Back in April, I made a film in under 24 hours for the first time ever to compete in Without Precedent film festival.

People do film sprints like this where they get a crew together to both develop and produce a film in a short window.

What made this one different was its quarantine theme during the coronavirus pandemic. With this in mind, we had very specific criteria for creating our film. For example: “No more than 3 adults total can work on the film” and “Your film must take place at least 90% in your home/interiors”.

I was left wondering, how do I create within the four walls of my home without a crew to call to produce a 5-min film? Well, this is how my roommate/co-producer and I planned. While we were given 48 hours, we didn’t start until 24 hours in because… procrastination.

STEP ONE: Follow the feeling.

We reflected on what our quarantine has felt like in order to understand which emotions we’d bring into the story. It’s been a rollercoaster and we wanted to express all of that. With just five minutes to tell the story, we didn’t want to pack too much and fall short in execution. Instead, we debated: do we tell one situation all the way through or do we build one situation through a collection of micro-moments? (We chose the latter.)

STEP TWO: Assess your environment and resources.

We assessed the props and settings we had in our apartment. Living in a spacious two-bedroom apartment granted an eclectic set of cool, miscellaneous items like the leg cup you may spot in the film. We also considered which shooting techniques to use within the space. How can we get a variety of shots? How can we create dimension? How can we engage with objects within the environment to bridge a sense of connection beyond the camera?

STEP THREE. Edit as you go.

You want to minimize your editing time as much as possible. With each scene we shot, we’d review our footage and edit the scene as we went along to get a sense of how it all meshed together. And in case we needed to reshoot, we had the sequence at the ready to play around with clips. This approach likely works best for microfilms or film sprints.

THE RESULT. Even through the filming process, we noticed how we are intensely learning how to coexist. Whether it is bickering over little things or doing whatever we can to keep ourselves entertained, that’s DUAL ACTION for ya. Ultimately, the story was born out of recreating candid moments in quarantine. Check out DUAL ACTION below.