Caine Crockett will now be posting here. I’ve pretty much given him the freedom to talk about whatever he wants to. You may have seen him in some of the shorts on the website (Censored, Not Walter, Bad Girlfriend, etc…). He’s mostly an actor. So, it should be interesting to get experiences from an actors perspective on shoots.
Sometimes, as a little treat to myself, I enjoy wallowing in the pits of human existence. Where would I go to do that? YouTube of course. YouTube in this case is sort of like the dealer and sometimes, I need a fix badly. So, I start my search for street fights in the basement of human civilization. Once you wade through the crap where middle schoolers are just trying to get views by staging an obvious fake fight, you get to the good stuff.
“Hmmmm, Skater vs Rollerblader? OK. Punk vs Gangster? Yes please. Two Drunk Girls Fighting?! Hello subscribe button!”
I’m not really looking to see someone get hurt. Well, maybe a little, but really what I’m looking for is awkward situations that I can laugh at. During one of my kicks I came across this gem:
I’m not sure if this is staged or not, I pray that it’s not, because I would really like to believe that life really is this awesome. I don’t know what’s funnier, the fact that a fight breaks out right in the middle of a wedding or the fact that all of the other wedding guests just stand around watching as the bride gets what appears to be sexually assaulted. Of course, I can’t blame them. The only thing I would probably be able to do was lean to the person closest to me and say “Holy shit! This is awesome!” I love how the groom just kind of stands there with a not so bright look on his face as this biker chick just grabs his bride and pulls her off stage to kick the crap out of her. Then there’s the photographer snapping pictures in the background. Because that’s something you would want to remember on your wedding day.
“Hey honey, you remember when that butch chick dragged me off stage and beat the shit out of me in the middle of the ceremony?”
“No, I don’t remember that. Was that our wedding?”
“Yeah, hold on, let me pull out the wedding book, I’ll show you. Better yet, go get your lap top, fire up YouTube.”
Absolutely amazing.
Gabe gave me the Do Nice Guys Finish Last color correction version. It looked really good. It’s weird to see it in a somewhat polished state. Next we are going to work on the audio. I’m still debating how much I want to do to the audio. Part of me wants to clean it up completely and another part of me wants it to stay sort of rough. Some aspects of Do Nice Guys Finish Last are polished and other aspects are left rough on purpose. For example, the camera work was left rough on purpose. The lighting was set up and polished though. Mainly because we could do that and get away with it. It’s one of those things that we can slip past the audience that would make it look a little bit better. Audio is a big part of this. I really do want the audience to feel like they are watching a documentary done by a bunch of amateurs. But how far is too far? Is keeping the audio somewhat rough forgivable here? I’m going to have to figure that out tonight. After the audio, we’ll probably do the transitions and then we’ll be done. I already put the credits together so all I have to do is tack those on the end when the transitions are done and call it a day. With credits, Do Nice Guys Finish Last will wind up being just under 16 minutes. I can live with that. I think for a 16 minute film, it’s pretty fat free. I’ve seen short films that are 20 minutes that could have easily been cut down to 10. I don’t think this is the case with Do Nice Guys Finish Last. I think it’s 15 minutes, because it needs to be 15 minutes. We cut a lot out that was in the original script. Not just to get it under 15 minutes, but because the parts we cut out weren’t necessary. If you can get the point across in 1 scene, then why show 2? Or if you can get the point across in a scene that’s 30 seconds long, why would you show a scene that’s 2 minutes long? Of course, I think this all changes when shooting a movie. For a short film there is a totally different set of rules. With a movie, you have time for a set up and you can take your time here and there. With a short film there almost shouldn’t be a setup. The characters should already be past the setup and on to the point of the short film by the time it starts. For example, there’s a scene where Chris calls one of the girls and nervously asks her for a date. We could have shown him pacing back and fourth nervously while biting his finger nails and starring at his phone, but why? He makes it blatantly obvious by the tone in his voice that he’s nervous. It would be taking twice as long to illustrate the same exact point. As an audience member, I think it’s a little insulting actually. If we had shown the pacing scene it would sort of be like:
“He’s nervous…. You see how nervous he is? He’s really nervous. Look at how he’s pacing, he’s nervous. Man is he nervous.”
