Latest / Indie Film Podcast / [Deep Dive] $250 Short Film: Editing, Color & Sound on a Micro-Budget

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[Deep Dive] $250 Short Film: Editing, Color & Sound on a Micro-Budget · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. This week we are diving into the
0:03
post production of a $250 short film called Dive, directed by
0:07
me, Victoria Horne. I'm Chuck Norton, Co host,
0:11
location sound recordist, sound mixer for the short film Dive.
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We're both micro budget film makers and for these three
0:17
episodes we're breaking down the short film dive with us today we
0:20
have cinematographer and colorist Daniel Clamorous.
0:23
So let's close out this series with a discussion on editing,
0:27
coloring, and sound design. Do you want to start us off
0:31
Victoria and kind of just give us the deets on the actual dive
0:35
footage? Yes, the actual specs of the
0:37
footage itself. So we ended up with a final
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runtime of this film for 8 minutes, including all credits,
0:43
logos, what not, and the total storage space.
0:48
I just noted that well, all of it fits on a four terabyte SSD.
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However, Daniel saved the day and just knew it's about 680
0:58
gigabytes of footage. Ish.
1:00
Yeah, yeah. So thank you so much.
1:02
So on that note, Daniel, you're a colorist.
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I mean, I do suffer from imposter syndrome, but I, I, I,
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I've done it. You have you have colored many
1:14
things. I have.
1:15
I have, yes. So there's like an entire
1:17
certification process. What does that look like?
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I mean, it's you do get a digital certificate there with
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Davinci Resolve. So I did do that.
1:28
It's basically you got, you know, a manual like this thick
1:33
or a guide. And yeah, you just download the
1:37
footage and kind of follow along and it kind of breaks down all
1:41
the necessary information you might need.
1:44
Nice. And then there's, there's
1:46
actually a 50 question test at the very end of it, OK.
1:52
And you only get like 3 attempts to pass it and then you have to
1:56
like wait six months or something like that.
1:58
Oh yeah. Dang, OK.
2:00
Just like my GED, yeah. Just kidding.
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I never got that. I never bothered with a good
2:07
enough degree. That's why I'm in film.
2:09
To be fair, I got lost in the mail.
2:13
So you can get your certificate if you if you go through Da
2:17
Vinci's process. Basically you you need to
2:20
actually do the the packet in order to be able to pass the
2:23
test essentially. I mean, it would be it would be
2:26
wildly helpful. Yes, yeah, I would I would
2:29
recommend doing it in line. I don't know it's really
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streamlined. It's a really nice like how they
2:35
walk you through it from beginning to end.
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And then obviously they don't cover everything because there's
2:41
a million different things for for coloring.
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I I'm not even aware of them all.
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I would. I would imagine so.
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Yeah, Da Vinci's so complicated. I remember we were shooting a
2:52
short film and we thought we wanted to shoot it 2 tone, like
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a two or two. Excuse me, two strip, right?
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Is it that was called 2 strip, Red, green, 2 strip.
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There's no blue information in there.
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And so I remember I, I think you went down a rabbit hole too.
3:10
And I went down a rabbit hole and I was trying to figure out
3:12
all the different ways to do it. And there were so many different
3:15
ways to do the node structure to where you can make it just to
3:18
get rid of the Blues. It was interesting.
3:21
I I. Think we really like God that?
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How long ago was that? That was a year and a half ago.
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Yeah, about that. That wasn't that long ago.
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I ain't that one just copped out and like used a a a LUT that
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kind of emulated that close enough.
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Fair, Yeah. Just kind of old timey footage,
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yeah, look and look and feel and vibe, which.
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Worked as the silent film that it.
3:45
Yeah, it was a silent film. Yeah, it was goofy.
3:46
It was a weird one. It was a weird.
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One, it was a fun one. I I enjoyed it.
3:50
So did it cost money to get the certification from Davinci?
3:53
Now no completely free. Oh really?
3:55
I did. The only thing it cost me was
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maybe I'm old school but I wanted the the physical manual
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or guide if you will. Your study guide.
4:05
Yeah. So I did purchase that.
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Well, I suppose that kind of would be helpful too if.
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You, I mean, I guess you could have it.
