HOW WE MADE THE LENNOX REPORT

Steve and Amanda Bright

The Lennox Report was both inspired by, and made possible by, the Coronavirus pandemic and the national lockdown it precipitated in the UK. We were stuck at home with no work (our respective professions, photography and acting, had been completely put on pause by the lockdown) and were looking for a creative outlet. We had come up with many ideas for short films before but often got stuck on the issue of logistics, if you write a crowd scene, a scene in a busy cafe or even one on a bus it becomes very complicated and expensive to shoot it. Even the challenge of getting several actors together at the same place and the same time, for free, is often insurmountable.

Writing a story set during lockdown solved so many of these issues. Everyone is stuck at home on their own, communicating over video chat, so we could set our film in the world of one character, Kayla (played by Amanda), and only see the other characters as she does, on her laptop screen. We could record actual zoom conversations and use these videos to make the conversations that Kayla has. The problems of getting hold of actors were much reduced, since no one was working very much, and rather than asking people to come to a location and give up a day or more of their time we could record them sitting at home on their laptop for a couple of hours and then they were done.

Writing

From the start, Amanda was clear that she wanted her writing to reflect the world around her - the fears and anxieties that arose as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic and lockdown. She also wanted to reference the conversations she was having at the time with close friends and family about the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, a very difficult and emotional time when it felt like the Black community globally was experiencing trauma and grief.

Amanda had so many difficult feelings swirling around in her head that writing The Lennox Report became a cathartic act of self-care - getting these emotions out and onto the page, creating a story of Black joy for these difficult times.

Casting

This was the most nerve-racking part of the process! We knew exactly who we wanted for the roles - Amanda had written the characters with specific people in mind - but we had no idea whether they’d be interested in the script or would be willing to donate their time on a short film with zero budget. A few of the cast were friends, some were actors Amanda had worked with once many moons ago and a couple of people Amanda knew through mutual friends. After some very nervous phone calls, we sent out the script and were thrilled when everyone said yes. We even managed to secure Marilyn O’Brien as assistant director on the film!

Pre Production

As a photographer and director the thought of making the whole film on Zoom did not appeal to me, it’s very static and doesn’t allow for much editing, and it’s difficult to make the images look nice as you’re filming through a tiny laptop webcam. We decided to film Kayla’s end of all the scenes with actual cameras, as well as through her laptop, which then meant that we could cut between the ‘real’ world and the world of the laptop screen. We built sets and dressed rooms in our home to act as Kayla’s house, and lit all the scenes with Nanlite LED Forza 60 and Forza 500 film lights, which enabled us to give things a more filmic look. All of Amanda’s scenes were filmed on 2 cameras, a Sony A7Riii and a Sony A7Riv, using G Master 24-70 and 70-200 lenses, and sound was recorded using a Rode shotgun mic recording into a Zoom H4N sound recorder.

For our other cast members we were happy to film actual Zoom footage through their webcams, to give an authentic online look, but we wanted the sound to be as good as possible and so we sent ‘care packages’ out to all the cast with a small LED panel to enhance their lighting and an A10-TX-C mic pack (a tiny lapel mic attached to a recording pack which would start recording as soon as they turned it on) to record their sound.

Filming

Our amazing production co-ordinator Laura, who was in lockdown in Canada at the time, arranged all the schedules and maintained various spreadsheets so that we could keep track of all the logistics, and once we’d arranged times when most of the actors in any given scene could be there we filmed our scenes by sending out Zoom invitations to the cast and having everyone ‘pin’ one other person’s video and record the conversation, so we ended up with a series of individual recordings, full screen, of each person. We then worked through the scenes with everyone recording their own sound and the zoom chat, and at our end I filmed Amanda with two cameras on tripods, monitored the sound, and directed the actors, having also built and lit the set beforehand! It was a great reminder of why you usually have a full crew of dozens of people working on a film, doing it solo was hard work! Our assistant director Marilyn O’Brien read in for anyone that couldn’t be there as well as giving notes and helping me with directing the actors.

Post production

All of the various zoom footage was then emailed to us by the actors, and when we got the mic packs back we downloaded the audio as well. This was all then organised and the editing process began. This turned out to be a bit of a mammoth task, since for a scene with 5 people, for instance, we had 5 Zoom videos, 4 mic pack recordings, 2 camera angles and the shotgun mic recording. These all needed to be synced up before I could start to cut the scene between the laptop screen view (I designed a Zoom-esque video chat interface called Whoosh in Photoshop that we could drop all the zoom videos into) and the 2 camera angles from the Sony cameras.

Once I’d built a rough edit we recorded lots of additional foley sound (trackpad clicks, crunching crisps) and a few bits of ADR, and also began work with our two composers, Alex Kennard, who wrote and performed the brilliant NSYNC-like song that appears in the film, and Victor Chaga, who wrote and performed the amazing score for the whole film. Having the music in place inspired a few final editing tweaks and then once we were happy we sent an ungraded version of the final cut to colorist Rebecca Goodeve to work her magic on. This was the final stage before releasing the film.

The whole process was a steep learning curve and a massive problem solving exercise, but working with so many talented and generous professionals was a real priviledge and we’re very proud of what we’ve acheived on a micro budget and during a national lockdown!

BEHIND THE SCENES