Lessons Learned During Post

Anthony (Eric Martin Brown) and Two Chrises (MacLeod Andrews) have a stare-down

Quick Self-Promotion: I will be teaching a three-part course on Visual Storytelling at Brooklyn Brainery! The course looks at the tension between showing and telling in films. The first session will focus on existing films. During the second and third sessions, students will bring in works-in-progress (films, scripts, poems, novels, etc.) and discuss ways in which they can show their stories.

Where: The Brooklyn Brainery, 515 Court St., Brooklyn, NY
When: Thursdays, 6:30-8pm, October 6th, 13th, and 20th
Cost: $45
Register on the official site

Post

I'm just starting the promotion/marketing journey, but I wanted to step back for a minute and talk about the lessons I learned during post. What follows is a brief look at what I learned during post.

Make Time For VFX in Production

After Dan Loewenthal and I had scanned through the film a few times, and discussed/vetoed/decided on a few tweaks, we figured it was time to lock the picture. Up to that point, I'd put together some very rough visual effects shots, just so we had something to look at, and to give me some idea of what I wanted. I figured that few, if any, of these attempts would survive through the end of post (though a couple did). The VFX shots came in three basic flavors:

• Hiding/Erasing booms, boom shadows, lights, and other gakk
• Compositing plates together (there are a few shots where we extended sets and doubled characters)
• Creative work - adding tazer effects, glows, blood, and other things that weren't there during the shoot

What I've learned is that I have to pay more attention during production when setting up VFX shots. Ben Wolf, my DP, is really good at setting up and executing low-budget VFX. But I rushed through the process a bit, creating more work for Vickie later. A good example is of a composite shot called "Two Chrises". In the foreground plate, we had Anthony (left) and Chris (right) arguing, then turning around as a second Chris enters the room.

There are several problems with this shot. First, foreground Chris moves into the area that the background Chris occupies. If you're going to shoot a shot like this without using a greenscreen, then keeping the layers separate is pretty important. Second, the lighting from outside changed slightly between shooting the foreground and background plates, so Vickie and Verne Mattson, our colorist, had to spend more time in post evening up the shots.

Ben did a superb job framing and executing the shot. And the actors' performances were great - MacLeod Andrews (Chris) and Eric Martin Brown (Anthony) are, after all, reacting to someone who literally isn't there, and they sell it. The problem is that I didn't schedule enough time to proceed just a little more slowly and make some minute adjustments, so we had to rush through the shots.

On the other hand, this shows you what you can do even without a lot of money or a greenscreen. We could have tried setting up a portable greenscreen, but placing it far enough away from the actors and lighting it properly may have been very difficult in that location (it was a small office).

Regardless of these oversights, Ben, Vickie and Verne were able to put together a wonderful shot. Dan Loewenthal, the editor, broke it up into two pieces and put a reaction shot by foreground Chris in between, to heighten the impact of the shot.

DropBox!

I am not affiliated in any way, shape or form with DropBox. However, I totally swear by it. It is worth it to upgrade to the Pro Version ($10 a month). With Vickie in Queens, Quentin in Brooklyn, and Verne in New Jersey, it would have been very inefficienct for me to shuttle files back and forth. YouSendIt is a great option for sound files (Quentin and I used it a few times) but for video files, DropBox is key. It works like a virtual hard drive that synchronizes a directory on your hard drive with its online counterpart. Stick a file in your local Dropbox directory, and it will be uploaded. If you give other people permission to see your account, they can download it. No more shlepping drives and DVDs back and forth.

Amend the Script

After the picture edit is done, you should go back to your script and amend it to reflect the locked cut. You'd be surprised how many differences there are between what you wrote and what was said on set, and between that and how it was cut together. I found little chunks of dialog had been added, others taken away, and some bits rearranged within the same scene. Presenting an amended, as-edited script to your sound designer will help him/her out immensely.

You Can Never Have Enough Drives

I started out with a 2TB internal drive and a 500Gig Camera/Sound Master drive. Since then I bought three 2TB external e-SATA/FW drive - one serves as a backup of the internal drive, a second is for Vickie (and contains everything) and the third is for Verne. I also purchased a second 500Gig "shuttle drive" which went back and forth with me on those occasions when I was meeting with someone had to grab a file from them or give one to them. I will need another 2TB drive pretty soon, to back up all the behind-the-scenes footage, the various QuickTime exports I've made, and the VFX final files. Since space constantly gets cheaper, I only bought new drives as a I needed them.