4:12
I mean you can download it digitally and just have it on
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your iPad or whatever and scroll through with it.
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But I don't know, there's something about the tangible and
4:19
the smell. Yeah, the highlighters.
4:21
Yeah. Did you get any?
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Have you gotten any gigs? Fold it as a result of having
4:26
your color certification through Davinci.
4:28
Absolutely not. No, I'm also.
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I'm also. Pretty It's as valuable as the
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cost of the course. Well, I mean, I'm, I'm pretty
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dog shit at marketing myself and putting myself out there.
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So that that could be a a pretty big contributing factor.
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As well. That is very likely contributing
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to things there for sure. Like Boise is not a big market,
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no right. And I'm sure if we just asked
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all the people in the market, hey, do you do you know Daniel
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clamors a question B question. Did you know he's a colorist?
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And not very many for A and even less for B.
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There we go. All right, that's fair, because
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you are more known as the cinematographer.
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Yeah, I, I do like coloring my own stuff just because I mean, I
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know the limitations that I have on set and what I'm, I'm trying
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to achieve and I'm aware of my my abilities in the day of and
5:27
what I'm capable of doing in post with the colour.
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And so, I mean, yeah, I just, I like knowing what I need to fix
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and where it is and instead of relying on someone else to kind
5:41
of either fix my mistakes or and enhance it on their own, yeah.
5:46
OK, well, that makes sense. I agree.
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The same thing with sound, location sound and then sound
5:51
mixing. I think it's kind of important
5:54
to you kind of have to do both. When you're indie microbidget
5:58
filmmaker, you know it's not uncommon for somebody to
6:01
probably shoot and colour grade their own footage in a lot of
6:04
different places or. Yeah.
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I mean, look, if, if I could afford or if production could
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afford to have a colourist for any of the projects I've worked
6:11
on that's better colourist than I, I mean, I would be, I would
6:15
be welcome to it. It's just that would require
6:18
budget. Yep, yeah, budget's important.
6:21
And that's not what we do here. We're not about that.
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Do you want to talk about the split tone colour grade that you
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put on dive specifically? Sure, the.
6:31
Split tone is is basically creating a colour contrast
6:35
between the shadows and the highlights.
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And So what I did was ease the I think I can repeat myself like
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almost verbatim, right you? Can repeat yourself as much as
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you want to all. Right.
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So you, you get your, your 18% middle grey within the color
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space you're working on. And then that allows you to
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control, it gives you a, a point of control of like just
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adjusting the shadows and everything above that above the
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middle grade. So you get a a definitive
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contrast push that you're going to be creating.
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And so the idea is to just use contrasting colors that will, it
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actually does a really great job of giving the image shape like,
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yeah, 'cause we used a lot of red lighting behind the bar.
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And so when we're face on the the talent, like they're kind of
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getting blasted with red a little bit.
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And so any any part of the their face that was, you know, shaped
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with shadow, you remove the red and it kind of gives it like a
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little green or cyan feel and color.
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And what that does is it yeah, really rounds out the the, the
8:02
shape like across someone's face and just the the image in
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general. Yeah, it's amazing when you look
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at a before and after, how much depth that just gives the image.
8:13
Yeah, it is really nice. It looks good.
8:16
Yeah, it's gorgeous. And I kind of see what you're
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saying because like usually in a film, you want to get a little
8:22
bit of that, that Shadow Fall off just to make sure you have
8:24
enough depth really on like their face and the different
8:27
features of the individual. But this way it just, it just
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makes that pop a little bit more.
8:33
Yeah. Because I mean, ultimately as a,
8:35
as a deep pier cinematographer, you're trying to make a
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two-dimensional image look 3D, right.
8:40
So that's that's why you add shape and, you know, contrast to
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to people and environments, so that it and like foreground
8:49
objects, you know, so that way it gives a little depth to the
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to the environment and yeah. Came together well.
8:58
It really did. OK, So then switching around a
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little bit, what were the driving ideas and inspiration?
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If that was the color grade, what was the inspiration behind
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some of the audio and the actual sound design for the final mix?
9:16
So dive was fun in a couple areas and that was the.
9:24
Horrible in others. It was difficult in others.
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I talked last week how the audio was super noisy in the location.
