A Window on Oblivion

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Last month the lastest Eric Bana movie, Deadfall, was released in US cinemas. The unusual thing is that it had already been out for a month on demand. This is one of the first examples of yet another massive shift that’s occurring in the film industry.

For the first few decades of its life, cinema was unique. Then television came along. The film industry responded by introducing colour and widescreen aspect ratios to the cinema. TV eventually caught up with both of these developments. As we approached and entered the new millennium our home entertainment options were expanding exponentially. TVs are now huge, 5.1 surround sound systems are highly affordable; you can even watch 3D at home if you want.

So why go to the cinema?

Until recently, the answer was “because you have to if you don’t want to wait months for the DVD release”. This is known as the theatrical window, the time within which a film must be exclusive to cinemas, before it becomes available in other media. Many claim this system fosters piracy. After all, if you could buy or watch a film on demand for a reasonable price as soon as it’s first released, why would you pirate it?

Many others claim that without this system, cinemas would go bust. I suspect this may be true.

I will be interested to see what happens as more and films follow Deadfall’s example. Clearly the aim is to create word of mouth with the on-demand release, building the film up to the point where people will be desperate to see it on the big screen. Sorry, I mean the slightly-bigger-than-the-screen-you-have-at-home screen.

35mm projectors - a thing of the past.
35mm projectors – a thing of the past.

Ask yourself this: what happened to phone boxes when the infinitely convenient and flexible mobile phone became affordable? The same fate, I fear, awaits cinemas.

Because we can all have cinemas in our homes now. If we want to ban popcorn from our living rooms and pause the film whenever some weak-bladdered buffoon has to get up, we can. Or (and I’ll never, ever understand this behaviour) if we want to make phone calls and chat to our mates all through the movie, we can do that too without spoiling anyone else’s enjoyment.

The only possible reason to go to the cinema is to watch a movie on 35mm film….. Oh no, hang on… You can’t do that any more either.

Right, I’m off out to see Les Miserables. At the cinema. While I still can. If I could watch it on demand, would I? Given that it’s f**king cold outside and Hereford Odeon only seems to project digitally now, yes, I’d probably stay home and watch it on demand. A sobering thought.

A Window on Oblivion

Planning VFX

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A few years back I taught a module on Visual Effects for filmmaking degree students at the SAE Institute in north London. Rather than getting into the nitty gritty of how to actually do VFX, it focused instead on how directors and producers should approach and plan for them.

Here is one of the examples I gave, using a shot from my 2005 feature Soul Searcher. Joe Fallow (Ray Bullock Jnr.) sprints down the platform of Hereford station as the Hades Express departs, bearing away the villain of the piece and the kidnapped love interest.

Finished shot from Soul Searcher
Finished shot from Soul Searcher

The train was a 1:18 scale miniature and was dropped into the live action plate by means of a simple, static matte drawn in Photoshop – essentially a splitscreen effect.

But what if I, as director, had chosen a different camera angle?

Alternate angle 1

To achieve this version, the model train would have needed to have been shot against a green screen to make it appear in front of Joe and the platform. This would have complicated shooting the miniature slightly, as lighting for a green screen can be quite time-consuming.

Alternate angle 2

Here we have the opposite; now Joe is in the foreground, so he’s the one that needs to be shot against a green screen. Since he and the station are full size, the green screen would need to be much bigger and would require much more light. And remember we’re now talking about an impact on the main unit’s time on a location, rather than a small model unit in a studio, so the cost implications are magnified.

Alternate angle 3

Finally, what if I’d gone for a camera move? Now we’re into motion control rigs, to record the camera’s movement on location and applied a scaled-down version of that same move to the camera shooting the miniature. Either that or the live action plate has to be 3D-tracked in post-production, and that tracking data fed into the motion control rig that shoots the miniature. More time, more people, more equipment, more money.

