Family Fiend Production Still
Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth? Ever been on a set or around filmmakers and it sounds like their speaking another language? Are you learning about film making and want to learn some universal terms to help describe what type of shots you want to shoot? Well in this first installment, I’m going to talk about some common film lingo and define it. So let’s get started!
Let’s talk about shots. The shot of Catherine Trail and Jodi Essex above from Family Fiend would be considered a “two shot“. I’m a fan of two shots because you really get to see the interaction between the actors in the scene. The challenge is using it for really long dialog shots, because both actors have to nail it. Although you can always get a two shot then jump in for close-ups.
After the leap we’ll learn the lingo for character shots! Continue Reading…
Posted 1 month, 1 week ago at 1:08 pm. Add a comment
Mutantville Productions is headed back to the set this week as the new shooting schedule for “G.H.O.S.T.” begins in earnest! Principle photography was completed in November, pick ups were filmed over December, and the first assembly was completed over the winter holiday. After the first cut came in at a healthy 47 minute run time – producers Brent Bowers, Geo Blalock and writer/director J.T. McRoberts decided to invest in shooting some new scenes to expand the short film into a full length feature. After weeks of heavy work on the script for new scenes – the pieces are set in motion and MVP is on it’s way back to the set.
This week – we stop at a local bookstore where the fans will have a chance to meet and greet the one and only G.B. Cunningham from “G.H.O.S.T. “ Actors Dave Tunik and Davis Osborne are excited to head back to the set to bring the new scene to life. Filming on these additional scenes will continue through the few months and is expected to conclude in April. Keep watching Mutantville.com for your up to the minute MVP news!
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 3:45 pm. Add a comment
Work for G.H.O.S.T. started back in January with the launch of the MVP Blog here at Mutantville.com and the beginning of intense pre-production on G.H.O.S.T.. The cast and crew put in many a long day and night throughout production during October and November and we’ve carried that level of intensity into post-production by shooting pick ups all through December. We started editing during the second week of filming and are finally nearing completion of the first assembly of G.H.O.S.T..
There is so much going on behind the scenes that’s it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep producing timely updates in addition to doing the actual work. This has been an amazing adventure so far. The footage looks great. The performances were fantastic and the special make-up FX are spectacular. Just as it seems we’re nearing the end – we are in fact reaching a new beginning. It’s not official yet – but we are working on ideas for new scenes to shoot for the movie – to expand it from it’s intended half hour format into a full length feature! That’s right – we will still be able to cut G.H.O.S.T. down to a very tight half hour TV pilot s intended – but there is enough material there that with a few smart additions – we can expand the story a touch and turn G.H.O.S.T. into a full movie.
I’m so excited that I can hardly contain myself. While this is good news for us – it also means that this non-stop rollercoaster of work that we’ve been on since July will continue for the foreseeable future! Thank you all for your help in making this dream a reality. Everyone in MVP plays an important role and we couldn’t have made our movie without you! Keep checking the MVP Blog for more updates as they happen!
**Streebo
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago at 7:36 pm. 1 comment
Hello Mutantville! I want to discuss something that helped us out immensely when embarking on our first feature film “C for Chaos.” A few of us had gone to art school to develop our eyes, since of composition, etc… But we hadn’t gone to “Official” film school. We were lucky that Streebo had been studying storytelling since he was young and I had been behind a camera since I was young. Brento had been making and editing movies since he was young. So now that we’ve established that at one point we were all young, we’re ready to move on.
When preparing for “C for Chaos,” we all studied feverishly. We read all the books we could find but another thing was watching movies. I know this sounds like a “Duh” type thing but…we watched them from as if we were making them. Streebo and I would get together and point out camera movement, lighting, pacing, screen directions, composition, coverage, etc… If you really watch and dissect films in this way you can see how different directors can cover similar situations. Some may use more wide angles, some may go in for close ups, etc… Commentary tracks are another great resource. Of course not all commentary tracks are created equal. If you’re a low budget filmmaker then I recommend lower budget movies. Robert Rodriguez has great commentary tracks. Some of his you need a note book and the pause button to keep up. Be sure you keep an open mind when listening to the commentary. You may only get one or two gems, But if it saves you a night of shooting or makes something easier, I’d say that was worth 2 hours of your time. For example, on the commentary for Ronin, he talks about the scene when they’re buying the weapons. They purposefully wet the entire area since they were filming outside, that way if it rained, it wouldn’t mess up their shooting schedule. Either write this stuff down in a journal or file it away in your brain somewhere.
