Leisure was shot on a Canon XLI MiniDV camera. We used Sony tapes and I believe we went through exactly 30 of them. A better quality mic than the standard one was hooked up to the top of the camera for audio.

Other than that, there was no other equipment used for production; just the camera and the mic. For lights, we just turned up the Catos lights all the way.

For post, I edited the movie on a Mac using Final Cut Pro. When I started, it was an iMac and FC2. By the time I finished, I was using a friends G4 Tower and FC3.

Brian mixed the sound on a G3 Tower using Pro Tools. Chris Ferreira created the music on his PC using a variety of different programs (but PC's still suck.)

The DVD was made using DVD Studio Pro, and by that time I had FC4 and a Powerbook with a SuperDrive to burn the DVD.

And the choppy editing? Actually, this was a very practical decision that served many purposes.

First, there was the video problem. Though the digital quality of video has improved greatly, it still does not compare to film, and if a movie is shot on video, it tends to look a lot like a soap opera. One way I figured we could get around this, is by moving the camera.

Besides soap operas, people are also used to seeing video in news or documentaries. So if I wanted the video image to work and not feel like a soap opera, I figured I could give the feel of realistic live-action. Hence, the moving camera.

Secondly, there was the problem of being in one location for the entire movie. After awhile just staring an images of talking heads can get boring. Film is an action medium and needs to movement to work.

Since there was no movement happening in front of the camera, I figured we could liven things up by moving the camera itself.

Thirdly, there was the problem of many non-professional actors. Though everyone in the movie was very talented, very few were experienced. So I had to figure out a way to get natural performances out of them.

I decided to do this by shooting the entire scenes in one take and allowing the actors to ad-lib around the dialogue to make themselves more comfortable. Then in the editing, I edited out most of the ad-libbing and left just the dialogue from the script. That's why it appears so choppy.

Lastly, time is money and we didn't have a lot. So, in order to make things quick and easy, we shot everything handheld from one essentially one spot for every scene. This made it easy to manage on the set as I was trying to act as well as direct and produce.

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