9:32
So we were inside the bar because they had all the
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refrigerators running, which you need to have because it's a
9:36
restaurant. So I did my best to close
9:40
distance between the microphone and the talent to maximize
9:44
clarity there. So I spent a lot of time in post
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cleaning that up. So, but the sound design
9:51
element, I think what I leaned into there was the buzz from
9:56
the, from the open sign at the beginning.
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You know, you created an animated title sequence of dive.
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And So what I did there is I had like a neon light hum that I
10:08
added and then I, I pitched them up, pitched them down kind of
10:12
like cross faded them to, to give it a little bit more of a
10:16
punch and then carried that through as noise into the bar
10:22
itself. Because the bar was so noisy, I
10:25
wanted to have a bunch of ambience in there that can help
10:30
cover that loudness up that was just going to be present.
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So the sound design elements that I used was specifically to
10:40
try to mask the noisy dialogue that we got.
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But it was, it all ended up being OK.
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I thought it sounded fine at the end.
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Fortunately, I do want to give a shout out to Isotope RX because
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I bought that plug in like a couple months ago and it has
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saved me so much time cleaning up noisy dialogue.
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Oh, nice. It's it's normally what you do
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when you get an audio that's that you know, you have a
11:04
refrigerator running or you have HVAC running.
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What you have to do is you have to take a silent sample of that
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and then basically like use that as a reference noise.
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It flips the phase on that and then kind of covers the rest of
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the audio file. So that area becomes silence,
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but then it destroys some of the information in people's
11:24
dialogue. The plug in, though, just kind
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of takes care of that automatically.
11:29
You know, the AI stuff is getting a lot better, but I've
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used Premieres, I've used Da Vinci's, I've used auditions and
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Isotope RX basically put the plug in in and it did just as
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well, if not better as me manually going in and messing
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with the files individually. So huge, huge time saver there.
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So that was awesome. But yeah, sound design, I
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thought, I thought it was fun to to mess with your Victor's
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Finales logo 'cause you had an animated logo there.
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And then I tried to connect the sound design on that element
12:02
with the sound design on the dive title itself.
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And then inside the actual bar, you said you wanted it to be
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empty. And so I wanted it to kind of
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sound empty. And then you got some of your
12:16
aunt's music, which was kind of neat.
12:18
And So what I want I added into the bar scene then is that music
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coming out of what sounds like kind of a crappy speaker.
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And I felt like that kind of added, I put a little bit of
12:30
reverb on there and then EQ D it so it sounds like it's just
12:33
coming it. Sounded a little tinny, almost.
12:36
Yeah, tinny and it made the place feel a little bit more
12:38
empty to me anyway. So that's, that's what I did on
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the sound design and that was it was a fun one to mess with after
12:45
you after you get all the audio cleaned up, which I said that
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that Isotope RX plug in saved me a lot of hassle there.
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So I could take my time instead of focusing on cleaning up
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mistakes, which is usually 90% of what you do when you're sound
12:58
mixing. And it cut that down to like, I
13:01
don't know, like 6075%. So that was nice.
13:04
Dang, yeah, OK, so valuable plug in.
13:06
Yes, highly recommended. Highly recommended and they
13:09
usually have it on sale like a couple times a year so.
13:12
I wasn't going to, but I'm going to pull up my phone and write
13:14
that down or. Shut.
13:16
That down because he's not going to listen to the episode later,
13:18
so I don't. Want to listen to me?
13:23
That's other people's job. Do you want to talk about the
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the timeline for the edit Vic? Yeah, 'cause it was actually, it
13:31
was actually a pretty quick turn around for how much post got
13:34
done to it. I was actually kind of
13:36
surprised. So the first edit took about 10
13:40
days and it landed at about 10 minutes without any logos or
13:46
credits or anything like that, and then continued editing it
13:51
for another nine days after that to get it down to the 8.
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So I'm that jerk when I'm editing footage where I after I
14:01
get a version done, I'm gonna walk away from it for a whole
14:04
day at least. So that way I can just get some
14:09
space from it. And then when I come back to it
14:11
and watch it again, I can immediately judge past me for
14:15
making horrible mistakes and then immediately recut
14:17
everything entirely do. You ever get lost?
14:19
Do you ever forget to look at the look for the forest or lose
14:23
the forest for the trees when you're editing?
