SHORT: "On the Boulevard" production diary

The cut is almost locked. Shooting some pickups today. I had wanted to open the film with the classic 1940's process driving shot through the front window, with the rear projected driving footage dancing around in the background, but I couldn't procure a period vehicle in time. Finally found one, a '38 Ford, so tonight we shoot that, a few neighborhood drivebys past period appropriate backgrounds, and some green screen pickups to replace shots from principal photography (using backgrounds from that with some Photoshop extension). I'm going to use a 55" TV outside the windows to simulate the rear screen projection.
 
that's awesome. what's the end-goal with stuff like this? everyone involved presumably loves doing all of this, but is there any thought about an award or more work with the right people noticing?
 
I'm pretty indifferent to the former, I would more enjoy sitting in a theatre with a decent size group of people who were responding to the jokes than winning awards--it's not the kind of film that generally does that. It's probably more likely to win for cinematography as festival voters tend to get wowed by things that look different, and the 40's style of lighting combined with great costumes etc. contributes to that. Which as I mentioned earlier here I think, I would have liked to have taken on the duties for but realized it wasn't practical given the breakneck schedule. So that would be bittersweet, ha!

The goal after the Messhall festival itself would be to, again, have it make festivals for the fun of getting it out there. If I was able to leverage it into new relationships or work, that would be great. I haven't built a director reel in 20 years and it is time again.
 
How do you figure out what festival to submit to? I know nothing about them. I might submit my short to a couple just to experiment.

I'm also going to attempt to run a one-night festival of local shorts. The local community (Sonoma county) is very supportive of the arts. I'm thinking of renting the venue (maybe they will donate the space) and then asking the usual charitable local businesses to kick in some prize money for the entrants.
 
DustinSchmidt said:
But then I realized that windows on cars were way smaller back then.
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Exactly! Crazy small.

The reason I didn't go with green screen for this was that I wasn't quite sure how much depth of field I could carry to the back windows, and doing the keying myself, I was concerned about having soft edges to the window frames which makes the key harder to pull off. It may have been OK, but I knew it would work great practically, and it did.


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I hope you don’t mind I picked up this notebook, started reading and realized this is your diary.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that Jenette Goldstein (Vasquez in Aliens) was Connor’s stepmother in T2. Reminds me of Christopher Guest who can be unrecognizable from one movie to the next, This is Spinal Tap to Princess Bride. Just learned when recently watching A Few Good Men he was the military doctor who gave Santiago a clean bill of health.

While it might have been interesting if you got Jeanette I would have been concerned it be disrespectful parodying her previous roles.
 
There's a long history of actors doing that so I can't imagine anyone would consider it disrespectable, assuming it was done with good humor and taste. She may not have wanted to do that, and honestly I didn't have time in my shoot to set up those specialty shots anyway. And Tracie Thoms did a tremendous job in the part, so it all worked out in the end.
 
Oh, I'm liking that Charles. Two thumbs up. Are you using a film emulsion or plug-in in post to achieve some of that grain "look"? Assume you didn't achieve that with high ISO and Black Diffusion FX on set?
 
That was just a down and dirty Photoshop noise addition, the festival needed a promotional still so I knocked that out for them yesterday. The final look of the film will incorporate grain, diffusion, bloom, halation, vignetting, weave and other goodies laid on in Resolve.
 
Whoa! Here we are in a brand new subforum, Production Diaries! (did I just help name that?!)

Met with my composer today to spot the film. I had slugged in temp tracks from a bunch of '40's soundtracks I found on Youtube, which I've been living with for a month or two. The composer said it was super helpful for him to work from. He's going to create a full symphonic 40's style soundtrack on the keyboard, and process it to sound the way we'd expect an old film to sound. Can't wait to hear what he does!

Meantime, my VFX person is almost done with a couple of the major fixes. I've got a series of green screen shots that I've made a basic comp for, but I'm finding that when the subject moves quickly, we expect motion blur and the comp doesn't do that. So I think I need to outsource those to get that done better. And there are a couple of roto and ceiling replacement shots as well. Talking to some people on Fiverr about it but hoping to not have to spend much more as this film has cost me more than I'd hope!

Picture lock within the week--looking forward to that. Sound mix and grade are the two things left after that.
 
