The producers/directors tried to maximise production value while keeping costs down by betting on a story that would take advantage of some interesting resources that they could only secure for a short time period: machinegun replicas (used in airsoft) and army combat equipment. It naturally followed that the setting would be a war.
THE TRENCH
Due to the high costs of recreating a realistic battlefield in an open space, it was decided that the bulk of the action should take place inside a trench. The reasoning was that within a confined setting as such it was possible to concentrate the very limited resources while having better control over the filmic space.
As displacing equipment and crew would be costly, it was necessary to find a workable hole in the vicinities that could be made to look like a trench. Some promising candidates were found but ultimately they all proved to be impractical choices when it came to road access and proximity to electrical outlets (there are no generators in zero-budget).
It was eventually concluded that the only option was to build a trench from scratch, in a field close to one of the producers house. In normal circumstances the producers would have tried to negotiate for an excavator to dig the hole, but there was no time for that: the access to the cool guns and combat equipment was restricted to the following weekend and it was Tuesday already.
So they sighed, shrugged and got their hands on a couple of spades. For 4 strenuous days they would dig from sunrise to sunset. In the evening they would build props, plan the storyline and create a schedule.
And on the 5th day, they would summon all their friends for cast and crew and they would shoot a film.
The spades were old, the ground hard and the hole needed to be big: they wanted it 20 meters long, 1 meter wide, 1.5 meters deep.
It was dug with a special geometry designed to conceal its real length. The goal was to get away unnoticed by the audience while recycling the same areas over and over again. Obviously, this would require using close shots for most of the sequence.
PREPARING THE SHOOT
On the evening of the 4th day they concluded the set dressing and went to buy envelopes and paper, since this was a requirement of the story, which was only now gaining form. They spent the entire night producing fake blood using an ultra secret and ultra cheap recipe; burning wood so they could fill buckets with ashes for special effects; improvising a steadicam out of a bicycle stand for the extremely small and unstable Sony handycam they would be filming with; and creating a well thought-out shotlist with the aid of a model trench made with Legos. After 4 days of digging they were knackered. But the shotlist was crucial. It was imperative that the shoot was rigorously organised and planned out. They had one single day to get it all, so mistakes and fooling around were not allowed. In that crucial Sunday, they would gather all their people and resources to make some magic happen. The pressure was on.
Of course, this meant spending all night tweaking every single detail and going to bed at 5 am. Only to get up for the shoot no more than a couple of hours later.
SHOOTING THE TRENCH SEQUENCE
All bets were off, it was show time.
The shoot was intense, fast-paced, stressful and extremely rewarding. The planning paid out beautifully and everything ran like an oiled machine.
Unfortunately, the borrowed smoke machine they were meant to get for the entire day only arrived in the late afternoon and as such some helpers had to spend a good part of their day making and putting out fires in metal buckets in order to generate a feeble smoke. This was a safety hazard not to repeat, as some actors almost caught fire during takes, from standing too close to the smoke and consequently to the flames.
The shoot stretched on until nighttime, but they got everything that was needed.
The fading of the daylight called the wrap which only meant burying the entire hole and destroying all evidence that it ever existed by the end of the 6th day an inattentive passer-by would never suspect that only 24 hours before he would be walking past a war trench.
SHOOTING THE MILITARY BASE SEQUENCE
A couple of weeks later the producers borrowed the facilities of the Social and Cultural Association of Almancil (ASCA) for the military base. Less people to coordinate but much more complex camera moves, lighting and continuity issues. They got a fancy local restaurant to offer them a steak dish and a bottle of wine and also borrowed some of their cutlery for the scene in the canteen.
POST-PRODUCTION
The directors edited the film together, but Patrício Faísca was the sole responsible for the films sound mixing, colour grading, visual effects and compositing.
Using sound effects libraries it was possible to add a dense soundscape of detonations, gun fire and the overall confusion and chaos of a battlefield to the footage. Live effects libraries were used to paste explosions, gun flares and blood/dirt splashes into the picture, increasing its realism.
MUSIC
All the music used in the film and in related contents was written and performed by Sonat Duyar in a Roland RD700-SX electronic piano.
