Latest / Indie Film Podcast / Unexpected Costs That Can Break Your Indie Film (and How to Fix Them)

Transcript

Unexpected Costs That Can Break Your Indie Film (and How to Fix Them) · Indie Film Podcast

0:00
Welcome to Indie Film Podcast. I'm Vic.
0:02
And I am Chuck, this week we're going to be talking about how to
0:05
deal with unexpected expenses that pop up on your micro budget
0:08
indie film set. Victoria, what do you do when
0:11
you're filming? You look at your viewfinder and
0:13
you realize, uh oh, I'm going to have to pay somebody to fix this
0:17
visually with some effects in post.
0:20
Well, before I go into what I think is the best
0:24
hyperventilation technique, I would like to first start by
0:27
saying thank you so much to our sponsor for this week, the From
0:31
Beyond Film Festival here in Boise, ID Crawling from the
0:33
depths of Boise for the first year ever is a Film Festival
0:36
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0:40
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0:42
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0:45
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submitting your own work on Film Freeway.
0:50
Thank you from Beyond Film Festival for sponsoring us.
0:53
If you want to be an indie film podcast sponsor, just go to
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indiefilmpodcast.com and you can find out more information on how
0:59
to do that and get a shout out from us.
1:01
O Victoria, Before we start talking about indie film sets,
1:04
let's talk about some famous films that went notoriously over
1:08
budget. Do you want to start us out?
1:09
I mean, first of all, notoriously over budget.
1:12
I feel like it's going to end up being so many films.
1:15
You could you, if you'd try to just Google that, it's like, oh,
1:17
every film ever made. But yes, specifically I do have
1:21
one really fun example. People are not very good at
1:23
predicting how much things are going to cost.
1:25
You know, for a man made concept and like technically not having
1:30
money being real, humans are really bad at it and managing
1:34
it. We're just not good at money.
1:36
I. Think we just have too many
1:36
people that are coming after us trying to take it maybe.
1:39
That's it. That's that's the downfall of
1:42
the invention of cash. So what example do you have from
1:45
Hollywood? I have Heaven's Gate from 1980.
1:49
OK. And was originally budgeted for
1:53
11.6 million, ended up costing over $40 million at the time,
1:59
which equates to about $160 million now.
2:02
Nice. So that's exciting.
2:03
So 4 times it costs four times what they anticipated.
2:07
Almost just under like, 3 1/2. OK, Yeah, Dang, yeah.
2:11
And apparently it's because the director, Michael Chimino, which
2:15
I really hope I'm pronouncing that right because there is
2:16
apparently an actor with the same name, but he pronounces it
2:19
completely differently. Right on.
2:21
Well, he just gets whatever pronunciation he gets on this
2:23
podcast. Well, he he had won an Oscar for
2:28
The Deer Hunter at two Oscars for The Deer Hunter for best
2:31
director and best picture the year before in 79.
2:34
So the studio United Artists was like, hey, do whatever you want,
2:39
we've got $11.6 million for you to make this film.
2:43
Nice. Go nuts.
2:44
And apparently the man is a huge perfectionist.
2:46
Just OK, really needed to do things exactly the way he
2:51
envisioned them to the point where they would build sets and
2:54
he would come on and take a look at it and say, no, this doesn't
2:56
look like it does in my head, rebuild it and they would start
2:59
over and completely rebuild the set.
3:00
Dang. From what I can tell, he wasn't
3:02
a jerk about it, which is kind of cool, but I've also never
3:05
worked with him so I don't. I don't actually know.
3:07
I can't speak to that. I can just speak to the fact
3:10
that he spent five days filming 1 scene of people like entering
3:15
a skating rink of some sort. Oh Dang.
3:18
Yeah, and I'm just blown away by the idea of spending five days
3:23
on one scene. We always say 8 to 10 pages a
3:26
day, otherwise you're failing. Otherwise you're failing.
3:28
So this was a failure? No Massive.
3:30
Failure. Well, I guess they, if they have
3:32
the time, one of those things like I have been discouraged
3:36
when I've had videography jobs where you do have to revisit
3:40
things. And you know, I had coworkers at
3:44
one of the companies I work for that was always very flexible
3:47
about that, like, oh, we have to reshoot this entire thing again,
3:50
but the client's going to pay for it.
3:52
And yes, you know, I was thinking I'm going to get paid
3:55
again for this. But also I really don't want to
3:57
have to keep doing this over and over again because somebody at
4:01
the boss level has some problem with some minor issue and wants
4:05
to start over from scratch. So good for that, that Heaven's
4:08
Gate crew for being able to just keep tackling that over and over
4:11
again. And thinking about their
4:13
paycheck at the end of the day rather than, you know, their
4:16
motivation. No, I would have.
4:17
I would have lost my damn mind being on that side of and like
4:20
we're still, you still aren't happy with this.
4:23
We've been shooting this for three days already.
4:25
Are you sure you're not happy with this?
4:27
It's an establishing shot. Nice.
4:30
So Oh yeah, that was when it was 1980.