Picture lock delayed by two weeks as I slugged through a bunch of audio work that affecting timing here and there., There are something like 40 voiceover cues in the piece that we had originally recorded temp, then over the course of the edit I made some writing changes and added a few pieces to fill in dead spots, so we re-recorded those using Resolve's ADR tool, which I find very much in need of a functional overhaul. After too many hours at last the VO was all in place, the final edit tweaks done and I wearily pronounce the picture locked.

October 28th is the festival deadline, so it's a little tight now for the composer. I have a sound designer and editor working on the tracks. One thing I experimented with on this edit was removing all of the production audio except for the mix track while rough cutting--I find it laborious to work with 5 audio tracks when editing, especially if they need to be linked or unlinked (I often move between the two states). I was a little concerned it would be time consuming to conform back to the full range of tracks at the end, but it turned out to be a reasonably easy process.

The last big chunk of work for me now is the grade. I decided to go after this one on my own, the balancing process is pretty easy especially considering it's black and white, but I haven't dug fully into the overall treatment yet, with gate weave, halation, diffusion etc to emulate a vintage print. I also have a sepia flashback look to design, my hope is to find a look that would replicate what could have been done in the 40's using perhaps a chunk of diopter with the center cut out for a blurry edge look and heavy filtration.
 
Cutting picture without sound - I'll have to give that a go. Yes, having a bunch of audio tracks is a nuisance. I'd like the camera file to give me one mono track and then when picture is in decent shape and I'm ready to work on sound, bring in the ISO tracks from the mixer.

As to Resolves ADR, it's not ready for prime time. I still rely on Protools. Although, on the last shoot, while shooting, I already new I needed a line ADRd from a previous days shooting. I made a file of the line repeated about 20 times. Then, when we were on set, I had the actor listen to it and then just start saying the line. It saved an ADR session.

Speaking of ADR, Resolve's Fairlight's Voice Iso is a miracle worker. I shot a scene next to a busy street. I was sure I would have to ADR it. But using the voice iso feature, I was able extract clean dialog, with no traffic and no artifacts. Amazing stuff. Then I recorded some traffic in stereo and laid it down as a separate stereo track.
 
Paul F said:
Cutting picture without sound - I'll have to give that a go. Yes, having a bunch of audio tracks is a nuisance. I'd like the camera file to give me one mono track and then when picture is in decent shape and I'm ready to work on sound, bring in the ISO tracks from the mixer.
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Should be a one-click sort of affair, right?

Paul F said:
As to Resolves ADR, it's not ready for prime time. I still rely on Protools. Although, on the last shoot, while shooting, I already new I needed a line ADRd from a previous days shooting. I made a file of the line repeated about 20 times. Then, when we were on set, I had the actor listen to it and then just start saying the line. It saved an ADR session.
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The recording part of it isn't bad, although there are some dumb things like the text doesn't auto wrap on the page when you enter it, so you have do it manually. Such an easy fix on their end! But it's been like that for many versions. But the really awful part is selecting the keeper takes--only the top one on the pile can be accessed from the timeline, instead of letting you click to activate any of them. A big stack of takes becomes unwieldy fast. Ugh.

Paul F said:
Speaking of ADR, Resolve's Fairlight's Voice Iso is a miracle worker. I shot a scene next to a busy street. I was sure I would have to ADR it. But using the voice iso feature, I was able extract clean dialog, with no traffic and no artifacts. Amazing stuff. Then I recorded some traffic in stereo and laid it down as a separate stereo track.
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It's good and getting better, although it still falls short to Audo Studio (audo.ai), which I've been using past few years. Starting this project I did another test of Resolve's version and Audo on a noisy track (which all of mine are on this project due to loud fridges at location) and Audo still manages to extract nuances of speech that Voice Isolation can't quite match. Close, but not quite. It's also very clunky when used in the edit page, you can't paste attributes to add that setting to a selection of clips and it occasionally turns itself off when duplicating timelines.
 
CharlesPapert said:
Close, but not quite. It's also very clunky when used in the edit page, you can't paste attributes to add that setting to a selection of clips and it occasionally turns itself off when duplicating timelines.
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Yep. I wish I could use Voice ISO on a clip, not track basis...... Your not saying you can do this are you?
 
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