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How We Finished a Zero-Budget Indie Film in 12 Days · Indie Film Podcast

• 0:00
  I love that we went into this movie saying don't worry, we'll
• 0:02
  fix it in. Post, fix it in post.
• 0:04
  And it took a lot of hours to do that, Yeah.
• 0:06
  But you handled most of that, so thank.
• 0:08
  You I don't know if I'm going to recover mentally for a while,
• 0:10
  but yeah, I see a lot of pixels in my sleep and every time I
• 0:13
  blink. 27 days ago we began pre production on an 8 minute short
• 0:17
  film that we are scheduled to finish by day 28.
• 0:20
  So today we'll be discussing some of the snacks that we hit
• 0:22
  in post production. How would you handle DIY after
• 0:25
  effects emergencies late at night and on the weekends?
• 0:29
  Well, how would you take a musical thought and turn it into
• 0:32
  a fully polished and produced piece of music without any
• 0:36
  budget and very little time? And what's a third question that
• 0:40
  would pique your interest in listening to this episode?
• 0:42
  Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
• 0:45
  And I am Chuck, why don't we start with the DIY After Effects
• 0:48
  emergencies? Victoria, do you want to explain
• 0:50
  what you did for our short film in After Effects and how you
• 0:54
  handled questions that you encountered when it was late at
• 0:57
  night or on the weekend and you had no budget to pay people for
• 1:01
  their expertise? You know, I honestly think for
• 1:04
  anyone that's watching as well as listening, I think the props
• 1:08
  here at the front of the table, I think they perfectly explain
• 1:11
  what we did with this film. If you're listening then you
• 1:15
  can't see it. We have a dragon toy.
• 1:18
  Dungeons and Dragons Dragon toy or or not a toy, I guess.
• 1:21
  What would they be? They're called miniatures.
• 1:23
  Miniatures. Just a lamp, a dice jail and
• 1:26
  then some miniatures. One of them we bought painted
• 1:29
  and then three of them our friends Sam painted.
• 1:32
  Along with the dragon too, she painted the dragon and the
• 1:34
  treasure chest. So anything that is that has
• 1:36
  been hand painted there is all thanks to Sam.
• 1:38
  Thanks again Sam for doing that all in 2 days.
• 1:41
  It was excellent. So the the theme of the the film
• 1:45
  is Dungeons and Dragons. It's a musical, yes, as well.
• 1:48
  And it has some political undertones, yes.
• 1:50
  But for After Effects we decided that since it's a game, we would
• 1:54
  have all of the battle sequences, if you will, take
• 1:58
  place in an 8 bit world. Yes, and that meant animating
• 2:03
  them all and originally we'd done a test where we tried
• 2:07
  premieres new what is that their AI object mask tool Yes and it
• 2:12
  worked pretty well. It wasn't flawless or anything,
• 2:14
  but it worked and we were able to overlay us, testing out a
• 2:18
  little fight sequence onto a was it Street Fighter or Mortal
• 2:22
  Kombat or. It was a Street Fighter and then
• 2:24
  also Mario. Level.
• 2:26
  There we go. OK and and it worked OK.
• 2:29
  It was fine. And it was all in premiere, so
• 2:31
  it was all super fast and that was really cool.
• 2:33
  Yeah. And then you went to do the
• 2:35
  first quote UN quote auto rotoscope shot in Premiere.
• 2:39
  And it's not as flawless as we had hoped.
• 2:44
  There is a lot of promise in that tool and I will say it did
• 2:46
  come in handy for a couple of the scenes that we were using.
• 2:49
  But I don't think that tool is 100% there yet.
• 2:57
  It's not ready for primetime. It's not if you if you have a
• 3:01
  longer sequence or you have intricate movements or anything
• 3:04
  like that, you should probably just go to After Effects and
• 3:08
  rotoscope it. Yes, which we did.
• 3:10
  You what you ended up having to do for everything, Yes.
• 3:13
  And you built an 8 bit world around the character.
• 3:16
  So this is, this film takes place about 50% in real life and
• 3:21
  then 50% in this 8 bit world. Yeah.
• 3:24
  And you built the 8 bit world around them.
• 3:27
  Yes. And you've never done anything
• 3:29
  like that in After Effects before?
• 3:31
  No. So how did you handle the after
• 3:33
  effects emergencies that you ran into?
• 3:34
  Well, I have used After Effects in the past, so I wasn't too
• 3:38
  worried about. Oh yeah, how hard can it be?
• 3:40
  You just hop in there and I understand, you know, the
• 3:43
  compositions and like parenting layers and linking things like I
• 3:45
  know enough, I'll be fine. No, no, no.
• 3:49
  After Effects is wow, there's so much you can do in After
• 3:53
  Effects. It's a beast.
