Leap

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Backstory:
I've completed three independent feature films, plus countless shorts and adverts. My first feature was a no budget slasher I shot in 2007 for a budget of $600 called "Wulf". It played a few festivals and then I buried it, considering it my trunk novel. In 2009, I turned my back on horror and decided to be the Christian I considered myself to be. I still wanted to make movies and had an idea to combine parkour and the last days into a movie that was ultimately called "Leap".
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I shot it in 2009 on MiniDV (a Canon ZR800) for a budget of $200. I spent three months teaching my actors parkour and they did most of their own stunts. It screened at a local theater and we sold 200 DVDs. Let's be honest though- it's bad. My heart was in the right place, wanting to share what I was finding in my own personal Bible studies with the rest of the world, but it was poorly executed.
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In 2010, I made the sequel, "Leap: Rise of the Beast". It was the first feature film shot on a Canon Rebel T2i and we only had the kit lens. The budget was $2000 and continued the story I began in the first film: a group of college kids trying to save the world while the Vatican hunts them down. My goal was to make a Christian version of the Bourne series. We had a theatrical screening for it, sold 100 DVDs and then I stuck it on YouTube in 2012 and it now has over 1.5 million views and has made over $10,000 over the past ten years. Most of that money has gone toward purchasing better equipment because hey, tax write-offs :)
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Immediately after Leap 2 came out, I wanted to do something different before finishing the story. So I wrote a supernatural Christian thriller but everyone kept begging me to do Leap 3 next instead. I caved and wrote the script called "Leap: Revelation". It picked up in the middle of Leap 2, followed a new parkour crew and took us to the end of the world. The only thing stopping me from shooting it was the financing. I figured that I'd need $20,000 to do the movie on a "low-budget" while paying for actors and a few key crew members. Unfortunately I never raised the funds.

The past ten years saw me being homeless, getting a dream job as a VFX supervisor, losing everything I owned (including my dog) in a house fire, rebuilding my life, getting a wife, a new dog, and moving back to Montana. Now I run my own production studio called Pyro Studios and I feel like I'm at a point where I want to revisit this material again. I've grown a lot as a person and as a filmmaker and finally feel like now is the time. I've been keeping a production journal on my computer and I'll be sharing that here.

I hope it is useful and I welcome you all along this journey.

-Chris

Ten Years Difference
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You really have to love how far computers have come. It's currently 12:45pm here in Montana, and I've rendered a shot from Nuke, added a quick film grain to the entire movie, exported the whole film and am currently burning it to blu ray to watch with my actor this weekend. All of that in just a few hours! Last time I did this, my movie export took two days and another day to make the blu ray. I'm floored.
It is so much less painful that it was 10 years ago, lol. I remember once I tried to render a boat pitching on some waves for 10 seconds in 2012. It locked up my computer for six days and when it finished rendering the shot was unusable.

Some people say that It's the end of an era for indie filmmaking, and I definitely understand why they say that, But I also think that on the other side of the coin it's actually day one for an entirely new era of indie filmmaking, and one with what feels like unlimited potential.
 
It is so much less painful that it was 10 years ago, lol. I remember once I tried to render a boat pitching on some waves for 10 seconds in 2012. It locked up my computer for six days and when it finished rendering the shot was unusable.

Some people say that It's the end of an era for indie filmmaking, and I definitely understand why they say that, But I also think that on the other side of the coin it's actually day one for an entirely new era of indie filmmaking, and one with what feels like unlimited potential.
Was that in Tsunami? I had a client around that time that wanted a wine bottle floating in the ocean and that Red Giant plugin was the best thing I could find at the time and it still looked horrible.

I would agree that things have changed for us, as far as indie filmmaking goes. The market is saturated, while at the same time, there's less interest in indie films in general. That said, I think that the tools and the power that we have today will allow some really cool voices to break through the noise and hopefully find success.
 
Speaking of tools and power, just found another one today! Meet Cinecred https://cinecred.com/
It's basically an open source knock-off of Endcrawl. Sure, you'll have to find your own brand logos to add, but it's free as opposed to Endcrawl where credits cost as much as a small feature or short! I've been messing with it and I think I'm going to use it for my credits. The final result is very smooth and modern looking. You can have images, columns, even insert video clips like in "The Fall Guy". Best part is that it is Win/Mac/Linux. You just need a spreadsheet application to add the data (I'm using Numbers and exporting to .xlsx), but Excel or LibreOffice Calc would work just fine too.

Now if only someone could code a knock-off of Movie Magic Scheduling and Budgeting...
 
