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Set Design on a Budget: What We Learned the Hard Way · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
0:02
And I'm Chuck for the month of October.
0:04
We're going to be talking about horror films this week.
0:06
Well, Victoria, let me start off with a question for you.
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Besides camera, lighting and sound, what's the most important
0:12
aspect of a horror film? Art department.
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It might be more important than some of your gear.
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Well, what about story? What about my soul spilling out
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all over the page? Yeah, I'm going to say that good
0:22
art department can even recover a bad story.
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I mean, the village wasn't a total flop.
0:27
Good point on that one. So let's dive into the lessons
0:30
that we've learned from mistakes we've made in our horror films
0:34
in the Department of Art department.
0:37
I think that's a fantastic idea because we've made quite a few
0:40
mistakes, but to try to keep this episode under 5 hours,
0:43
let's focus on locations, costumes, posters and trailers.
0:47
And Chuck, maybe you could tell some of our new subscribers a
0:51
little bit about why you're qualified to talk about this.
0:53
The reason I'm qualified to talk about this is because I've made
0:56
a ton of mistakes in the last 10 plus years I've been making
0:59
indie films. If you don't believe me, look up
1:01
Chuck Norton on IMDb. You can see a list of films that
1:04
you've never heard of. To be fair, you do have three
1:08
feature films, and despite having worked in indie film for
1:11
the last 15 years, I have no feature films whatsoever to show
1:15
under my belt. Well, you must have had some
1:17
sort of awards that are worthwhile.
1:19
Oh, I've definitely done some some fantastic work, but again,
1:22
nobody's ever heard of it. I will say though, the last
1:25
short film Dive, which you helped out on, that is currently
1:28
on the festival circuit and is doing surprisingly well on the
1:30
festival circuit, has won me probably the most important
1:34
thing of all. And that's my father's approval,
1:36
because that's what every indie filmmaker is really just
1:39
striving for. Yeah, your father, because Mom's
1:41
always there. Mom's like.
1:43
You know what? That was a great job you did on
1:45
that. Did you watch it, Mom?
1:47
Well, yeah, most of it. Look how hard you tried.
1:49
No, I'm just kidding, mom. She's always super supportive of
1:51
me and she always watches all the work that I do.
1:54
But. I feel safe making that joke
1:56
because I don't know if my father would be able to find the
1:58
podcast, but just watch. He's going to find one episode
2:01
and it's going to be this one. I'm sorry, I love you.
2:03
I'm going to cut it into a vertical reel and then we'll
2:05
make sure we hashtag it exactly that fits into his algorithm do.
2:08
You think my dad's on social media?
2:11
Oh, you're safe then. You're safe, Yeah.
2:13
He's not. He's not browsing the Internet.
2:14
He's fine. So let's talk about art
2:16
department. One of the movies that I love to
2:19
go to, one of the horror films I love to go to to make myself
2:23
feel better as an artist, is Troll 2.
2:29
Troll 2. Good call.
2:30
Have you ever seen troll? Two, I have seen troll 2.
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Troll 2 is a horrendously bad horror film.
2:36
It wasn't even supposed to be Troll Two.
2:39
It was originally going to be the film Goblins because it had
2:42
nothing to do with the original Troll film.
2:45
And they somehow got access to the, the rights to that title.
2:52
The, the film company packaged it into, you know, marketing
2:56
that they had that existed for Troll.
2:58
And it was just an incredibly cheap, incredibly hilarious
3:03
film. The costumes were awful.
3:05
The set design was, was terrible.
3:07
Basically they just used some sort of like green goo on
3:11
everything to make people look like they were turning into
3:13
plants. Yeah.
3:14
That the. Yeah.
3:15
What? How else would you indicate that
3:16
you're turning into a plant? Yeah.
3:18
And the dialogue was absolutely incredible.
3:21
So they they live, or they're visiting a town called Noblog or
3:26
whatever. Goblin is backwards.
3:28
Noglib or whatever. Yeah, it's like this is the town
3:31
we're in. Don't spell it backwards.
3:33
Yes, it's it's pretty great. So if you're out there looking
3:37
for some inspiration or looking for some encouragement, there's
3:40
famous films, famous horror films that are horrendously bad,
3:44
particularly horror films that are horrendously bad that are
3:47
entertaining. And we've talked about that on
3:49
previous podcasts. Is it better to be bad or is it
3:54
better to be boring? It's always better to be bad
3:57
than boring, in my opinion, I guess.
3:59
Sure, some people may disagree, but you should always just swing
4:04
for the fences, Yeah, even if you miss, you're going to have a
4:06
good time getting there. I guess on that note, actually I
4:10
have a good example. And the title of the film I
4:13
think should just really nail it for everyone anyway.
4:16
It's called bad CGI sharks. Oh, I like it.
