POST-PRODUCTION

All our shots have been filmed, so now we move on to the most fun part of the process, capturing the footage from tape.  Now this takes place in real time and we shot about four hours of footage over the production of Awake.  So I spent a lot of time waiting in front of my editing station.  Fast forward a few hours and all the footage is in the Avid workstation in front of me.  That’s my queue to start cutting.

The editing process on Awake was definitely more involved than anything we have done before.  Now the way I went about doing this was to first cut the footage into sequence without any regard to sound mixing or color.  After countless hours of cutting and trimming we whittled down hours of footage to a much more manageable eight minutes.

Awake relies heavily on visual storytelling so the color of the film really had to help set the mood.  During production I shot as flat as possible in order to give me as much latitude in post-production.  This helps retain as much information as possible, as well as give a more neutral profile before color grading.  Now many times people confuse the difference between color correction and color grading.  Color correction is used to fix and white balance issues as well as match color between shots.  Color grading refers to changing the overall look of the film by pushing the colors.  Awake required a moderate color grade to help set the mood of the film.  In the pictures below you can really see the difference in raw footage and the finished product.

So now that we have our color right, our last step is sound mixing.  My favorite part.  That was sarcasm.  I will say I probably dislike this part the most because to me this is the hardest part.  Editing sound is something that requires a very good ear, and I’m not sure how good mine is right now.  Thankfully we are lucky to know some very nice people in the industry that have offered to help with our final sound mix.

We currently have a first cut of the film finished.  Running time is still around eight minutes, with credits.  Now this is a little longer than expected because the screenplay was five pages.  But this was an action heavy film so the one minute per page rule doesn’t quite apply since dialogue tends to play faster than action from page to screen.

The film is being screened to a handful of different people, both general public and industry professionals, to help gauge our audience reaction and to see if any other changes need to be made before submitting to film festivals.

-Matt

Stay updated on the progress of Awake and like us on Facebook.

PRODUCTION

Friday, 6:21 pm, principle photography on Awake begins.  That’s right I’m dropping industry lingo into this post.  Now we did have a couple of re-shoots and additions to what we shot, but 90% was in the can, yes that’s more lingo, during these three days.  Now, Awake has definitely been the most thought out and organized production we’ve ever done, both in pre-production and production.  We took our time ensuring the lighting, sound, and cinematography was just right.  Now I know it sounds like standard operating procedure, and it should be, but we hadn’t really put as much time in pre-production on anything else before, or on lighting and sound recording.  I hope it shows with this film.  I mean like this one is really good not that the rest are shameful.

Okay so this is the first installment of our very first production blog for our upcoming short film titled AWAKE. The concept for the film all came from personal experiences from suffering from pretty severe insomnia for the last five years.  Now this was a story that I really wanted to tell because no matter who I talk to, they can’t seem grasp all of the fear, frustration, and almost heartbreak that I experience on a daily basis.  I understand it’s tough to imagine going to bed as the most stressful part of your day.  Those are the feelings I wanted my audience to come away with after watching this film.

Now follow along and see if we pull it off.

PRE – PRODUCTION

Pre-production started where I assume most projects start, writing the actual screenplay.  After I completed what I thought was a sensible first draft I showed it to both Ryan and Daniel for comments.  They both gave good criticism which pushed me to make the changes to what the final draft ended up being.  It ran about five pages when I was finished writing.

Now this script is more scene descriptions and action than dialogue so I knew I wanted to attempt to be a little more visually creative when shooting this.  I got my locations and put together a shot list and rewrote a shooting script which basically goes over camera movements.

The next step in the process was casting and Daniel got the big lead role with the two supporting roles being filled by Rie Ma and my father Kevin DeBruycker.  It helped a lot that they both have acting experience from theater.

Luckily we ended up with some very good locations because of some very generous people.  With our actors and locations set, all we did was set our dates and shooting schedule and mentally prepared ourselves for what we’ve been preparing for…PRODUCTION.

-Matt

Stay updated on the progress of awake and like us on Facebook

When I was a kid growing up, like most people, I went through many phases of what I wanted to pursue as a career.  It seemingly swung  from one side of the spectrum to the other, from a soldier to a paleontologist, from an archeologist to an investment banker.  Looking back now I find it kind of silly like I’m sure most people do.  Of course now I know what I want to do, which in case you didn’t know from the title, is work in film.  But how did I get here?  How did I finally figure out what I wanted to pursue with such conviction after swaying back and forth between different careers?