Life After Post

Okay, that's it for now. There's a lot going on at the moment - we're in the process of building a new website for the film, and creating publicity/promo materials. I'll have more to say about that next time.

Breathing Out During Post

Ayana (Mina Vesper Gokal) and Chris (MacLeod Andrews) share a rare laugh in the field.

Next week I'll be working with Quentin Chiappetta (sound designer) on the mix for the film. He'll be mixing, I'll be gulping ice coffee and requesting minor changes. Bring this up, take this down, that sort of thing. With luck and hard work on the part of the team, the mix will be done by next Saturday, and then I'll be sitting down with Vickie Lazos (VFX) and Verne Mattson (color/conform) to match up the locked sound with the corrected picture. Then I'll be making festival screeners!

The End Of The Beginning

My role at this point is somewhat more managerial - I'm working with a group of very talented professionals who have good taste, so I'm there to help each of them with whatever they need, and lend a critical eye to the results of their efforts. At this point, it's not really possible to fundamentally change the nature of the film, so I feel like my job is to reinforce the strengths. On a more practical level, I'm making sure that:

• The sound and video stay in sync during the mix, color correction and VFX creation
• Shooting an insert shot that we've needed, inserting it into the locked picture, without changing the total picture length
• Finishing and outputting the end credits
• Coordinating between Vickie and Verne
• Creating new Quicktimes for Quentin that include the insert shot and the end credits, so he can score and sound design them
• Approving the VFX shots as Vickie finishes them up
• Grabbing Quicktimes of the color-corrected reels from Verne so we can check sync before we go into the mix
• Getting the festival applications ready
• Preparing a bare-bones DVD

While that may sound like a fair amount of work, it's not really - especially since it's spread over several weeks. And with a little help from a post schedule I created in Excel, Dropbox.com, and frequent emails, it's actually pretty painless.

Next Steps

The current strategy is to submit Found In Time to a couple of top-tier festivals, and send one or two screeners to producers and agents as a calling card for my next project. While waiting to hear back from all these sources, the next step is to build up the promotion machine. While social media is an important component of that, it's not the whole story. A good, well-placed "how-to" article (either in print or online) is sometimes worth more than upping the Facebook friend count.

I'm currently putting together a revamped website for the film. Found In Time currently lives in two places on the web (three if you count the Facebook page): here on Blogger, and as a section on the ChaoticSequence.com site. I set it up this way so I could focus on the more pressing job of getting the film together, but now I have to figure out how to retain the domain but migrate the content to another platform. On the coding side, I'm looking at Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, and my own PHP code (which I've used with minor modifications on about a half-dozen sites so far). For design guidance I'm looking at tons of film websites.

Most film sites have the same structure (story/about/cast/crew/buy it here/press/images/trailer/contacts), but employ a wide variety of approaches. Some use Flash and Quicktime extensively; others are fairly bell-and-whistle free. Some are super-slick, while others stick to the familiar blog format. The biggest challenge in web design, as I see it, is how to communicate information effectively. Generally, people hit up websites to find out things, rather than to engage in a 'rich, multimedia experience.' Look at the design of Craigslist, Google, Gmail, Mandy, Wikipedia... even Facebook. Words are primary; pictures support the text.

Having said that, there is a way to make a film's site more attractive, without relying too heavily on Flash. After developing with Flash for two years, I was very happy to leave it behind and go back to more traditional tools (though I still use it for animation, logo design, and video). Also, for the first time in a while, I'm thinking about smaller screens - designing pages for phones and tablets.

In the next series of entries, I'll start talking about the marketing process. This is critical to a film's success, but is often a bit of a challenge for filmmakers. You almost have to start from the beginning again.

Day To Day

Boom operator Shawn Allen and PA Denzil Thomas on set in the Bronx.


Reading over the last few posts, I realized I've been focusing almost exclusively on how-to's and haven't included too many updates on the film itself. So here's a brief post on the progress of the film itself.

If preproduction is training, and production is a sprint, then postproduction is best described as a marathon. You're exerting a constant, slow effort, but you can't overexert yourself. Rushing through post is nearly always a mistake.