4:35
Still definitely on film. Yeah, this was so fun. 1.3
4:41
million feet. Wow of film.
4:44
Holy cow. About 220 hours. 220 hours. 20
4:50
hours. That's like a that's like a
4:52
gnarly documentary. Well, apparently the first cut
4:54
was five hours and 25 minutes. Holy smokes.
4:58
The reviews were not good. Yeah.
5:00
And I'm like, well, cuz yeah, at that point, I'm sorry, that's a
5:03
full day in school and not even getting to switch up the lecture
5:08
that you're in. I couldn't do it.
5:09
There's my attention span. Wouldn't let me.
5:11
Well, it's too bad that he didn't just wait until HBO
5:14
started doing serials. Yeah, he would have fit right in
5:17
there. He'll him and Zack Snyder.
5:20
Season 1 Heaven's Gate that's. What he needed, Well, apparently
5:24
it only brought in 3.5 million at the box office.
5:27
Oh my gosh. So it completely bankrupted the
5:29
studio. United Artists had to shut down
5:31
completely. They sold to MGM.
5:32
So they're gone because of this movie.
5:35
And now the Criterion Collection actually went back, found it.
5:41
We're like, you know, this is really solid and did a digitally
5:46
restored version of it to really bring the full color palette and
5:48
everything out. And now it's loud.
5:50
It is like this incredible film that's a cinematic masterpiece
5:53
and it's absolutely beautiful and stunning and everything
5:56
about it is phenomenal. And it was a huge undertaking.
5:59
It's like, well, it was so huge of an undertaking, it bankrupted
6:01
a studio. Yes, that's fair.
6:03
But apparently it's actually pretty good.
6:04
So haven't seen. I don't know if I've seen that
6:07
one I. Have not.
6:08
But now I kind of want to just to wonder like how many times
6:13
did they do this? I thought the the fake may be
6:16
real, maybe fake, I don't know. 127 times Kubrick moment.
6:21
I thought that was bad. But now I'm like 5 days for one.
6:24
I want to see the scene. I want to see what they got
6:27
after five days and do I think it's worth it?
6:30
Yeah, well, I guess you wouldn't know because you didn't get to
6:32
see the other 1.3 million feet of footage.
6:34
I did not. I'm going to I'm going to talk
6:37
about a film that I have seen and I'm sure a lot of people
6:40
have too, which is Jaws, actually Jaws and then into
6:43
Water World. Because.
6:45
Jaws, it wasn't notoriously over budget.
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I just thought it was interesting that back in the day
6:51
they budgeted $250,000 for Bruce the animatronic shark for the
6:57
film Jaws. Love that his name is Bruce.
6:59
And then also they had to have operators obviously in order to
7:02
take care of the the shark in order to, and it was very
7:06
expensive. It ended up being like $500,000
7:08
of their $9 million budget just to deal with the the fake shark.
7:12
They spent half $1,000,000 on a fake shark.
7:15
Well, they had multiple too, like it was it wasn't I they had
7:19
they had multiple, but. OK wait I have a really dumb
7:21
question question to insert here.
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OK, go ahead, but I'm not an expert at JAWS, but I will
7:25
answer it as though I am and piss people off on the Internet.
7:27
That's beautiful. It's only semi related to Jaws.
7:31
Yeah. Wasn't the shark in Finding Nemo
7:35
named Bruce? Is that shark named after the
7:38
Jaws shark? I never watched finding Nemo.
7:41
I'm pretty I know there's a movie with a shark named Bruce
7:45
in it. Oh OK, well the the shark was
7:49
nicknamed Bruce in Jaws. Yeah, but I just wonder if this
7:51
animated film decided to name it after.
7:54
I don't know, that could be a fun nod.
7:55
Anyway, I'm sorry. Please continue.
7:57
Half $1,000,000 on Animatronic Sharks.
7:59
Yes, and he was. Obviously Jaws was difficult to
8:04
film because they filmed it in the ocean.
8:06
Which brings me to Water World, which that movie was ended up
8:11
going very over budget and the two Kevin's Kevin Reynolds and
8:15
Kevin Costner were key in making that movie and Spielberg advised
8:21
them do not shoot on water and he told them to film in a studio
8:27
and use a tank for a majority of their filming.
8:29
They ended up filming all over the place, California, Hawaii.
8:33
The end of the movie water world is at the how did you Waipio
8:37
Valley, which is absolutely gorgeous.
8:40
And they were delayed over and over again because filming on
8:46
the actual ocean, all the variables, you could get hit
8:49
with rain, you can get hit with waves.
8:51
And then you have to have crew basically maneuvering on
8:54
separate boats and, you know, resetting shots takes forever.
9:00
Saltwater is. Very corrosive.
9:03
Yeah, that would be. I would never want my gear near
9:06
saltwater. I would not want to do that.
9:09
US film makers who own our own gear and don't rent stuff or.
9:13
Use Studio. Equipment, every single time we
9:15
go out to shoot, it's like that would be a nightmare to lose any
9:19
amount. I would hate it.