Streebo is a big believer in only watching what you’re filming. So when we shot “C for Chaos” for about 3 years, that’s pretty much all Streebo watched. Thanks to places like Netflix he showed me horror films from all over the world. This can give you a lot of insight into the genre.
So before, while and after making your film, study as many films as possible. Notice I said study and Not watch. Watch is passive. Study is active.
Below Please leave comments about films with good commentaries for other filmmakers to go and study! Thanks!
Posted 2 years, 5 months ago at 9:08 am. 4 comments
From ASAP TRIP: The Film Sensei’s Six Quick Tips to Keep Your Indie Film From Sucking!
And here, my loyal students, are those tips to help you avoid some of the pitfalls I encountered as a beginning low budget filmmaker.
1. Lay Off the Zoom!
Yes, I know that George Lucas did it in the new Star Wars films and, yes, I know it was popular in the new Battlestar Galactica show, but all playing around with the zoom on your camera will do is make your footage look like a tourist shooting vacation movies out on the Florida Keys. A really good cameraman can make a zoom look ok (or semi-acceptable)…a really really good cameraman, that is. For the most part, though, a zoom will look shoddy and amateurish. Your best bet is to break your zoom controller or, at the very least, the finger closest to it. A dolly, stedicam or even hand-held track in will all look 1000% better than a crappy zoom.
2. Vary Your Angles
One of the most common mistakes of most new directors and a whole heck of a lot of indie and guerrilla filmmakers is shots all looking alike. Most low budget films are shot very tight and never really open up for a long view – they’re full of close-ups, two shots and cramped quarters. They also tend to be diagram shots framed at eye level. If you want to make your film more excited, or more interesting, pull back for longer shots, tilt your camera, shoot from a bird’s eye or worm’s eye angle – use your camera angles to help set your mood and control your audience’s level of tension/suspense/drama. A good guide is to pull back further than you think you should (or push in further). Make sure to change things up a bit or your footage and your film will become stagnant and boring.
3. Use Proper Lighting
One of the hardest things for most indie, low budget and guerrilla filmmakers to learn is how to properly light for the DV or HD cameras they’re filming on. With a much lower contrast range and higher need for light than the human eye (and film), lighting for DV/HD cameras can often be a bit counter intuitive. In other words, what looks good to your naked eye often won’t work for your finished film. If you’re not careful you’ll wind up with footage too dark to use. If you’ve worked with, or lit for, film cameras then it may take a little while to get used to the change in methodology. I’ve shot with a number of really good DPs recently who made the mistake of lighting for their eyes and not for the camera we were shooting with. Shoot some lighting tests before you begin principal photography so you can get used to your camera’s dynamic range.
4. Write for What You Have
Since most low budget, indie and guerrilla filmmakers also happen to write their own material, the number one thing you should keep in mind when putting your new screenplay together is: write for what you have! The best way to give your film a higher production value is to make use of anything and everything you’ve already got access to. It’s tough to go out and find a cemetary or a muscle car or an airplane, but if you’ve got friends/family with unique locations, props or wardrobe then you can make your little $5000 movie look like you spent tens or hundreds of thousands on it. It worked for Robert Rodriguez and it will work for you.
5. Get a Good Tripod
Hand holding is great on a date with your girlfriend (or boyfriend, we’re not sexist here at the Film Sensei’s DOJO), but it should be used sparingly on a film set. Get a good fluid head tripod and make use of it as much as possible to give yourself a solid base to work from. Remember, hand held footage is great as long as it is used for a purpose and for an effect. If you’re just doing it because you’re too cheap to spring for a good set of sticks then your film will suffer for it.
6. Get a Good Mic
I feel like I’m starting to sound like a broken record after yesterday’s post about essential audio equipment for indie and guerrilla filmmakers. However, it’s a point well worth repeating over and over. While your audience may forgive a little wonky storytelling, dark images or even bad acting, the one thing no one will forgive is bad sound. There is almost nothing you can do that is worse than poor sound quality, and nothing that will make you look more like an amateur – well, short of accidentally filming all day with your lens cap on. Decent mics are available even for those of us on a more modest budget and there is absolutely no excuse to be shooting with your camera’s onboard mic – EVER!
There you have it: the extent of my wisdom. Yes, I know there are a lot more things to keep in mind and that will help (like making sure to get a good AD to help run your set properly or not hiring actresses you want to sleep with), but if you follow these six tips you’ll have a good head-start on keeping your first low budget film from sucking worse than a two-dollar whore.
That’s it from the depths of the DOJO for tonight. Until next time, Keep Shooting!
