Ready for another first? Here’s what I cooked up when a fun family asked me to create a family comedy movie for their 25th anniversary. The production turned into a challenge, but the result is nothing boring or ordinary: 16 house traps to harass the burglars! Here’s how I did it.
My blog readers know by now that I’m surfing the wave of “firsts” related to cinematography nowadays. Although I dipped my toes into video possibilities of my professional photo cameras six years ago to cover events such as Mitzvah parties and weddings, the more artistic aspect of videography remained fairly uncharted until this year.
Stepping Up the Event Videography Game
In January, I worked on a breathtaking promo video for a belly dance duet which I legitimately dub “epic”. It was my first performance video.
In March, I filmed my first boudoir music video. Professionally choreographed into a multilayered story and shot for a whole day, it turned out bombastic but, regretfully, had to be kept private for the time being.
And lastly, earlier in May, I did my first impromptu commercial promo video to describe a seemingly mundane process of t-shirt screen printing. It was shot on a Pixel phone, but with proper storytelling, and my professional sound and video editing, received a cinematic feel that made the main character feel like an action “superhero”.
Short of a Hollywood (heck, even The Asylum) production, a family comedy movie could be a gradual next step into filmmaking!
What’s Involved in Filmmaking
These creative projects set the proper ground for true filmmaking that calls for:
- concept identification
- story development
- script writing
- scheduling and logistics
- casting
- props preparation
- scene setups
- dialog creation
- directing
- filming
Afterward, even more time is spent on:
- creatively and seamlessly piecing it all together in post-production
- cleaning up the audio
- adding sound effects
- finding appropriate soundtracks
- cutting and timing the footage to match them
- reworking the audio levels
- adding the final touches of artistic filters
- clip transitions
- subtitles/translations
- designing a title
- collecting end credits
- optionally, putting together bloopers
- designing the video cover and/or a movie poster
- rendering and uploading
And that, peeps, is not a wedding video anymore… This stuff takes a far greater effort and ought to cost more!
Love Story vs. Family Comedy Movie
What is a family comedy movie?
The closest thing to it is “love stories” that some wedding clients commission in place of, or in addition to, engagement photography. Most of you know what an engagement session is—a series of romantic photos from soft to daredevil. Being portraits, those sets rarely have a distinct storyline to develop, although I had striking exceptions like this post-apocalyptic story. So, love stories breathe life into those sessions in a way that they add action. I’ve never done them… (That insane post-apocalyptic session was supposed to be co-filmed as a love story movie, but we had to cut the budget.) Seen a few and heard how they aren’t easy to produce. Now I know why.
The premise of a family comedy movie is similar: write a story, now exaggeratingly funny (although some might still prefer romantic or adventurous), and film it into an entertaining video, now involving new members of the family.
Meet the Stars
So, Ilya approached me a few months ago. His family started an awesome tradition of celebrating their major wedding anniversaries with a creative and fun touch—a family comedy movie.
They had it done for their 10th anniversary! Filmed in Israel 15 years ago, it is heavily inspired by good ol’ Soviet comedies, hugely popular in my childhood. Despite its age and now-outdated effects, I thoroughly enjoyed watching that family comedy movie. It set the bar high with stickiness and a laugh factor.
Eager to finally break into this fun type of filmmaking, I eagerly jumped on the project.
Characters and Background Study
I started off with a request to introduce the family as perspective characters. To find them an appealing and customized concept, I needed to learn their stories and hobbies. Ilya did a great job and sent me a detailed resume for each of the five family members, including the dog.
As with bringing more outfits and props than needed to a creative portrait photoshoot, I couldn’t use all of that data, but here are the leads that caught my attention:
- Ilya: a systems engineer, later a computer network security engineer. Imports Siberian natural honey to the USA, a brand that his wife came up with. Runs several businesses. Ilya’s hobbies include fishing, karaoke, and hockey.
- Zoya: dentist assistant, registered nurse, medical staff manager.
- Tim: taekwondo since elementary school, black belt, instructor assistant, then American football, school team captain. In college: computer engineer. One of the hobbies: poker.
- Nicole: studying for a registered nurse, and works as a medical assistant in cosmetology. Among hobbies: fishing.
- Kristina: loves helping everyone, has an active lifestyle, and is into taekwondo. Hobbies: fishing and games.
- The family has a summer house in Poconos.