This is the first step in planning for VFX: understanding how your choice of shots influences the techniques required to achieve them and therefore impacts on the schedule and the budget. Stay tuned for more on this topic, and remember you can watch Soul Searcher in full for free at neiloseman.com/soulsearcher

Planning VFX

Press Kit Tips

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Stop/Eject press kit
Stop/Eject press kit

This week the lovely press kit folders for Stop/Eject arrived. Although we probably won’t need these for a while, you never know when something might come up; I wish I’d had one of these for the FilmWorks finale last month. The folders were designed by Alain Bossuyt of Le Plan B, who won the poster competition last summer, and printed by Sign Link Graphics.

For Soul Searcher I had the press kits printed as brochures. The disadvantage with this is that you have to reprint the whole thing if you want to make changes or add things, which might well happen as reviews come in and your festival run develops. With folders it will be easy to remove sheets and add new or revised ones.

Stop/Eject press kit
Stop/Eject press kit

So what will be on those sheets? What should a press kit contain?

First up you need a SYNOPSIS. For a feature film you should include a short one, similar to the blurb you’d get on the back of a DVD cover, and a longer one, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 words. If you read Sight & Sound magazine you’ll see that they reprint these synopses verbatim.

Then you need biographies of the key CAST AND CREW. Sometimes these are included as extras on vanilla DVD releases.

Next come the PRODUCTION NOTES – behind-the-scenes anecdotes about the origins and making of the film. In the early days of DVDs you could often find these reproduced like liner notes in a little leaflet inside the case.

Stop/Eject press kit
Stop/Eject press kit

Next you need a BONUS SECTION, for want of a better name. This is where you provide some extra material for a journalist to fill out their article with. Commonly this will be something related to the subject of the film. For example, the press kit for The Fast and the Furious might have included some facts and figures about illegal street racing. For Stop/Eject we might put in some info about cassette tapes and their history. For Soul Searcher I took a slightly different tack and included some extracts from my production diary.

Finally you need to include the complete CREDITS. Again, Sight & Sound reproduces these in full.

(If you’re supplying publicity photos on CD, which is unusual in these days of ubiquitous broadband, you shoud also include a sheet of thumbnails with accompanying filenames and photographer credits.)

Stop/Eject press kit
Stop/Eject press kit

Remember when you’re writing all this that you’re trying to give a journalist a story on a plate. You need to give them all the exciting elements they need to effortlessly put an interesting article together. The bonus section in particular gives you a chance to provide them with an angle – a hook which convinces them this is a story worth telling.

Why print all this, rather than emailing a PDF? Because a nice glossy folder on a journalist’s desk is more likely to get read than yet another attachment in the inbox. And if you meet someone unexpectedly at a festival or other event, it’s far better than to give them a hardcopy to take away than to rely on them reading an email you send later.

Press Kit Tips

DVD Extras

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Terminator 2 boasts some of the most comprehensive DVD extras ever
Terminator 2 boasts some of the most comprehensive DVD extras ever

If your new year’s resolution is to get out and make a film, perhaps you need a bit of inspiration to get you going. For the past decade, one of my biggest sources of both inspiration and knowledge of the craft has been DVD extras. The days of DVDs may be numbered, but that does mean you can pick them up cheaply, so there’s no excuse. Here’s my run-down of the most interesting extras out there.

General

Without doubt the most comprehensive set of extras I’ve ever seen is that on TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY. Although a lot of it is text, it leaves absolutely no stone unturned, covering every part of the process from scripting and scheduling through to marketing, release prints, telecine and foreign dubbing. It also breaks down every single VFX shot and special make-up gag in the movie.

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST includes a fascinating feature-length documentary following the huge cast and crew as they island-hop with ships full of equipment, building roads as they go to get to some of the remote locations, and weathering a storm that nearly destroys their picture boats. At one point an AD gives some staggering statistics about the shoot; you will not believe how many walkie talkies went missing during production.

The Tarantino-Rodriguez collaboration FROM DUSK TILL DAWN comes with an unusual feature-length doc called Full Tilt Boogie. Rather than dwelling on the action on set, director Sarah Kelly interviews many of the crew – right down to the PAs and runners – to get a unique set of perspectives on the production. Throw in a dispute with the union and the result is a much more revealing doc than we’ve come to expect.

Pre-production

LEMONY SNICKET’S A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS is a movie with a unique look, using traditional techniques like forced perspective and painted backdrops to create its fantasy world. A DVD documentary called A Woeful World explores the incredible artistry that went into this sorely underrated film.

