By Randi Altman

Audio post pro and Silver Sound Studio owner Cory Choy recently directed and produced the indie film Esme, My Love, which he co-wrote with scriptwriter Laura Allen. Choy came up with a rough outline, plot points, characters and backstories, and Allen helped him mold it into what it is today… a psychological thriller/mystery that is now streaming on Prime Video, Google Play, Tubi and Vudu.

Director Cory Choy having fun on set with co-writer Laura Allen.

The film follows Hannah, who notices the symptoms of a terminal and painful illness in her aloof daughter, Esme. She decides to take her on a trip to their abandoned family farm in a desperate attempt to connect before they have to say goodbye.

To capture the film’s authentic feel, “Laura and I went up to the location in Hauge, New York — and specifically the DeLarm family farm — and walked around the property and talked to the town historian. We stayed in the area overnight and really took it all in. Then Laura wrote the first draft of the screenplay, and we revised together.

We reached out to Choy to talk about making the film. DP Fletcher Wolfe answered some questions as well. Her section appears after Choy’s.

What was the film shot on, and how did you work with your DP, Fletcher?
Fletcher brings so much to the table because of her attention to detail, her laserlike focus on prep and her many years as a gaffer/lighting technician. Fletcher is a true director of photography in that she knows lighting inside and out, and she knows how to effectively run the camera department… and even grip and electrical G&E, should she need to. We shot the film on a combination of ARRI Alexa Mini and Canon C200 RAW with Cooke Panchro Classic primes and Canon Cinema zooms.

What about the lighting setups? Was it mostly natural light?
There were very few lights in this movie. Outdoors was almost all natural light, with a good amount of reflectors and flags — again, a testament to Fletcher’s experience and artistry. Even the shots where there were lights, they were pretty minimal (night for night and interiors).

How long was the shoot?
This was an extremely low-budget film; we only had a $90,000 shooting budget, so we had to be as efficient as possible. We shot on location in Hague, with 13 days of principal photography, two planned pick-up days at Bravo Studios in NYC, and one unplanned pick-up day at a pool in Fletcher’s friend’s parents’ backyard.

How did you and Fletcher work with the colorist? How did you describe the look you wanted?
Tom Younghans was the colorist, and we were really fortunate to work with him. He not only colored the film using DaVinci Resolve, but he also has a lot of experience with conform. Without Tom’s expertise, dedication and time, we would never have been able to get such a nice conform and color. Even though this was, I believe, his first feature film, he really put in the time and effort to make it what we wanted it to be.

I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted the movie to feel — my biggest look/visual reference being The Tree of Life. I wanted it to have a filmic and dreaminess to it. So our plan of attack was to first have Tom go through and even things out to the best of his ability, then dial in the look of the grain and then go in scene by scene to tweak.

Any examples of notes you had for Tom?
I wanted outdoors to feel real and nostalgic, and often this meant making night scenes darker and daylight scenes brighter. There were times when the sky wasn’t cooperative, and Tom did a great job turning some pretty dull skies slightly more vibrant and blue.

I was with Tom for most of the color process.

Let’s talk editing. How often were you looking at cuts?
It was an extremely long editing process for several reasons, and I worked with several different editors before I was able to land on Emrys Eller and Ellie Gravitte, who ended up being the main editors on the film. Once I was with the right team, I would check in on individual scenes with them once or twice a week.

Let’s talk pace. It’s definitely spooky. How did the editors tackle that, and what guidance did you provide?
This movie is a slow burn until it isn’t, if that makes sense. Once it hits, it really takes off. Oftentimes, pacing was dictated by a combination of our shooting style and the emotional content of the scene. Many scenes in the first act feature very long, static takes. (Old Joy was one of my inspirations.) But when we started to get to the internal frenetic state of some of the characters and memory and time, we moved to more and more shots, and therefore more cuts per scene.

