Mo cap?

Wednesday I flew down to Texas for a motion capture shoot for a key scene in the Mad Scotsman’s story, that will also be the backbone of the story trailer!

This is the first time I’ve ever directed mo-cap. As with most motion capture shoots, we already had edited audio — I recorded one actor in London, and another in Toronto. Now we needed to give arms and legs to those voices.

So motion capture is a bit like dance. My job was choreographing the movements and gestures that are supposed to sell the emotions in the voices. I had a general idea of where the actors could move in the imaginary space we’d already built. On the mo-cap stage, I worked with the actors to express the characters they were there to inhabit. The mad Scotsman is big in all senses of the word. The other person in the scene is a British aristocrat who measures her every move.

But it’s not just gestures. As I was working with the actors, at a couple of points we’d rehearsed a scene to the point where the two actors were getting everything right; but I wasn’t feeling it yet.

In one case I realized that the other party was just sort of hanging out with our mad Scotsman; I needed to tell the actress playing her that she had something urgent she needed to do elsewhere. Suddenly the scene woke up. It’s funny, because exactly none of her gestures changed. But now, I felt it.

In the other case, I hadn’t given the actress her intention. She was saying stuff to the mad Scotsman; but she wasn’t trying to convince him. The actress didn’t know the character’s “verb”. And again, not a gesture changed, but as soon as I gave her an intention for her character, the whole scene came alive.

I find the two most powerful questions I can ask about a scene, whether it’s written, or recorded, or edited, or mo-capped are: do I believe it? And, do I care? If I can get both answers to yes, I think we end up with something pretty neat.

Rest of the team's reporthere

The Director's Intuition

Very few books about screenwriting or directing make a serious effort to crystallize the knowledge that most screenwriters or directors know. In the CRAFTY books, I tried to crystallize what I know about screenwriting. What I find in Judith Weston's DIRECTOR'S INTUITION is a serious attempt to crystallize what film directors know. Specifically the book is about how to develop your director's intuition: what you know at a subliminal level, how you tell when an actor is bringing truth versus indicating, how you get an actor to bring his truth rather than just pretending.

The book is dense and kind of scattered. It's not a method and it's not a how-to. Possibly this is because Ms. Weston is an accomplished actress and acting teacher, not, in fact, a director. But she busts out legitimate insights -- hers and others -- at a furious rate. I would read this for the many nuggets of truth, each of which is worth a think. It's much like spending a week chatting with an accomplished actor and teacher in a country house. Every few minutes she says something that took a lifetime to learn.

The important caveat to reading any book about the arts is there is little point to reading passively. I try to make my own books as transparent as possible. You ought to be able to read it and get what I'm talking about. But to really have an idea what I'm talking about, you have to be writing. The best books crystallize what you are seeing -- they allow you to see a pattern in what you've already observed at some level. You can't learn to dance from reading a book. You can learn to dance by dancing, and improve your technique by dipping into a book.

In Ms. Weston's book, she says a lot of things I know already. Those are lessons I've already crystallized. She probably says a lot of deep things I didn't even notice, because I don't have the knowledge to crystallize. What jump out at me are the occasional insights that connect things I've seen but haven't paid enough attention to yet.

In other words, the book rewards rereading as you are directing or acting.

I would still like to read a book I call, in my head, CRAFTY FILM DIRECTING. That would be a soup-to-nuts method for directing, with chapters on finding material, analyzing material, casting, prepping, directing actors, directing camera, managing a crew, directing the editing, directing the sound and directing the soundtrack. John Badham has a fine book about directing actors (I'LL BE IN MY TRAILER). I've seen books on directing on a budget (REBEL WITHOUT A CREW). But I've never seen anything on how to approach reading a script, or how to talk to a composer, or where to let the soundtrack go silent. You're just supposed to know these things. Since I'm not a film director, I don't feel qualified to write the book myself.

Oh, and there'd be a chapter or two on managing your film career, along the lines of the career chapters in CRAFTY SCREENWRITING and CRAFTY TV WRITING.

What's the most influential book on screenwriting or filmmaking that you've read?

Controllable Situations

I see that John August's new movie, THE NINES, is out.

August is a top Hollywood screenwriter. But notice what he chooses as his feature directorial debut. The film takes place entirely in a house -- in fact, in his house. It is made of three vignettes involving the same three actors. In other words, it is an entirely controllable shooting situation. No car chases, no explosions, one location, three actors. It's a chamber piece.