14:25
Yeah, that's one of the reasons I had to start taking a day to
14:28
like step aside from it because I'll get stuck on something that
14:31
is so menial and does not matter whatsoever.
14:35
I think I mentioned some of the continuity stuff for
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replacements and everything. Nobody ever notices that.
14:40
Nobody's going to notice if somebody's hand was here or
14:42
here, and that's such a small difference.
14:45
I don't know why. But then I'm going to go through
14:49
all the footage all over again and see if there's just one word
14:51
where maybe their hand was just a little bit higher and it
14:53
doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
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I need to just let it go, but I won't.
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It could be a fraction of a fraction of a percent better.
15:01
Yeah, but it. Marginally.
15:03
Yeah, I think, I think getting your actual idea on film like to
15:07
100% is it's like trying to reach the speed of light.
15:11
Like you just you can't do it and it takes like exponentially
15:14
more effort to get from 98 to 99%.
15:19
Done. Like, I feel like sometimes
15:20
like, you know, 94 to 99% is like just as much work to get
15:24
to, you know, 94% from 0. Yeah.
15:28
And do you have to give yourself a deadline to for editing?
15:31
Because I don't. Know I will just keep going.
15:33
Yeah. I don't know about for you with
15:34
sound, but I feel like I can do the same with color.
15:36
Like if I don't, or even just production, just on the day
15:41
lighting, if there's time, I'm just gonna keep tinkering with
15:43
stuff until there's no more time.
15:45
Yeah, cuz you scheduled the time for it, so why wouldn't you just
15:48
use all of it? Gotta use it.
15:49
What else are you gonna? Do yeah, rap early, let people
15:52
go home from this unpaid project and enjoy time with their
15:55
families. Not OK.
15:57
No, no, absolutely not. So I think that was the longest
16:01
part was that editing all of it down was technically over the
16:06
course of 19 days. So we hit picture lock on March
16:09
31st at which when I sent it off to both of you.
16:14
And then Danny, I don't know if you remember this, your color
16:17
grade was complete on April 6th. So that is less than a week turn
16:21
around time. And I took three days longer
16:24
than you. I was on April 9th.
16:25
What the hell was I doing? To be fair, you were waiting on
16:28
me to get you the music from my aunt.
16:29
That's right. Yeah, that's.
16:30
Right, so I was still slowing you down to.
16:32
Be fair, there is something with my house.
16:35
I don't even remember what it was at this point, but something
16:38
had to be done by then, yeah. So I had to have it done.
16:42
You did. By then there were supposed to
16:44
be contractors coming to your house.
16:45
That is what it was, yeah. Yeah, and you were not going to
16:48
have a workstation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
16:50
So you had to crank that out. Quickly.
16:51
Good thing they didn't follow through, right?
16:53
Everyone. You'll get your house put back
16:56
together one day. That doesn't matter.
17:00
That's fine. And then the final submission
17:01
was April 13th, which, Full disclosure, the deadline for the
17:05
Film Festival got moved. However, after the 9th those
17:11
last four days was just me messing with the text message
17:15
animations. Yeah, you were very obsessed
17:18
about those. I.
17:19
Thought you did a really great job on those.
17:21
Thank you I. Yeah, it turned out better than
17:24
I I don't know what my expectation was, but it was
17:26
better than my expectation. I watched the first draft and
17:28
you were worried about whether or not they were going to be
17:30
legible, and I'm like, I thought they were pretty good.
17:32
You did continue to improve upon.
17:34
Them I did, I did continue to mess with them.
17:36
I kept making the font just a little bit larger, making sure
17:39
to emphasize like a sans serif fonts.
17:40
That way it's completely legible.
17:42
I was worried about the were you going to be able to tell who was
17:45
actually texting versus like, are we seeing this character
17:48
receiving a text or sending one? Basically, I completely lost the
17:54
whole forest of the movie for the text message tree.
17:57
Well, to be fair, the the movie itself, the plot of the movie is
18:03
based on the text messages, yes, and the the actual footage that
18:07
we shot has nothing to do what's with what's going on behind the
18:10
scenes? So it was a cool, cool idea,
18:13
cool script and well executed over all.
18:15
But the text messages are a crux to the entire film.