• 3:55
  And I have learned a lot. Yes, I'll tell you what, give
• 3:58
  yourself a project like this if you want to learn After Effects
• 4:00
  really fast, because I do feel a lot more comfortable in that
• 4:03
  platform now. So I feel like that's a big win.
• 4:05
  Oh, good. But the number one thing that
• 4:07
  helped was I was going through and I had these ideas in mind of
• 4:11
  what I wanted the world to do. And I know that After Effects
• 4:16
  can do it because I think Once Upon a time I had done a
• 4:18
  tutorial or something and seen that effect there.
• 4:20
  So I know After Effects can do it, but I don't know where that
• 4:24
  is. And I will say I was blown away
• 4:28
  because I'm not a huge fan of AII.
• 4:30
  Think it has its place for sure. But the Gemini, just Google's
• 4:35
  Gemini. You can just ask it.
• 4:38
  Hey, how comfortable are you with the After Effects library
• 4:42
  of effects and which ones would be the right ones to do this
• 4:45
  kind of effect? And it just comes back with a
• 4:48
  list of all the effects. Because I don't know if you've
• 4:50
  ever tried scrolling through all the different effects and
• 4:53
  generations and distortions and things that are in After
• 4:56
  Effects, but that is a huge library.
• 4:58
  Awesome that it's a huge library, but wow, there is a lot
• 5:02
  there. And this way it just serves you
• 5:05
  up the top three or four that'll work for you.
• 5:08
  And you can just go test them really fast instead of trying to
• 5:11
  go through and test each individual effect and see if it
• 5:14
  will work. So I will say, though, that some
• 5:18
  of the rules, the rules I guess, of this particular festival are
• 5:22
  that no generative AI can be used.
• 5:26
  I think that that usage of AI was following the law to the
• 5:31
  spirit, because I definitely went in and did all of this
• 5:35
  myself, for sure. However, I did technically use
• 5:39
  it. The good news is that the person
• 5:40
  who runs this festival is actually a listener of the
• 5:43
  podcast. So thanks, Cody, for putting
• 5:45
  this festival on. But also, if we're disqualified,
• 5:47
  let us know. Yeah.
• 5:49
  We're happy with the final product.
• 5:51
  Yeah, anyway. So we'll be sending it off to
• 5:54
  film festivals depending on exactly how the screening goes
• 5:57
  and what we think, whether or not we find the film festivals
• 5:59
  for the audience for this. But you know, we're pretty happy
• 6:02
  with how it all turned out. Everybody did a great job.
• 6:05
  No, the music is incredible. The music is absolutely just I.
• 6:11
  It's so wild to hear it because it sounds so good.
• 6:14
  Not because I'm surprised based on who was working on it, but
• 6:18
  more that how did it come together that fast?
• 6:21
  Yeah. And I can go over that a little
• 6:23
  bit. I was kind of hoping.
• 6:24
  Because I was, I was present just to kind of share with
• 6:27
  everybody the starting point. I took a little excerpt of the
• 6:31
  music that I recorded strumming my guitar and singing into my
• 6:35
  phone. And then we have a finalized
• 6:38
  version of that same the same couple bars.
• 6:40
  Yeah. And I'll play that for all of
• 6:41
  you right now. Here is the original idea that I
• 6:44
  had. Finally had the friendship
• 6:52
  hereafter strict rules to clean order everyone in line with the
• 6:58
  simple yes, I'll bring your party to life.
• 7:04
  And to be fair, that is what we sent off to all of the actors
• 7:09
  originally. Correct.
• 7:11
  So they were starting to study that and so in just what, 4872
• 7:17
  hours it it shifted into. Yeah, this is, this is, well,
• 7:21
  this is the actual final version, but Jesse recorded some
• 7:24
  ideas. Jesse Blake Rundle, he's been on
• 7:27
  an episode of this podcast before.
• 7:29
  Great songwriter, great musician.
• 7:31
  He heard that and then came up with some alterations.
• 7:34
  And then we brought in Mike Harris and we brought in John
• 7:38
  Chevelle and they did they added parts to it as well, as well as
• 7:43
  the final vocals. So this is what's actually
• 7:45
  playing in the musical itself. A little different.
• 7:50
  Slightly. O When we sat down to do the
• 8:19
  initial contemplating of what to do with these musical thoughts
• 8:22
  that I had, it was nice one to know local musicians.
• 8:28
  And I've talked about this a lot on the podcast that my brother
• 8:31
  and I made friends with the local music community by
• 8:35
  offering to do videography services for them.
• 8:37
  Essentially, it helped us learn how to run our cameras and it
• 8:41
  gave them assets that they could use.
• 8:43
  And we ended up making a lot of friends because the music and
• 8:47
  the film creativity realm is heavily overlapping.