9:20
Of of gear. But anyway, that was the, the
9:21
example I came up with was, was Water World 'cause we talked
9:24
about, or I talked about Water World last week.
9:26
And I, I love, I love the movie Water World.
9:29
It's one of those movies that it's just so bad, but at the
9:34
same time so entertaining. We recently watched a movie In
9:38
your Eyes that's that's the same where it's like, Oh my God, it's
9:42
just so wonderfully tasteless. But I I liked the concept,
9:49
frankly, I like the concept of Water World also, but I really
9:52
love the live show Water World. Oh, I haven't seen that one.
9:54
It's really fun. It's at Universal Studios.
9:56
It's a blast. Oh yeah, the it's, it's not a
10:00
ride, but no. No, no, it's actually a show.
10:03
But they took Spielberg's advice and it isn't a tank, it is not
10:07
on the ocean. So when they.
10:09
When they reset back to one, it doesn't take two hours, yeah.
10:13
And you hope that somebody is not just randomly adrift, like,
10:15
where is gaffe? Like, oh, he's on that boat.
10:18
They forgot to anchor, Sorry. Just slowly drifting out to sea.
10:23
So should we should we talk about should we ruin a
10:26
cinephiles day before we go into some examples of us running into
10:30
our own budget overruns? Yeah, this one's going to hurt.
10:33
OK, do you want to take this one first?
10:35
Yeah, I'd like to go first just to get it over with.
10:37
For those of you who might not remember this new segment of the
10:40
podcast, Ruin a Cinephiles Day is our attempt to just say
10:43
something a little unhinged and out of pocket about filmmaking
10:46
as a whole. May or may not 100% be an
10:48
accurate representation of our feelings or actual emotions
10:51
about something, but will inevitably anger people on the
10:56
Internet, which is endlessly entertaining for us.
10:59
So if you don't follow us on social media yet, you can check
11:02
out all the chaos yourself and see these completely out of
11:04
context clips posted. If you see some of our vertical
11:08
videos, people get very upset if we don't dot all our is or cross
11:12
all our TS or just say something that's an opinion.
11:14
Yeah, which to some extent, you know, if I say something and I'm
11:18
wrong, I would expect the Internet to call me out on it.
11:21
I mean, that's what they say about Wikipedia, right?
11:22
I remember in high school when Wikipedia first got to a point
11:25
where they were saying, no, you can use it as a source in your
11:29
papers now, because statistically speaking, every
11:32
error on Wikipedia is corrected within 5 minutes because there's
11:35
somebody angry on the Internet who does know.
11:38
Yes, that was fun. The Wikipedia trolls.
11:40
You gotta watch out for those. I would never go up against one
11:43
of them. They are very well spoken and no
11:47
that they are right and that would be very intimidating.
11:50
I can't wait till AI takes over all that, that'll be great.
11:54
That's really. Sad programmed AI trolls.
11:58
Do you wanna go ahead and talk Marvel and hopefully get
12:03
somebody in the MCU fan wagon? Fan wagon bandwagon.
12:09
I like fandom bandwagon. I was inadvertently combining
12:13
all those words into one. I appreciate it.
12:15
I like fan wagon. There we go.
12:16
Fan wagon. The MCU Fan wagon.
12:19
This is for all you MCU fan wagoners out there.
12:22
Go ahead. So the largest budget for a
12:26
Marvel movie has been end game. Avengers end game at $356
12:31
million. So some stats put it up to 400
12:34
million. So I'm guessing that about at
12:36
the point you're spending that much money, an extra 50 mill or
12:39
so doesn't really matter. You can just throw that around
12:41
or write it off his waste. And Despite that budget, they
12:46
still couldn't buy a third act. And personally I'm offended as
12:52
someone who looks at their crafty budget and says that
12:55
could fund my next 5 features. But they don't put in the effort
13:00
to the story. And at this point, it doesn't
13:03
even feel like Disney Marvel is really having budgets so much as
13:07
just bailouts. And they're just going to keep
13:09
chucking Infinity Stones at something until it looks like
13:12
it's a movie. And of course, they'll keep
13:15
ruining Cap with language one liners that frankly just tear
13:19
down the character. And sure, it's good for a cheap
13:21
laugh. Actually, it's not a cheap
13:23
laugh. That is a very expensive laugh.
13:25
That is a $50 million laugh that you just paid for.
13:27
And for anyone that's trying to come at me in the comments right
13:30
now, I get it. I hear you.
13:32
But just know that when you're angry and commenting, you're
13:35
essentially giving Kevin Feige 10 bucks.
13:38
So congratulations, you're now funding Secret Wars.
13:41
And you know what? Just to put one last little pin
13:43
in this Disney Marvel, if you're listening, you did She Hulk
13:47
dirty with the TV show. You absolutely did.
13:50
The entire ending felt rushed. She is the real GOAT.
13:52
She is the best female hero you have.
13:54
And no, I don't forgive you. Nice, that was a good anti
13:58
marvel rant. It was a lot, and that kind of
14:01
breaks my heart a little to say some of that.
14:02
Oh well. I.
14:03
Actually liked end game. I thought end game was solid.