Kind of annoying, isn’t it? I think, a lot of short films fall in to this trap. The audience is smarter then you think. They can figure it out.
Yesterday, while delivering something for work, I saw a sign that said “Dexter” with an arrow on it pointing in the direction I was going. I stayed on course and just kept going. Then I had to make a right and there was another sign, right before my turn with an arrow pointing to the right. I still just kept going. Then I saw an arrow leading in to a parking lot that said “Dexter Crew.” My first thought was “no freaking way.” On my way back from my delivery I stopped off in the parking lot just to see it was true or not. Low and behold, there were several wardrobe and equipment trucks parked near the back. I didn’t run on set or anything or even get out of my car. I just wanted to confirm that they were shooting my favorite TV show of all time a stones throw from where I was. I drove back to work and then went back to the place again on my lunch break this time determined to talk to someone. The first person I saw was a security guard. I asked him if they needed any extras, or extra crew or anything. He said no, so I got in my car and went back to my stupid job. So many thoughts went through my head before I approached that security guard. What would I have done if he said yes? Would I have called my job and told them I wasn’t coming back from lunch? Absolutely. What if they had said that I couldn’t do that? Would I have let them fire me? Probably. After my conversation with the guard, a million other thoughts hit me. Why am I not applying to work on crews on weekends? What the hell am I doing here? Here’s where it gets a bit stalkerish. On my way home from work, there were basically two routes I could take. One that drove me right past the Dexter shoot and one that didn’t. I fully intended to just go home, but something made me drive by one more time. I wanted to give my card to somebody. Even if it was just the security guard. So, I approached the same security guard once again and after telling him I was sorry for bothering him handed him my card and asked if he could please hand it off to someone. He told me he would. Several things could have happened here. The most likely is that it went to the security guards pocket and that’s where it stayed. It will be there until the security guard either washes his pants or empties his pockets and throws it out along with some gum wrappers and receipts. Another possibility is that he did actually hand it off to someone. Where it’s now sitting in their pocket until they wash their pants or throw it out along with some gum wrappers and receipts. This is pretty likely as well. The unlikeliest of scenarios is that he did hand it off, the person he gave it to looked at it and thought to themselves “Maybe I’ll give this guy a call.” Or maybe they took that card and filled it under “P” for Psycho. I have to say, going there for the third time did make me feel a little bit like a stalker. I wasn’t disruptive or anything though. I didn’t try to break on to the set or talk my way in. I wasn’t trying to steal any wardrobe, I was really just looking for an opportunity. An opportunity to see how a big time production operates and to help out with that. Dexter is my favorite show, of course I would take any long shot chance presented to me to work on it. On my way to the Dexter shoot after work, I couldn’t help but think that it was fate. That maybe something would come out of it. It doesn’t end with that security guard though. I think this was a wake up call, that what I want to do is right in my backyard and all I have to do is try. What are the odds that I would have to do a delivery that day and that my delivery would pass right by a shoot of one of my favorite shows of all time? Fate or not, it was a wake up call for me.
On to other things though, right? Just because I passed by a Dexter shoot in my car doesn’t mean my world stops. Last night I was up pretty late getting some screen shots from Do Nice Guys Finish Last. I’m trying to put a press kit together. I got about 40 screen captures for it. Here are a few of my favorites. Keep in mind that these are pre color correction:
I think they look pretty good. I really like that behind the scenes one with the clacker. I just think that’s a really cool picture. The press kit is well on its way.
An update on the Censored showing at the SoCal Film Festival. The festival has an updated list of which program has the best ticket sales. Censored is in Program 10 and Program 10 is listed as third. Clearly that’s all because of me. The six or seven visitors my site gets must have gone to town on those tickets sales. Again, here is the info of where you can buy tickets: SoCal Film Fest Tickets Censored is playing in Program 10 on Friday 9/18/2009 at 7:20 PM. It should be a good time. There are lots of other short films playing there. I’ll definitely be there.
