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Micro-Budget Filmmaking Gear: The Tools We’re Most Thankful For · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
0:02
And I am Chuck for the month of November.
0:04
We are thankful film makers. And we couldn't be more thankful
0:07
to all of the listeners joining us right now for the very last
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episode of Season 1 of Indie Film Podcast.
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That's right, this will be our last full episode.
0:16
We're going to post some reviews, which include Film
0:18
Festival reviews and a film review in the month of December,
0:21
and we will be back in January with more full podcast episodes.
0:25
So, Chuck, let's go out with everybody's favorite topic and
0:28
frankly, one that we actually haven't talked about that much
0:30
on the entire first season. Yeah, gear and tools that we're
0:34
thankful for. Yes, let's talk about some of
0:35
the gear and tools that we're thankful for.
0:37
The area I want to start is organization, and I'm going to
0:40
start with a quote. When the world feels out of
0:43
control, organize your sock drawer.
0:46
What does that quote mean to you?
0:48
It means that I was right to buy all neon obnoxiously colored
0:53
socks. Oh, OK, I just buy them all the
0:55
same so that I never have to worry about matching them
0:57
because that stresses me out. But either way, we both have our
1:00
sock drawers organized, which makes filmmaking that much
1:04
easier, I believe. Is what the quote supposed to
1:06
mean? Or, you know, just apply to
1:08
whatever field you're in. Oh, I.
1:09
Guess I kind of thought it was more like if you can prove that
1:13
you have control over this one little thing that's super close
1:15
to you, then maybe the rest of the world isn't so.
1:18
Oh, see, to me, it's like a domino effect.
1:21
So if you have your sock drawer organized, if you have your
1:24
footage organized, if you have your process on set organized,
1:28
it's going to clear up your head so that you can focus on the
1:32
things that come at you in the moment rather than being, rather
1:36
than thinking about the stuff that you screwed up or the other
1:39
things that are disheveled. That is fair.
1:42
When, When you get the chance to actually put everything, all
1:47
your ducks in a row, if you will, yeah, then you have a
1:50
little bit more headspace for the creativity and the fun
1:52
parts. Yeah, exactly.
1:53
So organizational tools that you've found throughout your
1:57
years of filmmaking that you recommend people take a look
1:59
into. My favorite organizational tool
2:03
is going to make me sound like a little old lady, and that's
2:06
fine. I own that OK.
2:09
I really love tangible binders and sheet protectors.
2:13
Nice this is from your years and of scrapbooking is that?
2:17
Yes, my years and years of scrapbooking and knitting and
2:20
darning socks. On the subject of socks.
2:22
Nice. So you started with scrapbooking
2:24
and you're like, I really like this.
2:26
What's a very confusing form of media and art that I can get
2:31
into that will allow me to use more binders and more
2:35
spreadsheets? And you're like, well, clearly
2:36
filmmaking because there's a lot that goes into it.
2:38
Well, technically, I think it started more in in college when
2:42
I was running more full sets with more people and inevitably
2:47
running behind on set, because of course I was, and trying to
2:52
figure out what we can cut to save some time as we go.
2:55
And then getting to the editing room and realizing we're missing
2:58
so much footage and so many shots and key plot points that
3:02
just aren't there. So I started a new system.
3:07
It's a binder. It's those cheap crappy little
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sheet protectors and a bunch of the Visa V wet erase markers.
3:14
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just load up the script in
3:17
there and I literally draw my coverage map so that I know what
3:22
every single shot is starting at and ending at.
3:25
And if we go a little before and a little after, that's totally
3:27
fine. I don't have a problem with
3:28
that. If that makes the actors get in
3:29
the moment a little better, that's fine.
3:31
But I need to know exactly what shots are covered or what pieces
3:36
of the script are covered in each shot.
3:37
Yeah. And then that way if I'm running
3:40
behind on set, I can just look at the coverage map and say
3:43
that's fine, we already have this other shot.
3:45
I know we already caught this on camera.
3:47
We can access shot and it can go away. 86 Get it out of here.
3:51
That's, that's good. And just, I've seen you use this
3:53
on set and I think it's fantastic because so let's say
3:56
that you have 3 pages that you're shooting and you're
3:59
covering it with eight angles. And the maximum you would have
4:04
then is to cover all the entire script with each angle.
4:08
But what you do is you just drive.
4:10
It's like a rainbow on the side of the script, which is really
4:13
nice. And it's like, OK, shot 1 is
4:14
blue. And we're going to, we're going
4:16
to go through and cover this much with shot one.
4:18
We're going to cover this much. And so you can see when it's
4:20
overlapped. And then that way if you're
4:23
running behind schedule, you can start later in the script or
4:28
start early or whatever the case may be.
4:29
And you know that you do have that covered.
4:32
And if there's something that's that's just a part of a one or
4:36
you know that you need to get it, Yeah.
4:38
And those are the most important shots.