18:19
Without those text messages, you don't even have a story.
18:22
There's no intentions. Intentions.
18:24
It's fair they are. I will say I've also mentioned
18:29
before in another episode when we were in the early stages of
18:33
dive and I knew I would have all these text messages, which
18:36
Daniel was kind enough to say 19.
18:38
Actually we could in this 8 minute movie.
18:39
I counted. Yes, in this 8 minute movie we
18:42
could have cut to a phone 19 times.
18:46
And I was like, how could I? How could we visually show that
18:49
19 different ways? Keep this interesting.
18:54
That would have been tricky. It would have been awful.
18:56
So I I really hate it when text messages typically appear in
19:01
movies and TV because I can never read them.
19:04
I'm also a very slow reader. I will just own that.
19:07
Same. It's just, it's words are hard.
19:10
But I'm not I'm not as much of an idiot as that sentence makes
19:14
me sound like usually actually. Anyway, the text messages
19:19
themselves needed to be legible and so I had to go to my lowest
19:25
abled audience member, which is myself I think.
19:29
And I so I just kept trying to make them larger and larger
19:33
until I finally figured it out. But I will say there was one
19:36
person when we posted a short video on Tiktok, Schism is the
19:41
TikTok user, and they mentioned specifically a movie called
19:47
Katya Dreams of Waking Up and how well that movie did with
19:53
illustrating text messages on a screen.
19:56
And I will say I did not have any problems reading any of
20:00
those messages they ended up having.
20:02
It was so surreal. It's very art house.
20:05
It's very indie film. But the way that they did it was
20:09
that the screen was almost half consumed by this phone.
20:13
But everything that happens to the phone screen, you see happen
20:16
on screen. So when later on in the movie,
20:17
she drops the phone and then it gets a crack in it and it just
20:20
suddenly the screen cracks at the same time the phone hits the
20:22
ground. It's really cool.
20:23
They did such a good job with it.
20:25
So I really, I didn't end up doing that obviously in this
20:29
film. But I really appreciate that
20:30
user for recommending that film, not just because it was really
20:34
validating. It's all about this woman just
20:37
trying to get through life as she hustles through all these
20:40
different jobs and all she wants to do is just go on a vacation.
20:42
I'm oversimplifying it a lot. There's a lot of subjects to
20:45
this film, but it was just very validating for anyone who feels
20:48
way overworked in society right now.
20:50
Maybe every independent film maker.
20:52
It's a validating film. It is so.
20:55
I'll check it out. Yeah, OK.
20:59
The most difficult part of the edit for either of you, who
21:03
wants to go first? Go for it, Danny.
21:04
What was the trickiest part on the color grid?
21:07
Pass. OK, I'll, I'll, I'll take this
21:11
one. Then I wrote it down the the
21:14
trickiest part, because again, noisy environment.
21:18
The trickiest part for me was balancing the dialogue to all
21:23
the ambient noise I had to add into the mix.
21:28
So we had, I'm trying to remember all the different, all
21:32
the different noises I had in there because it was the speaker
21:37
with the music coming over like a, you know, like a crappy
21:41
speaker. There was a night time cricket
21:44
chirping that I added in and then I put a low pass filter on
21:48
that so it sounded like it was outside and a hum.
21:52
I just added a hum that connected with the open sign and
21:55
the dive animation. So like the audience was already
21:58
braced for it. So I cranked it in those parts
22:00
and then brought it down lower. And then just, you know, the
22:04
normal room tone in there too. So that was it was pretty busy
22:07
and you kind of want to keep those levels monitored,
22:10
especially the the singing, the music, because it did have
22:16
actual lyrics in it. It wasn't just like ambient
22:19
music. And so you got to be careful on
22:21
that. So that was, that was probably
22:23
the trickiest part to make sure that they were intelligible
22:25
because you want to be able to understand everybody, everything
22:27
everybody says, but you still want to kind of hit the audience
22:30
with a, with a wall of sound as much as possible.
22:33
They need an artistic cacophony if you.
22:36
Will a cacophony of sound. So I guess what was it?
22:44
The most challenging part? Yeah, the challenging.
22:46
Part of the color grade. Well I I guess with the
22:50
implementing or executing the split tone I did not use the LUT
22:55
method of the two strip. OK, it wasn't just a LUT of this
23:01
exact thing you could just drop on there.
