Inspiration x2 - Jun 10
Sorry for the blog silence – any readers that are still out there and see this, well, you are the faithful ones. We’ve been in the middle of another project, and blogging just takes a back seat in that kind of situation. I keep running across things I want to blog about – just don’t get it done. To make up for that, I’m going to post two videos today, both of which are inspiring to me for different reasons.
First is the teaser for the Billy Graham June TV special. Doing a tease is an art form in and of itself (just look at how many bad movie trailers are out there), so learning from a well-done tease is a great way to improve your own skill.
Next, this promotional video is a commercial for the Discovery Channel – and it’s just plain cool. Fits their brand, promotes their style of content and makes you excited about the amazing world we live in. This one is probably going to make my list of the top 10 favorite commercials this year…:
Political Ad: "It's Morning Again in America" - Apr 24
I recently read a commentary on this ad in which the commentator talked about how personally he wasn’t a Reagan fan, but he thought this ad was a great piece, especially as a part of the whole message Reagan presented. At a time in our nation when Americans didn’t have an abundance of national pride, Regaan brought a message of hope and of good feelings about the USA. Interesting to watch, especially in the midst of this political season.
Food for Thought: Mistakes Christians in Entertainment Make - Apr 23
Read an article recently about mistakes Christians in entertainment/media often make. Here’s a summary of the points. Do you think these are valid mistakes? Or can we ever expect our productions to be as popular as the world’s since we’re “not of the world”? :
1) Just because we’re Christians, we don’t have to produce explicitly Christian programs.
2) Most movies by Christians fail because they’re just not good stories.
3) We’re out of touch with cultural trends.
4) We have no idea how to “brand” ourselves and our product.
5) Christian lingo doesn’t work. We’ve got to speak in a language the people around us can understand.
6) Didn’t take the time to do our homework about who we’re pitching to, what a pitch looks like, what the market is accepting, etc.
There are more mistakes listed in the article, so check it out. I wrestle with how much “popularity” Christian films should aspire to gain…I mean, how popular was Jesus? Speaking truth isn’t necessarily a route to widespread acceptance by the general public. That being said, some of these points are really valid, and some I question. But what do you think? It’s good to think through this type of stuff and figure out what your philosophy of filmmaking is. Ask yourself two questions: 1) What has God called me to? and 2) Is my vision in line with the Bible?
Guest Blog - Behind the Scenes of Fireproof, part 2 - Apr 18
Part 2 of a guest blog written by Rob Whitehurst of
sounddude.com.
Another innovative thing that just sort of happened, and then became the norm for the rest of the movie, was in between set ups or scene changes, Bill, the capture engineer, or director Alex Kendrix, would be editing the movie. They started cutting the movie together while we were making it, on set, between set ups. They would take all the camera angles, and other footage that had already been shot, and edit it together, with wild lines, sound effects AND pre-recorded sample music and have it ready to view in minutes time. We were constantly being told by studios, editing facilities, execs, post houses, etc., that no one has done a movie this way yet, especially a Christian film. They had nearly all of
the movie’s scenes edited in rough cuts by the time we wrapped in December. Truly amazing!
So my job became strictly the production sound mixer and not recordist. I did use my Sound Devices 744T hard drive recorder to pick up some sound while riding on the nose of a freight train (definitely an E-Ticket ride), while zipping through town in a fire engine (a boy’s dream finally come true), and for various hospital beeps and whirs. But the Apple G5 computer became my recorder.
Issues on this movie were confined to mostly weather (we got rained out several times) and noise. First of all, our grip package came with a generator on a flatbed truck. This was not a theatrical generator with baffling, it was your standard everyday industrial monster that you could hear for blocks. So we parked it as far away as I could get the gaffer to put it (they only had so much banded), put movers blankets everywhere and did the best I could but there are still genie sounds in many scenes. When it gets to the theater, we’ll see if we can hear it. My sound designer, Nick Pallidino says he can take a lot of that out. We’ll see what kind of wizard he really is.
Most of my issues came from it being a low budget, independent
film, which does not “own” the locations we shoot in. On large
budget films, you rent locations and you pay for expensive ermits
to lock off surrounding roads with police, shut down factories, turn off a/c units for whole buildings, etc. On this movie, we shot in free, donated spaces. So we had virtually no say in controlling or
eliminating background noise. We shot a week in a real hospital wing. We couldn’t turn the very loud a/c off and most of the dialog lines were whispered (this is a whispering movie!). So we lived right on edge of frame with the boom, blew some takes because of the mic dipping into frame, and even with that, some scenes still sound like the starship enterprise (background roar). Oh well! I finally had to come to the place where I just got what I could and went on. Not easy for a perfectionist! And I had to use wireless mics as principal sound in too many shots. I hate their sound and the hassle of using them.