4:39
Though to be fair, I try to make sure I never have anything
4:43
that's only covered by 1 angle whenever possible.
4:46
Yeah, just because what if that shot doesn't work out?
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What if, especially if it's like a complicated one or something
4:52
along those lines or a super wide where we, there's no way in
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the world we're getting audio for it because there's no way a
4:58
mic can be anywhere near them. You never know.
5:01
Weird things come up on sets. Our listeners know this.
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They've had chaotic moments. So that's my #1 organizational
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tool binders and sheet protectors.
5:09
And then at the end of your shoot, you know, I'm cheap.
5:13
We're indie film makers. You just get a damp like paper
5:17
towel or whatever, wipe it down, let it dry, use it again.
5:20
I've been using the same ones for about 10 years now.
5:22
Nice. They're just kind of like.
5:24
They're a little foggy, yeah. Maybe not great.
5:27
But that's OK, you can use them as an ND filter if you need to
5:30
in a pinch. Light diffusion.
5:31
Yeah, it works great. So you were talking about though
5:35
the, the wide shot, right? You're saying covering something
5:38
if you if you have it just in a wide, making sure that you cover
5:41
that dialogue in a close as well.
5:42
And I want to talk about that a little bit because what are the
5:45
organizational tools that I learned probably about four or
5:51
five years ago doing audio on set.
5:52
I was using a very inexpensive Tascam recorder that didn't
5:56
allow me to quickly notate what shot and what scene and what
6:02
take we were on. The Tascam that everybody has
6:05
and everybody has seen at some point in their lives.
6:07
Yeah, yeah. And so when I would go back and
6:11
because I do my own post audio as well, so when I would go back
6:14
and try to get audio from different takes, it was a lot of
6:17
work because the camera setup, you wouldn't know where it is
6:21
necessarily because the folders I didn't want to manually
6:24
organize it. So I would just go like, oh, OK,
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well, we were at this shot at about this time, so I can jump
6:29
to whatever file O anyway, the the zoom F6 was the first
6:33
recorder that I ever bought that allows you to quickly maneuver
6:37
between scenes and takes and shots.
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And as soon as I had that, it was so nice.
6:43
That way I knew where I could pull a line from a different
6:48
take if I needed to super quickly.
6:50
Because you know, it's right there, you know exactly what
6:52
scene this is. You know that that audio, I
6:55
mean, no, that's really nice. And that's not manually going in
6:59
and renaming every single file. Which don't worry, I've done and
7:03
did it after sharing the footage with somebody else who is also
7:08
going to be editing. And then tried to send them the
7:11
project file, which could immediately not link any of the
7:14
footage because I had done the dumb thing and renamed the file
7:17
as opposed to renaming it after importing it into Adobe.
7:20
So now I do that instead. Yeah, don't ever rename actual
7:24
files. Don't do that.
7:26
Don't do it. Just don't.
7:27
It's going to make. It a mess.
7:28
If you ever have to hand a project off, good gravy, that's
7:32
a. Nightmare organizational tip.
7:34
Don't rename your files as they exist.
7:38
Rename maybe folders that they're in?
7:40
Yeah, all at once, and then share your footage or rename
7:44
them just inside your editing. Software.
7:47
Nice. Do you have any other
7:48
organizational tools you want to talk about, or do you want to
7:50
move on to the next? Topic I do because I don't want
7:52
people thinking that I only use pen and paper for things.
7:56
I do use digital tools too and there are two digital tools that
7:59
I really love. I love studio binder which does
8:02
have a free option. You can only work on one project
8:04
at a time and it has some limited features on it, but it
8:07
is a really nice way to just automate what scenes you're
8:10
filming, certain locations, and you can import different
8:13
people's schedules and it can help you build out shooting
8:16
schedules and things. You can also write your script
8:18
in there too and keep the formatting, which is nice, but
8:20
it is really cool that it has those breakdowns and
8:22
storyboarding. I also really love Google Forms
8:26
as far as scheduling goes because all I have to do is
8:29
create this form asking people to select their availability.
8:32
When I get it back, you can convert it straight into a
8:35
Google Sheet. And then that spreadsheet
8:37
basically tells you when everybody's available.
8:39
You just go through and sort it by who's available for what
8:42
scenes you need, and then boom, you know exactly when you're
8:44
filming what you're filming. Yeah, that's.
8:45
Nice. I kind of want to point out
8:47
right now if there are any film makers out there that are just
8:50
getting started and they don't have, just like they don't have
8:53
any experience on a commercial set.
8:55
This is important for them to consider because when I started
8:58
making movies with just my brother and I, then we didn't
9:01
need to necessarily have all of these organizational methods in
9:05
place because he and I were doing everything ourselves.
9:08
Which is a gift and a curse. Yeah.
9:10
And so we didn't need to learn these things.
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And then as soon as we added somebody else running camera and
9:15
then we got on bigger sets and we started to pass projects back
9:18
and forth between the two of us in post, it multiplied our
9:23
issues like our sock drawer exploded in our faces.