Yes! I'm always surprised this hasn't happened yet. Maybe budgets & schedules just aren't sexy enough :)
I feel like the Budgeting app would be fairly easy for someone to take LibreOffice Calc and incorporate it since we've been using spreadsheets for budgets for years and years. I even have a custom budget sheet in my "GodDoc" that tracks VFX, cast and crew, and other things.

The Scheduling one I have no clue about. I'm not a coder, but my guess would be some sort of database to store the data (locations, characters, props, eighths, etc...) and a basic calendar to drag and drop things. I know everyone loves strip boards, but I REALLY like using the calendar in MM Scheduling. I get a God's eye view of the production, I can see my eighths, estimated shoot time, and all that.


Back in the day, the standalone Celtx app had this function, so I know it's not impossible. I also know it was built off of Mozilla framework back then, so maybe Thunderbird was the base?

In any case, I don't code and have no desire to do so, so I guess it's just a pipe dream for now 😞
 
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The Scheduling one I have no clue about. I'm not a coder, but my guess would be some sort of database to store the data (locations, characters, props, eighths, etc...) and a basic calendar to drag and drop things. I know everyone loves strip boards, but I REALLY like using the calendar in MM Scheduling. I get a God's eye view of the production, I can see my eighths, estimated shoot time, and all that.

For our four-day-four-night festival, with about two dozen "departments" requiring fairly detailed scheduling over six weeks we use ...

...

...

a basic spreadsheet. :shocked:

The key to it is that our one production assistant has the God's eye view and the keys to the Pearly Gates. They make the necessary changes as and when fresh information becomes available; everyone else can see what's planned, but is not allowed fiddle with it!

It helps, too, that there's a lot of continuity from one year to the next, so lessons get learnt and details refined. I was impressed to see that for my department, without any specific input on my part this year, there were sources and delivery times noted for the sixty-odd tables that we'd need - and they all turned up as expected.
 
For our four-day-four-night festival, with about two dozen "departments" requiring fairly detailed scheduling over six weeks we use ...

...

...

a basic spreadsheet. :shocked:

The key to it is that our one production assistant has the God's eye view and the keys to the Pearly Gates. They make the necessary changes as and when fresh information becomes available; everyone else can see what's planned, but is not allowed fiddle with it!

It helps, too, that there's a lot of continuity from one year to the next, so lessons get learnt and details refined. I was impressed to see that for my department, without any specific input on my part this year, there were sources and delivery times noted for the sixty-odd tables that we'd need - and they all turned up as expected.
I guess my problem with the spreadsheet approach is just the way my brain works. I NEED to see a typical calendar and everything laid out on that. What makes MM so great is that I also get my total pages and estimated shoot time right there too. I have ONE page that I can print and stick on the back of my shooting script to see what's coming down the pipe. I can see how strip boards are nice on a larger production with many departments, but right now when it's basically just me, that calendar is nice.

I had an audition yesterday for an angel that I need for the reshoot of the final scene. His name is Liam and he's the son of John, who played Hank. He's got the right look, and actually didn't do too bad. I hit record on the camera and then acted opposite him, so I still need to review the footage and see how he looks on screen, but I'm hopeful.
 
I spent some time with Cinecred today and kicked out what *should* be the final end credits. Once you get the hang of how the spreadsheet stuff works, it's pretty fast. The best part is how professional they look with minimal work. I have headings for things like Cast, Crew, Special Thanks, and depending on how you tag an element, you can have nice columns and bullet points. I found some brand logos that I wanted to include at the end and they slotted in easily by following the example cell data.

Once I had the sheet filled up the way I wanted, I told Cinecred what size and frame rate to use, and then chose an export codec. Exporting at ProRes222 on my MacBook Air takes around 15 seconds at 2048x858, 24fps. I moved it over to my editing computer and dropped it in. Looks legit!
 
I went and saw Alien: Romulus today. Karissa didn't want to go, so I went alone and had the entire theater to myself. The movie wasn't bad, but the sound mix could have been more immersive.

Last week I upgraded my music software from Mixcraft 8 to Mixcraft 10. It was only thirty bucks, so hard to say no to that. My film scoring template with all the instruments I use opened like a charm. As a bonus, the upgrade include some new loops so I set out testing those first and created two tracks. The first is for the opening titles where Blake is working out. My temp track was from the movie "Brink!" so I had a lot of fun creating that late 90's-early 2000's punk sound. I also created a loop based track for a dinner scene where they have music in the background. Temp track was "Hotel California"

Today I wrote a rough version of the love theme that I'm using for the wedding scene. It's loosely based on Crystal's Theme from Leap 2, which in turn was based on a theme from Bourne Supremacy.
 