How to get an Epiphany... - Apr 11
“The aha moments grow out of hours of thought and study,” he says. “If you look at my innovations, there’s a common theme. I take something familiar, intuitive and ubiquitous and recast it in a manner that will redefine its use to drive profound change.”
What drives creativity and innovation? Though not specifically geared towards artistic creatives, this NY Times article still provides some food for thought on how to cultivate and grow creative ideas, preparing yourself for that exciting moment when the lightbulb switches on. There’s a great quote at the end of the piece from Louis Pasteur saying, “Chance favors a prepared mind.” I believe creativity comes ultimately from God, but He wants us to exercise and develop our gifts. Read, watch, play around with your camera, try to imitate the work of gifted filmmakers. Creativity probably is a large part preparation, so don’t spend your evenings, mornings or weekends being lazy. Learn and grow.
Guest Blog - Behind the Scenes of Fireproof - Apr 9
Part one of a guest blog written by Rob Whitehurst of
sounddude.com.
I’ve been asked to give a run down on the making of the movie Fireproof from a production point of view.
Principal photography ended December 15th in Albany, Georgia. This was quite different than the production of the movie Facing The Giants, which is from the same producers. On Giants, we worked much of the time as Director of Photography Bob Scott and I would work for NFL Films, a two man camera and sound crew in documentary mode.
Fireproof was shot like a “real” film would be, though again, with
a minimal crew. This time around we had a few more folks, including a gaffer, a key grip, a dolly grip, several swing guys (grip/electric) , and an A/C – Steadicam operator, and I had a real boom operator. My sound designer also visited the set twice for the big special effects scenes to record surround sound using a stereo shotgun mic and a Holophone mic:
http://www.holophone.com/products.html
which is a 7.1 mic with 8 elements in it recorded directly to laptop
computer. This sound will be used to build the 5.1 theater sound for thelarge scenes involving a car wreck/train scene and the burning house scenes. I also used two 416 shotguns in x/y pattern to walk through a real hospital emergency room to get stereo ambience for an emergency room scene, which I recorded to a Sound Devices 744T hard drive recorder.
The movie was shot over a six week schedule, once again on the Panasonic Varicam, with Panavision prime lenses. The Pro35 Digital Image converter was again used which gives the look and depth of field of film to the images:
http://www.pstechnik.de/en/digitalfilm-pro35.php
No zooms were used except for some b roll shots of the burning house. But this movie was recorded in a fashion we are being told that has never been done before for any picture. On location, we had a video capture engineer, who took an uncompressed SDI digital feed from the Varicam, complete with embedded stereo audio, and captured it directly to an Apple G5 Pro computer and OWC hard drives. The whole movie took 8 TBs of storage including backups. The capture software was a new program
from Apple called ProRes 422, which lives in the Final Cut Pro6 editing suite. We were being told by Apple that we were the first motion picture to capture SDI video and audio directly from the camera to a computer for storage for a movie. They called us their guinea pigs. We also ran DV tapes in the Varicam as a backup just in case. ProRes records HD video, uncompressed, including uncompressed audio. Here’s some information on it:
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/finalcutpro/whatsnew.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/04/18/a_closer_
look_at_apples_new_prores_422_video_format.html
http://www.digitalpictures.com/images/ProRes_422_WhitePaper.pdf
We were all very impressed by this in that none of us have ever done a movie this way before. And we kept hearing from Sony Pictures that no one else has carted a G5 out into the field and recorded uncompressed video and audio through it to hard drives. On top of that, I did not record any principle sound to separate media. It was very scary. Either it was on the hard drive, the dv tape or it wasn’t. I was constantly running to video village between set ups to make sure “it was there”. When playing back a scene, we used JBL reference speakers to listen and the engineer could pull up the waveform to look at it and make sure we weren’t clipping.
Stay tuned for more…
Video: Ireland's Festival of Hope - Apr 3
Here’s the first video from Daniel’s work this week in Ireland. They’ll be working on the videos during the day and editing and posting at night.