9:27
And it took, it took, you know, a lot of breaking of bad habits
9:32
to make sure that we are, you know, conversing about shot
9:37
lists together and making sure that projects are organized and
9:41
we can easily move them back and forth between myself for audio
9:45
and then Danny, our cinematographer for color
9:47
grading in post. Like, and it was really messy at
9:51
first. So, and, and if you're shooting
9:54
short films and then you go into a feature film, it's like an
9:59
exponential increase for some reason.
10:01
You would you would assume that. Oh, OK, well, you know, it's a
10:05
90 minute feature. That would be like 910 minute
10:08
short films. Probably 9 times as hard.
10:11
No, it's it's not. For some reason it's it's way
10:13
more complicated. Than closer to 90 yeah, because.
10:16
It's more difficult timelines and, and things get convoluted
10:19
and then if you go to make changes, it's it there's like a,
10:23
a domino effect, so. Though to your point there, for
10:26
anyone that is getting started and you don't have any of these
10:29
organizational tools and you would like them, you can
10:32
subscribe to the Indie Phone Podcast newsletter and you will
10:34
get our shot list template for free and our budget template for
10:37
free. It's all the same stuff that we
10:39
already use, and you can just copy those and start using
10:42
those. Yeah, get ahead of the game.
10:43
Yeah, absolutely. That's free.
10:45
Also like and subscribe to these videos.
10:47
We never ask people to do that. Yeah, we haven't been doing
10:49
that. Subscribe Subscribe to our
10:51
YouTube channel or if you listen to this on Spotify.
10:53
No, wait, can I say it's the last episode of the season?
10:55
Can I say it? Yeah.
10:56
Smash that subscribe button. Smash it.
10:59
Sorry, I needed that. OK.
11:00
Anyway, so are there any other organizational tools that you
11:03
wanted to come? No, I'm good on that.
11:05
I kind of want to talk about some equipment that punches
11:08
above the weight, the cheap stuff, the very inexpensive
11:12
tools that we've picked up throughout the year.
11:14
And I want to give a shout out to Lumix Slash Panasonic,
11:20
because that company was the reason I learned how to actually
11:25
operate a camera. I bought AGX 85 for $500.
11:31
This would have been in like 2018, I think I wrote it down
11:35
2018. And then right now I think the
11:38
used bodies sell for $500. Just the body without the
11:41
lenses. Yeah.
11:42
And if you are just getting started and maybe you're using
11:47
your phone, obviously there's a lot of good options out there
11:49
with like a black magic pocket 4K.
11:51
But these these inexpensive point and shoot mirrorless
11:55
cameras are super handy because they do teach you how to use
11:59
the, the manual adjustments. You can obviously, you know,
12:05
like get into like some V log or some some log type footage with
12:08
them And that GX 87 or excuse me, GX-85.
12:12
There was a way to hack into it to get like the Panasonic cinema
12:15
D that if you go online, you have to be careful because you
12:17
can like brick the camera. But mine was OK, which was kind
12:20
of nice. So it like gave me more dynamic
12:22
range and I could see instantly. It was crazy.
12:25
I could see instantly when we're shooting in this environment.
12:28
We did live music videos and the the backdrop, which if anybody's
12:32
watching this on on YouTube, we're watching it on Spotify.
12:35
We're just sitting in front of a bunch of black sound foam.
12:38
And you can imagine, like with a dynamic range limited on a
12:42
camera that's a little bit less expensive than you know, the
12:45
highlights start to blow out and then this is just like deep
12:48
black. Right, black.
12:49
And suddenly my always black shirts and Plaid stuff starts
12:54
just kind of fading into the background a little bit.
12:56
Yeah. And then you get something that
12:58
has like a more log type profile.
13:01
It's kind of like, wow, OK, you can actually see that.
13:04
You can see the difference in the dynamic range.
13:06
So those little point and shoot cameras, I love them, which the
13:10
GX 85 I think has it's it's it's it's definitely an exchangeable
13:14
or interchangeable lens system on that one.
13:16
But it was really nice to learn that.
13:17
Yeah, I think that's actually kind of perfect then, because
13:20
it's not so much one, it's not a budgetary or or price point
13:25
barrier exactly. But it still gives you the
13:28
flexibility of being able to get an idea and a feel for what
13:31
types of shots you actually like getting, what style of lenses
13:34
your lens you're really after and gives you, you know, it's
13:39
almost, it's like having kind of training wheels.
13:40
Yeah, absolutely. But it's still perfectly good
13:43
footage. Yeah, and if you're if you're
13:45
just getting started, you know, like even a Canon rebel,
13:49
something like. That I always tell people to get
13:51
a Canon rebel, especially if they're going into photography
13:53
for the first time. Yeah, but actually, I guess,
13:55
yeah. Obligatory shout out to Nikon
13:59
for making me fall in love with cannons.