He could probably have directed a more ambitious movie, just by writing a hot script and attaching himself. But he's wise enough to start small. (I see he also directed a comedy short nine years ago.)

If you're a writer looking to direct, look at the feature debuts of big name writers. Billy Wilder started with a little piece of fluff called THE MAJOR AND THE MINOR, which I think takes place mostly on a train. (Which, of course, means on a train set in the studio.) Stephen Soderburgh's SEX LIES AND VIDEOTAPE takes place mostly in two houses.

The more controllable your script is, the more likely people are to let you direct it; and the more likely you are to do a good job with it.

Sneak Preview

A bunch of people have asked me how my sneak preview of my short went. Hmmm, how should I answer that? The audience laughed, so that's good. And people came up and said nice things afterwards. And a short film distributor sounded interested.

On the other hand, I was hoping they'd laugh more! There are a few things in the film I find terribly funny that the audience didn't quite laugh at.

(Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.)

I'm not sure the audience knew 100% what to make of it. I could have directed the same script much broader, anywhere up to Kids in the Hall over-the-top. I went for a subtle, naturalistic kind of humor where you recognize the characters and situations, from your own life. I think that would probably work better in a longer film, where the audience has time to figure out what the tone is. The audience needs to know they're supposed to laugh.

The short aired in a block of shorts that were mostly not actually comedies. It's easier to keep people laughing than to get them laughing.

I also could have stuck a little more expo in the film. There's enough to tell you what's going on, but only if you know that you're supposed to be paying attention, and until maybe halfway through, you don't necessarily realize that all the story lines are interweaving, so you might have not been picking up all the info that's there. In a five and a half minute film, I didn't think that I would have to remind the audience what went on in previous scenes; but I ought to have referred to the previous scenes a little more clearly.

For example, in an early scene, a Texan steps on Dave's foot, and Dave apologizes. Five scenes later, Dave is at a dinner party saying, "So I stopped him, and I told him, hey, maybe you can go around stepping on people's toes wherever you come from, but that kind of behavior is unacceptable here." It would have killed me to have Dave start with, "And he stepped right on my foot!"

Likewise, I was a little too clever in some of my dialog, pursuing that naturalistic style. For example, if you pay attention, you realize towards the end of Jenny and Buster's scene what exactly Jenny is mad about: Buster has sent naked pictures of Jenny to her best friend, who is also named Jenny. ("You know how email can be!")

But you have to figure it out. And that cuts into the laughter.

So I was a little subtle. And subtle doesn't get the laughs. It gets the chuckles.

It's nice to get laughs.

In some ways you have to put more expo into a short film. A long film has time to set up its tone and its rules and its world, and then play with them. That takes about five minutes, or just when I'm rolling credits.

Or you could be not so bloody ambitious. You could not have eight characters and nine locations and ten scenes in five bloody minutes!

Anyway, those are my complaints at myself, because I'm picky.

Mostly, I'm really happy with how the film turned out. The actors are brilliant. The rhythm is great. The music is terrific. (Though because of a mixing problem, you couldn't hear half of it. That, we can fix.) I think the film is entirely successful for what I was trying to do. It's a style that would translate really well into the feature I want to direct. I got people to laugh without having to make the actors mug for the camera.

I just want them to laugh more, damn them!

So that's how my screening went. Probably really successfully! I think it was one of the better short films there. But don't ask me. I'm the writer-director. You tell me how it went. What I'm focusing on is how I could have done it differently, and better...

Dozen Done

We finished TWELVE WAYS TO SAY I'M SORRY today. Whee!

And not a week too soon. We'll be sneak previewing next Friday, at the Comedia Festival in Montreal. We're airing in an hour of Bravo!FACT shorts at 5 pm at Monument National (1182 St. Laurent) next Friday. There will be yummies afterwards, and you can meet Judy Gladstone, who runs the Bravo!FACT program. Seating is first come first served.

Come see it!

Sound Editing

Spent a few hours with a sound guy doing the sound editing on my short. He had a lot of proposed audio slotted in -- stings and whooshes, background noises, ambient sounds. I spent a couple hours responding to them -- this one I liked, this one is no good, this one needs to be less swishy and more whooshy. And we did some fun little audio gags, like where the film freeze-frames, letting the score slow down to a halt, rather than just cutting out.

What amazes me is that this all took about two hours. Based on his amazing speed while I was in the room with him, I'm going to guess all the sound editing on this film will take up maybe eight hours.