Video: Stuck - Mar 28
Creative. There’s not much more to be said.
Stuck from Yark on Vimeo.
Can the Horror Genre be Redeemed? - Mar 26
Is Horror a genre that can be, for lack of a better word, redeemed? That’s the question that was posed a month or so ago on the Christian Filmmakers e-mail list. There have been quite a few interesting responses. A quick summary of some of the thoughts and ideas posed:
– Horror touches on the supernatural, allowing the filmmaker to explore issues of God, angels and demons as an integral part of the genre.
“There are certian rules to abide by to successfully
survive a horror movie… #1 Never have sex, sex =
death… #2 Don’t drink or do drugs, sin factor. and #3 never ever under any curcumstance say I’ll be right
back cause you won’t be back.”
Well, there was more to the discussion. I just don’t have the time to condense it. What do you think about Horror? My personal viewpoint is that to “redeem” horror would probably result in a totally different genre, so then the question would be moot. And the brief time I was a horror fan in my teens was enough to cure me of ever wanting to dabble in it again – I’m just not into blood and scary things jumping out at me. Any other genres you wonder about “redeeming”?
Video: Children See, Children Do - Mar 11
This will be my last post for the next week and a half. Don’t give up on me though! Idea Central will be back up and running the week of the 22nd. We’ve got some interesting stuff in store, including a behind the scenes look at Fireproof, an interview with the sound guy on the film’s set, and more of the same inspirational clips, great news, and informative articles that are a part of what we do here! Anyway, have a great week, and we’ll see you again in the blog world soon!
News: A New Era for Online Video Ads - Mar 6
There’s a whole new market potential for video producers as Google unveils its new video ad plan. You can check it out here. Think of how the Google text ads have brought low-cost advertising in reach of many small businesses. There might be that same potential with video ads. While the text ads require extreme brevity of composition, the video ads can take advantage of the “a picture is worth a thousand words” adage.
Video: Salford University Promo - Mar 5
We’ve been researching college and university promo videos in preparation for a project we’re doing for a school. Most of the promo videos I found were unexceptional as far as look and artistry were concerned. The following video was one of the notable exceptions. Doesn’t communicate a lot of substance about Salford University, but it does give it a high class feel. I love the picture frame concept. Like to use that sometime in one of my own projects.
Also, notice how the sound effects contribute to the soundtrack. The cell phone ring, the traffic, the crowd noise – all blend into the rhythm of the music. Rather cool.
Pro-life: the new Hollywood standard? - Feb 25
Has Hollywood gone pro-life? In this interesting article from Christianity today, several ’07 films are highlighted for their surprising pro-life content. From Knocked Up to Waitress, from Bella to Juno, keeping your baby is the “in” way. Or is it? This article takes a look at why writers might be pro-life…but just for the moment. None of these movies, with the possible exception of Bella would be called good wholesome films, so it’s interesting that they chose to get at least one moral aspect right – life is truly valuable, even at conception.
Video: Uprooting Anger - Feb 22
Uprooting Anger, our latest no-budget project. Any thoughts, suggestions, comments to help us improve it?
How to Be a Gaffer - Advice from the Field - Feb 22
Knowing the tricks and skills of a gaffer is a great way to get your foot in the door in the industry, as well as being a good skillset for any indie video producer. Here is some advice that I culled from a thread at the CML Lighting forum by experienced gaffers on what it means to be great at your job:
- Stay close to the DP, and listen to the conversations between him and the director
– Watch some of his prior work so that you know the DP’s style – Balance between lighting on your own and taking instructions.Part of this depends on your relationship with the DP. What kind of person is he? If the director hears your suggestions and loves them, but the DP doesn’t like them, you might have problems. – Along those lines, no one likes a gaffer to be a DP. Let them formulate their plan first. Then you can offer up suggestions and discuss the lighting needs. – Don’t be discouraged if the DP doesn’t take your suggestions 99% of the time. Be there as a second set of eyes, and when he needs you and you’re ready, he’ll be glad he’s got you on his team. – Always think ahead, and try to be prepared with equipment that might be needed in the next 20 minutes. – Be calm and cool. The DP doesn’t need to deal with your stress too. – Learn to light and to be able to “see” the lighting needed for a situation. Study lighting, and get to know styles and looks. When a DP knows he or she can trust your judgement, they’re much more likely to give you added freedom.