Sooner then that though, I’ll be down near the Huntington Beach Pier this Thursday to watch Finding Nemo at the SoCal Movies by the pier event. Partially to try to get people to see Censored, but mainly because that event sounds kind of awesome. Stop by and say hello if you’re in the area.
We’re done cutting Do Nice Guys Finish Last. Now it’s on to working out all of the little kinks. Color correction, audio adjustments, and transitions. It feel like an accomplishment to have cut it. It’s come a long way. From 18 minutes to just under 15. Me and Chris talked about it this weekend and we’re not expecting it to get in to any festivals. I think we established that from the beginning though. It doesn’t make it a bad short film. I think it’s a great short film. I should say, it’s going to be a great short film. There’s still a lot to work on. I still am very surprised by how much you can get away with in the mockumentary format. You don’t need a tripod, it doesn’t matter if there are mistakes here and there, and actors can stumble over their lines and get away with it. It’s a fun format, but I think I’m going to be moving on to the next thing now. I don’t see another mockumentary in my near future. Although, it has changed my opinion on hand held camera work. Even though we didn’t use a tripod we still got some really nice cinematography. Maybe I’ll open up and use it in my next short film. My main problem with it was that in short films it became a “style.” I’ve heard film makers asked why they went hand held on their entire short film and they would say “That’s just my style.” No, that isn’t you’re style. %90 of the time it’s because they were either too lazy or low on cash to use a tripod. I’m totally cool with both of those excuses. But to cover it up with this rouse of “That’s just my style” is pretty lame. Call it what it is. I know low budget films don’t have access to fancy dollies or equipment. But there are ways around that. I feel like I’ve put cameras on everything. Wheel chairs, roller blades, office chairs, at least 3 different home made dollys, carts, ect… Whatever works. Am I total hypocrite for shooting Do Nice Guys Finish Last all in hand held? Probably, but that was my style, so piss off. In actuality, I wanted to shoot all in hand held, I chose to shoot all in hand held, and I left my very awesome tripod at home on purpose. Do Nice Guys Finish Last is a mockumentary, which means that it’s essentially a fake documentary. In this case, I felt like hand held was necessary. I really tried to think of how an amateur documentary film maker would film something like this and that’s why I chose to go all hand held. Basically, I was trying to mimic the style of someone who didn’t know what they were doing. Which actually was a lot of fun. Kind of like when we built the murder chair for Red Hood. That was a blast. We built the entire thing out of wooden pallets. What was awesome about it was that we got to put our selves in the place of how the main character would build something like this. It was a total hack and slash job. When something wasn’t holding we either attached another piece of wood to it with about 6 screws or we just tore it off and started again. We figured the main character wasn’t a carpenter and she didn’t need it to look pretty. It was purely functional. I actually have a picture of it:
It’s not pretty, but it’s functional. You can sit in it, it will support your weight, but it’s absolutely not comfortable. This was a chair that the main character used to torture people in, so none of that really mattered.
I kind of strayed from my original point, but whatever. My point is that sometimes bad camera work or shady craftsmanship is called for in a film. As long as the audience knows it’s intentional. With hand held, it’s very difficult to make it look like it was necessary and very easy to make it look like you as a film maker were just lazy. That’s not to say that I haven’t seen films that were well done all in hand held. I just feel like that “style” is extremely over used because it’s an easy out.