I spent three months building the sound on my student film back in the day, cutting and splicing bits of mag film. Sure, that was a longer film, but man! Just to take the soundtrack-slows-down gag I mentioned -- that we did in about a minute. In my student days I would have had to set up a tape recorder, then played back the soundtrack on another tape player, and then physically slowed it down. Then dub that to mag film. Then splice it in. And if that didn't work, doing it again.

I'm feeling very good about the film. Some of the sound problems I thought were going to be serious just went away. ("Oh yeah, the bar upstairs was only on the boom mike track, not the wireless mikes. So we just used the wireless mikes.") While sound guys are always bitching that directors ignore their complaints on set ("we'll fix it in post"), my impression is that I could have ignored our sound guy a little more. He was doing a better job than he realized.

Tomorrow we're going into the mix. End of the day, our film is ... done!

UPDATE:

Q. And then what?

Then we take it to a billion festivals. And air it on Bravo in Canada. And see if any networks in the States want it.

Eventually it will hopefully wind up on Moviola, or some other paying short film venue on the Net. And y'all can see it!

Funny, Not Funny

One of the hardest things in editing a comedy is to trust that the jokes you laughed at originally are still funny. After you've seen a joke ten, twenty times, you start stressing about the delivery, about the cinematography, the choreography, and everything else. And then you want to cut the joke.

It's important to remember your original reactions, so that you can remind yourself that yes, this is funny. The most dangerous thing is to start cutting things that seem obvious or boring or unfunny to you after you've lost all taste for them. You may find yourself cutting the meat.

Rough Cut

I saw my rough cut last night. I was pretty sure the film would hold together, because I knew the script did. I was not too worried about whether it would all cut together because I had coverage for all but one scene, and a framing device I could always go back to it. My big question was running time. I had a 7 1/2 page script and a hard 6 minute limit from BravoFACT! I did my best during the shoot to keep the actors from getting pause-y, and 45 seconds a page is not unreasonable if you keep a sense of urgency in the scenes.

I was really happy in the event to see that the rough cut came in at 6 minutes exactly. We'll be trimming from there, so we won't be in the awkward position of wanting to do a 6 minute cut for Bravo and a longer, funnier festival cut.

Simon Webb, our editor, one of the best in Quebec, did a really great job. Not only does the cut move well. He also introduced some freeze frames and wipes that really add to the rhythm and tell the story more clearly. My notes were on the order of "hold on his reaction a hair longer" and "I think there might have been a take where Nick did this really funny thing..." and "trim the second sentence there, we don't need it." It's such a pleasure to work with crafty professionals.

I'm looking forward to seeing anothe cut this evening. I just couldn't be happier with the film. The actors are just brilliant -- human and real and even touching while saying some utterly ludicrous things.

Okay, I do have one quibble. The Red Rock M2 depth of field adapter threw anything that was not in the middle of the frame into soft focus. My fault for being too nervous to watch the dailies until the end of Day 2. (I did ask various people to check, and they told me everything was fine. As Ronald Reagan said, "Trust, but verify.") Either we put it on wrong, or it's crap. I don't think the softness will hurt the piece -- our exteriors look fine, and for the last day I yanked the adapter. It's only really annoying to me in two shots, and I doubt the audience will care.

But that is a quibble. I am thrilled with the results, and I hope you'll get to see the finished film at a festival near you some time this year.

Da Film Is Okey Dokey

We got our last shot last night, except for one greenscreen shot we're going to do in studio with one actor on Tuesday morning. The film is in the can! If by can you mean a variety of hard drives and memory cards.

I think it's pretty neat that all the takes for a film can fit on a laptop. You really could cut a whole film on your laptop.

I'm thrilled with the footage we got. Our actors were brilliant. And professional. And fun. A million thanks to Alison Darcy for recommending so many of them. We had technical difficulties with our equipment, but the cast never let the crew's fussing get in the way of delivering funny and yet emotionally truthful performances. And I have to thank the cast for being so damn funny. One one of the takes last night I literally wound up rolling on the floor laughing.

I have to thank our producer, Michael Solomon, for bringing together a small but highly effective and professional crew on a very tight budget. We had no surprises in the personnel department, and that was a huge relief. I was prepared to go over our BravoFACT! budget if necessary, but Mike was determined not to, and he did a great job in the producer's delicate task of juggling money, time, equipment and people. Laurie Nyveen, our Associate Producer, was invaluable in managing the dozens of tasks we flung at him on short notice (casting, exploding cell phone effects, "Grand Banks Cod Pieces," free maple pies?), many of which I'm probably not even aware of.