4:20
This movie is delightful and it's these two brothers who have
4:24
written this script and they have to come together again to
4:28
finish it. But then the shark from the
4:31
script comes to life and it's this poorly rendered CGI shark.
4:36
So then in the movie, it's just a poorly rendered CGI shark.
4:40
It's fantastic. It's so well done.
4:42
It's like swimming through the air.
4:43
It's not based in water because it doesn't need to be because
4:46
it's a CGI shark. Nice.
4:48
Yeah. The whole thing was just
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absolutely brilliant. And they just leaned in and.
4:52
So it's super meta then? It's very meta and they really
4:55
wanted to make fun of how many shark films there are out there
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because there's a lot of a lot of bad shark.
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Just Google bad shark films and take a look at the sheer volume
5:07
of results that arise. And we've talked about Jaws
5:09
quite a bit on this podcast. And I wouldn't put Jaws as one
5:12
of the bad shark. No great ones.
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I think it's the first one. It's the first shark or film.
5:17
There was a shark film, yeah. Probably it's the first famous
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one. Yeah, that came out and
5:21
obviously like it had a huge impact on the popularity of
5:25
shark films. It definitely.
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Did a lot of emulators like Sharknado?
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Exactly just. Fan fantastic film there too,
5:32
but. Brilliant.
5:34
Do you want to talk about some? You're a horror fan.
5:36
You're a horror aficionado. You started making films when
5:39
you were a teenager, essentially with whatever camera equipment
5:42
you get hold of, and you dove into horror pretty heavily.
5:47
Did I love horror films? I just think they're so much
5:50
fun. Do you have some practical
5:51
advice about locations that you can give some of our listeners?
5:56
As far as locations go, don't try to build from scratch.
6:00
Don't tell yourself that, yes, this empty room is exactly what
6:04
I need because trying to build up from scratch is just so
6:08
difficult. And I've done it a million times
6:10
and it never looks good. So if you just have friends or
6:14
family that you can beg to use their house and they're like, Oh
6:17
well, we should clean and clear stuff out, just tell them no,
6:20
no, no. I want this to look like a home
6:22
that somebody lives in because you can tell when it's not a
6:26
home that somebody lives. In Yeah, so example of that this
6:30
isn't a horror film, but the most recent feature film that I
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helped produce, Stockton at Table Rock on Amazon Prime.
6:37
You can check it out there. But we ended up using our friend
6:40
Jesse's house as the main location because when you go in
6:45
there, it looked exactly or very close to exactly like what we
6:50
would imagine this character's house could look like.
6:53
Except for the fact that he had or Jesse has shelves and shelves
6:58
of books because he's an avid reader.
7:00
And we knew that the character in the movie would not have that
7:03
many bookshelves. So we all we had to do is just
7:05
move his bookshelves into another room.
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And then we closed that room off and we filmed in his living
7:11
room, kitchen and his bedroom. And it was so much easier than
7:15
trying to set deck a place that didn't fit the aesthetic of the
7:18
film because it's a nightmare. And then if you're making indie
7:23
films on the weekends, in the evenings, half day shoots and
7:29
you're using somebody's house, a friend's house then or your own
7:32
house, having to take all those things down and put them back up
7:37
in between shoots turns into a nightmare.
7:39
And it doesn't matter how many photos you take, you will always
7:42
forget where something went. But do always take photos.
7:46
Yeah, it does help. That will help you, but it's not
7:48
perfect. But I just think I generally
7:52
speaking, there's no shame in just asking for a location.
7:56
Obviously, yes, lived in house is fantastic.
7:59
But in addition to that, you'd be surprised outside of LA how
8:02
many places are going to be so generous with their locations
8:05
because I've asked countless bars, restaurants, just
8:09
different locations throughout town that I need to film in.
8:12
And yes, you have to work outside their working hours,
8:14
which especially if you want a bar, means you might be waiting
8:17
to film until 2:00 in the morning, which I have done.
8:20
But it gets you a location and especially for a bar, it's so
8:23
hard to recreate that because I am not going to buy all of those
8:26
liquor bottles and keep them on the shelves.
8:28
I don't have that much assorted glassware.
8:30
I'm not going to do those things.
8:32
Yeah, and that's actually a conversation we had at the
8:35
Chicago Horror Film Festival with some of the film makers out
8:38
of LA Yeah, finding locations can be tricky.
8:41
However, in small town areas, you were able to basically
8:46
borrow a bar because the bar owner is also an actor.
8:51
And in smaller areas, a lot of times because the owner operates
8:57
the bar, they're closed for a couple days a week and we were
8:59
able to sneak in there. On 2 days.
9:01
On the two days that they were closed so we didn't have to
9:03
reset all the set deck. Exactly, though sometimes you
9:06
can work around other just restaurant hours too.