-Mat N., the Film Sensei
via Six Quick Tips to Keep Your Low Budget Film From Sucking | Asap Trip.
Posted 2 years, 6 months ago at 7:33 pm. 1 comment
We had a rather productive day of filming this past Saturday – productive that is – until we were set to roll the cameras on our finale scenes when we lost all power to the opera house. We hoped it was nothing more than a tripped breaker or perhaps a blown fuse – but after three hours in the dark – we were worried that it was something a bit more serious. We sent the cast and crew home only to discover to our pleasant surprise – that the problem was indeed a blown fuse which was easily fixed. Before losing our power – we were able to shoot two scenes earlier in the day as well as an extended photo shoot featuring our full cast.
With help from assistants Sylvia and Sierra, our make-up FX expert Todd A. Britt was on hand to provide some amazing ghostly make-ups. Their make-up efforts were not lost as we were able to catch the supernatural victims in an exhaustive series of photos and promo shots. Expect to see those pop up as promotional posters somewhere down the line.
The producers of Mutantville Productions would like to extend a hearty thank you to our cast and crew. You all dealt with the delay like real professionals and we were able to make the best out of what was potentially a disastrous situation. Due to the set-back – we have extended the shooting schedule of G.H.O.S.T. to include November 14th and 21st – giving us just enough time to wrap before Turkey Day! Thank you all for everything you do. I look forward to seeing you back on the set for our finale this Saturday!
~~Streebo
Posted 2 years, 6 months ago at 11:06 am. 1 comment
From Mike Jones Digital Basin: Allow me to be deliberately provocative…
How a Movie looks is a very important thing. The visual aesthetics of a movie profoundly shape the experience of watching it. Few would argue with this position.
Aesthetics, by definition, is the study of ways of seeing and of perceiving. When we consider the aesthetics of cinema we are considering how a movie looks and is perceived. To the filmmaker – concerned with making, building, constructing a film rather than just experiencing it – aesthetics are tangibly the techniques they employ to depict the world of their cinematic creation.
So far, this is all pretty obvious and straight forward. But something we must consider is this idea of ‘Technique’ and the choices at the filmmaker’s disposal – What are they? How are they used? What do they mean?
Any visual technique used by a filmmaker is simply a tool leveraged for an aesthetic story-telling purpose. Quick-cutting or long-takes, close-ups or wide shots, colour or black and white, dollys or pans, so on and so on… The effectiveness, impact and worth of any given technique a filmmaker employs is derived from its suitability to the context of the film. In simple terms, does the technique match the story?
Filmmaking is above all else a process of problem solving and the techniques employed are simply the solution to those problems – be they narrative, emotive, technical or creative. For example;
PROBLEM – The audience need to feel a part of the action, that they share the danger the characters face.
SOLUTION – Shoot hand-held and shaky, ducking and weaving the camera with the action
All this seems well and good and leaves open infinite possibilities for creative aesthetic solutions. Great films are made when directors find innovative, fresh and exciting aesthetics to solve creative problems.
But if we except this premise then we must face up to a distinct problem. If a single aesthetic choice becomes so dominant and common and ubiquitous across all genre’s of filmmaking, regardless of the creative problems posed by individual films, then it ceases to be grounded technique – it becomes stale, meaningless, banal, a default position rather than a creative choice.
In the 21st century I would attest that Shallow Focus and Rack Focus aesthetics have lost all meaning as useful creative problem solving techniques and instead have become banal, unimaginative staples of cinema. And it prompts us to ask loudly…. “What the hell happened to Deep Focus?”
Let me step back a bit from this verbose statement and provide some clarity on the trajectory that leads me to this point. In the early days of cinema film stocks were slow and so apertures had to be wide open in the hope of obtaining decent exposure. With wide open apertures you get very shallow depth of field – a short stretch of space where the subject is in focus that renders anything in the fore or back ground blurred.
In the 40′s companies such as Kodak and Agfa developed better chemical processes and faster film stocks. With faster film stocks apertures dont need to open so wide for exposure and thus depth of field can be extended. Deep-Focus cinema was born; an image aesthetic where subjects at varying focal-lengths from the camera can be equally sharp; both foreground and background in focus. Cinema changed dramatically as a new set of problem solving aesthetic techniques were opened up for filmmakers; new opportunities and possibilities for how a film could look. Shallow Focus and its offspring Rack Focus (where the lens is manipulated in-shot to shift focus from one subject to another) became not the staple of how films looked and worked visually but rather options of choice that a filmmaker may chose to use, or not use, depending on the needs and context of the film.
Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, and the superb camera work of Gregg Toland, stands as a penultimate example of the power of deep-focus and spawned the host of new thinking about cinema aesthetics that was embodied by the French New Wave and scholarly journals such as Cahiers du Cinema.
But the cinematic party of aesthetic choice, possibility and variety seemed to be cut short as deep-focus became the victim of the Video and Digital Revolutions.
Let me explain…
Video technology – the ability to capture a moving image electronically rather than chemically – came along in the 70′s and 80′s. For the most part such technology was seen as having a great many benefits but one of them was Not visual fidelity. The technology still had many years to go (and an evolution from analogue to digital) before it may be considered visually equal. The simplistic result of this was that Video Cameras at this time were made, in large part, not to directly compete with film cameras for conservatively traditional cinema roles but to serve different purposes. As such they were largely small cameras with small sensors. There is of course a direct mathematical correlation between the size of the sensor (the imaging plane) and the depth of field rendered. Small sensor = deep depth of field. Large sensor = shallow depth of field. Video technology, by nature of both its technological limitations and cultural position within media industry contexts, was innately deep-focus.
What must remembered about cinema aesthetics is that they are deeply connected to cultural responses. Take for example the modern age of mobile phones and mass popular YouTube uploading. We have become so used to seeing nightly TV news filled with amateur footage that is shaky, pixelated and out of focus depicting immediate and current events in a veritae style that there is a prevailing cultural construct that directly associates such Shaky / Out of focus / Pixelated images with ‘Truth’ and ‘Actuality’. It’s for this reason that modern TV news proactively requests amateur footage from its viewers despite it being only a few years ago that airing such footage would have been considered beneath ‘Broadcast Quality Standards’. Similarly TV networks the world over have been known to compress and deliberately degrade images of natural disasters and war zones in order to make it seem more ‘authentic’.
This same cultural construct response was forced upon deep focus by the video revolution of the 70′s and 80′s. What was ingrained into the popular visual language was that ‘deep focus’ equated to video and so, in the minds of viewers, primarily to documentary, news reporting, amateur footage, cheap production and pornography. Conversely that ‘shallow focus’ equated to ‘film’ and high budget, narrative cinema, high-art.
This shift in the popular cultural ‘reading’ of moving image aesthetics and the separation of High and Low cinematic art on the basis of Deep or Shallow focus has been a blight and a curse on filmmaking ever since.
In the digital age, amid the famed ‘digital revolution’, we at last moved towards a parity of visual fidelity between celluloid and digital but have been simultaneously afflicted with a prevailing bogus desire to constrict the aesthetics of digital to the legacy hang-ups of film.
Sadly the prime concern of digital indie filmmakers over the past decade has not been the new aesthetic possibilities afforded them by digital technologies but rather an almost singular focus on the cost saving and pragmatic elements of digital. As such, the much lauded desire of digital filmmaking has been to, on one hand, shoot cheap but, on the other, have it look like ‘Film’.
Now, despite the thousands of website articles, posts, forum treatises and essays dedicated to the mission of how to get the ‘Film Look’ it is arguable that a useful definition with any clarity on exactly what constitutes the ‘Film look’ is near impossible to come by. Frame Rate, Progressive scan, Grain, Flicker, Weave, Dynamic Range, Gamma curve – these are all the traits often cited as the ‘film look’ but together they constitute such a broad palette of hazy and in-tangible possibilities that distilling them into a particular set of aesthetic traits is a highly ephemeral process.
May I suggest this…. The ?film look? is bullshit; a product of marketing representation and the digestible distillation of an association with a particular mode of viewing. The ‘film look’ is a cultural rather than aesthetic understanding; one drawn from our legacy of personal cinematic experiences in the movie theatre watching a projected image – Nostalgia not Aesthetics.. Thus, when it comes to making ‘films’ in the digital age for ourselves our base instincts are to want our films to evoke those same nostalgic memory associations we have with celluloid. This we translate as the aesthetic of film, the ‘film look’, but in truth it’s much more about cultural and personal association.
Through all this, the ramifications of this for digital indie filmmakers have been profound. In working with Digital Video but desiring a ‘film look’ – that is near impossible to quantify – their efforts were skewed and corrupted. For so many digital indie filmmakers over the past 15 years their functional definition of the ‘film look’ was primarily whatever aesthetic characteristics were the opposite of what was innate to small-format video. Most specifically Shallow Focus.