Right now we're about a little more than a month away from finishing. The Visual Effects Artist, Vickie Lazos, is doing a great job with a mix of shots - some very challenging boom removal shots, composites that were shot without greenscreen, and a few nifty touches that hopefully people won't even realize are effects.

Verne Mattson, our colorist/conformist, is nearly done; he just has to grade the effects and titles. Quentin Chiappetta and his team at Media Noise are nearly done with the sound design - our mix date is mid-to-late August. For my part, I'm revising the titles and working on a last, stubborn insert shot.

I spend a good deal of time trying to think about the next steps - what festivals to apply to, who to potentially approach for distribution, what the poster should look like, etc. I confess that the social media explosion of the past few years baffles me. I know that I need to take greater advantage of it; however, I'm not sure if there's a payoff at the end. Do Facebook fans turn into ticket buyers, DVD renters - or just bit torrent streamers? Does it prove to a distributor that you have an audience, or does it just mean you're really good at marketing your film?

I've "liked" a bunch of films and do follow their posts, but it's a very passive experience. When these films are finally done, will I go out and see them? I don't know. I'd like to think so.

So I throw out this question: does social media campaigning have a good ROI (return on investment), or is it just one more thing you "have to have," like a press kit or website?

When Sh*t Happens

Despite your best-laid plans, at some point during the prep, shoot or post, a monster fuck-up (or a few small ones) are going to come along and take a dump on said plans. Apart from the obvious (try to stay calm, get your plan B ready) what do you do?

Shoot Something

For some reason (that's still not clear), we lost our NYPD TCD (Traffic Control Division, who are also responsible for police presence on set) on a particular day we needed them. In New York City, you are not allowed to shoot scenes with "film cops" without real ones being around. Otherwise, some other real cops might wonder what the hell is going on.
Since we had a full day of shooting scheduled with Morton and Jess, our 'Psychcops,' I was in real trouble. My DP (Ben Wolf), sound mixer (Anthony Viera), and I sat down for a few minutes and figured out what angles/parts of the scenes we had scheduled that we could shoot without Morton and Jess. Meanwhile my crack PAs called Curt and Mollie (who played Morton and Jess) and told them they weren't needed that day. According to SAG regulations, I had to pay them for the day, which sucked, but it was better than trying to pull a fast one on the police. If we had been caught in violation of our permit they could revoke it and then we'd be really screwed.
As it turned out, we were able to shoot about 80 percent of what we had scheduled, and we added a scene that we'd originally scheduled for the next day. So despite not having a plan B, we were able to salvage the day. The lesson here is to keep shooting despite the obstacles. Come up with something - anything. You can't afford to be down for more than a couple of hours on a low budget shoot.

Replace

Sooner or later, someone will become an obstacle in your path. It could be a crew member with an attitude, a cast member with a schedule conflict that can't be worked around, an agent who's putting the hammer to your balls on 'behalf' of his client, an investor who insists on a LOT of special treatment before signing that check, a location owner or vendor that keeps changing the deal on you. These people may be your friends. They may be acting from completely benign motives - anxiety, loyalty to their client/organization, a misunderstanding, or because they've been burned by producers in the past. In any case, you have to make a decision: is this aggravation worth it? It may not be. Start looking for a replacement.

The horrible thing about being the boss is that you may have to replace someone for the good of the project. You will have to put your loyalties to the person to one side.

Chances are, the replacement person will be better than you'd hope for. The knot in your stomach will go away surprisingly fast.

Consult

Chances are, your crew has been through whatever fire you're going through. In fact, they've probably encountered it a lot more often than you - a DP can work on many features in a year, whereas you can probably only direct or produce one every two to three. It's not weakness to ask for advice - it's common sense. It also invites people into the creative process, which is a good thing.

On Found In Time, we were shooting in a narrow corridor, and I couldn't figure out how to make the script blocking match the location. I knew going in that it was a tough location but didn't have much choice - I'd run out of time to investigate alternatives and the price was right. On the day, I was still figuring out how to position my leading man between the two leading ladies, even though it clearly wouldn't work with the geography of the place. Ben came up with a solution instantly - just change the door that one of the characters was coming out of - and then everything snapped into place. Instead of me staring into space for an hour trying to figure it all out we were shooting in about fifteen minutes.