I upgraded to Mixcraft 10 from 9 and I like the interface - it seems a bit slicker. Mixcraft is so easy to work with, but I bought Davinci Resolve Studio and might play around with the Fairlight audio component if it isn't too steep a learning curve. Have you ever used it? Like to know what you think if you have.
 
Today I wrote a rough version of the love theme that I'm using for the wedding scene. It's loosely based on Crystal's Theme from Leap 2, which in turn was based on a theme from Bourne Supremacy.
Nice! One thing I've used in several wedding scenes is Pachelbel's Canon in D Major, which my husband calls the "song that plays right before the bride walks down the aisle."

It only works if you have friends who are musicians and willing to record themselves in exchange for a credit but it has the advantage of being something long off copyright but that people recognize even when they can't name it.
 
I upgraded to Mixcraft 10 from 9 and I like the interface - it seems a bit slicker. Mixcraft is so easy to work with, but I bought Davinci Resolve Studio and might play around with the Fairlight audio component if it isn't too steep a learning curve. Have you ever used it? Like to know what you think if you have.
I really like it too. Very modern. I've been using Mixcraft since version 4 and it's come a long way. I love the Fairlight page in Resolve! I'm using it to mix the entire film. You can bus tracks and all that stuff. I also like have access to my sound effects library from right in the program.
 
Nice! One thing I've used in several wedding scenes is Pachelbel's Canon in D Major, which my husband calls the "song that plays right before the bride walks down the aisle."

It only works if you have friends who are musicians and willing to record themselves in exchange for a credit but it has the advantage of being something long off copyright but that people recognize even when they can't name it.
Good to know! The wedding in this film is just a private ceremony, so I'm really just looking for a nice theme to underscore the scene.
 
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I really like it too. Very modern. I've been using Mixcraft since version 4 and it's come a long way. I love the Fairlight page in Resolve! I'm using it to mix the entire film. You can bus tracks and all that stuff. I also like have access to my sound effects library from right in the program.
Cool! I've used Mixcraft forever, too...I think I might even have started with the first version! I'm looking forward to using Fairlight, though. I'm just starting to get a vague idea of everything Resolve can do (right now I'm deep into the Fusion page and its nodes) but will jump into the audio soon.
 
Cool! I've used Mixcraft forever, too...I think I might even have started with the first version! I'm looking forward to using Fairlight, though. I'm just starting to get a vague idea of everything Resolve can do (right now I'm deep into the Fusion page and its nodes) but will jump into the audio soon.
The Fusion page is great, though I still prefer Nuke. That said, I've done a bunch of videos on my YouTube channel about Fusion, so let me know if you ever have questions or run into any hangups :) Now that I think about it, I did actually do four shots in Fusion for this film. Three green screens of a news reporter, and one shot where I had an extension cord in the shot that I needed removed. It was just faster to do it in Fusion than go through the pain of exporting .exrs and all that for Nuke!
 
Spent the past few days cranking out more music and I'm making good progress. The other day I was contacted by a fan of the first two films that runs an online radio show with thousands of listeners. He and I have been in touch over the last ten or so years off and on. In any case, he just saw my teaser that I released last fall and wants to have me on his show to talk about the movie. That got me thinking, "I really need to get a press kit together", so I've spent the past couple days working on that too. I also wrote up a press release to send to our local papers out here. Theoretically, we could be just over a month out from having this done and ready to premiere - which is super exciting!

I'm also starting on a new trailer, something that tells slightly more than the teaser I did last year just after wrapping. That one came pretty easy, but I'm having a hard time cutting this new one. I've got a great music track, lots of great images, and a better sense of the final film, but choosing what to include and what not is proving to be a challenge now.
 
I haven't made this available to the masses yet, but wanted to get some feedback from people here first. This is what I've come up with for the new trailer. I think there's a few VFX shots that I'd like to touch up, and I might try having the trailer tell more of the story, rather than just be a montage of shots. At the end of the day, I'm realizing that I'm not much of a trailer editor. If I had the budget, I would totally hire someone to do this.
 
With the disclaimer that I'm TERRIBLE at trailers, a few thoughts.

The images are great - really. I do think it would benefit from trying to tell a bit more of the story, perhaps a little bit more lighter stuff at the beginning (kids on monkey bars are great) building toward tenser moments. Perhaps the "I don't know honey" woman could come right after the young woman "the answers might be in here"?

Also the early music feels a bit intense. Maybe a bit lighter earlier and build it up?

Again, it LOOKS great but just feels like it could use a bit more emotional build, whether or not you decide to tell a bit more of the story.
 
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