• 8:52
  And we talked about that in the episode with with Jesse Blake
• 8:54
  Rundle. But so we've collaborated on
• 8:57
  projects together. When we came to you and I went
• 9:00
  to Jesse with this idea, and we also went to my friends Mike and
• 9:04
  John with this idea. They were like, sure, we'd love
• 9:07
  to help because this is an idea that we like, we're excited
• 9:10
  about it. And people tend to creatives
• 9:13
  tend to volunteer on creative projects versus like commercial
• 9:16
  ones. So we sat down, took took a
• 9:20
  listen to the music. You were there as well,
• 9:21
  Victoria, as well as my brother and then these three musicians.
• 9:26
  And we just kind of broke it down.
• 9:27
  We decided that OK, well, clarinet is going to be on going
• 9:32
  to be with the devil. The cello is going to be
• 9:35
  featured with the devil and then the main character Aaron, is
• 9:38
  going to have guitar. Everybody's going to be singing
• 9:41
  their own vocals. We got lucky because Victoria,
• 9:44
  you've directed musicals before. Yes, so that came in handy.
• 9:48
  Yeah, we cast. We cast Jesse as the lead and
• 9:52
  then your three, your three connections, your your three
• 9:56
  friends and actors came in and they are excellent vocalists.
• 10:01
  And for those of you who are not yet sure if you want to see this
• 10:05
  final project, let me sell you on the final thing.
• 10:09
  Chuck is actually appearing as a character in this film as well.
• 10:12
  Yeah, that's exactly why everybody wants to watch.
• 10:14
  This I think so. They want to see me run around
• 10:16
  as an armed guard in an 8 bit world.
• 10:18
  Yes, that is a feature. But fortunately, with your
• 10:23
  friends and coming in, as well as Jesse being able to sing, I'm
• 10:28
  not. I wouldn't say that.
• 10:29
  I'm a great singer. I have melodies in my head.
• 10:32
  Jesse has better ones. He was able to write the melody
• 10:35
  that you heard there. He knew when to draw it out,
• 10:37
  when to speed it up. Obviously time was a limitation
• 10:40
  too, because we had to write all this music in in under 10
• 10:44
  minutes. Yeah, we ended up with just over
• 10:46
  8 minutes, which I felt like was a safe buffer.
• 10:49
  Yeah, if we're if we're trying to make a movie under 10
• 10:51
  exactly. And we still ended up keeping it
• 10:53
  right in that timeline. It'll probably be under 9
• 10:56
  minutes I'm guessing. Yeah, once all the final credits
• 10:58
  and everything are in there, because of course it's due
• 11:00
  tomorrow, so we still have to do the credits.
• 11:03
  Yes, just credits left, but everything else is looking and
• 11:06
  sounding. I'm really happy with all of it.
• 11:08
  Yeah. And I guess to answer the
• 11:10
  question, what do you do if you're trying to Polish music
• 11:14
  without any in a limited amount of time and no budget?
• 11:18
  The only way to really do that is to have the skill sets
• 11:21
  yourself or you need to be well connected with some people,
• 11:26
  exchange favors or be involved. The most important thing is be
• 11:30
  involved in the creative projects in your community.
• 11:34
  Yeah, I would say that's that's even more important is
• 11:37
  obviously, yes, having talented friends helps.
• 11:40
  These miniatures would not have been painted without just me
• 11:43
  having a friend who's talented. But you can make those friends
• 11:49
  at any point in your life. And you can make them by going
• 11:52
  out, getting involved in the community, inserting yourself
• 11:56
  into new places, meet new people.
• 11:58
  It's very seldom that people wake up in the morning and say,
• 12:00
  boy, I hope I don't meet someone interesting and fun that I can
• 12:03
  work with on cool projects later today.
• 12:05
  Like that's that's not generally how that's not how I wake up.
• 12:08
  I guess I shouldn't assume for other people, but.
• 12:10
  Yeah, and be be assertive about crossing some of those some of
• 12:14
  those boundaries as far as creative outlets because like
• 12:19
  the music film thing very similar, you know, even your
• 12:22
  friend that was she can paint, she can create.
• 12:26
  She's done props for my musicals in the past too.
• 12:29
  Like she's she's just a really talented artist and she's
• 12:33
  actually really excited about working in film more and she
• 12:36
  thinks it's fun. So when it's little asks like
• 12:40
  this, it's not, well, I guess I don't know if it's saying, hey,
• 12:43
  can you paint these four items, five items in two days?
• 12:47
  I don't know if it's a little ask, but.
• 12:49
  Well, yeah, she did a great job. She did.
