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109 Post Production

Gonzo_Entertainment

Gonzo_Entertainment

OK, restarting the thread here to use as I move through the post production process. I'm going to start it off with a few production photos.

You guys have heard me refer to this slider before. It's pipe with a bracket for each end that mounts to a combo stand. These are the 8' pipes, we have a 4' set we borrow as well. The pipes just interchange. We are using a set of skate wheels and cheese plate that's part of a rig my friend sells under the brand "filmtoys".

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Rare (for me) use of a Glidecam.

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Three days prior to this, this room was totally empty.

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Here's why you better plan for audio post.

First, I use a lot of original music, one of the trademarks of my films, so that makes this extra long for me. All the songs were selected and written, in some cases enough rough cut recordings made before the film was shot, so we aren't starting from scratch. I'd say my Sound guy/composer probably has in the neighborhood of 40 hours in the opening theme alone. That's taking the rough music, arranging it to fit perfectly with the opening sequence, recording the real string trio (violin, viola, cello), and mixing it (still has to be re-mastered of course). The other three songs which are more "practical" in nature are all written and partially recorded, but still pending final recording and re-mastering.

We spent 6 hours yesterday recording all the fake TV bits for a sequence where the protag is channel surfing. They still have to be mastered and "worldized"

Tonight we have a 4 hour ADR session scheduled. All the dialogue recorded outside the motel room is basically trash, too much HVAC hum from the other rooms. We'll probably need another two or three hour session to complete it.

He hasn't even started on foley which will be very extensive. We generally foley every single sound in the film, every footstep, every door knob turn. He'll have many long days of working until 5:00 PM and then doing foley until 1:00 or 2:00 AM in his future.

We locked video yesterday, and want to be finished by the end of August. Four weeks is a very tight timeline to complete sound, but we'll get it done. Luckily titles, VFX (minor like smoothing some glidecam) and color correction can run concurrently thank god.

By the time all is said and done there will probaly be a couple hundred man hours in the sound for a 12 minute movie.
 
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Great stuff Gonzo. Is this the wrong thread to ask about that slider setup of yours? Looks like maybe 2" pipe. Nice that it goes into the combos, though I can't quite tell what you are using to attach. Are they on the pop-up baby pin or dropped into the, er, part I don't remember the name of. :D

Looks like the standard sort of "skateboard wheels on angle iron" setup that I see on DIY PVC track dollies, or is the design slightly different?

Trying to decide on a slider design. I like the option of having the longer pieces. Come to think of it, is that just some speed rail? :lol:

Hats off to your DP on the bare bulb shot. Love it.

Same goes to your art team.

That is a tough window situation. Not sure if having a roll of rosco scrim would have helped. Might have been good for another stop. It's ludicrously overpriced though. One of these days I'm going to find a company that makes what is essentially the same material for bus graphics and the like and hopefully discover it is vastly cheaper out of industry.
 
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David.rhsc said:
Great stuff Gonzo. Is this the wrong thread to ask about that slider setup of yours? Looks like maybe 2" pipe. Nice that it goes into the combos, though I can't quite tell what you are using to attach. Are they on the pop-up baby pin or dropped into the, er, part I don't remember the name of. :D

Looks like the standard sort of "skateboard wheels on angle iron" setup that I see on DIY PVC track dollies, or is the design slightly different?

Trying to decide on a slider design. I like the option of having the longer pieces. Come to think of it, is that just some speed rail? :lol:

Hats off to your DP on the bare bulb shot. Love it.

Same goes to your art team.

That is a tough window situation. Not sure if having a roll of rosco scrim would have helped. Might have been good for another stop. It's ludicrously overpriced though. One of these days I'm going to find a company that makes what is essentially the same material for bus graphics and the like and hopefully discover it is vastly cheaper out of industry.
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Caveat, not a grip, so my terminology is pretty iffy as well.

I think it is speed rail, though you could make one out of regular 2" pipe pretty easily. It's borrowed from a union grip who is a friend of my DP. He loans it to us every time we shoot. He's got about 4 sets in his garage. Each end is a bracket with a hole for each of the two pipes. A hex bolt is used to lock the rails in place. Between the two pipes is a round extension thing that points downward. This downward pointing thingy, drops right into the doo hicky hole on top of the combo stand. You can also filip it upside down, so now the bottom is flat and rest the rig on sandbacgs/apple boxes if you want a very low shot.

