Brian Vowles’ “Robot Attack” (2018) demonstrated that visual effects can play a significant role in mobile moviemaking. Now, with “Gary,” the Canadian animator takes mobile VFX to a higher level both technically and narratively. What makes this horror comedy work so well is the total integration of story and visuals. And we should not overlook the excellent performances of Vowles’ cast, which consists of his two sons, his wife, and…himself. The director takes us behind the scenes of the production (below).
“Gary” is an entry in the My RØDE Reel Short Film Competition. If you like the movie, feel free to vote for it.
Brian Vowles on the Making of “Gary”
I wasn’t going to enter the My RØDE Reel Short Film Competition because I had already missed a couple of weeks of it. However, I was talking with a buddy one night, and I told him about the contest and my idea for “Gary.”
He was laughing pretty hard and he said “You gotta do it”…… Sometimes you get an idea in your head that seems funny, but then you think about it so much that you don’t even know if it’s funny anymore. His reaction reminded me that the concept could still work and so I literally got started the next day.
The Cast
The kids have been wanting to make another short for a while so it was fun to get the band back together……… and it was really nice to get Mom involved with this one. Although she helped a lot with “Robot Attack” and “Run,” she never wanted to be in front of the camera. But “Gary” was a family story, and so for this one she had to. She did awesome….
The Idea
I had the idea for a long time, but the original was a way darker movie. My kids are really getting into horror movies now I thought it would be fun to do our own. I love “Gremlins,” and that’s kind of how I originally pictured it: “Gremlins” but shot in the format of a
Dodo video. A creature starts out sweet but turns on the people that saved it.
But, 2020 was such a bummer for so many people, and it didn’t feel right. The world is too bummed right now to watch a family get torn apart by some creature, myself included. I just felt like making something totally ridiculous and goofy. The Dodo videos are popular because they are bite sized, feel good stories that cheer you up in the middle of the day. So that’s what I aimed for instead.
The Script
My original script had way more stuff in it, but having to keep it under three minutes for the competition made it a better short. The script had this whole scene where we found him in the forest and that was replaced with one line of me saying, “We found him in the forest” and showing him in the box. It was far more effective at telling the same amount of story in way less time.
The Production
I only had five weeks to put it together. Because I have a day job, the deadline was really tight. I would finish work….. eat dinner…… and then come back down and get started. It was a lot of late nights and I’m glad it’s over. I think contests and deadlines are good. It’s a nice way to motivate you to get things done. If there was no deadline I would probably be tweaking and poking around on this for another six months…..if I even started it at all.
Everything was shot with my iPhone XR using
Filmic Pro and my
Rode VideoMic Go. I shot it with the 2:1 Preset at 2K – 2048 by 930.
I picked up a really nice little Ulanzi cage for the iPhone and that was great especially for the mic.
I really wanted to use my Moondog Lens for this but it didn’t feel right. I wanted it to have a Dodo feel and most of those look like they are just filmed by regular people holding iPhones, not “filmmakers” trying to compose shots. So I tried to meet somewhere in the middle. A slightly more Cinematic – Dodo video.
I did toy with the idea of shooting it all vertically but I’m not sure that would have worked in a film competition. I only did the “Dog Blanket” scene vertically because it fit….. That was a recent viral video and I think most people were used to seeing that play out vertically. It also lends to the comedy of that scene and made Gary seem a bit more real.
Gary’s Voice
Our Pug Lewis provided all of the audio for Gary. Lewis makes tons of horrifying noises, and if you hear him playing in another room sometimes he can sound like a really vicious creature. He can have very throaty growls and snorts, but they don’t sound like they are coming from a big dog. It was prefect for Gary.
Animation
I didn’t have a lot of time for animating Gary and so I had to be creative with the shots. By the time I got to animation I only had about two weeks left and there were 13 shots to do so I had to do more then a shot a day to finish on time.
The first few scenes when he’s not really moving was half story and half necessity. I had to pick the battles with the heavy animation shots or wasn’t going to finish on time. The blanket shot took about ten hours and the hardest shot was the “Walking Gary.” That took about 15 hours to animate because he took a lot of steps and I had to animate the collar and his leash.
Legal Lesson
On the night before I was going to submit- I double checked the contests “Terms and Conditions” and made a horrifying discovery: “…. you can’t show any logos that you don’t have written permission to use”
I was pretty sure I would never get permission from Adidas, Amazon, Hurley, or Volcom….. especially in less then 24 hours. So I had to go back into all those shots and try to erase them before the deadline. I had to hide the logo on my hat. Blur the Adidas logo on Brandon’s shirt. Cover the “Hurley” on Dylan’s shirt and blur the Amazon logo on Gary’s box. It was awful. I couldn’t go to sleep until they were all done because it had to get submitted the next day. That was a painful, stress full all-nighter. Hopefully people don’t notice those fixes on the first viewing, but they will on the second.
Lesson learned…… Never have name brand logos appearing in your no-budget short.
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The editors of MobileMovieMaking have chosen “Gary” as the Mobile Movie of the Week.”
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