9:09
For example, I made one short, also not a horror film, but it
9:13
involved 2 millennial stereotypical pizza drivers.
9:18
OK, I guess delivery drivers. They didn't just drive pizzas
9:22
around, but they kind of did. They were pizza chauffeurs, so
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they were driving around and a lot of.
9:27
CGI murdering pizzas. It would have been a horror
9:29
film. It could have been.
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The opportunity was obviously lost on me at the time, so now I
9:34
just feel bad about it. But I think that could be a fun
9:36
sequel. Oh.
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I got one. Maybe he puts like peanut dust
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on the pizza, just goes in here and then delivers it to people
9:42
with peanut allergies. Oh, that's just mean shellfish.
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Oh God, it's just all anchovies on the pizza.
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He just annihilates anyone without allergies.
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That's his goal as a serial killer.
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There you go, folks. If you were looking for a horror
9:57
film idea, there it is. Somebody who really hates
10:00
allergens. As long as it's earnest, it
10:02
needs to be earnestly executed, because just like Troll 2, I
10:05
feel like the most absurd films that are executed earnestly end
10:09
up being the most hilarious. Oh, cuz that you can tell
10:12
everyone's in it and everyone's all about it, and it's that it's
10:15
that genuine vacation to it that sells it and it just makes it
10:19
that. That's what primes the cult
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classic engine. I think I agree.
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Or at least the cult following engine.
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I agree. Do you want to talk about your
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pizza film? I totally interjected.
10:28
Oh, yeah. So instead of trying to figure
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out a way to make it look like we were filming in a pizza place
10:33
because there was no way to recreate that, we ended up just
10:37
asking around until we found a pizza place that didn't open
10:39
until 2:00 in the afternoon on Sundays and we just shot there
10:42
early in the morning. Yeah, you got to be clever with
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the workarounds. I I will say that our second
10:48
feature film, We Speak, was supposed to take night, take
10:51
place in one night on New Year's Eve.
10:53
But we filmed it over several weeks and we used my house as
10:57
the location. And I threw a New Year's Eve
11:00
party, decorated it, and then had to keep the decorations up
11:05
for the next three weeks. And it was pretty annoying
11:08
because it was all empty cups. And then when I did want to have
11:11
people over, then I had I had sticky notes all over my house.
11:17
To make sure you knew where tipped over.
11:19
Plastic cup was here. Empty bottle was here.
11:22
Tinsel was here. Yes, and each table I had a
11:24
separate box for. Each countertop I had a separate
11:27
box for and. I would substitute the sticky
11:30
notes for the object and swap them out every single time.
11:33
Before and after we would shoot and yeah, so.
11:36
That is a lot, but also that's a really good methodology for if
11:40
you've got a long term shoot and you need to keep your props and
11:43
set deck straight. That's actually really smart.
11:45
Yeah, the the sticky notes did work pretty well because they
11:48
taped them down so that they wouldn't get, if they did get
11:50
wet or whatever, I could replace them and they would still stay
11:53
in place. But that also was easy because I
11:56
live by myself and I couldn't imagine asking somebody to, you
12:01
know, to invade their their home and then also demand that they
12:04
not change anything about the way that they have their home
12:07
set up. Can you please live this way for
12:09
the next? Three weeks, I'm going to make a
12:10
Halloween movie. I'm going to dress your house up
12:13
like it's Halloween and you're going to be living like that
12:16
until February. That would be rough.
12:18
Though to be fair, you did say you had to keep the decorations
12:21
up and my understanding is having seen the inside of your
12:25
home, those decorations are still up five years later.
12:29
Not all of them. Some of them I kept.
12:31
If they were practical decorations, I'd keep them.
12:34
That's the nice thing about having a house and living by
12:37
yourself is if you offer it up to other film makers for them to
12:41
film things, then they will decorate your house and often
12:43
times they forget to take things home like various pictures that
12:47
they hang up on the wall. Throw pillows.
12:49
Throw pillows. Yes, yeah, exactly.
12:52
So those types of things, if they don't pick them up, you
12:55
know, you're all welcome to come back to my house at any time and
12:58
pick up whatever set deck stuff you left.
13:00
But. So what I'm hearing is your
13:02
advice to tip typical bachelors would be if you don't live in an
13:07
area with an IKEA, offer to let people film at your house.
13:10
You'll still end up with decorations in your home.
13:13
Oh yeah, that's a great idea. Look at that.
13:15
Yeah, I suppose even in LA especially like if you can just
13:18
take your empty new studio apartment and be like, hey,
13:23
you're welcome to film here, charge them whatever they want,
13:25
say that you can decorate it however you want, and then maybe
13:28
just. Whatever they leave behind.
13:29
Load it up with furniture. I love it.
13:31
Yeah, you don't have to buy a futon and have it be dual
13:34
purpose couch in bed. Maybe you can get both things
13:36
separately and have a production company pay for it, I don't
13:39
know. Anything is possible.