23:03
I honestly, I did look and I thought, I'm not going to do
23:09
that this time. I'm going to, I'm going to have
23:11
more. Well, because I mean, the
23:13
problem with, with just throwing a LUT on there is that you, you
23:16
lose control of what you're actually trying to implement and
23:19
you're kind of just at the whim of what it, what it creates for
23:23
you, right? And I mean, you can, you can
23:25
obviously manipulate it after applying the LUT, but opting to
23:30
just do it by hand, I guess actually one of one of the
23:36
challenging things was so the bar the the bar scene.
23:42
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the the bar scene where
23:45
we're we're in the bar shooting across the the bar top on the
23:50
talent. If you notice, I don't know if
23:56
you did, but it it was, it was challenging as to where I let
24:05
that middle. Ideally you want to choose the
24:09
the middle Gray point, the 18% Gray.
24:12
But what that was doing, because we had such such contrast in the
24:18
scene that her hair you would get like any little stray
24:24
strands or anything that wasn't. The little flyaways.
24:28
Thank you, Flyaways. Those were obviously much
24:32
brighter then like the, the hair and the on the like just
24:37
directly underneath that was, was shadowed.
24:41
So what you would get is a little bit of that 2 tone or
24:45
split tone with the, the, the green, like right, unlike the
24:51
right above her ear, it would be green.
24:53
But then because we're we're contrasting, so we're pushing a
24:57
little more red into the highlights.
25:00
Yeah, it would it would be a little more orangey and red and
25:05
then fall into the green. And it I was like, does this
25:09
look like she has colored hair? Like dyed hair?
25:13
Did did we make her redhead or Auburn or as if she's dyed green
25:19
low lights in her hair? Potentially.
25:22
I didn't notice that. Maybe so I, I, well, and then it
25:27
was like, So what I did was I, I, you can bypass the nodes in,
25:32
in Davinci's so you can get like a before and after.
25:35
So I, I, what I did was I like turned it off and just saw what
25:38
it looked like without the split tone.
25:40
And I mean, the, the contrast was just so great between the
25:43
flyaways and on her, you know, what was pulled back or whatever
25:49
that you could even still tell, even though it wasn't a color
25:54
contrast difference like that, that that contrast difference
25:58
was so great. I was like, I'm just going to
26:00
roll with it. And it it kind of just is.
26:03
I mean, it looks great. This is or.
26:05
It's not. Distracting.
26:06
I mean, I'm definitely going to go back and look again now.
26:08
Yeah, take a look. Take a look.
26:10
I want to see that now, but I feel like every time I was
26:15
looking at it there was nothing that felt.
26:16
Yeah, on her middle frame, like frame left middle frame, yeah,
26:20
you'll see the flyways or OK, Yeah.
26:22
Well, I'm gonna go dig into it, but I bet I thought it's still
26:25
great. I didn't notice anything.
26:27
I didn't notice any problems with it so.
26:29
Do you wanna talk about killing your darlings?
26:31
Oh, yeah, Because that was absolutely the hardest part of
26:35
this. And at one point, I played a
26:38
version of what I believed was the final cut for Chuck.
26:44
And right afterward, he just kind of looked at me and he's
26:47
like, you get the whole script in there.
26:52
Yes. Yes, I did.
26:54
Yes, I did because the actors just did such a good job with it
26:59
and all the footage just looked really pretty and I just, I
27:02
don't know, I really loved it. So I did finally have to cut
27:05
some of the lines of dialogue just to make it clip along a
27:08
little bit faster. But it's I died a little that
27:12
day when I did. I, I think you were very anxious
27:16
when I asked to sit down in front of your workstation on
27:19
Premiere Pro. And you're looking at it and I'm
27:21
like, I think I can take this 1 1/2 minute intro down to about
27:25
30 seconds. And I think I did.
27:27
You did, and that's the intro we ended up using because you're
27:30
right, the shorter version was better.
27:31
Oh, so there was one shot that we didn't use.
27:35
Which was? The bartender polishing glasses.
27:38
Oh, that's true. Because I shot that for the
27:40
intro. And then you ended up cutting
27:41
it. Yeah.
