Filmmaking

[Erkki]

Recently shot a video interview with 11 people and am editing those... Fairly simple, one camera and one person at a time.

 

Today shot a dance video in a house that had quite a large living area, but it was a HUGE challenge to get good angles. When I looked at the footage, I initially felt like a total failure, that I didn't manage to keep the dancers' bodies in the shot. But I really needed a wider lens, which I will borrow for some reshoots this Sunday. And after editing the footage, it doesn't look that bad.
 

After these I will need a break and get back to editing my movie - and I still have a few extra scenes to shoot...

 

Also, I have to say the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K rocks. I love the picture quality, especially color of skin tones. I rented it for the dance video shoot and will buy myself one. It's really a bargain for the quality it offers as I understand - so if you want to make low-budget films, consider that camera. It comes with DaVinci Resolve Studio, which can handle all the editing needs, probably (well even the free version can for the most part, but lacks some things you might need).

 

I already want to write or find a new good script to shoot with the Pocket 4K.

[Erkki]

Haha, turns out the reason that I couldn't keep the dancers in frame was not because I needed a wider lens. I had actually previously tested the space with even narrower lens on a different camera body, and that seemed like it would be enough. It turns out when the Pocket 4K is set to record RAW 1080p video, then it crops in 2x, making the image 2x narrower that the lens would normally give. I feel so stupid, that I wasted a whole day of shooting trying to find good angles to shoot from without figuring out that this was what was hindering me - I naturally wanted to film RAW if possible, so I could get best options for color grading. The moral, I guess: always do a proper camera test with a new camera before taking it to a shoot.

 

But anyway, I have a chance to fix it today in the re-shoot and I hope it will be a cool video that I can share soon.

[Patrick R]

It's been a bit since I've posted here but I figure I'd wrap this up. I didn't get this into any festivals so I can finally make this public. Figure at the very least the first two minutes are of interest because the Thumbs were nice enough to let me use clips of Important If True. Making movies is hard and I am proud that I finished this.

 

 

[Erkki]

I accidentally made a tiny short nature video yesterday 

 

[Ben X]

Twin Peaksy!

[Erkki]

My short film is progressing. The video editing is almost done, now the main remaining things are

• shooting a short stop motion animation sequence
• ADR - re-recording some lines, recording some new lines to replace what's being said
• foley, sound editing and mixing
• color correction and grading

I have gotten a bit of experience with the last two doing some video projects for friends. But I'm somewhat color blind and because of this I dread the process of color grading a bit. Also it's actually a very technical area that I know I can't do at a similar level as a pro could, but I think I better do it myself to get the experience and to save money. And same goes for the whole sound process. But both are also actually kind of fun processes for having very direct and detailed control over what the end result is going to look and sound like.

 

I know I should spend some more time learning about these disciplines, but when I stop at some level of depth, am I going to be able to make the right artistic choices with what I know? I'm aiming for an autumn release now, though, so I can take my time.

 

The most difficult is going to be the stop motion animation, which is another thing that I initially described with one sentence in the script, but is now going to be much more complicated.

 

[edit] Also I forgot finding/commissioning music. I have a friend who wants to try making the music, but I haven't shown him the movie yet.

[Erkki]

I'm now trying to come up with a way to make the sound so good that the whole movie could be somewhat understood only by the sound. I found this research, I wonder if it's something unique or if it's reiterating in other words what all good film sound editors know (probably more of the latter?)

 

[Erkki]

I gave up on the idea in the previous post about making the movie understandable only by sound. That would be a totally different discipline and I have enough on my plate as it is.

 

I think I have an actually close to final cut of my movie, but we still have a lot of sound mixing and editing , color correction and grading to do. And to create proper credits with bloopers and stuff.

 

Still, if anyone wants to see the current state and give some feedback, let me know by PM and I'll send you a link. I might also have to prepare some questions like Patrick did when he shared his movie, so I might take a couple of days with getting back to you, though.

[Erkki]

My film is almost finished! After like a year and a half of phases with different intensity... Originally I hoped it would be just a couple of months of intense work.

 

I am planning to submit it to a festival today or tomorrow. I'm actually not sure if I have to have a finished film when submitting, but just to be safe... I just have to work on the credits a bit and maybe add some footsteps. And then I'll probably discover that I need to spend more time on promoting, preparing for more festivals etc....