One of the most difficult stages to get to was a full assembly of the film. For whatever reason that eluded me and my editors for a long time. One of the crucial scenes was actually written in editing by one of my editors, Emrys, and I have to say that it was the linchpin that really brought it all together. It was the baptism scene. After figuring out that scene, the rest of the movie finally fell into place.

After we actually got to a full assembly and rough cut, we then mainly focused on trimming the fat. I had both Ellie and Emrys go through individually and be as ruthless as possible, removing every single scene they didn’t think we needed. And it was funny because each of them chose different scenes to remove. I looked at each of their choices and kept the cuts that I thought made the most sense. Ironically, we ended up cutting some of the best performances and two of my absolute favorite scenes. That kind of broke my heart. But in the end, the movie was better as a whole without them – and I got to keep them in my “deleted scenes” bonus on the DVD.

You wore a few hats on this film. Can you talk about that?
I think one of the things that was most difficult about this film is that I was not just wearing my director hat. I was also the main producer. If I could go back and do it again, that is the thing I would change. It was hard to move from the logistical to the story, but once I did, it was really rewarding.

What was the film edited on? And do you have any examples of notes?
We ultimately edited in Adobe Premiere, though an earlier version was on Avid Media Composer. Media Composer was fine, though I wish it had been a little more stable. (Switching between Mac and PC was a nightmare for some reason. All the media kept coming unlinked even though we were staying in Premiere, and we eventually had to abandon a faster and better workstation because switching became such a problem.)

Who did the audio post? Were you hands-on?
I was the sound designer and mixer and editor for the audio post. My friend and colleague, Tarcisio Longobardi, helped a little with the organization and sound editing and some backgrounds, but I did 95% of the post audio myself. As the director, I actually found it essential to do the post sound since sound and VO play such an important role in telling the story.

What about the score, which plays a big part?
I was also incredibly involved with the score, which evolved over a long period of time with me, Emrys and my composers, Charlotte Littlehales and Stephanie Griffin. Much of the score was melodically related to the credit song “Atlantis,” which was written by a childhood friend of mine, Jake Herndon, when he was in middle school. Charlotte and Stephanie and I had many, many phone calls and sessions in regard to score.

DP Fletcher Wolf

DP Fletcher Wolf

Fletcher, can you talk about why you chose the camera and lenses you did? Was it mostly natural light? I almost feel like the light is another character in the film. Were you using on-set LUTs?We shot on Alexa Mini with Cooke Panchro Classics. B-unit work was shot on a Canon C200 and a Canon cine zoom that we got through the Canon co-marketing program. In spite of the tight budget, we wanted it to look the best it could, so there was a lot of borrowing and kind help all around to get some tools we knew we could depend on. The day exteriors were mostly natural light augmented with bounce and negative fill. Day interiors were typically natural window light augmented with a LiteMat. Some of the night exteriors and the basement scene were keyed mostly with flashlights.

We were viewing most scenes on-set with one of my old go-to LUTs. But for the day-for-night scenes, we monitored with a LUT I built for this project. I did a camera test at Hand Held Films with soft, toppy light and a chip chart. Then, with that footage, I shifted it blue until it felt monochrome and pulled exposure down until middle-gray was about four stops under. That way I could shoot properly exposed footage so faces would be visible when necessary, but we could all see what it was going to look like as we shot it.

Any piece of gear that was absolutely crucial/especially helpful?
Our 4×4 floppy solids and sky-blue muslin bounce. Those were our main tools for day exteriors, which is the bulk of the film. Also, the T-Bag underwater housing from Air Sea Land, which worked beautifully when we shot the underwater pickup shots. (That was after a failed first attempt in the lake.)

Did you do any camera tests? What did you learn?
Besides the little test I shot to build the day-for-night LUT, we didn’t do any traditional camera tests for A camera. (This was a microbudget, after all.) I did a brief test to make sure the C200 footage could be matched reasonably well to the Alexa and to see if there were any quirks to matching the exposures. (Underexposing worked for our project.)

We did, however, do some interesting camera tests during casting, which I shot. Cory wanted to get a feel for how the two actors would play together on-screen as mother and daughter. We used a C300 in Prospect Park for camera tests and auditions. It actually wound up informing our shortlisting for the scenes they read.