27:42
Sorry Tate, I cut his intro, but I thought he had a good intro
27:45
when he actually walked in. Yeah, because I was thinking
27:47
like when you introduced the character, do you just want to
27:50
just throw an image of them up there?
27:52
But when Tate walks in and kind of like basically Stone Cold
27:56
doesn't talk to the the the dude that walks in and sits down at
27:59
the bar, I'm like, that's kind of.
28:00
Cool, that was the better entrance.
28:02
No, you were right. And the shorter version of the
28:04
intro worked so much better. It was a lot cleaner.
28:07
I'm a big fan of indie films, just trying to cut out as much
28:11
as possible. Yeah, it's, it's, I feel like
28:14
it's, it's riskier to be too long than it is to be too short.
28:19
Always go with the shorter option and get the information.
28:22
Across. Oh, absolutely.
28:24
I mean, pacing is another thing too that you got to take into
28:26
account. You don't want to, like, ruin
28:28
your pacing by just having everything unless it's supposed
28:30
to be like comedic or whatever. But yeah, but you, yeah, after
28:34
that, I think you cut the whole thing because it was at 10.
28:36
Yeah. And then it ended up at 8:00
28:37
with credits. So we cut out, we cut out some
28:40
stuff. You're at 10 and then the
28:41
credits were going to start. Yeah.
28:42
So yeah, that was a major, major chopping.
28:45
But it it clips along really well.
28:48
And the you still left those spaces for for attention.
28:51
Too. Yeah, there's still some awkward
28:52
silences, but it's not every single awkward silence that we
28:55
shot, because we did film a lot of awkward silences, which were
28:59
delightful. They were good.
29:01
They were good. Do you want to update us about
29:03
Dave? Oh yeah, I do have some updates
29:05
because Daniel does not know about most of these updates.
29:09
Not Privy. So you will be OK.
29:13
So this film was made for the Idaho Film Family Festival,
29:17
which is a wonderful festival that we've already talked about
29:19
enough, so I won't go into it in too much detail.
29:23
And there we did win Best Screenplay and Catherine Roundy
29:27
did win Best Actress, which is awesome.
29:29
Two awards, first screening. Boom, not bad, not bad.
29:34
The next Film Festival that I submitted to was the American
29:36
Visionaries Film Festival, and this one I think is a very
29:39
pertinent note. If you're going to submit to a
29:42
Film Festival, you should double check the submission deadline,
29:47
the notification date and the start date for the event.
29:52
And perhaps if the final deadline is also the
29:55
notification date and the event the physical in person event is
30:00
the next day, maybe you shouldn't submit on that day if
30:04
it is the submission deadline. So you didn't get into that one?
30:07
We didn't definitely not get into that one.
30:10
And that was because you submitted it and then screening
30:12
was the next day. So there's no way they even
30:14
looked at that thing. There is no way that was my.
30:17
Or maybe they did stupidity. Well, I guess that's fair.
30:19
I don't know. You can let us know, American
30:21
visionaries, if you did actually watch that, Did you watch that?
30:24
It seems a little suspect if they're leaving it open and then
30:26
having the. Festival.
30:28
I think they they trusted people to read the dates and the
30:32
deadlines. I think they had enough faith in
30:34
humanity to do that, and I failed them.
30:36
They also appreciated your contribution.
30:39
They probably did. They did.
30:41
I bet I could send them a message and ask.
30:43
Hey so I submitted on the notification date.
30:46
Any chance you could reimburse me for that so I could submit
30:48
next year or give me a coupon code for an entry into the next
30:50
time? Sure, maybe I'll I'll try that.
30:53
OK, so that one was not a great start.
30:55
However, then we went to the Dunwich Horror Festival, which
31:00
was it's another online festival.
31:03
My goal is to do mostly online festivals so that I don't
31:05
jeopardize some of the oh gosh, like premier status.
31:11
Thank you. Yes, for some of the different
31:14
potential options. So done Witch horror festival,
31:17
another online festival, super delightful.
31:19
A lot of their logos are cute little Cthulhu's and it's really
31:22
cute. And the we won best short film
31:24
there strong in the under 10 minutes category, but did my
31:27
best short for that one, which was great.
31:30
Indie X Film Festival a little bit more popular.
