Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

By the time you read this, Part 2 of DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG, the Internet musical directed by Joss Whedon and written by Joss Whedon, Jed Whedon, Zack Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen, should be up at drhorrible.com, delighting viewers and crashing discussion sites all over the Web (seriously – whedonesque.com went down Tuesday under the sheer volume of DR. HORRIBLE comments, according to a notice at the site). Michael Boretz, one of the film’s producers, tells us more about the making of DR. HORRIBLE and the short film Boretz wrote/produced/directed, SPLITTING HAIRS — www.splittinghairsthemovie.com — which won the Special Jury Award at the USA Film Festival last year.

As the title of DR. HORRIBLE suggests, one of the main characters is an aspiring evil scientist type. Evil scientists, especially those created by Joss Whedon and played by Neil Patrick Harris, can’t live just anywhere, they need a lair. This might seem a problem on a limited budget, but according to Boretz, the production team actually found one – and it wasn’t even a set.

“I believe our assistant director is friends with the person that owns it,” Boretz says. “That’s a real home. I think this guy wound up on [a home-changing reality TV] show. They came on and pretty much redid the home into this mad scientist location, so when we got in there, we actually did very little. All the stuff that you’ll see in the film is all [part of] this guy’s home, his own stuff.”

Other locations weren’t quite so ready-made. “This was a full-scale, big, ambitious project with a minimal budget and minimal time,” Boretz notes. Of course, he can’t say what the budget was (Whedon has said “the low six figures”), but acknowledges, “I can tell you this was self-funded, by Joss, and that he did it for much, much less than it would have cost through a studio.”

This necessitated a fairly swift production period. “We had six days to shoot,” Boretz relates. “We shot at the Universal back lot. Joss called in a favor and Universal was very generous. This was before the fire [that gutted some of the Universal lot], of course. We shot out in the Valley, in the chapel that they used, I think, on SEVENTH HEAVEN. We shot at an auditorium in Echo Park. Those were some of the major locations.”

To make things go more smoothly, all of the songs were recorded prior to principal photography. “Joss, Jed, Maurissa and Zack brought in each of the actors – Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day – over the course of a couple of days to record their songs,” Boretz explains. “They recorded everything in Joss’ office. He has a really cool soundproofed recording room there, where they were able to do a very slick, professional job.”

Boretz played a primary role in DR. HORRIBLE’s post-production. “Post-production has been really interesting for me,” he observes, “because with my short SPLITTING HAIRS, I had to do everything, and on top of that, I wrote it and directed it, so I was really focused on it and going a little blind from staring at it for so long. With DR. HORRIBLE, once post happened, it was more about facilitating everything, so it was doing everything from getting our editing bays to using whatever friends were willing to help us out to get all the aspects of post done. Lisa Lassek [editor on BUFFY, FIREFLY and SERENITY] cut it, and then Geoff Rubay, who did the sound for SERENITY, was the sound supervisor and re-recording guy. He’s wickedly talented and really brought the sound to a whole new level. We mixed on a big stage over at Todd A-O. Zoic [which has done CGI effects on Whedon’s previous projects] did the visual effects for us. We have quite a few visual effects shots. [Post-production facility] Level 3 helped us out quite a bit, too. Aaron Miller, a post supervisor who had worked on BUFFY, put me in touch with the people at Level Three and we were able to get a really good deal. Level 3 finalized the end product. We mastered onto HDCAMSR and Level 3 even helped with our upload to iTunes.”

Once DR. HORRIBLE is done with its free Internet airing at midnight on July 20, are there further plans to market it as a DVD? “We will definitely have a DVD release,” Boretz reveals. “We are still working out the details, but Joss did this to show that there’s a different way to do things, he wants the fans to be able to see it and enjoy it, so our first priority is really just getting it out there and having people appreciate and love it. We also hope to show the industry at large that things can be done within a budget and then, hopefully, it can be profitable [enough to be] self-sustaining. We are working on the DVD release now and hoping to make an announcement at Comic-Con, maybe even have something for the fans to see. As of right now, we’re just working on extras [special features] footage and coming up with some really cool new ideas and working away at that.”

Unsurprisingly, Boretz won’t say much about what the DR. HORRIBLE special features will be. “I’m going to let Joss take care of that, but what I can say is that I do know that he and his family are coming up with some things that I don’t think has ever been done before for DVD extras, and I think they want to do a little more than just have the traditional behind-the-scenes [documentary]. They’re really working on having it be almost, dare I say, groundbreaking extras.”

Has producing on DR. HORRIBLE taught Boretz anything he can use for his next solo filmmaking venture? “Watching Joss direct is always an amazing experience. The guy knows what he is doing. I also learned quite a lot about post-production this time around. I did the post on my short, but I had a much more limited budget, and it took me a good year or so before I could get a final mix done. We had to do DR. HORRIBLE at breakneck speed, so I think we did all of post in just under two months, so everything had to go really fast and it had to be right and we had way more visual effects – we just had a lot of work to do.”

Whether you’re Joss Whedon or a first-time short filmmaker, Boretz observes, it helps to have friends. “People compliment me on is how professional SPLITTING HAIRS looks and I’m happy about that. It wouldn’t have been possible without certain people helping me.” He cites, among others, BUFFY, ANGEL and SERENITY makeup designer Rob Hall and ANGEL/FIREFLY costume designer Shawna Trpcic (the latter also did costumes for DR. HORRIBLE). “I got favors from big-time professionals. Almost all of my post-production I got for minimum, so it really was amazing. Extremely skilled editors helped me get the pacing right and made it look sharp, so yeah, it wouldn’t have been possible without people in this town being very helpful.”

Something else that’s true for everyone, Boretz concludes, is the spirit required to bring a project to completion. “It’s very hard to get things done unless you’re extremely focused and you have a passion to tell a particular story. Otherwise, it’s a tough process, especially without a lot of funds. You have to really love what you’re doing.”

This is certainly true of DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG BLOG, Boretz adds. “Everybody loves working with Joss. He fosters a really fun environment and what he writes is beloved.”