• 12:51
  And there was no small asks of any of our friends to help us
• 12:54
  out with this project, which on the next episode we're going to
• 12:56
  break down exactly how much everything cost on this quote UN
• 12:59
  quote, 0 budget production. Yeah.
• 13:01
  And, and hopefully have an idea of we still need to calculate
• 13:04
  how many hours everybody put in so that you, if you did want to
• 13:07
  make a budget, we could estimate how much that might have cost.
• 13:10
  Because nothing is ever actually zero budget.
• 13:12
  But you know, if you find enough people that are willing to work
• 13:15
  on projects, and you help out on enough of enough of other
• 13:18
  people's projects, you'll be able to hopefully get some of
• 13:21
  your ideas made. Yeah, and I will say in addition
• 13:24
  to being willing to, you know, exchange favors and go help
• 13:29
  somebody else out on their set for free, that's obviously a
• 13:33
  good way to to build connections.
• 13:34
  And you know, if if we didn't work with Christy and Lee here
• 13:39
  so much, I don't know if we would have had a gaffer slash
• 13:41
  bcam slash AD slash script supervisor slash PA slash.
• 13:45
  How many things did they do right?
• 13:47
  Like, I don't know if we would have had that, but when you go
• 13:50
  onto the those sets, that's just an opportunity to meet even more
• 13:53
  people, correct? And, and make more connections.
• 13:56
  So I feel like, you know, volunteering is worth it.
• 14:00
  Yeah. If you're trying to get your own
• 14:02
  things made, absolutely. If you're out there and you're
• 14:05
  trying to make a name for yourself for pay gigs within a
• 14:07
  specific section of the film making realm, then, you know,
• 14:11
  maybe not, Maybe that's not what you want to do.
• 14:14
  But you know, it's hard to find people in the film community
• 14:19
  that don't want to do the writing and directing aspect of
• 14:21
  things. Yes, right.
• 14:23
  I do have a moment of humility that I would like to share with
• 14:26
  everybody. So this.
• 14:29
  Is I forgot that was the sound effect for that.
• 14:31
  Record scratch. For some reason I thought it was
• 14:34
  like. Oh no, I don't have AI do have
• 14:37
  one of those but I don't know. I went with record stretch.
• 14:40
  I feel like it works. We can update it if we need to.
• 14:42
  Let us know, yeah. The the mode of humility I want
• 14:46
  to have is something that you actually shared online
• 14:49
  previously that we cut into a vertical video that got a bunch
• 14:52
  of really angry people commenting on it.
• 14:56
  And I just want to say that in certain cases the director's job
• 15:02
  can be heavily overrated and. That's right.
• 15:05
  This time Chuck said it. I didn't say it.
• 15:08
  I kept my mouth shut. I don't want to hear people
• 15:11
  yelling at me in the comments about it.
• 15:13
  I didn't say it this time. Yeah, if if you are surrounded
• 15:17
  by a talented cast and a talented crew of people, a
• 15:20
  director's job is not very difficult.
• 15:24
  And we got into this, this short film post production and like
• 15:30
  obviously the set, the day's shooting on set went so smoothly
• 15:34
  because everybody that was acting, Jesse, Nico, Sammy and
• 15:39
  Brock, all of our perform and and Adrian, yeah, all of our
• 15:42
  performers were off book. Yeah.
• 15:46
  And had everything memorized. Even though the music was
• 15:49
  obviously being updated during the week prior to. 72 hours
• 15:53
  before. So there was the only thing we
• 15:55
  had to rehearse was blocking on set.
• 15:57
  We split duties. I took care of crew and lighting
• 16:01
  stuff, and you took care of all the blocking with the actors got
• 16:04
  on set. Everybody learned they're
• 16:06
  blocking really quickly because they're used to doing this
• 16:09
  because they do musical theatre. Which is another reason get
• 16:13
  actors like it's so easy to call your friends and if you only
• 16:16
  have your friends to call and ask to step in, absolutely I get
• 16:19
  it that's there's nothing wrong with that.
• 16:22
  But man, actors are just used to this.
• 16:26
  Yes, and they do it all the time.
• 16:28
  It moves a lot more smoothly. And then they they obviously had
• 16:33
  had, they had interpretations of the characters that they brought
• 16:37
  to the table for us. So on set, obviously things
• 16:41
  worked really smoothly post production for me because I was
• 16:44
  in charge of sound effects essentially on this project.
• 16:48
  Normally I do location sound. I didn't record any location
• 16:51
  sound and, and, and I felt like my hands were tied as far as you
• 16:57
  taking care of everything on After Effects because it just
• 16:59
  kind of like bottlenecked there. If you wanted to create the the
• 17:03
  virtual worlds, you have more experience in After Effects than
• 17:06
  I do. I have very basic like I can do
• 17:07
  like some title movement things and I've done a couple
• 17:09
  tutorials, but yeah, you've done some more advanced stuff.