How did you work with Cory to help him get the look he envisioned?
From the beginning Cory wanted the woods and the old family farmhouse to feel like characters. They had to be both magical and dreadful at different times, but heavy with importance either way. For scenes where we didn’t have much lighting control, I tried to work the schedule to use the natural light and weather to lean in to which of those moods we needed to feel in any given scene. Since Cory comes from sound mixing, he provided some recorded narration and soundscapes in prep that conveyed the mood he was going for. That was a cool tool to have, and I understood what he was going for. I feel like I was able to translate the sounds into images.

Before shot-listing, I like to do what I call an emotional or psychological pass of a script, where I take note of emotional beats, whose perspective each scene is from and what’s going on with the characters internally. Then I bring those thoughts and questions to the director, and we tease out a map of the characters’ arcs. That’s the main thing for me that guides shot choices — what is the camera seeing? During that process Cory and I realized that halfway through the film, the perspective shifts from Hannah as the protagonist to Esme taking the lead, so we built that transition into the shot choices.

Any scenes that stand out as the most challenging?
The underwater scene was certainly one of the hardest. We shot all the above-water parts on an island that we had to shuttle out to on a boat. When it came time to do the underwater shots, there was a leak in our underwater housing for the camera. Those of us in the water were freezing despite our wetsuits, and the water was too murky to see anything. We wound up doing a pickup day in my friend’s pool to get the underwater shots. (Thank you, Brodsky family!)

The other hardest scene was the night exterior fight scene. That was shot day for night, there was a fair amount of choreography to cover, and we had someone dig us the big hole/grave with a backhoe. The cast did a great job working through it. I had hoped for a cloudy day to help us sell the day-for-night look, but alas, I didn’t get lucky, and at that point, we were out of days to shift around in the schedule. I tried to bring up the actors’ faces by blasting our strongest battery-powered lights at them (a trick I learned when gaffing for cinematographer Adam Jandrup), but they couldn’t really get close enough due to the fight choreography. That scene was probably our biggest challenge in the color grade.

Any happy accidents happen on-set?
Our most memorable happy accident was on the final shot, when Esme walks off into the distance for about two minutes while the credits roll. We scheduled it for sunset, but on the day we were scheduled to film it, the sky was completely overcast and gray, much to my dismay. We decided we couldn’t afford to reschedule it. We did a couple takes in the road with our PAs holding traffic back just off-screen. (God bless them.) We decided we needed a third take, and about halfway through that one, the clouds in the west parted, and a fiery pink and orange sunset broke through. It was glorious. I’m so glad we didn’t decide to shoot it on a different day.

How did you express the look you wanted to the colorist? What were some notes you provided about the look after seeing dailies?
I put together a lookbook for Tom ahead of time. It was separated into day exterior, day interior, day for night, night exterior, tent interior and underwater. My main notes were that I wanted to find a look that was dark, moody and natural, toning down green foliage a bit and drawing our eye toward warm skin tones. My eye tends to buck any super-strong grade that looks heavily affected in post, so we started our session choosing some film emulation LUTs and going from there.

Did the film end up looking the way you expected it to?
For the most part, yes — as much as any film does when it moves from visions in my head to concrete images dozens of people collaborate to make. The main surprises for me were probably from our B-unit photographer. We brought in our old friend Nathan “Bob” Jones for that. He shot most of the “monster” footage and a lot of the atmospheric b-roll. He and I were checking in after wrap each day to go over what he’d gotten, but I couldn’t review all of his footage, so there were shots that made it into the cut that I hadn’t seen before.

There were wonderful surprises — to see that he’d found a caterpillar or filmed an entire unscripted scene in a wide shot at the lake. He did amazing work, largely with little or sometimes no other crew to support him. His shots really weave the story together with unusual views of the forest.

Randi Altman is the founder and editor-in-chief of postPerspective. She has been covering production and post production for more than 25 years.