STFU: A Film.
I'll link here to the Quicktime file when I get a link from Adam or Scott. (Not sure who ended up with the final edit.)
So, making a movie thing. Some things were easier than I expected.
1. Getting into the library with our equipment was a breeze. The security guard didn't blink when we came in, and we were able to get our shots in both the quiet study room and the stacks without raising any eyebrows. Or, at least, we didn't raise them too high. (The light kit did trigger the theft alarm on the way out, but the guard waved us through, saying, "It's just all those wires.")
2. Actually, the entire shooting process was relatively easy. We were done in 6 hours or so, and that includes leisurely brunch at Dojo. Some of the shots had lengthy set-ups, mostly those we did early in the day before we ran out of energy (the final whimpering scene, the shot of Tom running that leads up to that, etc.).
3. Tom was a great actor. He shed his nervousness after one or two takes and really dug in thereafter. I know I would have required about twice as much time to get over my self-consciousness and inhibitions and general unwillingness to make a fool out of myself in public. You can see that even my turn as the pen tapper was pretty stilted.
4. We ended up with a lot of good material for editing, mainly thanks to the fact that Scott brought a second camera. Having two angles for every shot made it easier to stitch things together when we were editing.
5. When we added the buzzing insect sound effect to the rough edit, it was magical—it was as if a fly appeared out of nowhere. Tom did a good job of selling it, yes, but after we added the sound effect you could swear that there was actually a bug in the room with him.
Some things were a lot more difficult than I expected.
1. Editing. Adam did most of the heavy lifting here (including logging the clips) and we were all thankful for his deft Final Cut Pro skills. But what an exhausting process! Even just ordering and cutting the clips would have been a load of work, but throw in color correction, mixing and synching audio, cropping unwanted cameramen/mics out of scenes, adding titles, etc. and you're looking at a baffling amount of work. You'd figure it would take more time to shoot than to edit, but you'd be wrong (at least in our case).
2. Despite our best efforts, we didn't get all the shots we needed. Adam made a shot list, and we had the storyboard on hand, but for some reason we didn't get Tom pulling his hair out in the quiet study room, or some similar shot that shows building anger and annoyance that might lead to his eventual breakdown. Our solution was to cut back and forth between the stairs scene and close-ups of the annoyances (pen, gum, bug), all while a heartbeat sound effect plays, getting louder and faster. I think this solution succeeds, by and large.