14:03
I don't know if I should say that nice, but I do love cannons
14:07
and I shoot on them and have shot on them for years and years
14:09
and years all the way back to like my Cannon Vixia mini DV
14:12
camcorder. I think just I've been a fan of
14:15
Cannon for a very long time and it was just, I don't even
14:18
remember what it was at this point, but there was something
14:21
about Nikon that was so off putting to me that I went with
14:24
Canon and I've been a Canon girly ever since.
14:26
Right on, but what other cheap tools do you have for people
14:29
that you can recommend that they take a look at?
14:31
I have, oh, it's, it's not a specific one, it's a way to get
14:37
them. It's used lenses.
14:39
I just the glass doesn't lose quality because somebody else
14:45
used it. No.
14:47
As a matter of fact, sometimes you can go to pawn shops
14:50
especially and get some nice vintage lenses that actually
14:53
give you cool. I mean you and and lower Gentry
14:56
studios as a whole have a have an old school Konica that you
14:59
should done a lot beautiful. It's like it's a weird size too.
15:02
It's like a it's a 57 1/2. Oh yeah, that very calm.
15:08
Everybody uses that. Yeah.
15:09
And it's it's like an F1 four. And when I would go around
15:12
shooting on that one because I just I got an adapter to be able
15:15
to plug it into that little tiny Lumix that I had.
15:19
And it taught me how to get the focus correct because when
15:23
you're shooting at that shallow of a depth of.
15:25
Field you notice. You're going to, you're going to
15:27
see and, and I'd be getting shots and I'm like, I thought I
15:30
had that and I would notice that I thought I had it on someone's
15:33
eye, but it would just be like slightly behind and the focus
15:35
would be on their ear, you know, But it's, it's one of those
15:38
things and it's got a manual adjustment, which I love.
15:40
And some of those, those, some of the newer ones, they don't
15:43
have the adjustment for like the feet.
15:47
I mean, if you get a cinema lens, obviously that'll be fine.
15:49
Yeah. But you can get some of those
15:50
old photography lenses and it'll be like, oh, this is in focus at
15:54
whatever 8 feet away. Exactly.
15:56
And it's the, I don't know what's that's called like a
15:58
fixed focus. Somebody tell me in the
16:00
comments. Don't worry, they will.
16:02
Yes, thank you. But it's good to, it's good to
16:04
have that practice and you can do it really inexpensively.
16:07
Yeah, if you just get an adapter which they make they.
16:11
Do I? Found a Konica adapter to a
16:13
micro 4 thirds no big deal there you go it wasn't speed boosted
16:17
or anything like that. I didn't have any lenses in
16:18
between it, but it just allowed me to just plug it right onto
16:20
the camera and I got to practice, you know, and then you
16:23
get. Some little nice touches from a
16:26
vintage lens that you otherwise wouldn't.
16:27
Actually, we've mentioned him constantly on this show, so
16:31
we're going to him again, Cody Newton here in Boise.
16:34
He has a set of vintage lenses that he'll that he'll lend out
16:37
to people as needed or rent out to people as needed.
16:39
And man, it's just, it's a world of difference filming on those.
16:44
They're just beautiful. There's something about that
16:46
vintage style and look and it's not perfect for everything, but
16:49
you know what, swing by your local pawn shop, find some stuff
16:52
there. Alternatively, another option I
16:54
really like are the online rental places and none of them
16:59
sponsor us yet. So I'm not going to say any
17:03
names actually I'm just not going to say the names because I
17:04
don't remember. But it's something super easy
17:06
like went borrow lenses, rent lenses, something like that.
17:11
And that gives you the option to not only kind of try new gear
17:17
really inexpensively. So if there if there is a lens
17:20
you're considering, you can get that just shipped straight to
17:23
you, but you also have the option in there used inventory.
17:27
And yeah, some of that's a little bit more beat up than
17:29
what you might see at a pawn shop sometimes just because it's
17:32
been rented a lot. But, I mean, they sell them
17:36
there for maybe half the price of what you'd pay.
17:39
Yeah, if you were trying to buy it new or in some cases, even
17:42
less than half the price. Yeah.
17:44
And it still works. It's still fine.
17:45
It might not look as pretty. The lens cap might be a
17:47
different color. That happens.
17:49
And you know what? That just makes your gear look
17:50
more unique. Yeah, absolutely.
17:52
It's character building. If you can get a good deal on a
17:54
lens, take it, because you can always unload it for the price
17:57
that you bought it, sometimes even more if you sit on them for
17:59
a while. Yeah, those lenses are probably
18:01
only going to go up and up. Can I, can I talk microphone?
18:04
Yeah. So you should, I shouldn't the.
18:08
The Chit Chat web series, which I talked about previously on
18:11
this podcast. And then stocking a Table Rock
18:13
feature film. I used a $150.00 Audio Technica
18:19
AT-875-R shotgun microphone. I didn't use it as my primary
18:25
microphone, but I did use it as like a backup.