14:05
Oh. I didn't care for it at.
14:07
All that's OK. I don't love that the idea of,
14:10
well, Thanos was right. I don't like that.
14:12
I think that's actually very, very harmful and bad because
14:15
just because you get rid of 50% of the population doesn't mean
14:17
you're going to get rid of 50% of the bad mindset.
14:19
It's not going to fix the world's problems.
14:21
Especially if it's random. Exactly, you got to.
14:23
Get rid of the Oh man, I really didn't like that movie at all.
14:27
Realized as we're talking about it.
14:28
But they put dolphins in the, I don't know, some big canal in
14:32
Europe. I think somewhere in Venice they
14:34
were saying that the dolphins are back there or something.
14:37
Oh, I don't know. It was really weird.
14:39
Oh, oh, OK, OK. Yeah, in the no.
14:40
In the movie in the movie, they said Marvel.
14:42
I thought I was thinking for some reason the studios like
14:44
brought dolphins back for filming or something but that
14:47
doesn't. I think that would be animal
14:48
cruelty to put them in those canals now.
14:51
Yeah, Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.
14:53
All right. Well, I'm going to talk about
14:55
ocean sharks, OK? Are you ready?
14:57
I'm ready. Since 1970, the abundance of
15:00
ocean sharks and rays has declined by more than 70%.
15:05
And a lot of people will blame global warming, climate change,
15:08
yadda yadda yadda. But you know whose fault it was?
15:11
Steven Spielberg and his depiction of sharks in the movie
15:16
Jaws. I believe, and you can try to
15:20
prove me wrong on this, that since Jaws came out, people's
15:23
negative perception of sharks has caused that massive decline.
15:29
You know what? I think that's actually very
15:31
fair to sharks in a surprising way, because more people die
15:34
every year from selfie accidents than from shark attacks.
15:38
Oh, true, they're not actually the bloodthirsty monsters, but
15:41
Jaws depicted them to be that way.
15:43
And thanks Steven Spielberg for killing off all the sharks.
15:45
Yes, actually the the movie brought a lot of people or made
15:49
a lot of people interested in sharks and a lot more biologists
15:53
went into the field because of the movie Jaws, which is
15:55
actually, yeah, it's actually helps shark.
15:57
Makes me really. Happy preservation.
15:59
So in actuality they think that Jaws did help save some sharks,
16:02
but I just thought I'd say the opposite and see if some people
16:05
get pissed off about. That and people will get upset,
16:06
but that's actually really cool. I love hearing that where a
16:09
movie that came out, just pop culture movie, especially one of
16:13
the summertime thrillers or something like that, that got
16:16
people so hyped about something that they actually saw it as
16:19
kids and then were inspired to go into that in their future.
16:23
Yeah. Become a marine biologist.
16:24
That's so cool. Yeah.
16:25
Just like I was inspired to release myself from the Matrix
16:29
after I saw that in in high school, now I'm a firm believer.
16:34
It's the right pill. That that reality is actually
16:36
just a construction and that we're all living in a
16:40
simulation. All right, So should we talk
16:42
about Speaking of living in a simulation, simulating real
16:46
life? Do you want to talk about your
16:48
anecdote of how you dealt with visual effects emergency?
16:52
Go ahead. So shooting a film, a short
16:56
film, but a budgeted short film and the largest budget I had
17:00
worked with at that point to date.
17:01
So we get on set, there's an actor who's sitting outside
17:06
smoking a cigarette. We make a big deal out of, you
17:08
know, him getting a light and actually lighting it and
17:10
somebody else trying to bump a cigarette off of him.
17:13
And we get on set, we've got the herbal cigarettes ready to go.
17:16
We've got the fake pack to put them in so they look like
17:19
they're not fake cigarettes. And the actors, Oh no, I don't
17:23
want to smoke those. And obviously we're not going to
17:29
force an actor to put something into their body they don't want
17:32
to. That's not OK.
17:34
But it didn't even occur to me that that might be an issue and
17:37
something they wouldn't want to do.
17:39
And the director just looks, I was the cinematographer and
17:43
editor. So this is the director looks at
17:45
the actor, nods and says, that's fine.
17:47
Turns to me and says you can just fix that in post, right?
17:49
Cool. Nice.
17:51
So. You're like, I run camera, I
17:53
don't fix things. Well, you can do a lot of
17:54
different things. I can do.
17:55
And I was going to be the editor, so it made sense to say
18:00
that, I guess. But also was like, that's a lot
18:04
of physics. Yeah.
18:05
Which to be fair, at face value, just saying you're going to add
18:11
cigarette smoke or smoke at all into a scene doesn't sound super
18:18
difficult. Yeah, but again, it's the
18:21
physics of making it look real and having it be the right
18:25
opacity, having kind of variations in the opacity where
18:28
it actually looks like it's wafting there, making it look
18:31
like it's coming out of their mouth.
18:32
I don't know if you've ever seen a film where they they set it to
18:35
be cold or a ghost is nearby so suddenly you can see their
18:38
breath. And yeah, and it always looks
18:40
really crappy if it's inserted in posts.