I saw two movies this week. District 9 and Ponyo. I’ll start off with Ponyo. Ponyo is an anime movie by Studio Ghibli. A guy named Hayao Miyazaki did Ponyo and he has somewhat of a cult following. In fact Studio Ghibli itself has somewhat of a cult following. I went in to the theater not knowing anything about the movie. All I knew is that my girlfriend really wanted to see it. I’ve only seen one other anime by Hayao Miyazaki and that was My Neighbor Totoro. My Neighbor Totoro was an acid trip. Much like Ponyo, only Ponyo seemed to be catered more for children. I suppose My Neighbor Totoro was for kids too, but for some reason it seemed darker. I’m not even going to begin to try and explain the story line to Ponyo. You probably wouldn’t believe me anyway, if I did. It’s just one of those things you have to see. I thought it was great. If I was a parent, I would roll up a joint, smoke it in the mini van on the way to the theater, buy three packages of milk duds in the lobby, and go away to the land of Ponyo for 4+ hours. The movie is only 2 hours long but I would be sitting in the theater after the credits rolled either asleep or absolutely out of my freaking mind based on what I had just seen. It’s probably a good thing I’m not a parent. Awesome visuals in Ponyo and a story line that made me say out loud “Who the hell thinks of that?” It’s incredibly imaginative and unique. But you don’t need to be high to enjoy it. I enjoyed it and I wasn’t high at all. If I was high though it probably would have been a life changing experience. Just know what you’re getting in to. It’s an anime catered towards children, that’s an acid trip. District 9 was absolutely awesome. I loved that freaking movie. I am totally going to see that in theaters again. I’m a sucker for the horror sci fi genre, so maybe I can’t give the same opinion as the everyday movie watcher, but I thought it was great. I was entertained throughout that entire movie. The actors were all phenomenal in it, the cinematography was great, the special effects were awesome, the story line had me hooked from the very beginning, and the characters development throughout the story was amazing. If you’re in to this sort of movie, go see it, it’s awesome.
Watching some of my old short films last night I’ve realized how far everyone involved in all of this has come. Acting has gotten better, camera work has gotten better, lighting has gotten way better, editing has gotten better, and sound has definitely gotten much better. I’m not really sure how we all got here. I think we were all just committed to making a better product. It was pretty much a process of refining. We would try something else and if that didn’t work out, we would figure out a different way of doing. For example, in The Train Wreck, the sound is horrible. That’s because it was our first time using the boom mic. We thought we would be smart and hold the boom mic low and aim it up rather then high and aim it down. What we didn’t realize is that the boom mic would pick up EVERYTHING that went on with the actors feet. You can hear every single footstep the actors took in that short film. It’s really annoying. The next innovation in sound actually happened on Do Nice Guys Finish Last. In the last short film that we did Gabe complained that it had the sound quality of a porno. So, we looked up some information on the Internet regarding sound for short films and found some pretty good stuff. We spent probably about 15 minutes before each scene finding not only the right position for the boom mic but the right settings for the camera to match that. I have to say that Do Nice Guys Finish Last is probably the best sounding thing we’ve done so far. Which may be sad, but whatever, we’re getting there. I guess my point is, is that… I’m not really sure what my point is. I guess I’m just writing.
I just got the new cut of Do Nice Guys Finish Last from Gabe. I can’t wait to see it. I think we are extremely close to a final cut. Probably just a few changes here and there and we’ll be done. Then, we can start doing color correction. Which in all honestly, sucks. Color correction is one of those things that you have to do, but really don’t want to. Like returning your ex girlfriends DVD’s or going to a funeral. It’s just lame. Can’t modern technology take care of this for us yet? Can’t you have two shots and click on a box that says “I want these two thingies to look like they are the same color”? I mean, do we really have to spend hours fidgeting with some stupid little knobs to get it to do that? We have satellites that can read a license plate from space, but we can’t do that? Really? It’s total bullshit, it really is. I’m actually just trying to be funny. Color correction really isn’t that bad. It’s just kind of tedious. For some reason, Gabe is actually excited about it. Maybe he’s just tired of my nit picky editing notes. The last one was pretty bad. I think there was a portion where I cut like .5 of a second off of a shot. I’m pretty sure when I’m coming up with stuff like that, we are pretty damn close to a final cut.
