The Echo Game - feature filmmaking at new car prices

Thanks, I am just starting to do massive research on all of that. I would def look forward to a detailed blog or BTS from you guys. Pretty much all of my focus is going into a feature now, and I am making plans for if I get X-funding, and other plans for if I have to fund it for $30K, so I am scooping up as much info all around as I can.
 
I will definitely keep everyone posted as much as I can without hurting the movie. Right now I don't want to say too much here because we're deferring to the horror mags and websites. But once those articles are out I will link them here and discuss freely.

If anyone has any questions, of course, I'll be happy to answer them if I can.
 
Hi,
Can you tell us what are you using for the audio? Are your capturing the audio straight to the camera or you have a separate device to capture the audio? I don't know if these are dumb questions but I'm just starting film making and I'm completing my second short and I would like to know ways to capture professional audio for my future films. I will appreciate if you could tell us your audio set up.
Thanks
 
dougspice said:
As we work through post we've been continuing to get some nice little bits from the press, including a cool little piece in Fangoria! This is huge for the movie, because Fangoria is the #1 source for cult horror anywhere, and huge for Brian, who has been reading it religiously since he was 8!

http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=7340

Dread Central also did a nice piece focusing more on the awesome FX work.

http://www.dreadcentral.com/story/exclusive-fx-shots-comments-the-echo-game
Click to expand...

very awesome. I grew up on Fangoria and it would be a real treat to ever see one of my own films in there.
 
miamivideo said:
Hi,
Can you tell us what are you using for the audio? Are your capturing the audio straight to the camera or you have a separate device to capture the audio? I don't know if these are dumb questions but I'm just starting film making and I'm completing my second short and I would like to know ways to capture professional audio for my future films. I will appreciate if you could tell us your audio set up.
Thanks
Click to expand...

The audio was run through an external mixer, but generally captured directly into camera. For a handful of instances involving wireless lavs, it was captured to CF cards in the mixer. It all sounds just dandy, but if we were doing it again it would probably be preferable to record everything to the CF cards. Unfortunately I don't know the model number of the mixer or anything like that.
 
dougspice said:
The audio was run through an external mixer, but generally captured directly into camera. For a handful of instances involving wireless lavs, it was captured to CF cards in the mixer. It all sounds just dandy, but if we were doing it again it would probably be preferable to record everything to the CF cards. Unfortunately I don't know the model number of the mixer or anything like that.
Click to expand...

many thanks
 
Just a quick update for everyone here... Brian has been hard at work cutting and next week we review the first full-length rough cut of the film! Knowing Brian, though, there will be nothing "rough" about this edit... he's a top-rate, meticulous editor. The 10-minute sequence he posted for us about 2 weeks after production was finely cut, with temp music mixed in excellently. It was already far better than a lot of finished films I've seen.

That's not to say that there won't be lots of changes to be made. We've scheduled almost two months to finish refining the picture. This includes making final shot choices to effects sequences so the VFX compositors (probably me!) can get to work without waiting on a complete picture lock. The composer will start actually spotting and laying down real score as will the sound editor (TBD). Our goal is for a very polished final product in April.

This is a conservative timeline, based on a couple of factors. First, the holiday season basically shuts down Hollywood. Already (on November 25) I know many people who are officially on hiatus until 2009. In a sense this is great, giving Brian a lot of time to focus on edits and finalizing his choices for the post personnel we haven't locked in yet. On the other hand it makes it difficult to get him and us producers and other people together in one place. I personally will be in West Africa for an entire month! So we've scheduled the rough cut to allow us time to give notes and then break for a month to see the results.

Second is that Brian is financing much of this film himself with money from his work as a full-time editor. We simply have to allow time in our schedule for him to work regular jobs. If he focused exclusively on this film he'd be living on the street within a month or two. I'm sure a lot of people here can relate to that!
 
Yes, but not until January at the earliest. We want to cut a trailer (and since this is what Brian does for a living, we can count on it being tight and professional) and a sample sequence to send around, but right now everything must take a backseat to the actual picture cut.
 
So this week we looked at what is a few edits away from being picture lock, and the composer has already started to work.

So, while we start in on the VFX and sound work as well, Brian will now be focusing on getting a trailer cut for you all to see! (Well, it's not really specifically for you all, it's more for the handful of distributors that have been tracking our progress, but everybody wins!)
 
Brian has confirmed that we'll get a final cut of the trailer next week.

Today he's in our edit bay working away on the film; we will have picture lock today, as well as our first color session!
 
Looks pretty good man...

Can you talk a bit about how you got the locations you did, or point me to the post where you already gave that info :)

later,
Jason
 
Begged borrowed and [paid for].

Almost half the movie was shot in my house, the opening scenes were shot in another friend's condo, the office locations were begged from the director's former employer, the horror store was actually shot at my friend BJ's horror props facility here, and the hospital stuff was shot at Post Mortem Studios here in LA... they have all sorts of standing hospital sets and cut us a good deal we were just barely able to afford.

The real key, though, was that Brian had already asked around and knew what locations he would have access to while he was still forming ideas, before the script had been written. This really allowed us to milk locations for what they were worth and do some interesting things with color and pacing. The only "surprise" was the hospital set, which I arranged at the last minute because I was not really satisfied with what we had for that location.

I think taking careful inventory of what you have available is critical to building production value on very low budget films. If you brainstorm and think creatively you probably already have access to some very cool stuff that you might not even realize!
 
Thanks for the information.... locations always limit my ideas for scripts as I don't really expect to have access to public indoor locations, and have never been in a place where I can book an actual set....

Thanks.

later,
Jason
 
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