[Roderick]

Filmmaking is tough, but it's own reward. Hopefully the festival will accept your work, would be sweet!

[Erkki]

I feel like I should make a trailer, but ... I just finished a year of post-production... I'm kind of ready to not do more of that for a while...

[Roderick]

Luckily, there are professional trailer makers on this forum. (Though they might cost you.)

[Erkki]

Yeah, I think I saw someone mention that somewhere. I would rather keep the costs down for now though, unless I feel like I really need one and would rather not work on it myself.

[Erkki]

I just had the premiere for my short film for the people who helped make it, so now I feel like I could show it to more people.

 

https://filmfreeway.com/ModernLove2019

 

The password is: the full name of the protagonist of Frances Ha, without spaces, with the last vocal of first name replaced with 3 and the last vocal of last name replaced with 4.

 

Also my cousin designed a poster for it:

[Patrick R]

2 hours ago, Erkki said:

The password is: the full name of the protagonist of Frances Ha, without spaces, with the last vocal of first name replaced with 3 and the last vocal of last name replaced with 4.
 

 

I feel dumb but I cannot crack this riddle. By vocal do you mean syllable?

[TychoCelchuuu]

I think it's 1337 speak. Franc3sH4.

[Erkki]

Oh damn, I knew I made it too hard, just didn’t want password next to link. Tycho almost has it, but It’s Halladay, not Ha.

 

I was a bit drunk yesterday when posting it, and forgot to mention that our own Ben X really helped a lot in making this movie better by providing feedback in multiple phases of the process.

 

Firstly, the script was improved a lot thanks to several iterations after his feedback, and especially some quite dumb dialogue was avoided.

 

Secondly, when I had the movie cut to around 15 minutes and thought I couldn’t cut anything else, Ben identified many sequences that were superfluous and dragged the energy down instead of providing some additional context. And thus I cut almost a third of the movie and it became a 10 minute movie as I had wanted at first.

 

And thirdly during the sound editing again he really helped to make some things sound more natural or impactful.

 

PS Overall I’m happy enough with the result that I’ll try to send it to some festivals before making it freely available online until October 2020 when the music license expires   

[Ben X]

I think you mean "vowel" rather than "vocal"...

 

I was pleased to help with such a lovely film - it's a very impressive debut! Also, that poster is great.

 

I hope it does well on the festival circuit, and that you can muster the energy at some point to dive back in and replace the licensed track with a public domain one

[Patrick R]

On 9/6/2019 at 8:54 PM, TychoCelchuuu said:

I think it's 1337 speak. Franc3sH4.

 

7 hours ago, Ben X said:

I think you mean "vowel" rather than "vocal"...

 

It took me two levels of UHS to figure out how to watch this, I am foolish.

 

Congratulations, Erikki, this looks beautiful. All your time and effort (and money!) are onscreen. Now armed with this experience your next step is a massive feature length Mario Bava homage.

[Erkki]

Thanks!

 

Next I want to practice on even shorter formats, especially storytelling, lighting and set design. It will be a while before I dare to tackle a feature, but I hope I will one day. I have an idea forming for a 2-3 minute horror/funny currently. At some point it would definitely be fun to do a Mario Bava homage!

[Erkki]

This guy gives out solid filmmaking advice:

He shot some great short horror films at home with his wife and when they went viral, he got some offers and became a Hollywood director. I haven't seen his features yet. He made Annabel Creations and Shazam and a feature length version of one of his shorts.

[Ben X]

Wow, that is an insane career trajectory.

[Erkki]

My film didn't get selected for the local shorts festival. Now I have to figure out if I want to keep working on an improved cut (that I've been tinkering with after some additional feedback) and send to some other festivals or just put it online... I have no idea really what festivals I could send it to where there would be some point to it.

[Ben X]

Aw, that's a shame. Why wouldn't there be any point in sending it to a festival?

[Erkki]

Well, I think I want more reason than just getting it on a big screen in front of a few random people. The local one would have been perfect because people who have heard about the film could have checked it out. Also I kind of would want to see for myself how something I put together would look in a cinema. So I don’t want to send it somewhere far and not be able to travel there myself.

 

Basically I think I’d like to send it to somewhere nearby or where I’d want to travel. I guess I have to dig a bit since the main festival said no - I don’t know that many other festivals. I could send an improved cut again next year, of course.