I watched 2 episodes of Science of the Movies last night. That show is a big reminder of what I don’t have access to. One episode was all about different moveable camera mounts. There was this gigantic camera mount that had 12 points of axis that you could program to do motions over and over again. It’s basically so you can layer two shots on top of each other. Since the motion of two shots match perfectly, the two shots together look seamless. I honestly had no clue that’s how it was done. All of my split screen shorts were pretty much that, minus the motion. I didn’t realize it, but I kind of stumbled on the early meathod of special effects. That’s kind of cool. I find that I do that a lot actually. It’s kind of weird. I don’t know if I hear about it somewhere else and subconsciously make myself feel like I thought of it, or if I really do come up with concepts that just happen to match what’s already out there.
I am meeting with a script writer today to discuss Project X. By spreading the word through my contacts, I’ve actually got some people interested. Now all I need is a roughly $5000, an HD Camera, locations, equipment, skill, and food. Huh. Anyway, yeah, I’m going to be focusing on that. It’s tough to juggle everything though. Nice Guys Finish Last is almost done. That’s going to need to go out to festivals and Censored is still going. By the way, I submitted to something a while back called the SoCal Film Festival. I really hope I get accepted to that. That would be awesome. Mainly because they would be holding it right near my house. I could probably go to every night of that if I wanted to. It’s literally a 10 minute drive vs an hour+ drive to the festivals Censored has been accepted to. I would really like Censored to screen somewhere outside of California. Don’t ask me why, I just think it would be cool. Every time you get accepted to a festival they send you these little acceptance things:
Like that guy right there. I suppose can put those on the DVD’s that I send out to other festivals as sort of a selling point. Imagine if I get selected for all 4 of the other festivals I entered? That will be 7 total. That will look kind of insane. You also get one if you’ve been nominated for or win an award at a festival. Strictly Background had like a bajillion acceptance ones and 6 Best Documentary Award winners. These things are actually called Laurels. Every festival does them. At least as far as I can tell, every festival does one. I think they are kind of official and regal looking. It’s kind of neat to have these. Sort of like a digital trophy. Hopefully when Nice Guys Finish Last is done it gets it’s own collection of them.
EDIT(7/29/2009- 3:32PM) – I just got an acceptance E-mail from the SoCal Film Festival. That kicks so much ass. I’ll give you guys all the details in tomorrows post.
Is anyone planning on going to the AOF ? I think I’m going to check it out tonight. I’m not sure what I’m going to see, but I’ll see something. The first night I went we got a huge bag of SWAG. Everyone loves SWAG. Lets face it, if it’s free, someone will take it. There’s a sign near my house advertising free dirt. Anyway, the SWAG was mainly postcards of other short films. There was a ton of them. In the mix was also a DVD for a movie called Long Pig: Unrated Extreme Edition. I’m going to take a guess here and say that it’s probably amazingly gory. An independent film that’s unrated. O yeah, there’s going to be some crazy gore in it. I’ve seen some pretty intense stuff. I really feel like, if I can watch Irreversible, I can probably make it through anything. It’s not that Irreversible was gory, it was just hard to watch because of the context of it. That movie was unrelentingly brutal. I’m reading reviews of Long Pigs now. Apparently, there’s an “anus scene.” I’m not sure how I feel about that. Revolted and curious at the same time I suppose. I’m not much of a horror buff, but maybe I’ll check it out. Or I’ll give it to my neighbor to check out. He loves gory films.
Gabe should be bringing my hard drive tonight with the scene we shot last Thursday for Nice Guys Finish Last added. I really wanted Nice Guys Finish Last to be under 15 minutes. I bet it’s probably going to run a little over 16 minutes. Which isn’t bad. If there’s no fat and every scene progresses the story line, I have no problem with that. I suppose it is what it is.
I’m looking in to renting a theater to show Nice Guys Finish Last. I thought it would be cool to have a sort of theater showing and get some feedback before I send it off to festivals. I found one for $650 for one night. If I charged $10 per person, I would have to have at least 65 people show up to break even. I know, that I know that many people but weather they would be available or not is a whole different story. I found another one that rents by the week and that was $1000 for 4 shows. So, I would need to get 100 people there from Thursday- Sunday. That’s actually not that bad. I bet I could pull that off. O wait, that’s just for a stage, not a screen and all that other crap. Damn. I bet I could get a projector though and rig something up. In fact, I know a guy that has a projector and Gabe is in a band. Bands have speakers and stuff, right? I’ll have to get back to you on this one. Or maybe I can have the actors act it out in real time on stage. Wow, that’s a terrible idea.