13:41
I've been on sets where they're like, Oh yeah, we aren't going
13:43
to use those socks for anybody else.
13:44
You can keep them. The socks were part of the
13:46
costume. Oh nice, So do they get those at
13:49
Goodwill? Thankfully, no.
13:51
Oh, that's good. I was very impressed because if
13:53
I had been the one doing the wardrobe shopping they would
13:57
have been. These ones already have holes in
14:00
the normal spots. Well, that's how you they look
14:02
real. All right.
14:04
I'm totally lost on what we were going to be talking.
14:06
About well, I think we were going to cover some of our own
14:08
personal scripts instead of just Hollywood scripts, and we've
14:10
covered a few of those. Oh, absolutely, makeup.
14:14
I would do want to talk about how that is real rough.
14:17
We've talked about makeup in previous episodes.
14:19
We've had a whole makeup artist come on and tell us how much we
14:23
don't even know about makeup. Yeah, it's we dressed up as
14:27
zombies one time, which was actually a practical decision
14:31
because we're like, well, we'll just wear the clothes.
14:33
We're we will wear the clothes we were wearing in the earlier
14:37
shots and then, you know, make ourselves pale, make our eyes
14:41
dark and then dirty up our clothing, which actually kind of
14:43
works so. That could.
14:44
Work. We didn't look like awesome
14:46
zombies. We didn't look like good
14:48
zombies, but you could you could tell we were zombies based on
14:52
the sound effects that I inserted into the short film and
14:55
post. So once again, sound effects can
14:57
save the day. Just some gurgling noises.
15:00
Actually, on the subject of zombies, I got very lucky and
15:04
this is one thing where I would encourage you to just keep an
15:06
eye on community calendars because it was a 48 hour horror
15:10
Film Festival and it was taking place in October.
15:13
So there were some assorted Halloween events happening
15:15
around town, including something called the Zombie Walk, which
15:20
was very fun because it was a bunch of hardcore cosplayers and
15:24
just costuming enthusiasts who are all dressed up as zombies
15:29
walking around in like their own sort of makeshift parade
15:32
downtown. And I want to say there were,
15:35
there were probably 150 to 200 of them.
15:38
Oh Dang, can I guess where you're going with this?
15:41
Absolutely. Did you go outside and just film
15:43
them so that you had your own zombie stock footage?
15:46
Well, not stock footage, but my own zombie footage to
15:49
immediately insert into my film so that I didn't have to do any
15:52
of that makeup. You bet your buttons I did.
15:54
Oh nice, so because. They were all walking around on
15:56
a sidewalk, so I didn't need image releases, I told myself.
16:00
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's, that's, I think that's, I don't know.
16:03
You might want to investigate that before you run around with
16:05
your camera gear on Halloween just getting footage of people
16:11
that's like to be. Fair.
16:12
They were. They, or at least most of them I
16:15
assume were adults. OK, so I don't know if that
16:18
applies to children too. I don't know.
16:21
I think it's probably safer to keep images of children off of
16:25
the Internet, but I don't. That's a giant liability.
16:29
So maybe just watch that particular thing.
16:31
But I mean, also they're all in zombie makeup, so there's not
16:34
100% chance that you're going to recognize anybody anyway.
16:37
And it was for a local short film competition, so everyone
16:41
was just excited when they saw the camera.
16:43
So they all started like rushing and screaming and growling and
16:45
it was fantastic. Just upload the footage into AI
16:49
and give the prompt like spit this back out again so I don't
16:51
have any image release issues. I don't have any image releases
16:55
for any of this footage. Please fix it for me.
16:57
ChatGPT. I don't know if it does videos.
16:58
Just move some noses around, change some eye color.
17:00
Yeah, it'll be fine. Everybody has 12 fingers.
17:03
Yeah. And it's going to be gold.
17:05
Yeah, that's that's a great idea, just getting stock footage
17:08
on Halloween. Sweet.
17:10
I assume that it were again, the kids.
17:12
That's a little bit of a of a different line that I don't know
17:15
that I would cross, but this was an adult's event.
17:18
Yeah, Commercial productions, obviously you want to be super
17:20
careful if you're going to be releasing something on YouTube.
17:23
I don't even know what the guidelines are there, but.
17:26
I don't, I just. Be careful, be careful if you
17:28
get another people's, but if you don't care about it then just go
17:31
do it because Halloween Great, great plan.
17:33
It's delightful, Great plan. It's fantastic.
17:36
One thing that Speaking of horror, we did try to shoot
17:39
somebody in the head on screen one time.
17:42
How did that go it? Was a It was a nightmare and we
17:46
could. The film like took place in a
17:48
nightmare or the process was a nightmare.