My DP sells a rig under the name "filmtoys". It's basically a couple of pieces of cheese plate and a bunch of bolts and attachments that let you configure it in a bunch of different ways, very much like an erector set. It builds into a very nice handheld rig actually. We used it for that as well. Since it's based on cheese plate, you can also mount a tripod head to the top, then on the bottom mount an optional set of skateboard wheels he sells and use it on speed rails as we did here.

That shot of the lightbulb has been there since my first draft story boards. he did execute it pretty well. Swapped the existing bulb out for a clear 15 watt to make the shot work.
 
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ROC said:
@Gonzo, did the ADR turn out ok?

Need any help or advice? ADR is one of my specialties.
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Thanks Roc, I appreciate it.

It went pretty well actually. We still have one actor to go, but 2/3 done. Almost half of it was lines either in very wide shots or where the character was facing away from the camera, etc.. Only a couple where they were in CU and the sync to their lips had to be spot on. If my sound guy needs some advice on massaging it to make it fit even better I will let you know for sure.

Not sure what your experience is, but one actor did better looking at the video, and one actor did better looking at the blown up wave form of their voice. Whatever works right.
 
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Hey, no problem. Glad it went well. I know the headache of bad ADR and not getting it in the can perfectly very well.

My experience is (and I think there are tips in other threads I wrote with guru Alcove) that I have the actor listen to what he did before on the day and mimic it after.

I play him the line, he immediately says it again. Play it, say it, play it, say it, play it, say it, practically on a loop record.

Inevitably when playing back a whole paragraph it won't be PERFECT unless you're a singer or have an extremely good sense of musical timing or rhythm as well as matching pitch and musical phrases. For a long monologue I play them the whole paragraph so they see it in context, and then I play back bits of sentences - no more than 5 seconds at a time - and then I overlap the next one with the previous section so I have a cut-in point. I don't know about the skill of the recordist to do this sort of thing but I've gotten to a point where I can read a waveform like a book. I can look at it in Pro Tools and tell you what word is which and I just match up the ADR to the guidetrack in Pro Tools on another track and I know it will match the picture perfectly because it's synced to the original dialogue.

And I record mostly without the picture. Of course we refer to the picture if we need to but I don't want the actor to concentrate on watching the picture and trying to say it at the same time as the picture because their attention is lost on the delivery of the line I've found. If the guy is a pro and he's done it for years and wants to do it with the picture, fine, I do it with the picture for him and it sometimes works fine. But anyone who doesn't have that much experience I have found this mimicking technique to be the fastest way to a good product.

I always ask if the actor sings or plays an instrument. That gives me a ballpark of their ability to match and mimic.

It comes down to being able to mimic and repeat something perfectly duplicated again with the same intensity and believability.

Head gestures and hand movements and body language MUST be matched in the booth or it won't sound and look good together when synced up - I've spent a lot of time riding volume and pushing emphasis where the actor didn't do it in ADR and sometimes cut in the original track for a few words and/or syllables. Sure, you can just have the guy say it sitting down or being static, but in my experience the more the actor moves the way he moved on screen it sounds that much more believable. Even the slight head dip or looking downward can make the difference on an ADR line because the mic will be slightly off axis and you'll hear that if not just subliminally and it will make it all the better and believable. I've even had an actor start in the corner of the room and walk toward the mic as he was saying his line because that's what he did on set and the mic didn't follow him.

Also, always have a backing track or a wild track of ambience in the area where the scene is because you can be fooled by acoustically dead ADR in that it might not sound good by itself but it totally works and is sufficient when the rest of the soundtrack is there - if even a small room tone or a beach wave wash or a restaurant chatter track depending on the scene's environment.
 
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Thanks. Yeah it's a whole different ball game than any other recording techniques. Getting a convincing track can seem easy but it really takes some skill to get it right so the audience doesn't have attention on it. Hence the ADR jokes of the industry..
 
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Audio grinds on. recorded my vocals for our faux band "Sweater Vest" that we usually include in our films. It's playing on a cheap clock radio in the motel lobby in one scene. It's a bit of a cross between AC/DC and Foghat called "Ride the Bobcat". This is one of 3 complete original songs in the film (you don't hear the whole song, but we recorded the whole song), plus all the incidental music. After watching the final edit with rough cuts of the music (like synth strings instead of the real string trio we use) it completely transforms the movie. That's why no trailer, teaser, etc... yet. Everything waiting on final music.
 
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This press release went out to local media today, along with a copy of the poster.
thought it might serve as a decent example of one. In my experience smaller papers will often run a release verbatim if it's well written.