The only significant hitch in the show, which ate up hours of time, was the Red Rock M2 lens adapter. We used the Red Rock adapter to create a cinematic depth of field, which our HD video camera couldn't deliver. It did a great job of putting the background out of focus, but it was extremely awkward to keep focused on the actors if they and/or the camera were moving. Physically the difference between in focus and out of focus on the focus wheel would often be a millimeter. We couldn't focus by measuring distances with tape, either, because the lens markings did not seem to bear a close resemblance to reality.

On the other hand, the footage looks beautiful, and we're focused on what I wanted to show you, and not focused on anything I didn't want you paying attention to, so the Red Rock delivered what we wanted it to, for a very good price. The more expensive adapter would have been much easier to use, but hey, more expensive.

Fortunately we had enough time to get all our master shots and enough coverage to trim scenes for time, which was all I really wanted. Since the film is a comedy, I didn't shoot a lot of closeups -- I worked with my actors to stage the scenes so they played in dynamic, moving two-shots. The last shot of the shoot was a thirty second four shot with a lot of choreography.

That style meant I didn't need a lot of coverage. It takes a lot less time to shoot an additional take than to move the camera. Every time you move the camera your d.p. will need to relight. Or think he does.

It also turned out to be much more complex to play back in one scene video that you just shot in a previous scene. Part of the cost of dealing with new digital video cameras is that no one is completely familiar with all their idiosyncrasies, particularly how they interface with computers. The mere fact that you can throw footage from your first scene up on a TV in your second scene is pretty cool. But you have to work all the bugs out before you get to set.

But that's what you get for putting fancy shootin' in your short film. It all takes time. I think it will turn out to have been worth it.

Nick Can't Get No Satisfaction

"Do you have this in a nine?" -- "I dunno!"


"I'm so sorry ... would you mind looking for it???"



Many, many thanks to Peter Toumbanakis of La Table Ronde for letting us shoot in his amazing medieval boutique on St. Paul Street (other boutiques throughout Montréal and in Québec City).

And Sébastian at Pub St. Paul for keeping his live rock'n'roll band drinking a few more minutes until we got that last shot. That was a lifesaver, Sébastian!

Lina's Just Not Having a Good Day

If it's not one damn guy, it's another.



That's the great Al Goulem giving Lina a bad day now.

Can't a Guy Get Some Lovin' from his Wench???

That's Omari Newton begging and Lina Roessler not giving him the loving. Al Goulem was brilliant today too... I'm very happy with my day today.

Actually I'm Stoked

Brendan Kelly wrote a very nice article about how we are shooting our little $20,000 movie alongside Brad Pitt and David Fincher's $20,000,000 Montreal shoot for THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON.

For the sake of drama he made out that I'm irked by the shoot, but actually, I'm jazzed any time a major movie shoots in Montreal.

But we did have to move our exteriors by a day to avoid being crushed by the giant production shooting literally around the corner. And that nearly put us into a thunderstorm!

We have no idea where they're shooting tomorrow. Just so long as it isn't in Place Jacques Cartier (where there is also a crane in the mornings moving things up onto a room, loudly) or in front of Cafe Helios (which is next door to the Montreal Sweets Festival).

Actually we're doing pretty well considering the sweets festival and the giant production and the transit strike... say a prayer for us!

Nice Beaver

All in all, man, a good first day of principal photography.

Thank You, Big Weather Guy in the Sky

Looks like those pesky thunderstorms are not going to descend on Friday. Which is good, 'cause that's when I'm shooting my exteriors.

Today, I'm rehearsing the cast for my short film, which starts shooting tomorrow. The scenes are all incredibly short, as you might expect from 11 comic vignettes crammed into six minutes. But I wanna get them right before I have a whole crew present. Everyone I cast pretty much nailed their auditions, so I'm guessing I'll mostly be working on blocking and timing -- they won't have worked together. And in Al Goulem's case, I'm going to let him run riot on his lines -- he was hysterically funny in auditions when I asked him to ad lib.

This should be fun.

Fun is important. I keep hearing about top shows that they're incredibly fun to work on. Sure, there are good shows suffering constant creative turmoil backstage. But it's not necessary. And when people are happy, they're free to pour their energies into making the show good.