Viewers of the FIGHT CLUB DVD get to come along on the tech scouts – detailed recces where the director tells his heads of department everything he’s going to need at that location so that all the logistical problems can be anticipated.

TITANIC’s four-disc release includes interesting featurettes on previz, the process of creating moving storyboards. Although previz is a CG thing these days, there is much to be learnt from the military precision with which James Cameron plans his deep dives to the shipwreck using miniatures.

Production

For an unedited, fly-on-the-wall view of a small portion of a shooting day on a Hollywood movie (albeit one shot in New Zealand), Peter Jackson’s THE FRIGHTENERS is the place to go.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 has a good set of featurettes on the film’s varied stunt sequences, including one which reveals the terrifying way the knife-coming-towards-Tom-Cruise’s-eye shot was achieved.

If cinematography’s your thing, you could do worse than listen to DP John Schwartzman’s commentary track on ARMAGEDDON, where you can learn how to shoot under UV tubes, how to light half a desert and how to make Liv Tyler look her best when she’s on her period.

For a fascinating look at the construction and on-set operation of puppets and animatronics – from little chest-bursters to the huge alien queen – look no further than the ALIENS DVD.

Post-production

THE MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS’ DVD includes an interesting featurette on the specific use of miniatures for a crash shot in a film which mainly relied on CGI to create its illusions.

Staying with traditional FX, SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE includes a great documentary on how they made us believe a man could fly before the digital days with such classic techniques as front projection and optical compositing.

But if the digital era floats your boat, THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING has a nice featurette on digital colour timing (a very new process at the time). In general, THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy has a remarkable plethora of extras on all aspects of the blockbuster-making process.

Finally, I’m not sure any DVD extra has yet fully explored the world of post-production sound, but Sound & Music on the bonus disc of SPIDER-MAN 2 gives a nice glimpse. Legendary foley artist Gary Hecker takes us through some of the ingenious combinations of mundane items he used to make such sounds as Spidey’s shooting web and Doc Ock’s claws ripping open a bank vault.

Any good ones I’ve missed? Comment and let me know!

DVD Extras

Review of the Year

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As 2012 draws to a close, it’s time for me to reflect on how things have gone for me this year.

Up until mid-2011 my filmmaking strategy was very simple: I would make a film, focus and work on that film and that film only (apart from rent-paying jobs), then when it was complete I would move onto the next one. Thus, since going freelance in December 1999 I made Traction, Soul Searcher (short), Cow Trek, The Beacon, Soul Searcher (feature) and began working on The Dark Side of the Earth. Eventually, after six years of trying to get the latter project made, I realised that I had to change my MO.

Soul Searcher talk at Ort Cafe
Soul Searcher talk at Ort Cafe, April 2012. Photo: Sophie Black

As well as having multiple films on the go at once, I realised that I needed to work more on others’ projects, and crucially I needed to promote myself, to network and to make more contacts. Undoubtedly the thing that’s helped me most with this in 2012 is crowd-funding Stop/Eject. It forces me to promote myself and the project regularly, and has made me lots of new contacts on the social media sites and in more traditional arenas like the Herefordshire Media Network.

Giving talks and workshops is also a great way to get yourself known, and so I wanted to do at least six of these in 2012. In the end I’ve managed to do seven: three on the funding, making and distribution of Soul Searcher, three on the funding and making of Stop/Eject and one on freelancing in general. I also had Video8 screened at The Worcestershire Film Festival and attended Short-Sighted, a conference at BAFTA. Then in September I was lucky enough to be accepted onto the FilmWorks programme, the ultimate networking event, and came out of it with some great contacts.

Ghost-trainspotting, my Virgin Media Shorts entry in 2012
Ghost-trainspotting, my Virgin Media Shorts entry in 2012. Photo: Katie Lake

My directing goals for this year were to make a Virgin Media Shorts entry again, complete Stop/Eject and shoot a third short film of at least five minutes in length. Unfortunately I only succeeded in the first of these, with Stop/Eject still having much of post-production ahead of it and not even a script yet ready for the third short. I’m still keen to do another short, but without any clue of how to finance it I have difficulty feeling any impetus to get going on it.