For Immediate Release
Murfreesboro, Tennessee Filmmaker Nathan Fisher Premieres New Film 109

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—8/23/11

Announcing the world premiere of writer/director Nathan Fisher’s third locally produced short film, 109.
109 tracks the bizarre steps taken by a deeply disturbed loner totally controlled by his obsessions. He may have found a salve for his tortured mind, but at what cost? It features a talented cast of experienced performers as well as the film debut of Murfreesboro resident Rob MacLaney, 109 delves into the unexpected horror of the everyday.

Shot on location in Murfreesboro, Lebanon, and McMinnville, Tennessee, 109 is Gonzo Entertainment’s most ambitious effort to bridge high production value with low budget film-making. The cast and seasoned crew have succeeded in telling a simple story that still contains tremendous depth and will definitely leave audiences talking.109 also features an original soundtrack by Murfreesboro musicians including John McGhee, Jonathon Nash, Lars Hall, and Kenny Johnson.

This premiere will be on Friday September 16th at The Boro Bar and Grill located at 1211 Greenland Drive Murfreesboro, TN. The screening begins at 9:00 PM and will also feature a screening of Gonzo Entertainment’s award winning 2010 release, The Island, along with other selected locally produced short films. Admission is $5 and The Boro is 21 and up.

The Island is currently completing its successful festival run with a screening at the 2011 H.P Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland Oregon. It has previously screened at The World Science Fiction Convention, The Phoenix Film Festival, The Dam Short Film Festival, The Las Vegas Media Xpo, The River’s Edge Film Festival as well as numerous others.

Nathan Fisher has been a fixture in the Murfreesboro arts and music scene for over 20 years. Perhaps best known as the frontman for seminal Murfreesboro punk rock band Doctor Gonzo, he is also the voice of the Nashville Rollergirls.

Mr. Fisher is available for interviews upon request.
Contact:
Gonzo Entertainment
Nathan Fisher
615-XXX-XXXX (removed my number for public posting)
gonzomotionpictures@gmail.com
 
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Good grief....

Audio guy took his work with him on the road this weekend. He plugged a different interface in to Sonar (his small traveling one) and it caused him to lose the entire mix. When he got back home to his full sized interface it no longer recognized anything. He has to re-render all the tracks and re-mix. Thank god he didn't lose everything as he thought he had originally. Needless to say he got a good talking to from me about "Wait, you mean you aren't backing the entire project up to an external drive after everytime you work on it!"

It's Wednesday 9/7. The premiere of the film is Friday 9/16. That's 9 days for him to clean up this mess, send the files to the editor in california via yousendit. The editor then has to put it on his time line and do all his rendering and authoring and mail me the physical disks and the hard drive. It looks like there is some expensive overnight mail from California in my future.

people wonder why Producers get ulcers...
 
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Kholi said:
And, why it costs so much to hire certain types of experience on productions. =P

It'll get sorted, though. Are you going to do a private link when it's all done? Would love to check it out.
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Yeah, when it's complete I'll put it up password protected on vimeo and provide the password on request.

The idea that he wasn't saving prior versions he could revert to on an external drive blew my mind.
I am limited in the amount of complaing I can do. He is the co executive producer. I put up 90% of the money, but he has recorded 6 songs including 3 with full blown bands, done all the foley, recorded all the ADR, etc... etc... probably in the ballpark of 100 to 150 hours of work on this film at a budget cost of exactly zero.
 
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Film Threat said:
The end twist winds up being a perverse excuse for a bad pun
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I don't recall any pun, good or bad, at the very end. I do recall feeling a little cheated by the sudden conclusion. When I get to watch it again, I'll really pay attention to this. Maybe this overlooked pun was the satisfaction I was looking for.

It's an excellent film overall. :cool:

Are you still waiting on any bigger fests?
 
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Zensteve said:
I don't recall any pun, good or bad, at the very end. I do recall feeling a little cheated by the sudden conclusion. When I get to watch it again, I'll really pay attention to this. Maybe this overlooked pun was the satisfaction I was looking for.

It's an excellent film overall. :cool:

Are you still waiting on any bigger fests?
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There actually is a bit of a "pun" at the end. You'll get it when you watch again.

Yes, the main one being Nashville who I should hear from by Wednesday. If I don't get in there I may go ahead and put it online. Still waiting on Fresno, Maryland, a couple more, but about ready to say screw it. It's such a weird film I don't think I have much hope.
 
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Sorry about ruining the hotel pool for you... me and some friends thought it'd be fun to swim in beer, and they took away all pool privileges.


Great stills by the way (except the pool)
 
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