Lights, Camera, Witchcraft: Filming a Mini-Documentary

For the past few weeks, I’ve been creating a mini-documentary about the use of spectral evidence in the Salem Witch Trials, entitled Whispers from Salem. Since I will be completing this entire project in seven weeks, I worked primarily on pre-production and planning for the first three weeks. Last week was week four, so I wrote a rough draft and edited the script until I had a (semi) final draft. I will be filming and recording audio for the project this week and next week. Then, the final week is reserved for post-production and editing.

One of the more challenging aspects of filming new footage for this documentary was finding period-appropriate costumes and props. Of course, there is usually a Party City in metropolitan areas, but they don’t always have the best historic costume options. There is an Ehrle’s Party Supply in Tulsa, OK, with several costume choices, but many of these costumes are only available in child sizes or limited adult options. For this project, I needed at least one girl’s or women’s and one men’s New England Puritan attire. 

In my search at Ehrle’s, I found “Pilgrim Man” and “British Red Coat” costumes for the men’s options. However, there were more options for “Colonial Boy,” “Pilgrim Boy,” etc., in boy’s sizes. Since the men’s sizing was non-negotiable, I chose the “Pilgrim Man” costume. 

Since I would be the person dressing for most of the girl’s and women’s roles, either smaller adult sizes or large children’s sizes would suffice. For women, Ehrle’s offered a few choices like “Pilgrim Woman,” “Colonial Woman,” and “Martha Washington.” The girl’s section, however, had several more options, repeating some of the same costumes but also including more. Nonetheless, the “Colonial” costumes were too brightly colored for Puritan fashion, but the “Pilgrim” costumes were somewhat close to Puritan clothing. However, the women’s costumes were only available in sizes larger than an adult medium (sizes 6 to 8), and the girl’s costumes were smaller than a child medium (sizes 10 to 12). Therefore, I opted for the girl’s medium and hoped it would fit well enough for the video footage. 

I began recording on Wednesday evening with footage of Thomas Putnam standing behind Annie Putnam as she points to the camera. I also shot some video of Thomas Putnam writing a letter, but the footage didn’t turn out well. I was traveling on Thursday morning, so I created a shot list, wrote my second production journal, and started a recording log. 

I made a shot list template for a previous project, so my headings include shot number, interior or exterior shot, location, camera angle, camera movement, audio recording, subject, and description. (I also include an act and scene number in the template for projects with acts and scenes.) Using my pre-production script from last week, I copied the sequences I needed to film into my shot list template. Then, I added shot numbers for each sequence and planned out other shot details, such as location, camera angle, and camera movement. 

I started a recording log for this project during a layover between flights on Thursday morning. I also had a recording log template from a previous project, so I used the template for a new log. The recording log includes the edited file name, raw file, scene and take numbers, recording location, recording date, footage length, whether it will be used in the final video, and description. I filled out the information for the first two recordings.

Also, I edited the footage of Annie Putnam pointing at the camera to seem “creepy” during my layover. To do this, I added an exposure shift to brighten a video clip, followed by a darkened clip. Then, after a second of normal footage, I added a second brightened video clip. This video edit was for practice with Adobe Premiere Pro, not for this project. 

On Friday, I filmed several takes of a girl running down a hallway, someone (sort of) performing astral projection, and the performer standing up from a seated position. Since I kept the camera rolling for multiple takes, I went back to clip the footage down to usable takes. Then, I added these takes to my recording log.

For a sequence of girls running down a hallway, I wanted to clip together one video of a girl running with a separate video of a girl running to make it appear as if there were two girls. First, I tried creating a mask in Premiere Pro to hide parts of the overlapping video, but this introduced strange lines and uneven shadows in the footage. Then, I tried selecting and masking each frame of the overlapping video in Photoshop, but this made the second girl appear as if she were floating slightly above the floor. I will continue playing with these effects until I find something satisfactory or involve another person. 

On Saturday morning, I filmed an egg dropping into a glass of water and an eggshell falling on the floor. The eggshell falling didn’t turn out spectacular, but I initially wanted a glass to fall and break on the ground. I also added these clips to my recording log. Finally, I began testing audio and recorded a few attempts at the script.