Because deep-focus is the default position of many small format digital cameras, owing largely to small sensors as imaging planes, the prevailing aesthetic desire of indie filmmakers was to invest their films with the opposite – to enforce shallow-focus as a way of connecting with a popular culture mindset that connects Shallow Focus with ‘high-budget cinema’ and Deep Focus with ‘low-budget’ video.
As a result we have a whole generation of filmmakers who measure their aesthetic mark by how shallow their focus can be and how often they can Rack-Focus their shots. They are a generation who have been obsessed with rack-focusing rather than staging to move the viewer around the cinematic space; using the camera lens to depict space in flat 2D planes rather than a 3-diemnsion staging of space itself.
We’ve spent so much of the digital revolution fussing over how to make digital look like film that we’ve neglected the subtle art of arranging space itself, forgotten how to focus the eye Spatially rather than the far more clumsy and overt mechanics of doing it Optically. Most importantly we’ve forgotten that the viewer is a sentient and intelligent being, more than capable of deciphering, analyzing, speculating on and articulating the visual information they take in.
Let me offer a verbose rebuke of Shallow Focus and Rack-Focus by way of being provocative.
Shallow focus and Rack-Focus is lazy. A ham-fisted and overtly slothful technique with little impetus other than to lead your viewer around by the nose, to force them to look exactly where you want them to look, when you want them to look there. As a tool, like all other cinematic tools at the filmmakers disposal, it can and may be very useful. But as a staple and default way to depict moving images it is as articulate as a house brick.
Shallow focus and Rack Focus is the cinema equivalent of spoon-feeding the audience one small digestible and banal visual morsel at a time. Handing to them a deliberately unsophisticated and unchallenging image platter. It is the camera equivalent of writing only in capital letters and short sentences for fear your reader/viewer may not understand precisely and exactly what you want them to understand. “Look here”, “see this”, “turn now” – no distractions, no surprises, no accidentals, no confusion, no uncertainty, just the domineering dictation of a moving-image experience on pre-determined flat 2-dimensional planes. This is the essential internal logic of Shallow-Focus/Rack-Focus cinematography which, by nature of it’s elimination through blur of any distractions outside of a singular focus, is an acutely dictatorial aesthetic. An aesthetic that leaves nothing to the viewers analytical mind and doesn’t engage the viewer in a more complex visual contract. Rack-Focus refuses to allow the viewer to decipher and assemble meanings for themselves and is a condescending and patronizing way present a cinematic image.
That said, the problem is not Shallow and Rack Focus unto themselves as techniques but rather that they are not seen and used as deft Tools and problem solving Options. Rather they act as blithe and banal default methods fueled by a misguided desire for an association with nostalgic ‘high-art’.
Utilizing deeper focus allows for a complex play of light, space, distance, obstacles and subjects. The arrangement of the framed contents becomes paramount, the subjects proportions and relationships to each other the prime creative device. The construction of a cinematic space that is detailed and nuanced becomes the main canvas of the filmmaker. Shallow focus eliminates and takes these options away, it dissolves a great deal of the problem-solving and decision making process that is the art of the Director. In shallow focus the Director is not demanded to solve problems of space, is not compelled to ask questions of arrangement and position, is relieved of the requirement to convey proximity and relationships.
A post such as this may be very confronting for some indie filmmakers who have dedicated so much of their time to extolling the virtues of shallow depth-of-field and to toiling in their colour-grading system to mimic film-stock emulsion and gamma curves. But for those more enlightened readers who feel compelled to think outside of banal convention and consider how else things might be done, I encourage you to read David Bordwells superb book ‘Figures Traced Light’ which explores in exquisite detail the lost art of Cinematic Staging and Deep-Focus.
Likewise the two links below present some interesting reading in regard to the contentious history of deep-focus and its connection to movements such as the New Wave and the idea of ‘reality’.
via Mike Jones Digital Basin : Weblog.
Posted 2 years, 6 months ago at 10:00 am. 10 comments
Our intrepid heroes, Streebo & Brento, made a special trip across the skies of guerrrilla filmmaking to begin work on the editing of our latest short horror film – G.H.O.S.T.. Going into our first editing session – we had just under three hours of footage from the two weeks of shooting G.H.O.S.T.. We decided it would be a good idea to build the first assembly during production. This way we know if we need any additional shots or pick ups while we still have all of our cast available to us. It took us roughly five hours to pull the footage needed – but we’re all set and ready to go. We’ve already discussed editing possiblities and the angles we want to use. Next week – we’ll start building the first rough cut of the movie. Be sure to keep checking back for more documentary like updates as we continue the movie making process for G.H.O.S.T..
Posted 2 years, 7 months ago at 8:41 am. 2 comments