I used to think that it all started the first time I picked up a camera with my friends and we made a forty-six second martial arts film titled “Jeet Kune Do” which was modestly produced right outside Purcellville, VA, and will be lost forever now after being accidently deleted.  However, I really didn’t get into making short films until probably after our first eight “films” or so.  If that’s what you want to call them.  That’s the point where I really started wanting to take it more seriously and start pushing ourselves to produce higher quality content.  As time went on I spent a lot of time writing screenplays, creating this website, and uploading our short films to the web.  My passion for film has only grown since, but I truly think that it all started before I even picked up a camera.

Like I mentioned earlier, I went through many phases of possible career choices.  The most notable careers I remember were to be an Archeologist, CIA Analyst, soldier, Paleontologist, and most recently an Investment Banker.  Looking at all of these together really shows how scattered my hopes and dreams were as a child.  Why did I go through so many evolutions of occupational paths?  I thought a lot about this recently and I think I figured out why.  The reality is that these jobs were shown and romanticized in some of my favorite films growing up.  After watching Raiders of the Lost Ark all I wanted to be was Indiana Jones, the coolest scientist you’ll ever see.  Only Harrison Ford could portray an Archeologist as an attractive and exciting career path.  I also think this is one of the reasons I spent so much time digging holes as a kid, possibly trying to find some ancient artifact like the Arc of the Covenant or even some weird plates nobody read but Joseph Smith.  Of course there were way less NAZIs trying to stop me when I was digging.

Speaking of digging holes, let’s move on to the next boring job on the list, a Paleontologist.  The scene that really comes to mind when thinking of this job is the unforgettable scene in Jurassic Park.  After digging up an impeccable Velociraptor fossil in the early scenes of Steven Spielberg’s classic film, Dr. Grant, proceed to give a lesson in respect to a young Rosie O’Donnell look-a-like about the hunting habits of the giant turkey.  That was badass when I was seven years old, and I spent the next three years of my life studying dinosaurs and digging more holes.  Don’t judge me.

So did I want to really be any of these jobs when I grew up?  I don’t think so.  I wasn’t attracted to the jobs themselves, but rather the way they were portrayed in these great achievements of cinema.  I didn’t want to be an investment banker because of the money, I wanted to be an investment banker because it seemed like a cool job in Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, which is one of my top five favorite films ever.   I think I wanted to do something that could really affect people in the same way these great films influenced me.  If a well told story in a visual medium could change what I wanted to do with my life then I imagine that a well made film could really make changes in somebody’s life.  So that’s what I want to do.  I want to make a great film that really connects with people.  Hopefully we’ll be able to do that one day.

-Matt

At first glance the Ikan VL7 monitor is a quality external monitor at a very modest price point.  I ended up purchasing the full kit from B&H.  This kit included a hot shoe mount, a canon battery plate, battery, two VGA cables, and a nice hard case to carry it all around in.

After opening the box I proceeded to connect this Ikan monitor to my trusty Canon HV30 via the single HDMI port.  In addition to the HDMI input this monitor also has two VGA/composite inputs and a head phone output.  Immediately after plugging the VL7 in, I could tell a big difference in the picture shown on my HV30 LCD and the Ikan.  First off, the VL7 shows part of the captured frame that the built in LCD doesn’t.  Although the LCD only cuts off a small portion on the frame, it’s still very nice to see exactly what is being captured.  This helps a lot with accurate framing.

Boasting a 7 inch screen with a resolution of 800×480, the Ikan VL7, is an adequate tool for both framing and pulling critical focus.  It features both an aspect ratio of 4:3 and 16:9.  I prefer the latter while shooting HDV.

Now as an entry level monitor it doesn’t have too many functions, but it does have a peaking function which is useful for pulling accurate focus.  The other two functions are underscan which I don’t use, and switching between aspect ratios.  You can easily adjust the contrast and brightness with the plus and minus buttons surrounding the menu button.

Overall the Ikan VL7 adequately matches my needs for an external monitor.  I haven’t had a chance to use it in the field yet but I’m happy with what I’ve seen so far while testing its limitations.  I would definitely recommend this item to anybody on a budget that is in the market for an external monitor.