18:29
And for 100, well, I think they're like $200 now, but I got
18:32
it on a sale for a shotgun microphone.
18:36
It's small, it's portable, and it sounds surprisingly good for
18:41
$150.00. And The thing is, if you're
18:43
doing your own audio post production, a lot of times you
18:47
can get into the equalizer and mess around with the settings to
18:51
get it to sound. How you want it to sound or add
18:55
compression to get it to sound like it's a little bit closer
18:58
than it would have been otherwise.
18:59
But it, it was, it's a really clean microphone for $150.00.
19:03
And I keep it in my sound bag to this day.
19:06
And I'll grab it, you know, every once in a while if I, if I
19:08
need something that's, it's, if it's not like key, like if, if
19:13
somebody's talking off screen and I want to set something up
19:15
real quick, I might just point that like closer to him.
19:18
And then that way if I if we're doing a two shot and the other
19:21
person's off screen, I can get their audio clean that way.
19:25
So what you're saying is at $150.00 this microphone has
19:28
still proven itself useful enough that despite having more,
19:32
I don't know if better microphones, but.
19:35
Way more expensive than that. More expensive microphones now
19:38
you still hang on to that one because it does come in handy
19:41
and you can trust it. Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
19:44
And if you're just getting going and you're doing location sound
19:47
or you need a a camera and you're you're using a or, excuse
19:51
me, you need a microphone and you're using a black magic
19:53
pocket 4K, you can just XLR that thing right into the the XLR
19:58
input on the pocket and get some good on camera audio that way.
20:02
That's helpful, yeah. What else you got for cheap?
20:05
I have hair ties. Oh, hair ties.
20:08
And I know that's ridiculous, but they come in handy so often
20:12
and not just because you want to pull your hair back, which, you
20:14
know, depending on the length of your hair may or may not be
20:17
important for you, but I they're great.
20:21
They're so practical. You can go to the dollar store
20:24
and buy a pack of 500 like they, but they come in handy for so
20:27
much stuff. If you're trying to smooth out
20:29
motion on a tripod shot, you wrap the hair tie around it and
20:33
you just pull the hair tie slowly.
20:34
So that way kind of even if you have a cheaper tripod, it sort
20:37
of softens some of that motion. You don't get as much jerking
20:40
happening because it's got the extra kind of bounce and stretch
20:43
to it. You need to wrap up a bunch of
20:44
cables. You need to strap stuff to
20:46
things. I've used hair ties to attach
20:49
cameras to very makeshift stabilizers before.
20:52
Would I recommend that for most people?
20:54
No, because that's very not safe and you might break your camera.
20:58
But I needed the shot and it was risk I was willing to take.
21:01
There we go. And that hair tie held up nice.
21:04
So, you know, and I don't mean the fancy scrunchy ones that are
21:07
like the big puff. I'm just talking the little
21:09
black. I could have just I should have
21:11
just had one on my wrist right now.
21:12
And just to exemplify that point, that would.
21:14
Have unless they're listening only.
21:15
Yes, then that wouldn't have helped if you.
21:17
Don't know what a black hair tie is?
21:18
Then God help you. No, then good for you.
21:21
That means you take really good care of your hair and you've
21:23
never needed to like have suffer through any of the damage or
21:26
breakage that I'm sure they cause.
21:28
But. OK, well I guess I don't know
21:30
enough about hair then. But honestly, I know what those
21:32
black hair ties are. Yeah, they are.
21:35
Or. You could just use rubber bands.
21:36
Rubber bands also work, but I like the hair ties because you
21:40
can just throw them on your wrist and stuff without it like
21:42
irritating your skin or anything or without being a little bit
21:44
too tight. They are wrapped in fabric, so.
21:46
They're a little softer they're. A little bit.
21:48
Very cool. I want to also point out audio.
21:51
Again, cheap tools for for people that are working in post
21:56
make sure that you have a decent set of studio monitors, speakers
22:00
or headphones and they're not super expensive.
22:03
Yamaha makes a set of like 4 1/2 inch speakers that that I use
22:07
that I think sound great. They're very flat and by that I
22:10
mean they don't have a lot of EQ spikes built into the speakers,
22:14
whereas if you use like a set of Skullcandy headphones, a.
22:18
Lot of attacked right now. Yeah, like I don't know if
22:20
anyone's wearing any of those here on in this studio, but a
22:25
lot of times those are EQ D up so that the bass kind of put
22:28
punches through. I want my music to make my
22:32
heartbeat. Yes, that's good.
22:33
But The thing is, is you want to be able to hear it flat so that
22:36
you don't want any coloration on it.
22:37
Just like you wouldn't want to color grade your footage on a on
22:41
a on a cheap monitor, no, Or you wouldn't want to color grade
22:44
your footage on a monitor that's set to like some weird
22:48
cinematics. Setting.
22:50
Who even knows what settings they come with nowadays?
22:52
The vivid setting. Yeah, there we go.