In 2013 I definitely need to complete Stop/Eject and have a rough cut of my next short film by the end of the year, as well as entering Virgin Media Shorts again. I also want to have the Stop/Eject feature script at second draft stage and the beginnings of a package (actor attachments, outline budget and so on) by this time next year. I’d like to get at least one more feature script worked up as well. I want to get more directing gigs for other people, like SAS Couriers, and do more talks and screenings. It would be great to get Video8 into at least one more festival.

We’ll see how it goes.

But to finish off the year, here are what I think are the most interesting or useful of my ramblings on this blog in 2012:

  1. Crowd-funding evaluation – the things I learnt from my first crowd-funding campaign
  2. Homemade sandbags – how to sew your own sandbags to weigh down your lighting stands
  3. “It’s a film.” – why you should never utter this phrase if you want your films to be good
  4. Pain is temporary. Film is forever. – a summary of how Stop/Eject’s shoot went
  5. Trailer tips – how to make your trailers have all the impact of a proper one
  6. Ghost-trainspotting VFX breakdown – using compositing techniques to enhance a model shot
  7. Stop/Eject lighting breakdown – a detailed look at the lighting of a drama
  8. Editing Stop/Eject – some insights into the minutiae of the editing process
  9. Stop/Eject budget breakdown – find out how the £2,500 shooting budget of a short film was spent
  10. Top five low tech effects – running down some of the cheapest VFX in big Hollywood movies
Review of the Year

2012: The Year that Film Died

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Dark Side camera negative lab rolls
Dark Side camera negative lab rolls

A couple of weeks ago I screened the 35mm print of The Dark Side of the Earth‘s pilot at the last FilmWorks session in Bristol. It had been about 18 months since I last ran the print, and I was shocked how much attitudes towards celluloid had changed in that time. People were acting like they hadn’t seen a roll of film in 20 years, like I was some kind of whacked-out nostalgia hippy for wanting to shoot on 35mm. (But it still looked fucking awesome on the big screen.)

Digital cinema is one of those things that’s been lurking on the horizon for ages, then suddenly, silently… it’s here, like it’s always been here. Projection of moving images from celluloid is very, very quickly becoming extinct, as is acquisition of moving images on celluloid. Suddenly the likes of Christopher Nolan and Quentin Tarantino, staunch defenders of shooting films on film, are starting to look a bit loony, although I agree with them completely.

In September Fuji announced it would cease manufacturing of film stock, leaving only Kodak in the “market”, if such a word can be applied to an unwitting monopoly.

Dark Side mute print
Dark Side mute print

So we’re quickly heading towards a world in which “film” is a word completely divorced from its original meaning. Plastic strips coated in light sensitive emulsion will no longer play any part in the production or consumption of “films”.

The other day I went to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Although I chose to see a 2D 24fps screening, Peter Jackon’s sedate trilogy has been made in 3D at 48fps. The higher frame rate produces smoother motion which most people will associate with news broadcasts and documentaries. Overall the aim seems to be to make watching a film more like experiencing real life – sharper, smoother, three-dimensional. But is that what we really go to the cinema for?

It’s not what I go for. I want the scratches and the weave and the flicker because without them there is no magic, there is no suspension of disbelief. I want escapism. I want film. It seems I’m to be disappointed for the rest of my life.

2012: The Year that Film Died

Free Music, Stock Footage and Sound Effects

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A clip from epicslowmo.com
A clip from epicslowmo.com

For low-to-no-budget filmmakers, it wasn’t so long ago that stock footage and sound effects were out of our price range, and the only way to get music legally was to have someone compose it specially. Today the situation is very different, with plenty of sites out there offering material that’s not only free to download but royalty-free too. (This is an important distinction. Always read the license carefully to ensure that no further fees are due when the material is used in the territories, media and manner you wish to use it.)

Here are some of my favourite sites for free stuff. Again, please check the FAQs and licenses on these sites to make sure your intended useage is approved. If you’re serious about filmmaking, you’ll want to commission a composer, sound designer and second unit to generate original material for you, but we all have times when we need a quicker, off-the-shelf solution, and these are the places that help me out in those times.