• 17:12
  And then we went to Polish the music and essentially Jesse was
• 17:17
  our music supervisor as you would title it in in film.
• 17:21
  So we brought the musicians in the record, which were just
• 17:24
  basically he had recorded himself.
• 17:27
  And then we brought in we brought in Mike and John to play
• 17:30
  clarinet and to play cello. And they just kept coming up
• 17:34
  with ideas. And so I was standing there
• 17:37
  listening to what was going on. And I'm like, that's really
• 17:39
  good, you know. And they'd say, well, what do
• 17:43
  you think about this? And then I would say, well, what
• 17:46
  do you think? And they would answer the
• 17:49
  question. And it's like, you know what,
• 17:51
  what, what is the, what is something that you want out of
• 17:56
  this? And then people just shared that
• 17:59
  because we know and trust all these people and they did what
• 18:03
  they wanted to do. And it all came together as far
• 18:06
  as I'm concerned, which I can see how a director's job could
• 18:10
  be very difficult if you're working in a like a corporate
• 18:15
  environment. In a corporate environment or
• 18:17
  honestly even just a really large production where there are
• 18:21
  a lot of opinions that you do want to hear and you do respect.
• 18:25
  But also you have a timeline and a budget and a vision to stick
• 18:29
  to because there are 18 other departments that are depending
• 18:33
  on you keeping this vision the same.
• 18:36
  So if you change the, if you, I don't know, with a bigger
• 18:40
  budget, you know what I can tie this back to the little magic
• 18:43
  lamp here, much like a genie that has great power, it is all
• 18:46
  tied to a specific lamp. And I feel like the bigger
• 18:49
  budget projects, you sort of get caught in that.
• 18:51
  So for something that is very fluid and as a director, if you
• 18:55
  are willing to keep your mind open to let's see where this
• 18:59
  goes, let's play with this. I like that idea.
• 19:02
  I want to hear your thoughts. You do get a little bit more of
• 19:05
  that space to create and a little bit more freedom.
• 19:07
  And I think probably better end results because it's a little
• 19:11
  bit more collaborative and it's cool.
• 19:13
  But when you're on a bigger budget thing and your art
• 19:16
  department is set on one specific thing, if you're, you
• 19:20
  know, gaffer comes to you and says, hey, actually we had some
• 19:23
  thoughts around changing up the entire lighting sequence for
• 19:26
  this. It'll, you know, take an extra 2
• 19:28
  days to get everything set up and all the gear and everything
• 19:31
  that we need for it. But I think we should go for it.
• 19:33
  And then you're our department's like, no, you can't change
• 19:35
  everything to red lights. All the text is in red on their
• 19:38
  T-shirts and you can't read it now or I don't know.
• 19:39
  That is a really weird specific example I came up with there,
• 19:42
  but I'm hoping that it gets the point across.
• 19:45
  A nebulous, complicated example. No, I think I've been on a set
• 19:50
  where that exact same situation has has happened where art
• 19:53
  department was fisticuffs with gaffing.
• 19:57
  It it comes down to it sometimes, I'm sure, I'm sure.
• 20:00
  They're mortal enemies. I hope that one day they can
• 20:04
  they can repair the bonds that were broken.
• 20:06
  I I guess with indie film, I feel like the director's job.
• 20:11
  It can be difficult, obviously, in our case, when we surround
• 20:16
  ourselves with talented people that have their own ideas and
• 20:21
  you don't want to get in their way, then it makes things
• 20:26
  operate much more smoothly and it makes the final creative
• 20:29
  project a lot better. And I could see a couple
• 20:33
  situations where directing would be difficult, where it wouldn't
• 20:36
  be a necessarily good outcome. And maybe that's because the
• 20:40
  director is trying to funnel their vision through someone
• 20:43
  else, which is a creative person myself.
• 20:46
  And I feel like you're the same way.
• 20:48
  If I want something done in a specific way, I'm not going to
• 20:52
  reach out to somebody to get their input.
• 20:55
  I'm going to do it myself. Right.
• 20:57
  Yeah. Versus, you know, some, some
• 21:01
  directors might be more comfortable trying to get that
• 21:05
  out of someone. But yeah, at the same time, as a
• 21:09
  creative person, I don't, I don't necessarily jump at those
• 21:13
  opportunities to do someone else's work for them.
• 21:20
  Yeah. It doesn't excite me as much,
• 21:22
  you know, if somebody's like, well, it, yeah, I don't.
• 21:26
  I think that's the same for everybody, right?
• 21:27
  So that's something to consider. And then obviously, like indie
• 21:30
  film sets, some of them get huge.
• 21:31
  I wouldn't want to juggle a whole bunch of people.