22:55
Yeah, high contrast or too low contrast or whatever.
22:57
You want it to be as accurate as possible on your monitor when
23:00
you're color grading. You want your speakers or your
23:03
headphones to be as accurate as possible when you're mixing
23:06
audio levels because it'll get janky real quick when you when
23:11
you go into the theater, if you don't know what's going to
23:13
what's coming out of your system, you might have some
23:15
really low frequencies that just get pop out of that, that
23:19
theatrical subwoofer randomly, which it has.
23:23
I mean, that has happened to me. I had to, I had to fix that.
23:27
Yeah. On on Stockton and tail rock.
23:29
The first time we heard it at A at a theater that had a massive
23:32
subwoofer like some of that, the low end sound on the the score
23:37
track was just shaking the walls.
23:40
But I didn't have the. Yeah.
23:41
But but the issue was that I didn't have the monitoring to
23:46
where I noticed that that low end because it was very low,
23:49
that that low end was at that high of a level.
23:52
So you can check it with like visual monitors as well, but you
23:55
just want to be able to know that it exists.
23:58
And so that's why it's good to have like a subwoofer as well as
24:01
studio monitors or headphones that'll go very low frequency
24:03
and that's not that expensive. No, but it can make a huge
24:06
difference in your final product so.
24:08
Yeah, absolutely. Any other cheap gear that
24:13
punches above its weight I. Think that's pretty good for me.
24:18
OK, so should we go to the things that punch at their
24:20
weight? And they might be expensive, but
24:21
they are worth every penny. Yes.
24:23
Let's do it. I just got the classic
24:26
Sennheiser MKH 416 boom mic. That thing is wonderful.
24:32
I I love that shotgun microphone and they're kind of spendy, but
24:37
I would not exchange it for anything.
24:38
I will say though, there are some shops that will sell those
24:44
at a pretty discounted rate if they're used as well.
24:46
And usually because there were, I don't know what I would call
24:50
the reusium here in town because it's not really a pawn shop, OK,
24:56
but it's like a refurbished goods kind of shop, OK.
25:00
And they, they've had some Sennheiser's in there before.
25:04
Nice. That are definitely a steal at
25:07
the price so. I wouldn't worry about buying
25:09
one of those used. I'd like, I honestly feel like
25:11
if somebody were to attack me and I had that Sennheiser boom,
25:14
like I could just ward them off. Just beat them upside the head
25:17
with it if they. They came at me with like a
25:19
sword. I could deflect it with that
25:21
thing. It's it's pretty sturdy, so.
25:23
That's impressive. OK, what do you got?
25:25
I have the Ronan DJI, the gimbal stabilizer combo.
25:30
I've bought 2 of them now. I upgraded to the RS4 I think.
25:35
But they're they're incredible. They're my go to running gun
25:39
whenever I need something that I can be mobile, I can handle
25:43
quickly, especially for commercial gigs.
25:45
It's great. It's fantastic.
25:47
I love it. Yeah, a lot of us out here have
25:50
to be able to basically do an entire shoot on our own.
25:53
Yeah. So I don't have somebody that's
25:56
going to be there pulling focus. I will say that I have the
25:59
little focus wheel attachment as an option 2, but I also really
26:03
enjoy Canon's autofocus. Yeah, I know it's not perfect,
26:07
but it is pretty Dang good if. You got a Canon or a Sony, you
26:11
can probably just slam that onto the gimbal and you're good to
26:14
go. It's really nice, it's
26:15
practical. Other other stuff not, you know,
26:19
I mean, I don't have anything that's like super important
26:21
there as far as expensive gear. The the issue is, is that I was
26:25
a teacher for years. And so the summer times is when
26:30
I made films and with a teaching salary, I could never really
26:34
afford to buy the stuff that was quote UN quote nice.
26:38
I just remember when the Pocket 4K, the the black Magic Pocket
26:42
4K came out, that was nice because it was affordable.
26:46
And then we were hitting an upper limit on image quality.
26:51
And as soon as I played back what I could record with that, I
26:53
was like, OK. This is what we.
26:56
Now I understand why raw footage exists.
26:59
Now I understand why people pay a little bit more.
27:02
And then, you know, being able to work on set with Danny and
27:05
his red Cam, it's like, OK, this is.
27:07
This is a whole other level. This is.
27:09
This is not at all comparable to what I've been doing.
27:12
I understand, but you can. You can get by and do a lot of
27:14
things if you know the basics of lighting and framing.
27:18
Yeah, you can do a lot with some very inexpensive gear.
27:21
Yeah, which will be showcasing in an upcoming series for next
27:24
season without giving too much away, Yeah, So stay tuned.
27:27
There are exciting, new, hopefully entertaining things on
27:31
the horizon on that front, yes, which will be good, absolutely.
27:35
And you'll get to tell us all the things that you want us to
27:36
test out and and we'll get to try to do it as inexpensively as
27:39
possible 'cause we're indie film makers.