18:42
Exactly. It just looks bad so.
18:45
What did you do? I tried so hard I I went down
18:53
all my favorite tutorial places. I tried mocking up some options.
18:58
I tried just adding a little bit of a glow to it.
19:02
I did my absolute best and I was still very unhappy with the way
19:07
it looks. So I hired some people who are
19:10
visual effects experts. Actually, one of them had also
19:13
worked on a Marvel film in their post production department, so
19:16
it was kind of cool to get to connect with them.
19:19
Oh nice. That was kind of fun, but as you
19:21
can imagine, not inexpensive. No, no.
19:26
But they did do a great job and it does look very good.
19:28
OK. So how'd you cover that expense
19:30
then? I I took that out of my own
19:32
pocket. It was definitely not in the
19:35
film budget. Nice.
19:37
Well you were a producer on this too, so we should share that
19:39
with people. It's not like you were you were.
19:40
This was basically you were an owner of this film.
19:43
Yes, I was. I was basically the the Co
19:45
creator of this entire film. So I was executive producer,
19:49
cinematographer, production manager basically, and, and the
19:57
editor. And yeah, so there was there was
20:00
a lot going on there. I was also one of two people
20:03
that didn't get paid for working on the project because it was a
20:06
Stephen King dollar baby and you can't profit off of them.
20:09
So. So you weren't going to make
20:12
money? Anyway, I wasn't going to make
20:13
money anyway and I'm like, you know what?
20:14
I just need this film to be done.
20:16
Yeah, I know this is just coming out of my pocket and I don't
20:19
love that it's coming out of my pocket, but it needs to be done
20:21
so. That's what we're gonna do.
20:23
And you did check it out online. Oh yeah, it's online now.
20:26
I keep forgetting that I did that.
20:27
You can see it on YouTube. It's a Stephen King dollar.
20:29
Baby, the man who would not shake hands.
20:31
So if you would like to see just exactly how that cigarette smoke
20:36
looks, you can find it now on Victoria's Finales Films.
20:39
There it is. We had an issue with our film
20:45
Stockton to Table Rock where we didn't budget quality control
20:50
and that is something when you're looking for distribution
20:53
with your film that you do need to consider.
20:55
What do you mean as far as budgeting for quality control?
20:59
Well, film distribution companies will charge you for
21:02
that. And the quality control is, is,
21:09
I mean, it's not, it's not super expensive, but it's also not
21:12
super cheap and it's not something that we realized was
21:15
going to be something that we needed to consider as far as
21:18
cost is concerned. So it's not just you and the
21:23
other Lower Gentry team or even your DP or your colorist or
21:26
anything. It's not just you guys all
21:27
sitting down in a room and watching the film.
21:29
Again, for quality control this is.
21:32
So what we did in order to combat this is we had a couple
21:36
offers with film distribution companies and then the cost of
21:39
the quality control was going to be upfront with them and we were
21:43
going to have to pocket that. And then they were going to
21:45
pocket the first anywhere from like 5 to $15,000 that are film
21:51
made on streaming. So it just kind of felt like a
21:54
cash grab. Because they say that it's for
21:56
the the marketing of the film, right?
21:59
And that they're trying to recoup that marketing money that
22:01
they spend or whatever. Yeah.
22:03
But then marketing was also based on the verbiage in the
22:05
contract. It was a joint venture, which
22:08
when something is a joint venture in a contract with a
22:12
large company, I just assume that it's going to be 99.9% on
22:17
the filmmaker and then point 1%, maybe if you're lucky, this
22:21
distribution company is going to spend some ad dollars on getting
22:24
your film in front of people's eyes.
22:25
Or they're just going to put it at the bottom of a newsletter
22:27
and hope that somebody clicks on it and say they marketed it.
22:29
Yeah, if anyone has any good experiences with a film
22:32
distribution company, please, please make a comment in this
22:36
video because I would love to spread the word about good film
22:39
distribution companies. Yeah.
22:41
So to combat our situation with the quality control cost and the
22:46
upfront cost with Lower Gentry Studios for Stockton to Table
22:49
Rock, the film that we released in, in June, I believe it was,
22:53
we just decided to go with Film Hub.
22:57
And so the quality control was done.
23:00
I'm fairly certain by AI and, and I may have explained this on
23:05
the podcast before previously, but we got 3 attempts to pass
23:10
quality control. And so you upload your your
23:13
film, you upload all the image assets.
23:17
And so we got dinged on so many things after that first pass.
23:21
And they don't have an actual human being that you can talk to
23:25
you to get input from. Oh, it's just sort of auto
23:28
feedback, kind of when you're trying to export something out
23:30
of Premiere and it just comes back with an error like, yeah,
23:32
there was a frame dropped. We're not going to tell you
23:35
where, but there was a frame drop.
23:37
Yeah, it was. It was kind of like that.
23:38
So we had to basically redo all of our logos for the film
23:45
because they didn't like the font that we used, which was
23:48
which was Zoe's handwriting. Chose a handwriting yes and
23:51
decided to convert that into a font.