17:49
The process was a nightmare. OK, that's the tricky thing
17:54
about trying to do something that you've never done before on
17:59
camera. But if you're an indie
18:00
filmmaker, you're bold. You assume you're going to be
18:03
able to figure it out. And sometimes you assume you're
18:05
going to be able to. Sometimes you assume you're
18:06
going to be able to figure it out on the day.
18:09
And in this particular case, we came to set with fake blood, a
18:14
tube, a pump and some plastic. This sounds way more prepared
18:19
than I would have been for. Yeah, but we did not know how to
18:22
run the tubing like around the actor in the framing to where
18:26
the tube didn't just like show up.
18:27
And then the tube was like spraying the blood in the in the
18:30
wrong direction. When we finally did get it set
18:33
up and we realized that no, we don't know what the hell we're
18:36
doing. And we ended up trying to just
18:38
like drop frames. So the person looked like they
18:41
fell out of frame faster than they actually did and it was
18:45
really bad. That's that's why sometimes.
18:48
That's a creative work around. Yeah, if you don't know what
18:52
you're doing when it comes to costume design, special effects,
18:56
location setup, work within your limitations at 1st and maybe hop
19:00
on a set where they do know how to do that stuff and there's no
19:04
harm in not showing what the monster actually looks like.
19:09
No, because that's one of my biggest things that I'll preach
19:11
constantly is that your imagination is so much scarier
19:14
than anything somebody could create and show you on film.
19:18
Yeah. So don't show the monster if you
19:20
don't have to. Don't show the big scary thing
19:23
happening if you don't have to. Like, you can do cutaways.
19:26
You can do creative shots. You can show people's reactions
19:29
to it instead of the thing. You've got some options.
19:32
Yeah. Until you learn how to do it,
19:34
because nothing looks worse than really bad makeup, which
19:37
actually we saw a couple in Chicago Horror Film Festival,
19:40
which we should talk about next week.
19:41
Yeah. Next week we will go more and
19:43
that's great because that was such a fun festival and it was
19:45
really cool. And if you're considering
19:47
Chicago Horror Film Fest, then you should definitely do it.
19:50
Just go or submit your film. Either way, you'll have a killer
19:53
time. Too long, didn't read.
19:54
That's the short of it, but we'll go into more detail next
19:56
week. But there were a couple films
19:57
that we saw there that were B horror films.
20:01
And you could tell that the monster was wearing garden
20:04
gloves that they had painted with various sharp things glued
20:09
to the top of it. And the amount that I had to
20:13
hold in my laughter because the entire audience was just taking
20:18
the entire thing seriously. It was it was difficult.
20:21
It was difficult for me to watch that, but I enjoyed that the
20:24
hell out of it. Though I will say I've messed up
20:28
costuming quite a bit. Yeah, I don't think I've ever
20:31
done a costume really poorly. I think that my 2 choices for
20:36
any of my indie films are either I'm going to hire someone and
20:40
we're going to have a wardrobe department and everyone looks
20:43
great, or I'm not going to do it at all.
20:49
And that one happens a lot when I have no budget.
20:52
Yes. And unfortunately, that did
20:55
happen specifically. And what's the worst that could
20:57
happen? Oh, that's right.
20:59
Yeah. I had a maintenance worker in a
21:01
hallway meeting up with a hotel manager.
21:03
And the hotel manager was trying to ask him to open up the door,
21:07
but he was just in a T-shirt and jeans.
21:09
Oh, yeah. And then his toolbox was out of
21:11
frame, so nobody could really tell what was going on.
21:14
It was just suddenly the hotel manager is talking to this man
21:16
who's inexplicably speaking Spanish.
21:18
Yeah, that's it. That's so, you know.
21:22
It's good to have some actual janitor garb.
21:24
Yeah, which was kind of sad because we were filming in an
21:27
actual hotel, so I had this nice, beautiful long shot where
21:30
you could see down the hallway for hotel doors for days.
21:35
I probably should have given my maintenance worker at least like
21:37
a tool belt. Yeah, it would have helped
21:39
credulity. Yeah, it would help the audience
21:41
know what the heck's going on. Yeah, but, you know, for a film
21:44
called What's the Worst That Could Happen, maybe you don't
21:46
want to know what else is going on.
21:47
Oh. Yeah, good point, Good point.
21:49
That was a fun one. That was a fun one to shoot.
21:50
That was fun. That was that was fun for me to
21:52
learn how to get clean audio in a in a hotel that's open and
21:56
active and there are people checking in in the long.
22:00
Round and a bar open in the lobby.
22:03
Hold. It was almost like Wayne's World
22:05
when they're playing street hockey.
22:08
Car game on customer and hold and action and cut customer.
22:16
I do feel like there is a similarity between, you know,
22:19
your your student film makers or honestly, your indie film makers
22:23
of any age, and then the kids playing baseball in the street.