• 21:33
  And I understand now. I like Stanley Kubrick even back
• 21:36
  in the day. Worked with limited crew and
• 21:38
  limited cast because it's so much easier to get.
• 21:42
  It's a little easier to manage, it's a little easier to
• 21:44
  communicate your vision and get everybody on the same page
• 21:46
  because it's not going through 500 filters first of, you know,
• 21:49
  different tiers and levels of people.
• 21:51
  For sure, for sure. And if you have directors that
• 21:53
  know how to run the camera like you do, right, or if you have
• 21:57
  directors that do know how to gaffe or you know you have
• 21:59
  people that can run between different crew situations and
• 22:03
  and help out in a lot of you don't need a huge crew, then no.
• 22:06
  And the cast is only as big as you write it, so.
• 22:09
  Actually, I also have a moment of humility as well.
• 22:13
  But before I get to that, there is one thing.
• 22:16
  There you go, you get your own record I.
• 22:17
  Get my own record scratch, though I feel bad because I'm
• 22:21
  going to say one other thing that's also kind of important.
• 22:23
  So record scratch, stop today. We're actually going to be doing
• 22:27
  a live recording of this with the runner of Film Fort We're.
• 22:32
  Going to do a live indie film podcast, yes, so if you're in
• 22:34
  the Boise area and you're listening to this early in the
• 22:36
  morning. And you would like to come check
• 22:38
  out a live episode recording, come Down to Boise Contemporary
• 22:42
  Theatre. We're recording from 2:00 to
• 22:44
  2:45. And we're interviewing the
• 22:46
  runner of Film Fort, which is the Film Festival part of Tree
• 22:50
  Fort Music Fest. And Thomas is great and is
• 22:55
  willing to come on and chat with us and we're so excited to get
• 22:58
  to dive more into film festivals and how they work in the judging
• 23:02
  process and submissions. And it should be a really good
• 23:04
  time. So if you're here in the area,
• 23:06
  come see us Live Today. It's a part of Shreveport, but
• 23:08
  you do not need a wristband. You do not.
• 23:10
  It is free. The only thing you have to find
• 23:12
  is parking downtown, preferably near Fulton St. since that's
• 23:15
  where Boise Contemporary Theater is.
• 23:16
  Good luck on that one, it'll be fine.
• 23:18
  Shreveport is mayhem. Plus it's on Thursday so yeah,
• 23:22
  you might want to figure out the ride situation, but it'll be
• 23:25
  fun. If you're in walking distance,
• 23:26
  just pop in. It should be good.
• 23:28
  A little bit of BTS in the Film Festival world rather than just
• 23:33
  the film making stuff. That.
• 23:35
  So hopefully we'll learn some stuff about where we end up
• 23:38
  submitting Chaotic Evil, as it's tentatively titled, and we'll
• 23:41
  probably stay that way unless we come up with something better in
• 23:43
  the next 10 hours. There we go.
• 23:45
  Limited time. Yeah.
• 23:46
  What's your moment? Of my moment of humility is
• 23:49
  label your files well and pay attention to them in the
• 23:54
  timeline. Oh, because you changed your.
• 23:57
  You changed the edit. Here I just did.
• 23:59
  Recently this morning. I did because we had we had
• 24:03
  already been through picture lock.
• 24:04
  I've we've gotten sound effects that everything was pretty well
• 24:09
  locked in when I realized that I had used a wrong take and I
• 24:16
  don't know why I thought it was more believable that because it
• 24:19
  was actually that song clip that you played.
• 24:21
  Yeah, that was our tracking gimbal shot.
• 24:24
  That was one of the complicated ones.
• 24:25
  So it's the first one that we shot.
• 24:26
  So we wanted to get that one out of the way early and it was just
• 24:30
  completely out of focus. I just missed focus entirely and
• 24:34
  I was so embarrassed and hoping that maybe I can run this
• 24:36
  through Topaz or some other platform or something to try to
• 24:39
  fix this and sharpen it up a little bit at a time.
• 24:42
  And I was looking right over your shoulder and we re watched
• 24:45
  it on set and I remember thinking, I thought the last
• 24:48
  take we got was in focus, but we didn't have a monitor for it.
• 24:51
  We were just watching on the back of the Black Magic Pocket
• 24:55
  6K Pro, and you never know with those tiny monitors.
• 24:59
  It could be completely out of focus, or just enough out of
• 25:02
  focus that when you blow it up, you realize you missed.
• 25:04
  It that you can see their nose really well, but their eyes are
• 25:07
  a little blurry. Oops.
• 25:09
  Well, that's what it was, a creative choice.
• 25:11
  Yes, definitely. Anticipate something flying out
• 25:13
  of their nose. Yeah, the mystery is in the
• 25:16
  eyes, so it's got to be blurry. No.
