by -k.

(The original name for HIMM had been MARYMARY but after quickly discovering the existence of the Christian singing duo Marymary I added the “hiim” to avoid confusion.)

 

The idea stuck; I couldn’t stop thinking about it and got excited. The ideas kept flowing and I kept writing them down; typically coming to me in the shower or in transit to my classes. Initially I worked at jotting down all these random ideas and sat down to try to organize them - the whole thing was initially a series of messy ideas in my notes app - which I printed and transferred into a notebook that had been meant for non schoolwork ideas (basically usurped into the giant “Mary notebook”). I put it together into something that basically contained most of the main beats of the series; the ending wasn’t fleshed out but I had a general idea of what I wanted to happen. This continued over the course of April-June, and I didn’t really start doing any production until July 2016. 

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LIMITATIONS

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Throughout the process I kept in mind that I didn’t have easy access to friends who would drop everything to film with me (scattered in different colleges and scheduling sucks), nor did I have a great location, so I chose to set it in my own house, with strategic camerawork to hide anything identifying, doing all the filming on college breaks and editing during the semester. I accepted that most of the time I’d just have to play all the characters, and thankfully my sister was able to help with most of the additional acting when I needed it. I also had one other friend who I was thankfully able to schedule two different sessions with - to shoot “worse/the darkness moves” and “gone.” She had stage combat expertise and was able to help me when it came to the violence in “gone.”

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I had an additional friend who recorded Liz’s voice lines in the blog that also went on trips to the woods with me. Obviously my family was in the house all the time, so occasionally I’d ask if everyone could go out for a bit or strategically film where nobody was around. The Garden was a mix of local park areas near me, various interesting spots in my state, and near my college the next state over.  I had a tendency to just grab footage in the event I could use it later.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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Regarding technical stuff: I had some skills with the Adobe Suite (particularly in Premiere and After Effects) that I’d learned in high school, and my college USED to give everyone in my department free Creative Cloud since I needed it for class (digital media), so I had access to it for free. I knew I’d be learning more so I decided that's what I’d use. I had a Canon Rebel T4i  I’d gotten as a birthday gift a few years previously that I’d decided I’d do all the filming on. I had a tiny USB microphone I recorded additional audio on, but when I wanted to add in sound to a shot I’d just record it on the camera standing in the same area so I’d have to do little audio editing.

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WRITING

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The writing for HIMM episodes usually went as follows: I would brainstorm out what I wanted and key visual moments, key dialogue if there was any. Next, I’d write out a shot list. This worked for most of the videos that were styled in a very montagey fashion. When a video had more of a in-the-moment-run-around-and-scream kind of feel, like “worse,” “DO NOT TOUCH,” “gone,” I’d write more of a choreographed sequence of moments to hit and would just improv outside of that. 

 

I did write out separate scripts for the blog audio, the dialogue in “gone,” as well as all the dialogue and the monologue in “anagnorisis” and “goodbye.” For the last two episodes I was seriously flying by the seat of my pants so I wrote out that huge checklist document I posted on twitter to get ahold of everything I needed to do. It had been chaos before then.

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INITIAL PRODUCTION

 

I shot, edited, and posted the first episode in two days, since it was fairly simple and easy to do. I posted it, and told two of my friends, both of whom followed the series on their personal YouTube channels. Videos 2-5 were all shot in July-August 2016 so I had a large collection of footage. I worked as a camp counselor over the summer, and a few times brought my computer to work and edited on my break. I posted videos 2 and 3 before school started again, and then did my editing for 4-5 in free moments. I filmed and posted 6 on school break. Pretty much my general rule was “shoot during break, edit during school,” which continued until I graduated, so I’d often have footage taken way in advance.

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