23:53
Yes. So we did.
23:55
We did that. I say that very, very, I'm sorry
23:58
for interrupting you, but I'm, I'm saying that very, very
24:01
negatively because I remember trying to help you with like a
24:05
digital cinema, not ADCP. Oh my gosh.
24:07
Geez. A press, a press kit.
24:09
Yeah, an EPK and and trying to get it to use Zoes handwriting
24:15
for that and just feeling, but realistically it was so cool and
24:19
it did look awesome and it was so unique.
24:22
And, you know, it's very different.
24:23
It's you didn't have the budget to hire a designer to create a
24:26
font for you, so you were able to just convert somebody's
24:29
actual handwriting into it. And then that way when you see
24:32
Rory writing in the notebook, then it matches, and that's
24:36
really cool. So yeah, the.
24:38
It was cool. It was very artistic choice, the
24:40
characters. Handwriting in the film matches
24:42
the the posters that we made and then we had to throw those
24:45
completely out the window without any conversation with an
24:48
actual person because they just flagged it as note this isn't
24:52
legible enough. You can't, it's not going to
24:54
pass. They didn't like the wide stereo
24:57
image I used on the audio for the film that they said it
25:01
wasn't narrow enough. And so not being able to talk to
25:04
someone, I basically then had to export the entire audio file
25:08
almost in mono to where the and so I had to rebalance everything
25:13
because I didn't want to send it through with too much stereo
25:16
imagery. Because if we got rejected a
25:18
second time because of that, the third time without any input, we
25:21
you only get three shots at. It and.
25:23
If you don't pass QC the third time, then they're like you
25:26
cannot submit this title to Film Hub ever again and therefore
25:30
your plans of potential, potential self distribution,
25:34
even though Film Hub distributes it.
25:36
But this is kind of more like a DIY film distribution where you
25:39
get your money upfront immediately, your percentage of
25:42
the money upfront immediately, as soon as you make sales.
25:44
It's like that's out the window completely if you don't pass it.
25:48
And so, you know, we, we did 2 submissions and we failed QC 2
25:54
times. And on the 3rd submission, like
25:58
we finally, we finally passed. But we had to change.
26:01
We had, we ended up having to pay them for their own
26:06
captioning because we did our captioning ourselves and we
26:09
followed the guidelines that were on their website and
26:12
online. But then they just gave input
26:14
like the captions don't follow our protocol or whatever like
26:20
it. Doesn't it can be something as
26:21
simple as you put the music note symbol at the front and they
26:26
want it at the end? They wanted it on both sides.
26:28
The bookend. But they don't, they don't give
26:30
that input though in the e-mail. They just say no, it doesn't
26:33
meet the guidelines. And the same thing with I was
26:35
lucky that on the audio they said stereo imagery too wide
26:38
because a lot of the other input it was just like, no, this
26:41
doesn't meet the guidelines. Look at our guidelines online
26:44
and their guidelines aren't always updated.
26:46
So you're just kind of shooting in the dark like, oh, I don't
26:50
know, I have to reread all the stuff that they have posted
26:52
online and then plus check other references and just kind of
26:55
guess because you can't talk to a human being and they can't
26:57
give you, they don't give you the specific time codes at all
27:01
Points where something where something happened that was like
27:05
so. They're not even saying at this
27:08
time, this time, this time captions were incorrectly
27:11
formatted or anything. It's just captions were bad.
27:13
Yeah, it's like bad, no captions, no good, do it again.
27:16
So we ended up on the third go through.
27:18
The only thing that was wrong on our third attempt was they said
27:21
that the captions weren't quite right.
27:24
And I think there was, I think that might have been the only
27:26
like disqualifying factor. They had recommended changes
27:29
outside of that. And so we thought, OK, well,
27:32
we'll pay even though we just sat and did all of this
27:34
ourselves. We'll pay them 100 bucks to to
27:38
caption it or it was like, yeah, yeah, it was like almost 200, I
27:42
think. And so we just, we just did it
27:44
that way and we ate it. Like we just, that's one of the
27:46
things with indie film making a lot of times if you're not
27:48
careful with your budget, you end up paying for it yourself
27:52
out of your own, out of your own pocket cash or on your on your
27:56
credit card and putting yourself into further into debt because
27:59
you got nobody else to fall back on.
28:01
So that's what we ended up doing.
28:03
That does kind of make me wonder how many people who distribute a
28:06
film on Film Hub who have similar issues and they sort of
28:11
overcorrect to compensate for any issues that might be coming
28:14
up. Like how you went real hard with
28:16
that audio change just to make sure it didn't come up again
28:20
because there wasn't an exact guideline on any particular
28:22
moments or songs or anything. So I wonder if there's there's
28:26
something to that where maybe the films that you see on Film
28:29
Hub in theaters would actually look or sound pretty
28:32
substantially different. Oh, we.
28:35
Than if you stream it. We screened in an independent
28:38
film or an independent theater in Minneapolis and it was so
28:42
awesome because the the gentleman that was running it
28:45
was just a tech head and we sent him ADCP and it was the best
28:50
looking and sounding screening that we ever had for our film.