I suppose this should actually be titled, a day and night out at the DC Shorts Film Festival with my girlfriend, but I like the other one better so I’m sticking with it.  If you don’t like it then just stop reading, but seriously please don’t.  For those of you who don’t know, DC Shorts Film Festival is dedicated to showcasing independent short films, now in its 8^th year it has quickly grown to one of the ten largest short film festivals in the country.

My day at DC Shorts began at the E Street Landmark Theatre where they invited film makers to put on free, yes free, filmmaking seminars on various topics.  I attended seminars on Sound Design and Low Budget Filmmaking.  These were both very informative and were taught by Kelley Baker, an accomplished writer/director in his own right.  He is probably better known for his sound design credits, which include many films by Gus Van Sant, and most notably the academy award winning film Good Will Hunting.  You can check out his stuff at his website, angryfilmmaker.com, which is a great resource full of films, podcasts, and books.  Definitely worth checking out if you are into film.

Now the third seminar I attended was actually hosted by Jon Gann, the festival director, and two other festival directors.  This was a very informative seminar where he spoke about film festivals from the other side of things.  It was definitely eye opening and gave me a lot to think about before I submit one of our films for consideration.

Onto the screening, this was also held at the E Street Landmark Theatre here in DC.  The screening was eight short films from all over the world, ranging in length from 2 minutes to 22 minutes, and made on budgets ranging from $500 to $27,000.  I attended Showcase 5 which included the films, First Dates, Blue Night Club, Virus, Salar, Humane Resources, Three Actresses Walk Into a Bathroom…, Gentle Cycle Only, and Cured.  All of the films at the screening I attended were extremely well made with compelling stories.  The screening was packed.  Luckily I made it early enough to get a decent seat.  The ushers continually came to us asking if we could move down to seats that weren’t empty.  Every seat was filled; even the stairs in the aisles had butts on them.   Applause roared after every film ended.

After the screening we made our way to the “Celebrity Party” at Madame Tussauds just a few blocks away.  Madame Tussauds is a wax museum, a very realistic wax museum, remember this for later.  The party was catered by Matchbox I think, honestly the only sponsor I remember was Stella Artois, because they kept handing me free beer, who was I to say no?

It was very funny walking through the museum and seeing a group of people talking and then seeing Denzel Washington standing there listening closely, Tom Cruise smiling uncomfortably, or a drunk guy taking a picture with his hand on Jennifer Lopez’s butt.  I was startled by some of these statues on more than one occasion that night.  I did have the pleasure of speaking to a couple of the filmmakers who were in attendance.  One of which being the Director of one of the films from the screening I attended, Three Actresses Walk into a Bathroom.  She seemed very happy with the turnout and also went on to tell me that this was her first film, which made me feel like crap since we’ve made about 30 crappy ones.

Moving on, overall it was a great night for the film community here in DC.  I look forward to next year’s event.  It was great to see such a big turnout.  It seems the appetite for film in DC is growing, which is a glimmer of hope for all of us in the area.  Hopefully the filmmaking community in DC continues to grow and how could it not with great festivals like DC Shorts happening here every year.

-Matt

For more information go to dcshorts.com

So I’ve been wanting to add a section to go over this stuff for a while now.  You know, to show you all the tools we use to bring you such masterpieces, and to review new things as we add them to our shooting rig.

Well as of now it isn’t anything fancy.

Basically we use a Canon HV30, which is a HD camcorder that produces a great image with a little bit of knowing and practice at a really good price point.  I picked this one up for about $600.  Not too steep in the video world.  I would definitely recommend it to somebody looking to get into video but not wanting the spend all that much money.  The downsides are the lack of physical manual controls and XLR microphone inputs like those on Prosumer cams.  These shortcomings make achieving your visual goals a little bit trickier as you need to go through the menu to control shutter speeds, aperture, white balance, and focus.  Also the lack of XLR inputs means you need an adapter in order to utilize pro microphones.  We currently use a Rode VideoMic, which is a good entry level microphone, and runs about $149.

Those are the most important pieces of equipment we have, other than support and matte boxes.  We a pretty basic set of sticks (tripod) and a shoulder support to make run and gun shooting a little bit easier and steadier.

What’s coming next?

Rode NTG-2 – Pro level shotgun microphone.

