schleppin' productions

filmman

filmman

Veteran
I've been shooting and editing this felliniesque movie for the last two years -- off and on :grin:

If you care to check a promo-teaser for it, here is the link:

http://www.felliniesque.com

I followed the script in parts -- those parts that I could schedule and shoot for nothing. I have no budget -- whatsoever.

But I've spent money on it -- pocket money.

I edit everyday a little and add songs and scenes that I go out and shoot or scenes that I've shot in the past and done nothing with. I go back and rummage in my hard drives.

I have to shoot or edit all the time to keep my sanity. I don't care if I don't have money; I'm a filmmaker and I must shoot to stay alive. Shooting is like air: I must breath. Editing is like water: I must drink :Drogar-Love(DBG):

I enjoy reading this thread because I learn about planning, pre-production, scripting, casting and the nitty grittly of putting movies together -- even selling them. These are areas I don't have a natural propensity for, because I learned shooting movies in the late 60s at SF State Univ. :crybaby:

I appreciate your feedback. Do you have any suggestions for me? What do you think of my movie clip? Thanks for your comments in advance...
 
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Today I found some new piece of music that I'd tried earlier. I finally found an expected sequence where it worked beautifully.

I'm getting the rights to use this new piece of music. I need more music. I scour the internet looking for music :-)

Tomorrow I will tighten the movie a bit more. It's too long. I started out with about 98 minutes. I want to cut it down to about 80 minutes and then add a few minutes of new stuff.

The movie is a musical essentially. All my performers are unknowns -- for the time being. Maybe this movie will promote them and they'll end up as name performers. I'm definitely aiming this movie at the festivals.
 
Of course, writing a budget itself can cost over $1,500. At least that's what some people charge for doing a budget.

Script Breakdown and Casting are also expensive, if done right.

A no budget movie has to take everything that costs money into consideration and eliminate all unnecessary expenditures in time and money.
 
Today I was finally able to create the music for one of the sequences that was giving me trouble. It was a dance sequence with just a couple of drummers. The drums were driving me crazy all by themselves and the sequence was long, about 3 or 4 minutes.

So finally I created the music in Soundtrack Pro and now I have some exciting breakdance music that I created that make the whole sequence work.

Tomorrow, I'll go through the whole movie and tighten it. I'll cut it down to about 80 minutes and then build it back up with new scenes up to 83 minutes.
 
I need a piece of Indian music, like an old Ravi Shankar piece. How can I get a piece like that royalty free? Ineed it for a a scene in my movie Felliniesque Players. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
No one suggested any Indian music. Oh, well, I must go on.

Today, I edited a new rock n roll club scene. It went very well. In a few days I'll finalize the movie and get ready for festival submissions.

Any advise on which festivals might be right for my felliniesque musical movie?
 
I opened a new can of worms today. I "removed attributes" from a whole line of clips that I had put a gama correction filter on. I liked the 3-way color filter controls better. I began to wonder if the two filters did the same job when correcting for blacks. Well, I ended up spending 4 hours on all the clips.

What I was supposed to do was fix sound on a few sequences and wrap the picture. So tomorrow I have to go back to my schedule and do what I was supposed to do in the first place -- one day behind schedule...
 
it paid off anyway. Today I ripped into the movie and re-edited entire sections of it. The music works so much better. It was a major overhaul. I started at 4 AM and ended at 10 AM. I'm done for today.

Tomorrow I go back to fixing sound. It's exciting. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel :-)
 
today I finally went back and fixed sound....

A whole sequence had bad audio. Luckily I had a master take with good audio. I used the master scene to replace all the audio in the clips. I treated the master scene audio as wild sound, so it was a lot of syncing I had to do, but I finished it. Now I can celebrate.

I've done a lot of wild audio from the days of shooting with an MOS camera :-) It finally paid off the skill with doing wild lines on location rather than doing it in ADR (which was too expensive usually to do it later in the studio)....