28:53
And unfortunately, you know the audio you got to put it in
28:57
stereo mode. If you want to rent Stockton to
28:59
Table Rock, put it in stereo mode rather than five one
29:02
because the if you put it 51, everything's going to come out
29:05
of your center speaker. But if you have just, you know,
29:08
if you're listening on your phone or your laptop or
29:09
headphones, it's not going to matter at all.
29:11
So I realize that most people, you know, don't have their home
29:14
audio set up because we've talked about that.
29:16
A lot. We have talked about that quite
29:17
a bit. Yeah, not not as far as the
29:20
ruinous Cinephiles Day segment, but I did get raked over the
29:23
coals for that one for saying that I listen to my TV speakers
29:25
so. Shouldn't do it, should we?
29:28
Should we talk about some of the wishes that we would have if we
29:31
had additional budget, because we agree on this one.
29:34
We do, which isn't often that we agree on something specific, but
29:38
yeah, art department art. Department, micro budget film
29:41
makers, it always feels like art department is the biggest battle
29:44
and that's it's makes it harder to do genre films or period
29:48
pieces because it just looks. It just looks cheap if you don't
29:54
put effort into the costumes. And get somebody to be
29:58
responsible for it. Don't just say, oh, we're making
30:02
the movie or I'm the director. I'll I'll design all the props
30:05
and everything. Like don't do that.
30:06
Don't do that to yourself. Don't do that in general.
30:09
Just get somebody. Get a production designer who
30:12
knows what they're doing, who knows the best.
30:14
Tell them what their budget is. Hope that they stick around
30:17
after you tell them what that number is.
30:18
And then let them go nuts and let them handle it, because you
30:22
will be so grateful that they've built you a world for your
30:27
characters to live in and play in that your cinematographer can
30:30
now capture. You will be so much happier with
30:32
that rather than wow. They blatantly rented out an
30:36
Airbnb that has no set deck whatsoever.
30:39
Film this short. Cool.
30:41
Or you can get creative as far as if you're doing a realistic
30:45
drama that's not set at a different timepiece like time
30:48
period. What we did for Stockton was we
30:50
just borrowed our friend's house, who was very generous to
30:53
let us shoot in his house, but he had he had an aesthetic
30:56
because in his house already. And we're like, this is going to
30:59
work perfectly for this film. And it was just the house that
31:02
we envisioned. And luckily our friend owned it
31:05
and decorated it himself. So thanks, Jesse, for that.
31:07
And then we just crashed his house and, you know, paid for
31:10
him to leave town for one of the long weekends so that we weren't
31:13
like, you know. Just keeping him out of his
31:15
house all weekend. Yeah, exactly.
31:16
With nowhere to go, just sleep in your car in the backyard.
31:19
It'll be fine. Oh, wait, no, that's illegal.
31:20
And I don't. No, no, you're not.
31:22
You can't do that anymore. Yeah, be careful.
31:23
Yeah, be careful. So go ahead.
31:27
On the note of overspend, yeah, And your example being the QC,
31:33
my example being hiring a visual effects pro, I think that does
31:38
come down to one thing. That is my like my number one
31:41
piece of budgeting advice is to have a contingency line item in
31:46
your budget. Plan on.
31:47
It and it is 10% of your whole budget.
31:51
And I know it sucks to automatically have to just up
31:54
your budget by another 10%, especially when you're on an
31:58
indie budget. So you know it's shoestring and
31:59
you're going to be clawing to get every penny anyway.
32:03
But having that contingency in there means that you're not
32:06
going to have to use your credit card.
32:07
You're not going to go into debt because unexpected expenses are
32:10
going to come up every time. Somewhere along the lines
32:13
they're going to come up. Don't worry, that money will get
32:16
spent and it will not be wasted. But yeah, you do need it.
32:20
And if you don't put that in your budget, just be prepared to
32:23
pay that yourself out of your pocket or spend a whole bunch of
32:26
your time trying to figure out how to do something.
32:29
Or both? Yeah, or both.
32:31
Both, since both of our responses were well, I tried to
32:34
do it myself and failed miserably.
32:36
So I, you guys didn't fail miserably.
32:38
I tried to do it myself. Didn't work out, had to throw
32:41
throw money at the problem to fix it anyway.
32:43
For sure, for sure. Should we end with a couple
32:46
hacks? Yeah, of the week.
32:48
Yeah, because I have I have some visual effects hacks for anyone.
32:51
What's your visual effect hack? My visual effect hack, aside
32:55
from just the very standard, if you want to get better in After
32:58
Effects or I don't know what Da Vinci's is called, fusion
33:03
fusion. Thank you.
33:03
If you want to get better, obviously I don't use that one.
33:05
If you want to get better at these things, there are billions
33:08
of tutorials set aside one day every week or one day every
33:12
other week and you are going to sit down and you are not allowed
33:14
to leave your computer until you successfully recreate that
33:16
particular tutorial. It'll get you used to the
33:19
vernacular, it'll get you used to the layout of the program,
33:21
It'll get you understanding what the different physics and
33:23
mechanisms behind every single effect and particle movement and
33:27
all this jazz are inside there. And it's worth it every time.