• 25:19
  Yeah. So we went all the way through.
• 25:22
  It was during the color grade that I noticed that I use that
• 25:26
  there was one more take. Oops that I just.
• 25:30
  You. I just dropped the wrong take
• 25:32
  you. Actually nailed the focus on
• 25:34
  that. One I did, I did but.
• 25:36
  So no need for Topaz AI. No, thank goodness I don't have
• 25:39
  to use that because I have a feeling that would just be a
• 25:42
  monster and very, very huge time suck to try to render it through
• 25:45
  that. But that was a nice little
• 25:47
  confidence boost. But also I yeah I can't believe
• 25:52
  that. I thought it was more likely
• 25:54
  that Nope, I just completely missed focus.
• 25:56
  Then I grabbed the wrong file and dropped it in the timeline.
• 26:02
  Well, hey, it happens, and I realized it would have been nice
• 26:05
  to get some location sound on some of those insert shots that
• 26:08
  I didn't get while we were filming.
• 26:10
  The first time that Chuck has ever said no, we don't need
• 26:14
  location sound I. Didn't follow my own rules.
• 26:16
  Yeah, and that's happened sometimes, but I got sidetracked
• 26:19
  and, and working with the actors and helping with the shot
• 26:22
  design. And the, the one thing that made
• 26:27
  me suffer through was that I had to go then again and recreate
• 26:30
  all the Foley. And that's just, you know, it's,
• 26:34
  it's something, it's not like the most exciting thing to do,
• 26:36
  but I got to test out some new equipment, which was nice.
• 26:39
  I got to use my this they're not a sponsor, but I got to use my
• 26:43
  Zoom H5 Studio handy recorder, which is actually supposed to
• 26:48
  have better XY microphones on it and good preamps.
• 26:52
  And rather than hauling all my location sound gear from this
• 26:56
  studio into the living room, I just put the handheld recorder
• 27:01
  on top of a tripod and it sounded good.
• 27:02
  These are very subtle sound effects.
• 27:05
  So the score is playing throughout the entire film,
• 27:10
  essentially. But we just wanted to make sure
• 27:12
  that like the dice rolling had dice rolling sound.
• 27:16
  And obviously, like people like that were making big movements
• 27:20
  we wanted to have. If they were tapping on
• 27:22
  something or clicking, we wanted to have that represented but.
• 27:25
  Opening and closing a door. Maybe you should hear the door.
• 27:28
  Somebody knocking definitely going to need that.
• 27:30
  Yeah, that one was important. Yeah, and I could have gotten a
• 27:33
  canned sound of that, but usually it's too close.
• 27:35
  So I set my XY mic like way back into the room, knocked on the
• 27:38
  door, and it sounds like it's coming from a distance as it
• 27:41
  should. But the.
• 27:42
  But the review of the recorder, it worked.
• 27:44
  It worked. Oh yeah, it worked great.
• 27:46
  It worked great. It's not.
• 27:46
  It's not for location sound because it doesn't have good
• 27:49
  file naming conventions, but the quality was good and it you
• 27:53
  know, it's tiny so. Portable, easy to use.
• 27:56
  Anyone's used those really tiny handheld recorders, they're
• 27:59
  always so noisy that if you're, if you're recording something
• 28:03
  that's quiet, then when you try to turn it up in post, all
• 28:06
  you're going to get is that preamp noise.
• 28:08
  And that's the problem with like the inexpensive Tascam units and
• 28:13
  the inexpensive Zoom units. Usually those are like the most
• 28:16
  of the H series. If you turn it up too loud, all
• 28:19
  you hear is this hiss. Yeah.
• 28:21
  And that hiss is the preamps. Just the noise that they're
• 28:25
  creating. That's just.
• 28:26
  And if you record something too quiet in there, you're gonna get
• 28:29
  that in the background. It's like the it's like The Big
• 28:33
  Bang of audio. That's just always all this
• 28:36
  background radiation. It's always there.
• 28:38
  So wow, we're going. We're carrying on a lot here,
• 28:40
  but we did kind of want to talk about we watched a movie.
• 28:44
  Yeah. A short 1.
• 28:47
  Yeah, we didn't have a ton of time, so we were a little
• 28:49
  worried about devoting 2 plus hours to a film, so we went with
• 28:52
  a short Yes Doctor Horrible Sing Along blog Yeah which is
• 28:56
  available on YouTube. And we?
• 28:59
  People have barely seen that. We thought we'd watch that to
• 29:01
  inspire our post production process because that is one a
• 29:04
  very low budget film. 2 It's also a musical and they did
• 29:09
  things a lot differently than we did, which they didn't do a lot
• 29:13
  of ambient sound effects like we ended up adding with Foley into
• 29:17
  ours. However, what they did was they
• 29:19
  made a specific decision on when they were singing and and doing
• 29:25
  music and then when they were going into live action.