Stock Footage

  • Detonation Films have a large number of explosions, smoke, debris and fire effects shot against blue, green or black for compositing into your own FX shots. Many are free, though there is a small charge for some. One downside is that, due to the site being quite old, the material is all in standard definition.
  • Epic Slow Mo have 20 HD clips for download, including money burning, TVs being smashed up, insects flying and even a wet dog shaking itself off – all in super-slow motion.
  • The official Hubble Space Telescope website has a number of “Hubblecasts” and other videos which you can download and use bits of in your own productions. It’s a great place to get CG animations of the sun and other heavenly bodies for your micro-budget sci-fi epic.
  • The Prelinger Archives are a collection of vintage corporate and amateur films, including such gems as Joan Avoids a Cold: A Health Film for Children (1947). These might be useful to a documentary maker looking for footage to illustrate a period or just for comic punctuation. There are even some clips from old movies.

Music

  • Incompetech is the home of composer Kevin MacLeod (not to be confused with Kevin McCloud from off of Grand Designs, or anyone from off of Highlander). Throw a stone on YouTube and you’ll hit six hundred videos that have his music on, because he gives it away completely free. All the music on the Stop/Eject pre-production podcasts and on my comedy documentary Video8 is from Incompetech.
  • CC Mixter is a site where musicians can remix each other’s work in an endless creative dialogue. It’s also very handy for filmmakers, since the Creative Commons agreement allows you to use the tracks in your productions (though beware that some tracks prohibit commercial use). I recently edited a film set at a party and we got all the background music from CC Mixter.
  • Jewel Beat‘s music isn’t free, but at 99 cents per track it’s as near as damn. It’s surprisingly high quality too, with many orchestral tracks (albeit using samples) that wouldn’t be out of place in a big movie. This is where I got the music for Stop/Eject’s trailer from.

Sound Effects

  • Free SFX has a wide range of noises and is always my first port of call when I’m hunting for a sound.
  • Partners in Rhyme has a collection of royalty free and public domain sound effects including animals, instruments, and human sounds and phrases.
  • Sound Jay is another handy library of free sounds.
  • All Music Library has a small collection of free sound effects.
  • Sweet Sound Effects has plenty of epic action sounds like helicopters, gunshots and even Star Trek-style transporter beams. Nowhere on the site does it specifically say these aren’t actual Star Trek sounds that have been ripped off though…

Do you know of any more sites I could add to this list? If so, leave a comment.

Free Music, Stock Footage and Sound Effects

FilmWorks Finale

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FilmWorks, the networked professional development scheme I’ve been on for the last few months, came to an end this Wednesday with a big event at the Watershed in Bristol. The fifteen of us “native” to the Bristol hub were joined by the 30 participants from the other two hubs – Sheffield and Nottingham, plus a number of invited industry figures who would all be mercilessly pitched to throughout the day.

Getting some advice from Colin Pons
Getting some advice from Colin Pons. Photo totally nicked from the FilmWorks website. Sorry.

Stop/Eject is the project I have been focusing on throughout FilmWorks, but somehow in the last few weeks The Dark Side of the Earth – a project that’s been on the back burner for a while – returned to the fore. I was lucky enough to be able to screen the 35mm pilot for this epic fantasy-adventure in the Watershed’s biggest cinema to all the participants and mentors. When it came to the speed-pitching session at the heart of the day’s event, having arrived without any fixed ideas, I ended up covering both Dark Side and Stop/Eject, but with the emphasis on the former.

The event ended FilmWorks on a real high, after some mixed feelings for me earlier on. I have to confess that there were weeks when I didn’t want to go to Bristol and hear yet again how hard the industry is to crack into, how it’s full of catch 22s, how the statistical likelihood of getting into festivals is so tiny… It was seriously depressing me. But what always picked me up were the other participants. It was inspirational to be surrounded by so many talented and enthusiastic people, and triply so when the other hubs joined us this week.

And that networking is the biggest thing I’m taking away from FilmWorks. Right now I can’t tell exactly how these contacts will help me in the future, but I have no doubt whatsoever that they will.

FilmWorks Finale