I'd appreciate any feedback or questions.
 
no longer a schlepper

no longer a schlepper

I've had to add room "noise" to my good sound takes just to match them to the noisy takes -- that's the hardest thing I did so far :furious3:

But I had to do it because it would take me forever to take out the noise in STP -- and maybe I wouldn't be able to do it.

It was air conditioner noice that was in some takes but not others, and air conditioner noice is similar in characteristics to human voice.

Oh, well.

And i also fixed a lot of contrast and gamma problems. It took me all morning to do it; but I had a good day today.

The movie is coming along very nicely. This is going to be a festival film. I really hope I can get it in a big movie festival.

No one is advising me on which festival would be good for me.

I did a little research last night and found out that there aren't many festivals left that will consider an indie filmmaker's movie the way they did twenty years ago. There are too many festivals now -- thousands -- and the whole phenomenon has changed.

But I keep hoping... Well, at least I'm happy with the way the editing is going...
 
Today, my brain froze :-) I can't bring myself to cut. I added a little transitional music, but nothing major. I need to make a decision: to finalize the movie or to re-cut it. It's always a tough decision, to call it finished or to take it apart and redo it.
 
wild lines

wild lines

I decided to insert in wild lines. I did a lot of ADR today. The wild lines added so much meaning to the scenes. I'm happy again. Tomorrow I do more wild lines and get the movie ready for a final review.
 
Today I started the end crawl in Boris. Spent the whole time making sure I had all the credits. It always takes longer to do the end credits. Tomorrow it's back to ADR...
 
It's been ADR all day. It went well. The movie came alive now that 90% of the ADR is done. Tomorrow I'll complete the ADR and get ready for a final review before re-editing the movie's main sequences.
 
I finished the ADR. And then I cut in a new sequence. I'm really happy today. The movie is 100% better. Tomorrow I'll work on balancing the sound.
 
I'm balancing the sound. If anyone has a good way to do this, please let me know. Otherwise I'll have to go clip by clip and raise and lower the volume. Maybe there is a better way in STP? I have FCP Studio 5.04, dual processor G5 2.7 gHz.

I spent a couple of hours just watching the movie. This is the most enjoyable movie I've ever made :-) It started out as an experimental film. I can't believe it. I'm going to work more in this vain.

I'm nearly done. All I need to do now is take another look at the whole movie and see if I should recut it again.
 
Yes, it needs re-cutting :-) I put in a new piece of music today. Did a lot of tweaking. I'll be re-cutting the music a few times more over the next few days. It's looking and sounding real nice. Soon I have to figure out which is the best festival for a rock opera type of movie. Nobody has responded to my question about festivals. I've posted on three user groups. LOL No responses. Why?
 
filmman said:
Yes, it needs re-cutting :-) I put in a new piece of music today. Did a lot of tweaking. I'll be re-cutting the music a few times more over the next few days. It's looking and sounding real nice. Soon I have to figure out which is the best festival for a rock opera type of movie. Nobody has responded to my question about festivals. I've posted on three user groups. LOL No responses. Why?
Click to expand...

Cause your "Promo" looks like somebody's home movie. It looks really bad.

I have no clue what your movie is about from watching that... and to me.. that doesn't look like a 'movie'.

What is this even about?

From watching your promo I dunno if this is a documentary... a mockumentary.. or what..

more info would help.
 
Thank you, Loki, for responding. Finally somebody said something. Okay, now I can begin to improve my trailer.

Felliniesque Players is an experimental movie shot in digital -- my first digital movie. I've shot it over a two year period, loosely based on a screenplay.

I will cut a few different clips together to give you and others an idea of the content of the movie. This way you can advise me better on what to include in the trailer and possibly suggest some new way of editing it.

Thanks again for the criticism. The last movie I did - Butterflies in the Wind - the same thing happened. I edited many trailers before the last one was finally acceptable to the majority of the people who commented. It was another user group.

Criticism really helps. I learn a lot from criticism -- of my own movies and of other people's movies.

I appreciate the time an editor or filmmaker takes to comment, because without that I don't have an audience. Festivals are great if they accept a movie. And one has to go the festival and sit in an audience to be able to get some idea of how they like it.
 
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