22:28
You feel like there's a lot of similarities there.
22:30
You don't all know entirely what's going on.
22:32
You're all sort of working things out.
22:33
You know, you're good at a few specific things.
22:35
Yeah. And you're having a real good
22:37
time. But every once in a while, yeah,
22:39
you got to scream car and get just get out of the way.
22:41
If I remember correctly when we were in that hotel lobby though
22:44
to to shoot into the customer area and the restaurant area,
22:48
you went low for a lot of them, correct?
22:50
Yes. And then that way it was just
22:52
mostly the actor in frame. And I believe that was more of a
22:55
decision for continuity's sake than it was for the actual
22:58
shots. Yeah, because I didn't want
23:00
there to suddenly be a giant crowd of people in the bar
23:02
behind them, and then suddenly you don't see a giant crowd of
23:05
people in the bar behind them. Yeah, it just worked out better.
23:08
Practical lessons like that, we have a beautiful location, we're
23:11
just going to get one shot of them moving.
23:13
And then for anything that requires continuity, any of the
23:15
two that. So we're going to have to frame
23:17
out as much as we possibly can, unfortunately, because we have 0
23:20
control over this location. So yeah, it's a good idea for
23:24
your horror films to get control of the location.
23:27
It helps. And if you can't, it's super
23:30
important to be able to do that in one shot, whatever action
23:33
that you're going to have, because continuity can become a
23:35
real issue. Yeah, really fast.
23:39
But I mean, I feel like I feel like it's not just indie films
23:43
that struggle with some of that. And yes, this is not necessarily
23:46
a high budget production where you can shut down an entire
23:49
terminal of JFK airport or something like that.
23:52
Fine. But I do feel like you hear
23:56
enough stories about people saying, Oh yeah, we were trying
23:59
to walk down the street and then suddenly APA just nearly clothes
24:02
lined us and said, wait, stop, you're about to walk in frame
24:05
or. Something.
24:06
So you hear you hear stories where that still happens on
24:08
bigger sets too. So if that's happening to you as
24:10
an indie, yeah just hire more P as to clothesline people before
24:15
they walk into your. Shot nice.
24:16
Nice. Actually, Cody Newton gave me a
24:18
good tip on that is to have cards ready to hand out to
24:21
people to inform them that you're filming.
24:22
I don't know if this works in LA, but it does work in Idaho
24:25
and then in other smaller locations where he's filmed, he
24:28
says. And it gives them information
24:30
about the movie that you're filming filming.
24:32
And then it has just like a picture of somebody with their
24:35
finger over their lips like a. Stay quiet please.
24:38
Sort of like a the golf signs like hush and all.
24:40
Exactly. So he he used that as a
24:43
promotional way to keep people. That's.
24:46
Brilliant on set, like quiet or like in public places?
24:49
Quiet while they're trying to film.
24:50
And he said that it did work pretty.
24:52
Well, that's so smart and plus it distracts them and gives them
24:55
something else to do. So that way they aren't going to
24:57
be like focused on trying to ask you questions.
24:59
They just have a little QR code, they scan it and it boom, tells
25:01
them everything. Yeah, exactly.
25:03
So smart. I'm stealing that.
25:05
Or clothes lining. I think that's the good number
25:07
two option. Hey, you gotta have a backup
25:09
plan. Gotta have a backup plan.
25:12
If they ignore the card, knock them out.
25:14
Should we talk about some of the films that we aspire towards as
25:17
far as horror, set design and and costumes?
25:21
And we didn't really talk much about trailers, but maybe we'll
25:24
have time to get into that movie.
25:25
I can. Share a really fun example of a
25:26
trailer that I completely failed at.
25:28
Oh, what's that? I made a movie for another 48
25:32
hour Film Festival. It was supposed to be action but
25:35
it's me, so it had a very horrific twist.
25:38
And throughout the entire thing you slowly, one by one watch
25:43
every single character die. Which is very entertaining for a
25:46
short film, but for a trailer? It was a short.
25:50
Film it yeah, makes it very anti climactic because you kind of
25:53
don't need to see the movie now. So keep spoilers out of your
25:56
trailers unless it's a really good one and then you really
25:59
want to catch people's attention.
26:00
Maybe just give away one or two. Don't give away the whole.
26:02
Thing, yeah, that's hard on short films in general to make a
26:05
trailer. It's not ideal.
26:07
Really not easy, just use like the first 30 seconds and call it
26:10
a trailer. Or at least that's what I do.
26:11
Oh yeah, that's yeah. Here's here's 2 minutes from a
26:15
10 minute. Yeah, film.
26:17
That's tricky. So, your favorites?
26:20
Yes, yes. And I was going to point out
26:21
like as far as trailers are concerned, a lot of times it's
26:24
easy to just keep it simple. I mean, I always think of the
26:27
Shining trailer with the blood spilling out of the elevator,
26:31
which obviously isn't simple to do, but the example being a shot
26:35
from the movie, keep it real easy.