-Make sure you have more equipment than you need before you need it. – Make friends with the key grip immediately. You need the grips on your side. – Go on all location scouts, even if they don’t pay you for it. You’ll save yourself trouble on the shoot.
Video: The 5 Great Voice Over Artists - Feb 19
Got a link to this vid thanks to fellow producer Micah Bomgaars. I’m sure you’ve probably heard at least one of these voices before. Don LaFontaine is considered the trailer voice by some. Anyway, enjoy hearing Don LaFontaine, John Leader, Al Chalk, Mark Elliot, and Nick Tate in action, making fun of their own voices.
Marketing: Make a ticket more than a ticket - Feb 15
“...anything that can be delivered digitally as a download could be bundled into the value of a movie ticket and delivered from the ticketing site, the studio or from the theater’s website. The cost to deliver a song, script or even video (like what you might find as extras on a dvd) digitally is nominal relative to the marketing investment required to get people to the theater.”
That about quote is entreprenurial thinking and is something every indie filmmaker should consider as they prepare to market and distribute their film. You can’t expect an audience to gather simply because you made a movie. You’ve got to give them a reason to go see it. The above quote is from Mark Cuban, owner of the Mavericks, and a rather liberal but independant guy. Read the rest of this entry and then start thinking about how you could incorporate this type of innovative marketing into your next piece.
Video: Offensive Pandas? - Feb 12
I think the following Super Bowl commercial is weakly scripted and seem (to me) uneffective as well as unmemorable. But is it offensive? To some it is, specifically the Pandas with the Asian accents. Do these present a negative and mocking sterotype? The reaction to the salesgenie.com spot shows that we must be careful how we portray ethnicities. Stereotyping is easy to do, but can alienate your audience quickly. If you’ve got a thought about this commercial, I’d be interested in your take on it.
Video: From the Ashes - Feb 7
This video is compelling, both in subject matter and in artistic treatment. I think the producer and editor did an excellent job both telling moving stories and yet not relying on the strength of story alone but instead marrying the content with some great graphical work, musical scores and editing.
Trailer: Expelled - Feb 7
Don’t know much at all about this film, its content or its message, so I’m not promoting it, but thought some of you might be interested in it. Sounds like a compelling premise, though I wonder how many theaters it will actually play in. Here’s an article about the film and some trouble that came up when some of the interview subjects discovered what the film was actually about.
Update: Destroying Perceptions of Beauty - Jan 30
Update
I checked out the other Dove films to see what they were like and found them generally unimpressive. Evolution, the one I posted is the best by far. I guess that’s why it won several Cannes awards. Of the other films, I’ll post them, all except Onslaught. That one, if you’re not a fan of indecent and risque images, you’ll want to avoid it!
I’d heard of Dove’s campaign to promote “real beauty”, but hadn’t seen much of it. A friend pointed me to this commercial, and I was impressed by the clever but simple way it illustrated the artificial realities of the beauty/modeling industry. I’m always a fan of simple visual concepts to illustrate profound truths (or advertisting slogans!), and this one ranks up there with the Hi, I’m a Mac commercials from Apple.
Video: The Price of Belief - Jan 30
This is my week for posting videos! The featured clip today was produced by Open Doors International, a ministry founded by Brother Andrew and focused on the persecuted church. It’s a powerful video essay about the price a North Korean pays to be a Christian. On the producing side of things, I really liked how they made it a moving interview, putting you into the environment instead of just a sit-down with a nice background. It adds visual interest and accentuates the subject matter.
Make Cell Phone Video Look, uh, Great - Jan 24
Heard of Fix My Movie? It’s a service (currently in beta) that smoothes out pixelated, jaggy, low quality video and makes it look, well, they claim “great”. I’m not sure that particular adjective is the best description, but the site DOES appear to make the video look a little better. If you’ve got some low quality video footage, give this service a look.
Video: Samaritan - Jan 23
Scott Simmons has posted a blog entry about his work on the Modern Parables project. He’s got some interesting details about workflow and planning that helped undergird a successful production. Also, on the Modern Parables site itself, the director has posted some filmmaking resources about putting together Samaritan.
The Real 24: A Day in the Life of a Military Family - Jan 22
Last night on ABC World News, they played the following story about a day in the life of a military family. I thought it was cool how they connected the two stories, and gave you a glimpse of life for both the soldier in Iraq and the family waiting for him at home. For those of you that are documentary producers, I thought this might be an interesting watch.
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