God of Vengeance (film)

Filmed on Zoom during the 2020-21 Covid-19 pandemic. An adaptation of the 1906 Yiddish play written by Sholem Asch, presented by Yiddish Theatre Ensemble. Adapted for film and directed by Bruce Bierman, Assistant Director Karen Sellinger, music by David Rosenberg (along with a few purchased short pieces), English translation by Caraid O’Brien. Produced by Laura Sheppard. I was Technical Director, Production Designer, Director of Photography, Editor, and Sound Designer.

Originally planned for live performance in September, 2020, the pandemic turned this into a film project. Bierman's adaptation relocates the action from early 20th century Poland to Manhattan's Lower East Side during the Great Depression.

Several local theater companies began producing on-line live performances within a few months of the start of the pandemic. All exhibited technical flaws and all but the simplest one- or two-character plays were dramatically unsatisfying. It was clear from the outset that with our very limited budget and a technical staff of one (me), live performance was out of the question. Making a film would let us edit the performances and provide a glitch-free viewer experience.

Then we needed to consider how filming on Zoom was going to work. Could we equip the actors for filming by sending them computers with cameras and microphones? The large number of actors needed—seventeen—and our small budget meant that would be impossible. The actors would use their own computers, which were mostly laptops with built-in webcams. Most of the actors’ microphones turned out to be adequate, though we did end up supplying a few.

Before filming, the ten principal actors were sent inexpensive lighting kits and greenscreens, and the seven ensemble actors just greenscreens. Filming each Zoom session was done at my home in Berkeley with up to four computers, each recording a different actor in full-screen mode to local storage. A Gallery View of each session was recorded by Zoom to its cloud storage, and used to produce “dailies” viewed and evaluated by the production team.

Post-production took four months of editing, captioning and sound design. When editing was nearly complete the final backgrounds were installed. Background images were created using a program that analyzes images to create a painting in various styles from the extracted information. With this, I was able to use photographs of existing environments with picture elements from multiple sources to create artificial settings. The Tenement Museum provided some appropriate interior and exterior photographs; others were obtained from public domain sources. More details can be found in the video God of Vengeance Production Design Process at the bottom of this page.

This God of Vengeance was the product of unique circum­stan­ces. Talented stage actors were unemployed due to the pandemic, and were ready to pass the time working on a crazy project for minimal pay. The laptop computers that most people used for work and leisure were already equipped with webcams and microphones. Most people had reasonably fast Internet connections. A well-engineered and easy-to-use videoconferencing program, Zoom, was available to all at no cost. The filmmakers were similarly isolated and had plenty of time on their hands.

The completed film turned out to be better than any of the participants anticipated. It received more than 1,100 paid views on line, and brought in a little more than the roughly $7,500 it cost to produce and promote. We entered it in eight Jewish film festivals with no takers, but it stands as a lovingly crafted souvenir of a challenging time.

God of Vengeance trailer by Mark Faulkner

Stills from the film