Collecting the Concepts
With such inspiring input, I took a few weeks to gather 10 family comedy movie concepts (some are based on the data I did not list above):
- The Great Honey Heist
- Home Alone: Family Edition
- Family Adventure in the Poconos
- Sports Challenge
- The Musical Showdown
- Cooking Challenge
- The Science Experiment
- Karaoke Night
- The Fishing Trip
- Poker Night
Zeroing in on the Concept
I also offered initial scripts for the first two of them. The family picked Home Alone: Family Edition, inspired by the 1990s cult family comedy blockbuster. Everyone was game to have a wild time harassing the house intruders! It wouldn’t be a family comedy movie otherwise!
Next, I offered two script variations around what would make the family get stuck at home.
Lastly, once the final concept was approved by everyone, I decided on three key points:
- What would draw the burglars into their house? — Eavesdropping on Ilya’s chat with his son on securing the massive new crypto assets on a cold wallet by Trezor, hidden somewhere in the house.
- Why would they think that the house was empty for a weekend? — The burglars figured out the pattern of family trips to the countryside and, after watching them pack the night before, mistook an empty driveway, because the broken car was taken to a shop, for a “go” signal.
- How would the family track them inside the house to coordinate setting up the traps? — They had a fake security network to lure and hack the hackers; it secretly monitors the villains.
Oh, the Fun House Traps for the Burglars
I started researching the traps that the family could practically set up. My list grew to over 20 items. These 16 ultimately made the cut to this packed family comedy movie:
- The electric shock on the gate
- Tripwire fireworks
- Taekwondo surprise
- The poker room: glue on chips
- Karaoke machine to play ear-piercing noise
- Slippery the floor of the sauna with honey soap
- Bar: put soap into a bottle
- The filing cabinet in the office to blast confetti
- Rigged the BBQ grill to spray a burst of hot sauce
- Bruno’s poop
- Tripwire in an attic to throw Holi powder
- Honey trap
- Pillow feathers from the fan
- Throwing a football into the head
- Falling into the pool and fishing out from there
- Sleeping injection
As you see, I tried to stuff as much “character” into these traps as possible, collected in the initial stage of character study.
Scheduling and Casting
The initial casting was aimed at three burglars from the older children’s friends. As you may guess, such an insanely fun project wouldn’t lack an appeal and candidates, but scheduling nine people wouldn’t be easy.
We launched the project in early February, targeting our family comedy movie premiere in mid-May for the anniversary party. 3.5 months seemed doable as long as I had at least one month for video editing.
It would have to be a weekend to accommodate the family’s work and school schedules. My winter was unexpectedly busy this year—the aforementioned two music video projects and a huge creative photography project for a gymnastics team of 80 athletes were drawing away the resources. I’d need to find a rare free weekend as I knew I’d need at least two days to film such a project. Tim was swinging between New York and Texas for work, I had most weekends booked up, and a wedding to shoot in Mexico, and the parents had another trip to Israel to make.
With such scheduling challenges and resulting rescheduling, filming couldn’t be done until early May, leaving me only two weeks for editing—an unrealistic feat considering other ongoing projects. Thankfully, their anniversary party had some technical changes preventing from a public showing, anyway. This gave me the much-needed extra few weeks for production after the party.
We also had to adjust the villain cast—the original guys dropped out. Tim’s girlfriend Sasha and his friend Misha took over. I can’t speak for the original cast, but considering that no one is a professional actor, our final couple turned out to be very expressive, talented, and, foremost—tolerant of all the abuse thrown at them! They deserved their Oscars!
Filming and Bloopers
Filming took two days, although the guys thought one should be enough. I was pushing for that, knowing too well how slow the process is. I was happy I did, because, as it turned out, Misha didn’t realize we’d need him all day on Sunday, the second day. He had to leave for work by lunchtime (we thanked him for agreeing to run late), and one scene was shot with his body double—Tim. It was the firecrackers, and you only see Tim’s back turned to the camera.
Another logistical challenge, creating the biggest blooper of this family comedy movie, was having to stretch the filming past the dark hour on Saturday. Again, I had to shoot as many scenes as possible while we had Misha around. Because one of them gets really messy with the sticky honey, Holi powder, and feathers smeared all over them, it needed to be shot last that day, hence the darkness. In the movie script, the action takes daytime only, so if you pay very close attention, you’ll see a lighting disconnect there, as well as the guys getting suddenly clean. However, I feel like the pace builds up so well there, that without knowing this fact, most people will miss the blooper first.
I was the only cameraman on the crew and only used one camera. The varying angles you see were achieved through different takes. All assistance was kindly provided by the enthusiastic family members.
During the editing of the football throwing scene, it struck me that Tim would have looked cooler wearing American football gear. Going back to reshoot the scene wasn’t feasible for me, so I asked them to do it on their phone. There was no such gear in the house, so they used a hockey alternative, which also strikes the cord with another family hobby!