27:41
I will do one last expensive 1. And I know compare all things
27:45
considered, it's not the most expensive, but especially for
27:48
like a college student, when I bought my first Manfrotto
27:51
tripod, it was a game changer. Like the fluid head and just
27:56
having something that's sturdy enough but still compact.
28:00
Manfrotto tripods, I'm just such a huge fan of.
28:03
I'm sure that there are some people who say that they're the
28:05
worst, but you know what? They're amazing, they're great,
28:09
and that their fluid head system is absolutely just unstoppable.
28:15
We talked about that before too. It's a tripod.
28:17
Is always. Always worth the money.
28:19
Because if you get a good one, it's going to last a long time,
28:21
and if you get a cheap one, it's going to start to fall apart.
28:24
And you're talking about being able to fend people off with
28:26
your microphone. Well, hey, driving home alone
28:29
from a shoot and it's dark outside, if I want to take
28:33
somebody down Manfrotto tripod, that's going to pack a wallop.
28:37
Yeah, actually a carbon fiber boom pole would help you out a
28:40
lot 'cause it's real light. Just get a lot of fat like
28:43
velocity on. That so you can or you know just
28:45
the the heavy end of AC stand. Yeah.
28:48
Do you want to talk post production tools before we wrap
28:51
things up? I do 'cause I've got a couple
28:53
little things that I really like, and I'm going to say hands
28:56
down, especially if you're starting to do commercial gigs,
29:00
my absolute favorite that I hear nobody ever talk about is Mr.
29:03
Horse. Mr. Horse.
29:05
Mr. Horse is a plug in for Adobe.
29:10
I think they have a plug in for Resolve now too, actually.
29:13
What does it do? It's all sorts of transitions
29:16
and text effects and really simple, straightforward, but
29:21
clean and kind of interesting looking transitions like fast
29:24
wipes and all sorts of stuff that you wouldn't necessarily
29:28
use all the time. But for certain commercial
29:30
moments it works really well. And it comes with sound effects
29:33
for some of them, but you can also leave it off and it's
29:35
completely free. So this is really helpful for
29:38
those people that are just a one person show running around with
29:42
their DJI Ronan footage, random insert shots, and then they're
29:48
trying to put a commercial together to pay their bills for.
29:52
Or pay. Mom and daddy's cake shop or
29:54
whatever. Exactly, I think.
29:55
That's a little bit of extra flair with Mr. Horse.
29:58
Yeah, it's Mr. Horse. It's one of the greatest.
30:00
I think it's Mr. Horse Composer or something like that
30:02
technically, but just Google Mr. Horse and it's or you'll get
30:07
something from what was the Ed Sullivan Show.
30:11
Nice. Anyway, what about you?
30:14
The, the thing that I've used most for post production that
30:17
was a recent discovery was Isotope RX because I used to
30:20
clean up my own dialogue manually all the time.
30:23
And so anyone out there that's doing a running gun setup and
30:28
you need to use, you know, whatever lab microphones that
30:31
are inexpensive, that record internally and then mix that
30:33
with whatever camera audio that you're grabbing.
30:36
The, the nice thing about the isotope is that it you can, you
30:41
can preview it live as long as your computer is fast enough
30:45
because it uses a lot of processing power to, especially
30:47
if you're doing multiple tracks of like dialogue clean up.
30:50
But what it is, it allows you to like decrease the reverb and
30:54
decrease the ambient noise and just little sliders And so you
30:57
can kind of see what it sounds like and how much of the
31:00
ambience you want to remove until it sounds unnatural.
31:02
Because a lot of times the AI tools, because I've messed with
31:06
the the Premier one and the Da Vinci one as well, it just
31:10
doesn't sound quite as natural to me yet.
31:14
Especially Adobe's, I don't know what the heck they do, but they
31:16
do some really weird processing with their AI audio.
31:20
Cleanup. Yeah.
31:20
So it I wouldn't, I wouldn't trust that much at all.
31:24
To be fair, da Vinci's early editions were pretty rough.
31:27
True. They were very rough, yeah.
31:29
And I'm sure they're going to continue to get better.
31:31
So you might, you may not need to dump any money for for
31:34
Isotope. But the nice thing is, is it's
31:36
it's not, it doesn't burn into the file, which I guess neither
31:39
do the AI tools, but it's a good way to, it's a good way to just
31:42
kind of like lower the ambience without getting rid of all of
31:46
it. Which is nice because when
31:49
there's absolutely no ambient sound whatsoever that it just
31:52
makes everything sound ADR and AWE.
31:54
Very unnatural, Very unnatural. Weird.
31:57
It's uncomfortable unless you're going for that uncanny valley
32:00
but for audio type feeling. Yeah, which most people aren't
32:04
on the Amy film stuff. No, they're not.
32:05
So what do you got for some post production tools that you're
32:08
thankful for? I also really like Motion Array
32:12
and I know that that's of all the stock options that are out
32:16
there. Motion Array is a graphics
32:19
house. They've got stock footage, stock
32:21
audio, a bunch of graphic templates.