***
...and thus Command was made with a total cost of 27.5, spent on ingredients to make fake blood, envelopes and barbed-wire. Everything else was borrowed, and both cast and crew were friends working voluntarily.
THE TRENCH
Due to the high costs of recreating a realistic battlefield in an open space, it was decided that the bulk of the action should take place inside a trench. The reasoning was that within a confined setting as such it was possible to concentrate the very limited resources while having better control over the filmic space.
As displacing equipment and crew would be costly, it was necessary to find a workable hole in the vicinities that could be made to look like a trench. Some promising candidates were found but ultimately they all proved to be impractical choices when it came to road access and proximity to electrical outlets (there are no generators in zero-budget).
It was eventually concluded that the only option was to build a trench from scratch, in a field close to one of the producers house. In normal circumstances the producers would have tried to negotiate for an excavator to dig the hole, but there was no time for that: the access to the cool guns and combat equipment was restricted to the following weekend and it was Tuesday already.
So they sighed, shrugged and got their hands on a couple of spades. For 4 strenuous days they would dig from sunrise to sunset. In the evening they would build props, plan the storyline and create a schedule.
And on the 5th day, they would summon all their friends for cast and crew and they would shoot a film.
The spades were old, the ground hard and the hole needed to be big: they wanted it 20 meters long, 1 meter wide, 1.5 meters deep.
It was dug with a special geometry designed to conceal its real length. The goal was to get away unnoticed by the audience while recycling the same areas over and over again. Obviously, this would require using close shots for most of the sequence.
PREPARING THE SHOOT
On the evening of the 4th day they concluded the set dressing and went to buy envelopes and paper, since this was a requirement of the story, which was only now gaining form. They spent the entire night producing fake blood using an ultra secret and ultra cheap recipe; burning wood so they could fill buckets with ashes for special effects; improvising a steadicam out of a bicycle stand for the extremely small and unstable Sony handycam they would be filming with; and creating a well thought-out shotlist with the aid of a model trench made with Legos. After 4 days of digging they were knackered. But the shotlist was crucial. It was imperative that the shoot was rigorously organised and planned out. They had one single day to get it all, so mistakes and fooling around were not allowed. In that crucial Sunday, they would gather all their people and resources to make some magic happen. The pressure was on.
Of course, this meant spending all night tweaking every single detail and going to bed at 5 am. Only to get up for the shoot no more than a couple of hours later.
SHOOTING THE TRENCH SEQUENCE
All bets were off, it was show time.
The shoot was intense, fast-paced, stressful and extremely rewarding. The planning paid out beautifully and everything ran like an oiled machine.
Unfortunately, the borrowed smoke machine they were meant to get for the entire day only arrived in the late afternoon and as such some helpers had to spend a good part of their day making and putting out fires in metal buckets in order to generate a feeble smoke. This was a safety hazard not to repeat, as some actors almost caught fire during takes, from standing too close to the smoke and consequently to the flames.
The shoot stretched on until nighttime, but they got everything that was needed.
The fading of the daylight called the wrap which only meant burying the entire hole and destroying all evidence that it ever existed by the end of the 6th day an inattentive passer-by would never suspect that only 24 hours before he would be walking past a war trench.
SHOOTING THE MILITARY BASE SEQUENCE
A couple of weeks later the producers borrowed the facilities of the Social and Cultural Association of Almancil (ASCA) for the military base. Less people to coordinate but much more complex camera moves, lighting and continuity issues. They got a fancy local restaurant to offer them a steak dish and a bottle of wine and also borrowed some of their cutlery for the scene in the canteen.
POST-PRODUCTION
The directors edited the film together, but Patrício Faísca was the sole responsible for the films sound mixing, colour grading, visual effects and compositing.
Using sound effects libraries it was possible to add a dense soundscape of detonations, gun fire and the overall confusion and chaos of a battlefield to the footage. Live effects libraries were used to paste explosions, gun flares and blood/dirt splashes into the picture, increasing its realism.
MUSIC
All the music used in the film and in related contents was written and performed by Sonat Duyar in a Roland RD700-SX electronic piano.
***
...and thus Command was made with a total cost of 27.5, spent on ingredients to make fake blood, envelopes and barbed-wire. Everything else was borrowed, and both cast and crew were friends working voluntarily.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content