Film Editing
As outlined above, an even more involving and tedious stage follows the filming, and it takes multitudes of time and effort. By a fair estimate, editing this family comedy movie took 10 times longer than filming, hour-wise. Here’s the beauty of my editing interface on a super wide monitor, the bones, if you will.
I won’t bore you with the long and complex technicalities of Premier Pro video editing in 4K. Just want to share a few additional resources that you may find useful. I found all my soundtracks on Free Stock Music and sound effects on Pixabay. For the title, end credits, and transition effects, I used VideoHive FX Presets and a bit of Canva. Voiceover was generated in Animaker Voice.
I was modest on the special effects as there was no budget for those or for the cooler ones. The basic electric lightning animation was created in Premier Pro.
Disclaimers
Going back to the bloopers, this family comedy movie is really, really not a serious project in its essence. I mean, the production is sober, and the goal was to commemorate the family as a tight, cohesive unit—undefeatable, collaborating, and supportive of each other. However, the point of the project was to have a load of fun filming, and long years of giggles to follow.
We didn’t have enough time to shoot, so I cut corners here and there. We didn’t have time to reshoot scenes as a proper film production would ensue upon the first round of editing and piecing together. These two points would result in higher costs, and for a family comedy movie, budget priorities are different from a commercial blockbuster.
Lastly, this is by no means the valid, working instructions on how to set up the pranks, booby traps, tripwires, etc. Most of the things we illustrated would not work as shown! Don’t even bother criticizing and explaining how to set them up “properly”.
Over to You! (If There’s a Budget)
Are you as adventurous and fun? Would you dare to take on such a family comedy movie creative project? I tried to highlight the challenges and processes involved for you to decide. Not the least of the factors is budget, of course, and I’d like to be upfront: this is expensive!
The daily rate of any filmmaker like me, just for shooting, is over a grand, so a big project like this family comedy movie would be at least a few thousand for filming. As you probably realized by now, filming alone is not even half of the effort! With all the required preparation and post-production that takes months, be prepared to shell out $3-5K, and even more for the elaborate movies.
Yes, not cheap, but to some families, it could be an attractive alternative to yet another anniversary party for the same money, of which little memories will last as long as an offbeat visual creation for generations to enjoy, marvel at, and giggle at.
DIY Family Comedy Movie (If There’s No Budget)
Alternatively, I encourage you to give your own family comedy movie a try, even as a DIY project, if there is no budget. Let nothing stop you. This is a must-have bonding experience like no other, especially with curious kids and grumpy teens!
You can use your phone to film. The latest ones, like my Pixel Pro 7, sport video stabilization, so you don’t even have to use a mobile gimbal (they aren’t too expensive, by the way).
Use the resources I mentioned earlier for post-production. Instead of professional Premier Pro software, a consumer mobile app like InShot will give you the basics for transitions, trimming, speed, audio mixing, animation, text, and special effects. The outcome may not be as clean and polished, but you won’t spend thousands.
You just need to tap into your creative potential to come up with a concept and write your catchy script. Involving your kids will be fantastic throughout the project! They can contribute fun ideas and rad script concepts, they’ll think that you’re the coolest parents ever, they’ll have a blast filming and acting, and the older ones could even have a kick out of video editing, either lending their TikTok skills or learning new tricks for that! How cool is that!
And, if all fails or you still prefer the quality of a family comedy movie below, there is also a professional backup option with a solid set of skills, tools, directing, and dedication, right?
Now, enjoy the show!
Credits
Starring: Ilya Marder, Zoya Marder, Tim Marder, Nicole Marder, Kristina Marder, Alexandra Livshits, Michael Shamilov, Bruno Marder (the dog)
Director, screenplay, camera, video editing: Ed Hafizov of Zorz Studios
Sound and special effects: Premier Pro, Videohive Fx Presets, Pixabay, Animaker Voice, Canva
Bitcoin and crypto security: Trezor Hardware Wallet
Siberian premium honey: Eltech Trade
Location: The Marders Residence by Eltech Development
Soundtracks: Free Stock Music
- Back to Work Again by TeknoAXE | http://teknoaxe.com
Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ - Escape Velocity by Scott Buckley | https://soundcloud.com/scottbuckley
Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ - Goblin Slayer by Deoxys Beats | https://soundcloud.com/deoxysbeats1
Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US - Hall of the Mountain King by Kevin MacLeod | Edvard Grieg | http://incompetech.com
Creative Commons / Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ - Nostalgic Marshmallows by Arthur Vyncke | https://soundcloud.com/arthurvost
Creative Commons / Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en_US
Behind the Scenes
I made them part of the video, placing them after the end credits. Will not post here. They are fun like me almost peeing my pants when scared by an unexpected fireworks explosion.