32:24
It's mainly the graphic templates that I like them for.
32:26
Their stock footage and audio stuff is fine, but the man, they
32:32
have so many mogrit files and different templates for every
32:34
single editing suite and it's all really user friendly.
32:39
All the creators put a lot of time and effort into creating
32:42
these tutorials that go along with them.
32:45
And it's it's just really, really nice to have it.
32:48
And it's 15 to 25 bucks a month. Oh, OK, so it's not, but just
32:53
depending on what plan you choose.
32:55
OK, it's not over the top. It's not terrible.
32:57
And you can go month to month and cancel whenever.
32:59
So if you just have one big project coming up and it's
33:01
unlimited files and things. Oh nice.
33:03
So I like motion array. I say Kudos to them.
33:07
That's really solid. Yeah.
33:08
Now that I'm thinking about post production and I talked about
33:12
studio monitoring for audio earlier, like the sound foam and
33:16
the Rockwool, which you can't see the Rockwool, but I have
33:18
this studio covered in it's just an inexpensive type of
33:22
insulation that I that I built around or inside of boards
33:26
myself. And they're just kind of like
33:28
scattered about the studio here. And it makes it sound really
33:31
dead, which is very important when I'm monitoring audio for
33:35
film stuff, which a lot of times if, if I go on the reddits where
33:39
people are talking about like post sound mixing or the
33:41
videography stuff, a lot of times people are like, oh, it
33:43
doesn't matter, like, you know, just use this cleanup.
33:45
Use this cleanup. It sounds very simple, which is
33:47
fine if you're making content that people are going to ingest
33:51
on their phone or maybe YouTube. But if you're making a film and
33:57
you want to send it off to film festivals and they're going to
34:00
be screening it in actual theaters, decent quality
34:03
theaters with decent sound systems, you might want to get
34:07
an environment where it's deadened when you're, when
34:10
you're listening to your audio. If you can't afford to hire
34:12
somebody to do your post audio, you'll want to make sure that
34:15
you find a space to where you can listen to it and, and really
34:19
listening close so that you can hear any of the hiccups that are
34:23
happening. You want to be able to crank it
34:26
up loud and not have like those echoes washing that stuff up.
34:29
You know, like if it's if it's a janky audio blip between cuts,
34:33
you might not notice it if you can't turn up the speaker loud
34:36
enough, or if you have too much reverb going around in the place
34:39
that you're listening. So would an alternative to that
34:42
be noise cancelling headphones or is that kind of a no go?
34:45
That won't actually be, I would not use noise cancelling
34:48
headphones because the way that noise cancelling headphones work
34:51
is, is, is just like physics. So they have microphones on the
34:54
outside of them usually. And what the microphones are
34:57
doing is they're picking up the ambient noise and then it's it's
35:01
playing it, it's mixing that into your headphones, but
35:03
inversing the phase so it cancels it out.
35:06
That's how that works. So if you've ever taken noise
35:09
cancelling headphones, especially the bigger ones where
35:11
you can actually see the microphones, if you take them
35:14
and it's like outside on a windy day, it'll start doing all sorts
35:17
of weird, like making weird noises inside of your
35:20
headphones. And it that would be fun.
35:21
It makes you a little dizzy. So that's fair.
35:24
That would mess with your equilibrium quite.
35:25
Yeah, noise, noise. Cancelling headphones are are
35:27
great for when you're on an airplane, but I would not touch
35:30
those things if I'm doing audio mixing personally.
35:33
OK. So I figured I would ask.
35:35
Yeah, I didn't know. But yeah, so OK, anything else
35:39
that you want to add as far as tools that you're thankful for?
35:44
Well, probably you not because you are a tool.
35:48
Great introduction, I appreciate that.
35:51
But thank you Chuck for always doing so much of the post
35:53
production for this very podcast.
35:55
Oh, absolutely. And thanks for thank you for
35:57
doing the marketing. This has been one hell of a
36:00
first season. Yeah.
36:01
And like, like we said, there's going to be a few short
36:04
episodes. We reviewed the She Her Film
36:07
Festival, the Portland Out of the Stars Film Festival, the
36:11
Chicago Horror Film Festival, and we have a review of the
36:14
indie film Worm Town. Those will all be coming out.
36:17
Hopefully we'll get them all out in December.
36:19
We'll post them to the normal channels, but they'll be little
36:22
short, little short videos. And so hopefully you like those.
36:26
And if you have some things that you want to have reviewed, feel
36:29
free to send it in. Definitely, yeah.
36:31
Otherwise, enjoy the holidays, enjoy the end of the year, and
36:35
we'll see you all in January. Yes.
36:37
I mean, is that a succinct farewell?
36:39
It was, for once, I did a succinct farewell.
36:42
Excellent. Well, goodbye.
36:43
Bye.