33:31
But my biggest hack is start with something real.
33:36
And it doesn't matter how shitty it is, if you need to show
33:39
somebody's face getting beaten in, you don't need to.
33:43
And you know you're going to have to do it and post because
33:45
you're not actually going to break this person's nose.
33:47
But you want to see bone perfect, just dump a bunch of
33:51
blood on their face so you have something to start with.
33:54
One, it helps you set better anchors for your actual points
33:59
of the effects inside of it. It helps the entire image read
34:03
the depth of the image better and where certain things should
34:05
be happening. And it does give you a realistic
34:08
base so that you're more accentuating the reel than
34:12
entirely trying to fabricate something.
34:14
So start with practical visual effects and add the minimum
34:18
amount in post. That you need to always do it in
34:20
layers, always feather your edges, but always start with
34:23
something real. Right on.
34:24
I like that. Yeah, we were talking about
34:26
budgeting in my hack of of the week is about saving money.
34:30
Nice. OK love this.
34:32
Very excited please. Equipment purchases.
34:35
My piece of advice for indie film makers starting out is
34:39
don't buy a piece of equipment that doesn't solve a problem
34:43
that you're already experiencing.
34:45
Oh. I like.
34:46
That we have had situations pop up where we're where we imagine
34:52
something and we justify equipment purchases before we
34:55
understand that we need it. For example, we got a wireless
35:00
focus puller which not super expensive, but it was ended up
35:04
being like a couple few 100 bucks because we envisioned
35:06
having to pull focus wirelessly and the mechanical focus puller
35:12
was totally fine. So we just wasted a few $100 in
35:15
the situation. The few $100 that could have
35:18
covered the captioning. Yes, exactly.
35:21
And, and it was one of those things where, well, wouldn't it
35:23
be nice if we could pull focus remotely, but then we didn't
35:28
purchase the monitors and all that stuff there's.
35:30
A lot more to it. There was there was a lot more
35:32
to it and the example that because we always cheap out on
35:36
audio when it comes to equipment.
35:38
Everybody does. At at Lower Gentry Studios and I
35:41
shot or I captured audio on a super cheap Tascam unit and A
35:46
and an incredibly cheap audio Technica boom mic and a very
35:51
cheap boom itself to where it started to fall apart.
35:55
It wouldn't lock into place. And this was we shot basic
35:58
basically a majority of the chitchat web series, which you
36:01
can see online on lower Gentry studios.
36:03
So 12 films over 12 months. And I was operating on this
36:06
really cheap equipment and I realized that like, oh, I'm
36:10
having to go through and clean the preamp noise on every single
36:13
one of these short films. Wouldn't it be nice if I had a
36:17
recorder that had good enough preamps to where I could
36:20
alleviate the step? And so my audio kit basically
36:24
was built out with running into limitations on the equipment
36:28
versus some of our gear we bought because we're thinking,
36:31
oh, look at the shallow depth of field on this, this lens.
36:36
Wouldn't it be nice if we, you know, insert blank thing here?
36:39
And then we ended up finding a cinematographer with all his own
36:42
gear. So it didn't even really matter.
36:44
Even better. Yeah.
36:45
And and whereas the audio end we just bought based on running
36:48
into limitations and issues. And so the kit is a lot more
36:52
efficient and practical than some of the video purchases that
36:57
we've made. So just wait till you run into
36:59
an issue. I think that's brilliant,
37:00
because not only did that let you kind of save money up for
37:04
something that you knew you were going to need, you also knew
37:07
exactly what problem you needed to solve and what problem your
37:11
current gear was presenting. Yeah, because before using that
37:15
Tascam a ton on a bunch of different films, did you really
37:18
know that much about preamps? No, I just grabbed A Tascam unit
37:22
and we're all self trained on all these.
37:23
Things exactly. So it kind of taught you.
37:26
It filled in one of the unknown unknowns and let you know what
37:30
problem you even needed to solve in your next piece of gear.
37:32
So then you knew what to look for in their reviews and the
37:34
actual specs. I think that's brilliant.
37:36
Save some money because gear can take a lot of take a lot of your
37:40
funds and people get really excited about gear for some
37:42
reason. And there's so many, so many
37:44
YouTube channels just dedicated to talking about gear that you
37:47
can buy. It's like Christmas morning, you
37:49
get to open all these presents and they're just these fancy
37:51
boxes and everything's all shiny and yeah, you know, it's nice.
37:54
Well, yeah, you know, I get, I get the same way sometimes I'm
37:56
like, oh, wouldn't it be nice to get this new camera?
37:58
And it's like, well, my old one works perfectly fine still, so
38:02
why do I need to drop a few grand?
38:04
No, until you know exactly what problem you need good to solve.
38:07
You're good with the gear you got.
38:08
Just take it. So all right, well, shall we end
38:11
with this to sync for a while? I think that sounds wonderful.
38:13
Bye bye.