26:38
If you have something visually stunning, you can just show that
26:41
hopefully, and that would get the point across.
26:43
And then trailers can also be tricky in the sense that
26:45
depending on how you cut it, they can be misleading, which we
26:48
were talking about before the podcast, because Shining, again,
26:52
there was somebody on the Internet that cut the entire, he
26:56
cut an entire trailer of The Shining as a ROM com, which I
26:59
thought is pretty, pretty funny. But you you can take scenes and
27:02
make them appear what they aren't if you're doing it very
27:05
succinctly. And it's really entertaining,
27:07
yeah. But there are also examples
27:10
where you can use that to benefit your marketing, right?
27:14
The Godzilla trailer from 2014 had a ton of Bryan Cranston in
27:19
it because he's super popular from Breaking Bad at the time
27:22
and everyone's just really excited about seeing him and
27:24
more stuff, and you assume he's the lead and the protagonist and
27:28
he's not. Ancillary character.
27:31
Take that, Godzilla fans. But it got more people into the
27:33
theater. Hey, sells tickets I.
27:36
Feel like Godzilla sells tickets anyway though.
27:38
Yeah, I would imagine it'd be fine, but they wanted that extra
27:41
Bryan Cranston money. Who doesn't?
27:44
So horror films. I always talk about The Shining
27:47
on this podcast, but I can't remember if I've talked about
27:50
Pan's Labyrinth. That's a Spanish movie,
27:52
Labyrinth del Falno. It's one of my favorites.
27:55
Guillermo del Toro directed it and I feel like they did an
27:59
amazing job of setting up this fantastical world in this little
28:05
girl's mind and the monsters that they invented were
28:08
incredible. You can check out all sorts of
28:11
behind the scenes stuff on how they created it, but this was
28:14
2006 was when it was released and at that time special effects
28:19
weren't what they are now obviously.
28:22
So they did a lot of compositions where they used a
28:25
lot of practical costumes and then added to it with special
28:31
effects. So it holds up.
28:33
After effects 5 or whatever on at the time.
28:35
Yeah, whatever they were using in 2005, probably while they
28:38
were cutting everything together.
28:39
But you know, it just kind of talks.
28:42
It shows an example of what you've talked about previously
28:44
on the podcast, like if you're going to use special effects in
28:48
post, it's good to have practical effects onset that you
28:52
can accentuate in post versus trying to recreate everything
28:57
and all the physics of those items or the like blood, for
29:02
example, debris. And I'm spending a lot of time
29:07
in post to try to recreate it. It's better to have, you know,
29:10
the, the skeleton of that. And if you look at some of the
29:12
behind the scenes stuff from from Pan's Labyrinth, it's
29:16
fantastic. And the actor in that, Oh boy, I
29:19
forgot his name. I don't even know if I wrote it
29:21
down. Doug Jones.
29:23
He was the the, the fawn and. That.
29:26
And the way that he moved in the costume and the behind the
29:29
scenes stuff, it looks exactly like this monster in this movie.
29:32
And you it kind of comes across as a visual effect or a special
29:37
effect during while you're watching the film.
29:41
But I think it was because they maybe just like dropped frames
29:43
in the movement or something. Oh yeah, this guy moving to make
29:46
it look stop motiony when it actually wasn't so.
29:50
Oh, that's wild. Very cool stuff.
29:51
But just kind of lends additional fodder to your actors
29:57
can bring so much to life when when they have something to work
30:01
with. Because could you imagine if
30:02
they just rigged him up and, you know, one of those green morph
30:05
suits and put a bunch of dots all over him and then told them
30:07
be the fawn? Yeah.
30:09
It's like, well, having something there and giving them
30:12
something to work with and having the tools to actually
30:15
move and do fun things. Yeah, You're just giving them
30:18
more tools to play with. Well all the green suit people
30:20
are just like, give me that Marvel money, just hand over
30:22
that Disney money. Just want the I don't even care
30:26
this is just a factory, a content factory.
30:29
But anyway that's what I imagine them saying.
30:32
That's fair. I've chat on Marvel movies a lot
30:34
in. This you definitely have.
30:37
What's your? Shining example of a horror film
30:38
that you aspire to. I'm actually going to expand it
30:42
a little bit more generally because I think I think
30:44
everybody here has heard me talk about Krampus and the puppetry
30:47
there enough and how it was like this 5 foot eight guy playing
30:50
this giant monster, but it was a real puppet and a real like
30:53
suit. And anyway doesn't.
30:55
Yeah, I don't need to go into more details about it.
30:57
I'm instead going to talk about Mike Flanagan.
30:59
Yes. And while yes, he's done plenty
31:02
of movies too, he does a lot of those TV series or or Netflix
31:05
special series. Yeah.