Juicedlink – This is a low noise preamp that increases signal to noise ratio as well as creates an XLR input to allow use of pro mics.  This combined with the Rode NTG-2 will definitely increase our sound quality.

Ikan Vh-7 – An external monitor to use to help find critical focus while shooting.

But these are just tools to help tell stories, so make sure that your story is good without dropping a bunch of cash to make a shitty story look good.  Like what we do.

Finish, is that something that we can do?  It’s a question that always seems to arise when we’re trying to film a movie.  It’s much tougher than you’d think.  Sometimes production just doesn’t happen the way you think it will, sometimes people leave the area before we wrap, and sometimes we just lose interest.  This probably explains why we only seem to finish the films that only take us one day to shoot.   But they are more or less a one night stand, fun but not really all that satisfying.  I think I speak for everybody when I say that I want to accomplish something with a little more substance.  Something that afterwards we can look back at it and be proud.  You know something with an actual story.

But anyways that’s not really the point.  The point is that after looking through a bunch of tapes, I found a bunch of old footage from movies that we never finished.  So the first thing I did was edit the footage of a movie that we actually had finished filming, but never ended up editing.  It ended up being Al’s Pizza, which we shot about two years ago with original JFP cast, which includes the recently absent Top Gun Actor, James Ray Clark III.  The man, the myth, the legend.  So check it out and stay tuned as we start finishing everything that we never finished.

-Matt

My last post was titled “The Fire is Relit” and well the fire is relit but hardly burning. Well that’s not really true, we have the desire just can’t seem to finish. Something that my sort of girlfriend may not agree with. Is that too personal? Meh, I don’t really care.

About three months have gone by and we finally finished our most recent film, which by the way is just a fancy word for digital video. Daniel and I have been working on our most recent pretentious installment. As many of you may know our creative minds have churned out such “clever” films as Sole Release, Henry, and Harry Shits His Pants. All internet masterpieces in their own right.

So as the finishing touches were being made on the film, using my trusty Avid Media Composer, which mind you took way too long as after owning the software for over a year I still haven’t quite mastered, we got a little stuck. Not on anything important really though. Not the color correction, not the sequence of clips, not the audio levels, but the all important title. I had originally titled the film “Daydream” and it seemed fitting. However, Daniel was there and the title was not nearly clever enough. It had to be super pretentious, different, and special. It had to reflect the mystified views of the protagonist. Did I say clever? I mean remember we brought you a film titled Sole Release about somebody losing their shoes. Get it?

After quite a bit of deliberation and questions, mostly about how to center a title in the most advanced non-linear editing system on earth, we came to a decision on the title……

……DAEDRYM……Get it? Yes? Fucking awesome, you’re smart. No? Well then one of us is an idiot and honestly it’s probably us.

-Matt

For all three of you that have been checking the website, youtube channel, or facebook page, I would like to personally thank you.  I know it has been a while since we have made any movies or posted anything, but that is going to change.  Or at least that’s the plan.  We are all growing up and getting real jobs so it makes it tougher to dedicate time to filming.  But that doesn’t give us a real excuse, I mean we still have weekends where we can film instead of going out drinking.  And the time to do that is now.

We’ve come a long way in the past five years since we first picked up a camera and put something on the screen.  We went from just hitting record and saying, “Do something” or just doing random shit set to music to actually writing scripts and having actual storylines.  We even began to rehearse some of our stuff.  Although each time we’ve rehearsed we never actually finished filming the movie.  Maybe that’s the problem.  Maybe we got a little ahead of ourselves and took the fun out of it.  We bought fancy HD video cameras and external microphones; and all that really got us was a lot less films that just look and sound better.  Maybe we should just pick up the camera and make a fucking movie without even caring if its good or not.  Maybe we should just start filming again for the same reason we did before, for fun.  Either way I don’t really care how or why we are doing it.  Just that we do.

The fire is relit.  At least for me.  I shouldn’t really speak for everybody else, but I will anyway.  Last weekend I showed some people all of our movies from the beginning to end, all like thirty or so, and after watching them all I want to do is make movies.  Honestly I don’t really care how good or crappy they are.  I mean I do, but if they aren’t great it doesn’t mean we won’t show you them.  You all might as well be there for the journey, you should see our mistakes as well as our triumphs, although I’m not too sure we’ve had one of those yet.  But we’ll keep on trying and hopefully you’ll keep on watching.

-Matt