So, the Pick up shots are done. It was actually pretty painless. We had a very small crew and we knew what we were doing. I went with a little bit of a different workflow this time. Rather then just having the actors memorize the script and then shooting, I went through the dialogue with them a bunch and made the adjustments I wanted before I pressed record. So, they memorized the dialogue and knew how to act it out. It worked out very well. I also really tried to avoid saying things like “I need you to be angrier.” I’m usually pretty good about that, but sometimes I slip up. Instead, I tried to direct through situations that the character would be put in. For example with Caine, I needed him to be more upset so I said
“OK Caine, so this sort of thing always happens to you. Chris always gets the girl and you don’t understand it. He has the girl of your dreams practically throwing herself at him and he’s complaining to you that she’s not the right one. You haven’t been laid in God knows how long.”
Instead of just saying
“I need you to be more angry.”
It worked out really well. Not only was it more of a collaboration between me and the actors, but we both got what we wanted out of it. We actually had a lot of fun doing this. I’m thinking about posting one of the out takes where everyone was just kind of goofing around. What do you guys think? Would that be something you want to see? The only comment I’ll get, is probably an ad for Viagra, but that’s ok, I’ll take that as a cue to post it.
Today is the day for the pick up shots. I’m hoping for a small crew of just me and a boom mic operator. Why? Because, nobody likes pick up shots, I’m doing everyone a favor by keeping it minimal. Plus I think it will make things go faster. It’s not that difficult of a scene really. I’ll head over there after work, go over the new dialogue with the actors, set up the lights, and then shoot. Shouldn’t be too difficult. I think I’ve gone over how much I hate pick up shots, so that’s established. I still don’t think words could ever describe my true hatred for pick up shots.
Gabe got me the 2nd cut of Do Nice Guys Finish Last today. I’m looking forward to checking it out. Watching a short film over and over again has always been kind of tough for me. In the book I’m reading (How Not to Make a Short Film), it’s outlined perfectly. When you first look at all of your footage there are times you want to shoot yourself and times you want to celebrate. Not per project, no, this all happens in one project. I was actually very comforted to read that this is all normal. The truth is, that nobody is closer to your project then you are. If you see a flaw, it’s going to scream out at you every time you watch it. That’s the first thing you’re going to see in fact when that flaw comes on screen. Here’s what I do. Upon first seeing all those flaws jump out at me, I let my brain freak out for thirty seconds. This is usually just my brain saying “God damn it” over and over again. Then I take a deep breath and try to think about ways to fix them. If I can’t find a way to fix one, I show the scene to an impartial third party. Sometimes I’ll even ask “Did you see anything wrong with that scene?” If the impartial third party notices the flaw, then I have a potential problem and I possibly have to re shoot something or figure something out. %95 percent of the time though, they don’t even notice it. Sometimes I will run it by 4-5 people and %95 of the time, they all don’t notice it. If they don’t see it, I’m making way too big a deal out of it and it’s passable. Some times I’ll even add “Did you see that X was wrong with it?” Most of the time, the answer is “I didn’t even notice that.” That flaw will always jump out at me when watching the short film but at that point, I can live with it. I never talk about the flaw again. It’s over, it’s there, I’ve dealt with it, and %99 of the population probably isn’t ever going to notice it or care if they do.
Has anyone ever seen Science of the Movies? It’s on the Science Channel every Thursday night. It’s an amazing show. I’ve started DVRing it. The host of the show is named Nar Williams. I want that guys job so badly. All he does is goes to these different companies that offer different technologies in film making and asks them questions about how the technology works and then sees them in action and most of the time he gets to participate. All of that aside for an aspiring film maker it’s an amazing look at new technologies in the industry.