31:07
And. Fall at the House of Usher.
31:09
Yeah, but he's also got Blind Man or The Haunting of Blind
31:12
Manor, The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass.
31:14
Oh, yes, yes, he's got a ton. And I do specifically want to
31:18
talk about the Fall of the House of Usher because the art
31:20
department is beautiful and everything that Mike Flanagan,
31:23
Mike Flanagan does, the art department is just incredible.
31:27
It's even if you don't like the stories, which is fine, you
31:30
don't have to. You're allowed to be uncultured,
31:33
but I'm biased. But realistically, you can't
31:37
watch any of this stuff and not say it's pretty.
31:39
There's just and the attention to detail on everything is
31:42
superb and it's flawless on on our department.
31:46
His art department is killer every single time.
31:48
And Fall of House of Usher, I feel like, is a really good one
31:50
because so much of it has these really long, like, talking head
31:55
moments, and yet it's pretty enough that I don't even mind.
32:02
I'm not upset about it. And yes, obviously he does a
32:04
bunch of the big practical effects he has, like the whole
32:06
room raining blood and all this other stuff.
32:08
Like there's a lot going on. I guess it was raining acid that
32:11
turned into blood, but whatever. Doesn't matter.
32:13
Fact is, he does a lot of fun creative stuff, too.
32:16
But the art department is just so stunning that it can pull you
32:19
out of even what might have been a dull moment.
32:21
Yeah. And it's really nice.
32:22
He does a good job. Creating, creating the space.
32:26
And I would say that his style, at least on the stuff that I've
32:30
watched, is a lot based on the location.
32:33
Obviously, if it's period, he'll have people dress accordingly
32:38
and you know, he has his monsters appear in certain
32:41
scenes. But I, I feel like a lot of his
32:43
is like he's get, he gets the location and the vibe, Yeah,
32:48
before he starts rolling. Exactly.
32:50
And the locations are always just expansive and windy and
32:53
detailed. And part of learning the full
32:57
story is uncovering these spaces.
32:59
So I don't know, maybe I'm crazy, but I'm pretty sure.
33:02
Well, I might be crazy anyway, but that's neither here nor
33:05
there. I feel like Mike Flanagan
33:09
encourages art department to be a part of the storytelling.
33:12
Yeah. And if you don't have gigantic,
33:15
winding, complicated spaces to film in, your film's going to be
33:20
a failure. I think that's another, I think
33:22
Heretic is a good example that you don't need a huge well,
33:25
obviously they had a large enough space, but it was
33:27
technically 2 locations, right? Just in the house and then in
33:32
the basement labyrinth. Oh yes, a heretic.
33:35
Yes, yes I keep like confusing that with Hereditary.
33:39
There heretic is the A20. Was it a 24 movie?
33:43
I'm not going to commit to that. OK, but it was the I don't know.
33:46
It was the two missionaries that go into the the creepy guy's
33:49
house. Yes, yes, Heretic.
33:51
Yes. That was incredible.
33:52
And yeah, and they easily could have passed.
33:55
They could have had three separate locations and three
33:57
separate places there. Yeah, it didn't have to be 1,
34:00
but they shot it brilliantly. And that is one thing that I
34:03
love about certain films and certain directors is their
34:07
ability to show you a location and for you to be able to move
34:13
around in it in your mind. And when they're in a certain
34:16
room, you know, how that connects to the dining room, to
34:20
the living room. And especially in a horror
34:23
movie, if somebody's buried deep in a basement and suddenly they
34:27
have to run. And you as an audience member
34:30
know that, oh, they have to navigate this set of stairs.
34:33
They have to go through this locked door.
34:35
There's an entire 2 hallways they have to get through.
34:38
Yeah, it's it builds that intensity versus somebody that
34:42
isn't as capable of shooting in a complicated location or
34:45
building a location in the audience's mind.
34:48
It cuts down on some of that tension.
34:49
Exactly. So it's.
34:51
Nice. Right on.
34:52
Is that about it for art department for us?
34:55
Did you have anything else that you wanted to add?
34:57
I feel like those are my really big ones.
34:59
Those are my big winners. And not to say that CGI bad CGI
35:03
sharks is a big loser, because I don't think it is.
35:06
Yeah, but it's a little meta. Yeah, I love it.
35:10
I love bad horror films. Those are actually one of my
35:13
tops. They're so much fun types of
35:15
film to watch. You can get just like a free
35:17
trial of a shutter subscription for a while and just go nuts on
35:20
there. Absolutely do it.
35:22
It's a real fun weekend. Right on.
35:24
Winter's coming up, so yeah. Hunker down, watch some horror.
35:27
Excellent. Shall we succinctly say
35:29
farewell? Sounds wonderful.
35:30
Excellent. Bye bye.