• 29:27
  Yeah. And so ours was totally
• 29:29
  different. There was no real way to to get
• 29:31
  live sound while people were lip synching no to the the tracks
• 29:35
  because it would just be a jumble of noise.
• 29:37
  Well, and they needed to actually sing.
• 29:39
  We've covered that too. You can't if you're recording
• 29:42
  somebody on like film, if you're filming somebody as they lip
• 29:46
  sync, you can kind of tell a little bit for sure.
• 29:49
  So it's a little bit nicer if they're actually singing.
• 29:51
  Even if they're not belting full out or anything, they need to at
• 29:53
  least kind of mark it just so. That way for sure the tension in
• 29:57
  the body and the breathing all kind of line up.
• 29:59
  Yeah. The, the only way I could think
• 30:00
  of that I would be able to do that live as a location sound
• 30:04
  recorders would be to get them some sort of earpiece that's off
• 30:06
  camera and then you could get their singing as well as their
• 30:09
  movements. Oh, that's fair.
• 30:10
  All at once and then sync that with the track.
• 30:13
  And hope that nobody can see that earpiece.
• 30:16
  Yeah. Or make it a part of their
• 30:17
  costume. Or if you're really good at
• 30:19
  After Effects, you put a green earpiece in their ear and then
• 30:21
  make the earpiece disappear in post.
• 30:24
  I will not do that and will not do that.
• 30:26
  I love that we went into this movie saying don't worry, we'll
• 30:29
  fix it in post. Fix it in post.
• 30:30
  And it took a lot of hours to do that, Yeah.
• 30:33
  But you handled most of that, so thank.
• 30:34
  You. I don't know if I'm going to
• 30:35
  recover mentally for a while, but yeah, I see a lot of pixels
• 30:38
  in my sleep and every time I blink. 8 bit Dreams 8 bit Dreams
• 30:43
  8. Bit dreams.
• 30:44
  All right, should we talk about our Featured Film Maker of the
• 30:46
  Week real quick? I would love that.
• 30:48
  Who do we have this week? This week's featured filmmaker
• 30:52
  of the of the week is Darrell Miller.
• 30:54
  He's hailing from Indianapolis, IN.
• 30:56
  Darrell is a hip hop. Excuse me?
• 30:58
  Darrell is a hip hop artist and filmmaker.
• 31:01
  Who wants this? Who wants to stop the stigma
• 31:04
  about mental illness? I'm going to let you take it
• 31:06
  from here, Victoria, because I think I wrote myself a tongue
• 31:09
  twister when I typed. This up I think you did nice
• 31:11
  job. OK so Darrell the hip hop artist
• 31:13
  and filmmaker is looking to stop the stigma about mental illness
• 31:17
  by supporting mental illness programs and also talking about
• 31:20
  it in his art. So far he's written and directed
• 31:22
  2 projects titled The Boy in the Darkness and a Traumatic Story
• 31:26
  Part 1. His next film project is a
• 31:28
  superheroes web series called Paragen X, which sounds
• 31:33
  delightful, so I'm very excited for that.
• 31:35
  I watched a couple clips of it and it looked pretty cool.
• 31:38
  OK, all right, well then we know what we're watching next,
• 31:40
  because if you don't like Marvel heroes, maybe you'll like some
• 31:43
  indie heroes. Anything besides Marvel or or DC
• 31:47
  would be good for me, I'd appreciate it.
• 31:50
  But if you would like to be our Featured Filmmaker of the Week,
• 31:52
  make sure you head over to indiefilmpodcast.com/submit.
• 31:56
  There you can see a little button that says Become the
• 31:58
  Featured Filmmaker. Or if you follow us on social,
• 32:01
  just click the link in our bio and just go straight to the
• 32:04
  Become a Featured Filmmaker. There it is and we will read a
• 32:07
  little bit about you or if you pre record a message we would be
• 32:10
  happy to share that. And then just also make sure
• 32:13
  that you include some assets, maybe some Screener links or
• 32:16
  things like that, that we can flash up on the screen for
• 32:19
  anybody that's watching the podcast.
• 32:20
  Because we want to show off your work.
• 32:22
  Because indie film makers are cool and they're doing really
• 32:24
  awesome stuff right now, and Hollywood's at a complete
• 32:26
  standstill right now. So exactly.
• 32:30
  We got the edge on creativity, I feel like.
• 32:32
  So, anything else you'd like to add?
• 32:33
  Or shall we succinctly say farewell?
• 32:36
  I think we'll try to get those words out.
• 32:39
  Good. Succinctly goodbye.
• 32:41
  Bye.