31:33
Most people probably know that one, so all I know right now is
31:36
that it is an official selection, which is cool.
31:40
I don't have any idea if we're going to win any awards for it
31:44
yet, but they do have in person events, I want to say at least
31:48
annually, maybe quarterly, so that could be a thing and an
31:52
option. I'm pretty sure they're based
31:53
out of LA. And then the next one is a Film
31:56
Festival I had never heard of before, but was intrigued
31:58
because it's the monthly Film Festival, which meant it was
32:01
going to be a fast turn around time and it's only an online
32:03
Screener. I was really excited to submit
32:06
to it because it wasn't super expensive.
32:08
We ended up doing pretty well. Danny, you got a nomination for
32:13
best Cinematography. Yeah, so I thought that was very
32:16
nice. We also ended up winning Film of
32:19
the Month, Director of the Month, Screenwriter of the Month
32:21
and Actress of the Month again for Catherine Roundy.
32:24
Very. Strong.
32:25
Yeah. So that was cool.
32:26
And what I really like about this festival is that it, well,
32:30
first of all, they actually do send you a cute little trophy.
32:32
Apparently you don't have to pay extra for that, which is nice.
32:35
Awesome. I know.
32:36
So I'm like, cute. And then you'll also get an
32:40
interview when you invest film, which is kind of fun.
32:43
And that way you can use it in some of your own promotional
32:46
materials. If you pay for the review
32:48
critique, you can use that on IMDb for any of your own
32:50
promotional materials, which is kind of nice.
32:52
So I did pay for that. So we'll see what the review and
32:54
the critique say. Hopefully something good, I
32:56
don't know. Well, that's a good thing to
32:58
have for later on, building publicity and getting local
33:02
media attention or any media attention and.
33:05
Yeah, that's helpful. Yeah, Lower Gentry series.
33:07
We had to just pay for those outright to get you.
33:10
Usually do. For for our film.
33:12
So I'm sure that that's. O the fact that this was
33:14
relatively cheap and justice wrapped U in the cost of the
33:17
submission to the Film Festival, I was pretty happy about that.
33:20
I thought that was really nice. But the coolest thing?
33:22
And they do have feature festivals or feature films as
33:25
well, not just shorts. Is that they will also, if with
33:29
your permission, send a Screener link to a distribution company
33:32
just to get the ball kind of rolling.
33:34
This. So for the first time ever, I
33:36
have the potential for a distribution company to see a
33:39
short film that I've worked on. Do you want to talk a little bit
33:41
about your plan with Dive as far as Film Festival submission?
33:45
So you started the process, obviously the movie was done,
33:49
completed not that long ago, yes.
33:51
You're submitting to film festivals that are basically
33:55
super fast turn around, yes. And what's your plan moving
33:59
forward? The plan is essentially Laurel
34:01
shopping. OK, nice.
34:03
Trying to build some hype around it.
34:05
Just being honest here. I'm all for being transparent,
34:08
so the entire idea here is I don't want to ruin the premier
34:11
status. I want a fast turn around time
34:12
because I want as many laurels as possible and I need to get
34:15
working on and finishing the feature script because this is
34:18
sort of a prototype sampler piece, if you will.
34:22
It's it's essentially a pitch for a feature film that I would
34:25
love to make, but we'll need funding for.
34:28
So I'll I've have submitted to a couple larger festivals as well,
34:31
like TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival.
34:34
Nice, fingers crossed. That'd be really cool.
34:37
You got to play to win. Oh.
34:38
That's true. That's very true.
34:39
So some bigger festivals, a lot of first year festivals where if
34:44
they're tied to bigger name people, just because that seems
34:46
like a good strategic move because if I'm guessing that
34:48
they're going to be producers with a lot of money there, I
34:51
want to be there. And if it's a first year
34:52
festival, maybe they'll have fewer submissions.
34:54
So my odds go up. Yeah, it's just a strategy
34:57
numbers game at this point. But that's kind of the goal with
34:59
Dive, so we'll keep you updated as it goes.
35:01
Nice. Nice dig it.
35:03
Right on. Will anybody have anything else
35:05
to add before we succinctly say goodbye?
35:06
What's? All I got, yeah.
35:10
Bye. Bye.
35:11
Take care everyone.