So I'm going to try to keep things fun.

How Akira Kurosawa Got to Direct

He wrote screenplays:

Soon the Shooting

We had our tech scout yesterday, going to all the locations with our producer, associate producer, DP, UPM, Production Designer and our assistant camerapeople. (Two of them, 'cause it's a P2 HD camera.) And moi, le director.

I'm feeling pretty good about this show. We have a great cast and a great crew. I'm just delighted that my favorite editor, Simon Webb, is on board. Gags keep occurring to me; I'm just trying to calibrate how many I can stick in the show without putting a joke on top of another joke, which as we all know won't do.

This is really the first time that film school has been an unequivocal help. The one thing film school really, truly teaches you how to do is how to direct a short film. And having directed a 27 minute film with a crew of 6, directing a 6 minute video with a crew of 12 is much, much easier.

Wednesday's rehearsals. Thursday we start the three and a half day shoot. If you pray, put in a good word for us, will you?

School

Q. I am very interested in the film/tv industry. I do have a desire for writing scripts,producing and directing. Do you have any comment or have heard anything on this school's program; a community college in NC has a two year curriculum in Film &Video Technology, it's an associates degree program in Applied Science. Hands-on instruction taught be industry professionals.

It would be easier for me to comment if I knew the name of the community college. (Guys, please, spend at least as long writing the question as I'm likely to spend answering it, huh?)

Q. Sorry, the college is Cafe Fear Community College, in Wilmington,NC. A few of the major courses are; Intro to film & video,Camera and lighting I & II,grip and electrical I & II,production techniques I & II, 2D and 3D design & animations I and editing I.

Offhand, I don't think that a community college (even in Cafe Fear) is going to teach you anything in two years that you could not learn on your own. I'm not just being a snob; I'm not actually sure that major programs like UCLA or NYU teach you all that much that you couldn't learn on your own. Sure, you get access to equipment, but you can rent a prosumer video camera for a couple hundred bucks for a week, or buy one for a couple thousands; and you can edit on a Mac with Final Cut.

Don't go to a community college to study film, unless of course you just need an AA degree. Write a script. Rent a video camera. Buy a Mac and put Final Cut on it. And shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot.

Set yourself a goal of making one complete under-ten-minute short film every two months. This gives you six months from script to edited film if you edit one film while you're prepping and shooting the next film and you're writing the film after that. (Multitasking like that will help you absorb the lessons, as you sit in the edit bay cursing your idiot director -- you -- and moron writer -- you.)

Don't shoot anything longer than ten minutes; it's much easier to get people to watch a short short than a long one, and you'll take more risks with a short short.

Where do you get your crew? From the AA program at the community college, of course. But you don't have to actually go there. For my short I'm getting a lot of people from Concordia, but we're producing it ourselves.

In fact, if you get a film student in the AA program to "produce" your film, then you can lay your hands on the free equipment without paying for the classes.

After two years of this, you'll either to be ready to go to LA, with a kickass reel, or you'll know that the film business is not for you. After two years of community college, you'll have spent a lot of time in classes hearing people talk about how it's done, but a lesson learned by doing is worth ten times a lesson heard in class.

Of course you could also go to the AA program while shooting a film every two months. I'm just not sure what the benefit would be; except possibly to get your parents off your back about how you're spending your time.

Film is all about the doing, not the theory. And experience will be a much better instructor than anyone you'll get at a community college in North Carolina -- possibly better than anyone you'll get anywhere.

Short Advice

In about eight weeks, we plan to be shooting my short, Twelve Ways to Say 'I'm Sorry', on a budget of about $20K.

What books do y'all recommend on shooting a low-budget film and/or a short? What are the most useful books you've read on the specifics of do-it-yourself production? Of nuts and bolts directing?

The Final Four

Friday Night Lights is airing its final four, with its renewal hanging in the balance. Maureen Ryan of The Chicago Tribune has a slew of stories about it.

One talks about how they shoot the show, with location shooting, multiple floating cameras and a lot of improvisation. Yikes! Wow! I am in awe.

One's an interview with Jason Katims, the showrunner.

And here's an interview with Kevin Reilly, head of NBC Entertainment, on how they're trying to find an audience for the show rather than changing what the show is.

There's some overlap, but they're all worth reading.

You are watching the show, right? Wednesday nights, NBC, 8 pm.