Challenging Yourself

El Director

El Director

Veteran
My buddy and I live a few hundred miles apart and decided it would be fun to help each other grow by giving each other filmmaking challenges. After the challenge is given, the other person has two weeks to make a short film. We're not expecting any of them to be award winning, but it's getting us off our butts and making movies.

Here's the video where we issue our first challenges.

Since I just moved out to the Flathead, I really don't know people out here to help me out. So I created the Flathead Film Society on Facebook and was surprised how many people are interested in doing projects and such. I'm pretty excited to work with a bunch of passionate people. It'll be great to come together and help each other out on our projects.

Is anyone else doing this? Creating small challenges for yourself and using Facebook to find other locals? I'm curious what your experience is.
 
Yay! DVXers that are actually making films!
Leagues more significant and important than
debating the relative merits of sensor size or
fixed pattern noise.
 
It's fun to just make stuff and not care about the gear! I got mine all shot last week and my buddy did his this weekend. We're looking forward to the result!
 
For sure. I think we'll be posting our shorts in the next week :) Speaking of challenging, we visited my wife's family for Christmas and I had the urge to shoot a short using their property. Problem was I didn't have my camera, any gear, or props. So we used Filmic Pro on my iPhone and staged a finger gun shootout. It was silly and fun, and overall a great exercise in letting the imagination go.

 
So on the topic of challenging, I've got my short shot and graded. Being lit by a candle, it's darker than anything I've done before. I uploaded to YouTube as a test using the YT preset in Resolve 16 Studio and it's bad. The film is so dark that I'm getting all kinds of nasty compression artifacts. Anyone have any ideas on how I can reduce that?
 
I remember ages ago someone recommending adding noise/grain to your video. The noise apparently reduces the homogeneity of the image, which in exchange makes the codec make smaller macro blocks. The big macro blogs are one of the causes of the compression artifacts.

I am not too convinced, but it makes sense.

The dude from Film Riot also suggests uploading at the highest possible resolution, since youtube gives more bandwidth at higher resolutions and this leads to less compression. When he uploads something dark he goes "Please, watch at 4K, it is dark and will look terrible at lower resolutions".
 
Congrats on your challenging challenge!

So your edited master (h264?) is clean, but you get the artifacts strictly from YT?

Yes, highest resolution and bitrate, and grain can help up to a point (less so on the YT end of things).

But here's a free trial of Filmconvert. Pull the rip cord and go granular:
https://www.filmconvert.com/download
 
Thanks for the tips on the grain guys. I'll give FilmConvert a try. I had wanted to master in 1080, but I did try a 4K and it did look significantly better. What are your suggestions on the standalone vs the Resolve plugin?
 
This is the best that I was able to get with YouTube compression. Shot in RAW on the URSA Mini 4K at f4 ISO 400.

Here's my buddy's short, shot all on the DJI Mavic 2 Pro as per my challenge for him:
 
Round 2! I'll post the Challenge Given video later, but I'm pretty excited about this one. He challenged me to do "Jaws in a Montana lake" and must include the famous "Zolly" shot. I happen to live just minutes from Flathead Lake and there is rumored to be a lake monster named Flessie in it, so she'll be the focus of my short. I'm still bouncing around a bunch of ideas for the story, but I'm pretty excited.
 
Super excited to finally be shooting next week. The project, currently called "Fins", has taken on a life of it's own. While I was casting the film, I learned that Bill Butler, who shot the original Jaws, lives about an hour from me in Montana. My contact had set up a meeting with him, but he just turned 100 and his health is failing, so I won't get to meet him. However, she will make sure he will get to see the film, so I hope I do things justice.

In preparation, I've been rewatching Jaws, paying special attention to the camerawork and suspense. My wife and I also watched "The Meg" last night, which we both enjoyed. I've watched a ton of interviews with Mr. Butler, and did a lot of research into the photographic process that was used. I'm really hoping to capture the "look" of Jaws. For the first time ever, I prevised the entire film, which was made easy with Previs Pro on my phone. I could set up the scene and then move around and explore camera angles to find the shots I want. A quick export of the jpgs into Avid and I had a nice animatic that I'm happy with.

The script is based on an account I read about that a real couple had with the lake monster in the early 2000's. I changed a few things and set the story in 1995 to do away with SPOT and cell phones to call for help. I'm also taking the less is more approach, only giving us glimpses of the creature. When we do see it at the end, it's a practical effect- My wife made a 9 foot long monster tail for me. My very first camcorder will also be making an appearance, as well as a boombox that I had as a kid.

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I admire your gumption and think that this is a great idea. Kind of like having creative spotter. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Also, I had to look up where Bigfork, MT is. That's some pretty country, and so close to Glacier. Lucky you!
 
QuickHitRecord said:
I admire your gumption and think that this is a great idea. Kind of like having creative spotter. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. Also, I had to look up where Bigfork, MT is. That's some pretty country, and so close to Glacier. Lucky you!
Click to expand...

Thanks! And yes, I love it out here. I do a lot of backpacking so it's a great place to be :) I grew up in Spokane, WA and definitely prefer it out here. You're in Portland? I've been that way a few times. It's great you have the coast so close.
 
I have a lot of family ties to Bozeman so I've been visiting MT my whole life. I also spent a week in Missoula when I had a film premiere at the International Wildlife Film Festival a few years back. The one time I went up to Glacier, it was pouring rain (in the middle of summer) and so misty that I could barely see a thing. I've been meaning to go back! There's something really invigorating about being in grizzly country.

I feel like it's fairly rare that I meet a fellow filmmaker who also enjoys backpacking. I do quite a bit in the PNW and I get up to WA all the time, and occasionally over to MT and WY. I even keep a casual blog about it if you're curious.

Your latest prompt inspired me to look up local legends of mysterious creatures, of which there are a surprising number.
 
I checked out your blog, looks like you have tons of great adventures! What kinds of cryptids did you find out in your parts (aside from Bigfoot)?

Plan right now is to film "Fins" tomorrow afternoon! Looking forward to it!
 
Had a blast filming early this morning starting at 6am. We were wrapped by 10am and the overcast weather lent a nice and consistent look to everything. For having never acted before, my actors (my next door neighbors) did a pretty good job. Some stuff could of been improved, but we were fighting daylight, so I had to let some stuff go.
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The creature tail that my wife made worked like a charm. It did everything we needed it to!
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The biggest challenge we had was just filming with the actors in a canoe. Trying to keep the thing pointed the right direction was no easy task. I also found myself having to stand knee deep in the water to film. It wasn't too cold, but it definitely got chilly near the end.
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I hope I don't find myself needing to reshoot anything, but if I do, my team is game.

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