progression III

updates:

title design: our latest and last piece of the puzzle fell into place a week ago. via a comment on emily's blog, i found her friend queen kellee's blog and noticed from her bio that she did title design. i emailed her and asked if she'd be interested in doing a small title design job for me. nothing too crazy as i didn't want anything fancy (the title "sequence" is just the main title and is only on-screen for about 5 seconds). thankfully although she was slammed with work, she agreed to do it.


kellee asked me what i was looking for. i explained what i was thinking and she liked the idea and was immediately on board. a very smart cookie she was talented enough to take the small quicktime i'd provided of my placeholder title, composite out my graphics, drop hers in and return it back to me at full 1280x720 resolution (sneaky thing read my blog and figured out the original rez). i was impressed. that was version one. by number four we had it nailed.

the first test of anyone i work with is how they start - how much do they figure out on their own, how technically savvy are they (can they grab a file off ftp without laborious instructions?), etc. the basics of how someone operates can tell you a lot about them, irrespective of their actual artistic talent. doesn't mean if an artist is a discombobulated luddite that you won't work with them - but it's a good thing to know upfront.

at every step in our process kellee was fast to respond, quick to provide a new version and excellent in realizing what i wanted. the title looks fantastic. i highly recommend her to anyone looking for a designer.

sound: a recent sunday afternoon found kimberly, terron and i sitting with kilyoung (our sound mixer), in his small studio downtown. we spent a few hours going through every scene in the film. kilyoung had addressed most of our concerns from our previous meeting, but still had a few outstanding issues that he wanted our specific input on.

the major hurdle was the sound for an exterior scene that we'd shot at the end of the second and last day of the shoot (we shot over one weekend). we were rushing to beat the light and didn't have time to properly set up sound (or flags for that matter). additionally we hadn't planned to use this particular part of the location exterior to shoot. add that the location was the sidewalk next to a semi-busy street, that we didn't have a permit for shooting on said sidewalk (and at one point watched nervously as a sheriff patrol car did a slow driveby), and that the traffic noise made it almost impossible to get clean sound - and you have a perfect candidate for adr.

so terron and i recorded the three lines of dialog with the actors in his living room using two borrowed mics and a borrowed dvx100. this was seven months after our shoot and true to film production form, the last possible weekend one of our actors was available since he was moving back to chicago.

turns out kilyoung didn't think our adr was very usable (what?!), and he attempted to use the on-set sound which was recorded from behind the actors backs inside the building! to his credit after some processing gymnastics it wasn't too bad - however one of the lines didn't match. mine actually. in the earlier wide shot takes i'd said a line that ended with "...catch up." in the later close ups i realized i'd said the line wrong and amended it to "...catch you." the best audio was from the earlier takes but of course the line didn't match. i assumed this would be a simple fix, but it wasn't. we managed it, but only after a rather laborious process of exhausting all the options.

more importantly, this process was another example where being the champion of your own film is necessary. kilyoung was ready to accept a comprise because he'd done all he could with the solution we'd tried. he said we'd come to the point where we needed to make a choice, either use the wrong line, or use the adr that really didn't match. then i suggested finding another take from a different shot where i'd said the same line to see if we could steal the last part of it. this ending up working perfectly, and after some fancy audio work by kilyoung was undetectable as two separate takes of audio spliced together in the middle of a sentence.

if i hadn't insisted on making the line perfect, and hadn't suggested another option to try, i would have been stuck with a less than satisfying moment in the film. it's both scary and impowering to realize you can make that happen, but also that if you don't no one else will and the film will suffer. although i don't agree with it, when folks argue the auteur theory of film authorship i can see where they come from.

the bottom line - if you can at all avoid adr, definitely do so. it's surprising how difficult it is to replicate the same sound. even using the same actor during a looping session, watching their own performance - all the nuances, the emotional state of the actor, etc., are different. and of course the environment isn't remotely the same. it's trickier than you'd think.

that said, adr can obviously be a very powerful friend - but do as much as you can to get on-set dialog. you'll be thankful later. unless you plan your whole film as an homage to french cinema. then rock on with your bad adr self.

color: after demo'ing it, i purchased a copy of red giant software's magic bullet. it's an excellent program. very fun. it's not a true color correction program, more of a "look" designer. but wow. you can do some great things with it. we sat down for a few hours one weekend and set our looks. we have four: the opening title sequence, exterior looks for the two outside scenes (which take place on different sides of the building), and the interior set look.

i've been spending the last two weeks applying our looks to each cut. overall our footage was fairly uniform in terms of color and density, so there weren't many times where i had to balance the plate first before throwing the magic bullet filter on. once i added our look to each shot i then went through and made any necessary adjustments for gradient placement and intensity (we used a gradient filter look on all the interior and one exterior scenes), density (brightness) and contrast. im very pleased with the final look of the film.

i decided against two options that i'd originally planned on:

• adding grain: after adding the magic bullet filters i realized the footage looked great. the emotional feel i wanted was accomplished, so the grain (originally intended to give a gritty feel to the film), wasn't necessary.
  
• adding depth of field: i had really wanted to shoot with a 35mm lens adapter and wasn't able to. this is a key element in making video look like film (though it's a distinction that will soon be moot as hd cameras incorporate better lenses and become more easily adaptable). shooting with these lenses allows you to force perspective and create the depth of field look that's so beautiful. as a storyteller and director it allows you to invisibly focus attention where you want it in the frame. i even showed an example of this in an earlier post.

  although i still intend to utilize a 35mm package next time, i decided against adding the look in post for one basic reason: return on investment. either way it was accomplished - me doing the vfx or paying someone else to do them - it was going to cost me and i didn't feel the investment was worth the return. the effect looked nice on the test shots i tried it on, but i didn't feel that it would make a significant enough overall impact (especially after color-correction), to justify the time and expense.
  

festivals: we just submitted to the jackson hole film festival, of all places. we'd never heard of it until it was featured on withoutabox, but it sounded cool and pretty well developed. that brings the total of submissions to four. haven't heard anything back yet. tribecca notifies next week (assuming they also notify those who didn't get in), so hopefully we'll hear one way or the other.