Butterflies in the Wind in pursuit of happiness

Hey filmman,

If you are looking for trailer music, there are a few options.

First is you can use royalty free music, there is lots available on the internet, just do a search. There are lots of libraries, as well as the option to purchase individual tracks, depending on your needs etc.

The other option is getting a composer to write you something, OR, sometimes the composers website has demos listed that are currently not being used for anything.

As for the sound files for trailers, you could look into something like:
http://www.videocopilot.net/products/dsfx/

This seems to be geared at action movies however a lot of the sounds you'll find here will be useful for a trailer of any genre.

I'm sure there's some sort of website which has sounds like this available for individual purchase, and if you're prepared to dig around you can probably find many of the things you need for free.
 
Thanks, Chris. I'm going to check out videocopilot....

I worked for a few hours last night with Soundtrack Pro. At first I liked it -- a little -- then I hated it. It was all jumbled up musical tidbits that didn't work together.

Sometimes I want to cut an honest trailer; at other times I just want to sell DVDs and say to myself, just cut a trailer that makes the visitors buy the movie regardless of how dishonest the trailer is.

I don't know if there is a middle ground or any rules to this. Most of the trailers of big movies I see don't show me enough to want to see the movies. In fact, I resent the tidbits they show ... and I always hated the fade-out/fade-in since I was a film student eons ago.

That's one of the main reasons I hardly ever see any movies in theaters anymore. I have to be literally dragged to see a movie these days. ... I don't want to end up hating movies :-)

So it's back to square one. To me music is the key to doing a good trailer. For that matter, more and more, the music is becoming the key to my wanting to do a movie.

I really need to find a great piece of music before I start my next project.

Back to the trailer, yeah, I better ask a composer to do the music rather than spending days on editing a short trailer.

Somebody in another thread suggested that I "plant a question in the viewers head that only seeing the movie will answer." That opened up a window in my mind.

I think I need to follow that line tonight and see what I can come up with.

Thanks again, Christ, for the help you offered me.
 
Absolutely - if you can do it yourself - go for it.

I think a lot of people end up spending hundreds, and thousands of dollars on stuff they don't need. Of course, with the video copilot thing, that's cheap considering you could cut thousands of trailers with those sounds, and probably use them for heaps of other things. They're good quality sounds, too.

But doing it yourself if you have the tools is a great thing.

I agree on the comment you made about music being the reason you want to do a movie - when I hear a good song or a great track, it inspires me in the same way. Film and music are connected so much, I think a lot of indie filmmakers don't realize this and end up using crappy ambient stuff they downloaded, the kind of stuff you'd hear in a high school theater project or something.

Trailers are an interesting thing. Even though a lot of trailers give hardly anything away on the story itself - I have seen some trailers recently that make me really want to see the movie. I'm a sucker for good music, some great dialogue and cool settings - emotional material that's not over the top. A clue that the movie might have a great pay off. I don't like to hear too much "back and forthing" with dialogue in a trailer, I think that's best saved for the movie itself. Creating an emotional response is the key - if the trailer can do that to me - in a matter of a minute or two, I'm sold. I will see that movie. I love trailers...sometimes as much as I love the movie. :p

Let us know how it goes with Soundtrack pro.
 
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I worked until now -- 2:10 AM :-) on Soundtrack Pro. I'm having fun though. I'll tomorrow if it's going to work.

I must download the videopilot program you suggested....
 
The last trailer must be good; no one's commenting LOL

It's actually just over a minute, so it would be nice if I had a few comments.

Thanks.
 
What did Bob Dylan mean when he sang, "there ain't no success like failure and failure ain't no success at all" ?

If you know, please relate it to my efforts in editing a new trailer for BUTTERFLIES IN THE WIND.

Vic :-)
 
This is the new poster. I'm preparing to go back into the film markets (foreign distribution), so I need your feedback.
1234111816.jpg
 
And this one was the original artwork. Let me know if you think this is better. I'm thinking of going back to it.

1234112064.jpg
 
Thanks, Jim. I needed to know that.

BTW, I checked out your BTS video clip; it's looking good. Good actor. It looks like you're shooting film too :-)

Keep up the good work.
 
filmman said:
Thanks, Jim. I needed to know that.

BTW, I checked out your BTS video clip; it's looking good. Good actor. It looks like you're shooting film too :-)

Keep up the good work.
Click to expand...

Thanks, yep, my first 35mm project. First time with short ends too. Definitely need to adapt to that kind of workflow, it reminds me of starting out on super 8mm which only had 2.5 minute loads.
 
Next time you use short ends, let me know. I sell them at the lowest prices and I can get you long ends too.

On my own shoots, I like to use the 200 foot mags. I find that two minutes is plenty long enough to cover 99% of my scenes. When I'm editing I rarely have a shot longer than ten seconds. It's usually 4 to 7 seconds.

I use the 400 ft mags when the camera is on a tripod. With the Arri 2c that's my limit anyway. I have 6 magazines. Two of them are 400 footers. I never shoot more than 6 magazines in a 4 hour stretch. I load during lunch and shoot the rest of the day with the 6 mags that I reload.

3,200 ft, that's over 35 minutes per day. It takes me a minute to replace a magazine on my Arri 2c. That's 12 minutes in an 8 hour shooting day.

I like to shoot 25 days. So I never have any problems shooting with film.
 
Five to one shooting ratio with one camera is pretty economical and you still get five times more footage than you will need to include in the final version.

But if you're shooting two cameras then five to one ratio ends up as 2.5:1 ration. It's still doable considering that you're getting two angles accomplished at the same time.

personally I'd rather shoot one camera because I'm then directing the single angle from where I'm looking. Nobody can consider the aesthetics of two angles simultaneously. So shooting two cameras is like directing 50% of the movie.LOL
 
I'm thinking of repackaging BUTTERFLIES IN THE WIND. New poster, new trailer, new look. I need to buy a used Magic Bullet so I can play around with some film looks.

Any other suggestions for creating a film look that will jazz up my movie?
 
i had to buy a MiniDV camera for transfering footage to my G5. Everything was held up for months -- very frustrating.

in a few days I should be getting the Canon Optura
i just hope it works for a few weeks ... until I transfer all my old MiniDV tapes

what a disaster to shoot digital tape -- sound disappears for no reason, tape gets old and brittle -- a real joke as professional tool.

i can't imagine how people spend millions of dollars on productions and capture them on tiny fragile tape like that LOL -- incredible.

once this internet thing gets sorted out, i'm going back to film for every type of production

just now ... can't afford to promote without utilizing digital when it comes to quick trailers and movie clips....

digital makes sense for pr and advertising --

thanks for the comments

good luck with your projects
 
if you have a feature length movie and would like me to take it to the international markets, send me an e-mail: vic@felliniesque.com

I will only represent serious filmmakers -- no exploitation, horror or x-rated stuff, "and I have nothing against exploitation movies!" LOL
 
filmman said:
if you have a feature length movie and would like me to take it to the international markets, send me an e-mail: vic@felliniesque.com

I will only represent serious filmmakers -- no exploitation, horror or x-rated stuff, "and I have nothing against exploitation movies!" LOL
Click to expand...

I am going to keep in touch with you via email, I don't have anything this year, but I hope to produce a feature in 2010, but you know how that goes....

Still working on script, not sure of what the game plan is as far as distribution, but I have always appreciated your advice and knowledge.

And if we do it on 35, will definitely need the hook up on re-cans and medium ends.

Jim
 
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