A man murders his wife and has to rush to get rid of her body before morning, but he hits a few bumps along the way.
To the Happy Couple was the final project for my Production class. The only requirement was the exclusion of dialogue, no spoken words. The project focused on cinematic skill and the ability to convey a story through visuals.
Pre-Production
With a little over a month to complete this project, I was in a rush to brainstorm. It was a struggle to conceptualize a simple story that didn’t require dialogue. I took inspiration from one of my favorite albums, Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory by Dream Theater. The story features a wife and husband killed by her lover, who then frames the husband for the crime. I wanted to try a horror/comedy where a husband has trouble disposing of his wife’s body and tries various solutions that make things worse.
The plus side was that I purposely wrote for only two actors (three, if you count the role I play right at the end). I knew my friend, Erik, was available and eager to star in it, and I could have my sister play the dead wife. I knew Erik would be able to take direction well to get what I wanted out of this while offering his own take on acting like a murderous husband. Once I sorted out what I could film and put it in the script, I coordinated with both of their schedules to shoot everything in two days.
Production
The first day of filming was spent in my house, splattering fake blood on my sister’s crappy clothes and my white-tiled kitchen. The biggest challenge was making quick, non-staining phony blood. Mixing ketchup, red velvet cake batter and some dish soap seemed to do the trick. It was perfect for looking good on camera while being thick and palpable, the way I like blood to look. Realism didn’t matter much to me. I wanted the blood to be disgusting, like a thick sludge leaking from a pipe.
We shot everything in sequence, so I didn’t have to stress too much about continuity. I knew my sister would have to get wet, so that would naturally happen last. Erik was all for literally dragging my sister across the floor. I knew I wanted a jarring look for the over-the-shoulder shot of him, so I had some shakiness to the handheld motion. This would make a ‘bad’ stabilization effect in post-production, later on.
Putting her in the tub was hard because I needed it to look like the husband was trying (yet failing) to dissolve her in acid à la in that one scene from Breaking Bad. We put some make-up on to make her look rotting and not-at-all dissolving, which helped keep up that urgency of getting rid of the body before it was too late.
The next day, we drove to Plumb Beach, the most isolated location I could think of, to pretend to bury a body. It’s off the highway and isn’t a very well-kept beach area, so it had that seedy vibe. We filmed my mom driving the car into the spot because A) she had much better skill as a driver to line it up with the camera neatly, and B) she was worried Erik would accidentally crash the car.
Filming on the sandy dune-covered area wasn’t terrible. It made for an interesting look as Erik actually dug into the ground to pretend to bury my sister. I was more worried that an audience wouldn’t understand just through visuals that both guys were in similar situations (burying their dead wives) and joining forces.
Fun note: in the final shot, where two body bags are shown, my sister actually got into a suit bag while the other one was stuffed with pillows. We didn’t have enough pillows to fill up both bags, so she (reluctantly) got into the bag and lay motionless on the sand. All this had to be done before nightfall because I didn’t have any lights. I wanted to get as close to darkness as possible to avoid harsh shadows or sunlight on Erik or myself.
Post-Production
This was one of the first projects that I got to edit in Premiere Pro (I had painstakingly used Windows Movie Maker for past work). It was fun learning as I went, trimming footage and figuring out which takes to go with. A few shots that were handheld needed stabilization, which took a trick and a half. Some wonky stabilization gave me this great, jarring effect for when Erik drags my sister across the kitchen floor. It had that manic feeling to it, like something from an old horror movie in the ’40s.
Color correcting was difficult for me, but I think I did a decent job. The quality of the video was decent, especially from a DSLR that we hadn’t really bought to capture cinematic-quality footage. I think the compression and the lighting conditions really affected the grain of it all. But at night, I knew I was gonna give it the classic blue tint, both to deal with the fact that we shot day-for-night and to give that really cold, chilling vibe.
I used free-stock music for the sound. Originally, I used the song My Mind Rebels at Stagnation by Hans Zimmer, which fit the quirkiness and comedy of the ending scene much better. Unfortunately, YouTube copyright prevented that, so, in the version I put on YouTube, I used a different song that was more acoustic and melancholy. This changed the whole feeling of the scene, but I think still got the intention across. It became more like an acceptance, which shifted the whole comedic tone I was going for.
I guess it couldn’t really be called a horror/’comedy,’ but I still think my execution was pretty well done. I hope to redo it with an actual budget and a different crack at the script itself; definitely tell a more coherent story with diegetic sound and some dialogue and make it more of an acting piece.