blake Silver, KC Gleason, and Susan May Pratt.

On the weekend of July 18th–19th we spent two days at Jaime Stocker’s apartment shooting Leah’s sorority hazing scene, Charlie’s yearbook photos, and Kristi’s collegiate stories. Liz gave us too much excellent footage and as a result my first edit ran long. In this case, less was funnier.

We contemplated leaving the identity of our editor a mystery, but the cat has long been out of the bag (thanks to whoever put our names on IMDb). Phillip Loren Patrick is derived from the middle names of our three editors. We slightly bastardized Katie L. Hall’s — I insisted it would be weird for a man with my middle name as a first name to also have Lauren as his middle name, so it became Loren. The “P” in JP’s name is Patrick, which is conveniently also a cool last name. Katie had never used Final Cut before she decided to pick up some of the slack and quickly proved her value getting quality rough cuts together. Using Google Docs, we kept a shared log, divided the film into six reels, and assigned scenes to each editor. We made a ton of progress before I had to step away for a few weeks to shoot my third feature. After wrap, I resumed my editorial duties.

I’ve always enjoyed editing, but I found this experience particularly educational. When you’ve logged so many hours behind the camera without taking footage all the way through post, there’s something clarifying about doing it yourself. You quickly see that getting an extra take is invaluable for a multitude of reasons, that dirty coverage leads to continuity headaches, and that actors sometimes give their best performance off camera. I forgot how crucial having quality audio for off camera actors can be. Every director and cinematographer should spend serious time in an editing bay.

It took great personal sacrifice to get this film made. Among the blood, sweat, tears, and credit card debt, I also lost my beloved Persol sunglasses. A vehicle ran over them on set after falling off my camera cart. Christine discovered the cracked case and flattened remains. There’s something comical about the image, but I was genuinely sad. Karmic payback, perhaps: during one of the first nights at the ranch, I accidentally broke Kate Ducey’s eyeglasses by sitting on them at the hot tub.

More from the ranch — and the road — in Part 3.