Punt

On Found In Time, we had a monster 15-hour day on our soundstage (as a result of poor scheduling on my part) on day 11, so everyone was pretty tired by the end of day 12. The shoot was dragging and I wasn't getting what I wanted from anyone, including myself. My brain was the consistency of cottage cheese. I realized that if I pushed us up to the 12th hour, that we were still not going to wrap out of the scenes we needed to shoot, and the work was going to suffer. By pushing the scenes to the next day - our last day of shooting - I was taking a chance. We already had about 8 pages to shoot, and a hard out on the location and some of our cast members. Adding another 2 pages seemed insane.

But on the other hand, we WERE coming back to the location the next day. After looking at the existing 8 pages we had to shoot, we realized that we could tuck the owed scenes into the end of the day without screwing anything else up. This proved to be the correct decision - people got some sleep, we were able to start a little earlier, and we got better work done.

Consolidate, or Break Apart

Sometimes consolidating your setups is a good idea - unless it results in a complicated pretzel-twist setup or creates other problems that you'll never get out of.

On Windows, a film I lined produced, one ten minute scene was supposed to be shot in one take. On paper it looked easy enough - two characters in a room, talking, then arguing, then fighting. But the location turned out to be full of mirrors, and the blocking got very complicated. So there was no way that the DP WASN'T going to see himself in one of the mirrors at some point.

After trying to shoot it all in one take, Ben and Shoja Azari (the director) talked it over and decided to shoot 'sort-of' coverage. This meant shooting moving masters from different angles, trying to avoid the mirrors as much as possible, and emphasizing different elements from take to take. By shooting the scene this way, the editor had enough material to cut with, without sacrificing the 'feeling' of the single take. Some people who've watched the film aren't aware that it's actually several shots stitched together.

On the other hand, on Caleb's Door (my first film), I had the opposite problem. I was three hours behind and we were shooting a four-page dialog scene between the two lead characters, Liz and Caleb. Liz and Caleb were sitting side by side at a bar, looking at each other. This would normally call for four-to-six setups. A master shot looking down the bar at Liz, a reverse looking at Caleb, then CUs of both of them, then cutaways, then a double (if possible) from behind the bar. There was no way to accomplish this and make the rest of the day.

Then something wonderful happened. Ben put the camera on the bar for the master on Liz, which would normally just get the back of Caleb's head. But Carl, the actor playing Caleb, ended up playing the scene looking AWAY from Liz and at the bar. In other words, he was in profile for nearly the entire scene - so we were able to get both actors' faces in one master shot. Plus, since he was closer to the camera, it worked as his CU except for three lines, when he finally does turn to Liz. So we shot the three lines as a separate CU, then shot a CU of Liz. This gave us enough material to cut with, and saved us three setups. I wish could take credit for it, but the main point is that it got us out of a major jam. and it worked really well.

Failure Is Just Another Opportunity To Learn

It may be that nothing works, that the shoot falls apart anyway, and you don't get everything you need. It sucks, and it's the worst feeling in the world. But it's not the end. There isn't a single great painter, sculptor, writer, business owner, scientist, parent, cook - a single great anything - that doesn't have a failure in their past. A script that didn't come together, a restaurant that never opened or failed, an experiment that blew up, a novel that bombed. Sometimes what separates the wheat from the chaff in the film business is what you do after you fail. Do you pack it up and do something else, or do you learn what you can, file it away, then get up (after a good night or two of drinking) and get back in the saddle? I've had my share of failures, and it's taken me years in some cases to see them in anything but a negative light, but now I recognize them for what they are: learning experiences.

When One Head Is Better Than Two

A candid moment for actress Kelly Sullivan (Jina)

I'm usually very scared when I'm approached by a hyphenate to work on their film - the producer/director. I wonder how they're going to handle it when I need to have them sign a check while they're on set trying to direct, or when I have to get their signoff or opinion on something that will not add value to the screen, but will definitely fuck us if we don't take care of it. Often the experience isn't pretty. I've had arguments over the cost of bagels.

But I recently found myself in a similar situation, and, probably due to hubris, I figured I could handle it. I could walk the producer/director tightrope. I'm still not sure I've pulled it off - I often worry that I've been too worried about producing to be as effective a director as I could have been. But it is possible, and with some sweat and initiative, it can even be enjoyable, to wear two hats.

Trading Space For Time

In military tactics, there's a maneuver called trading space for time. You send a fast, light force up against the enemy, then retreat ahead of them as they advance, harassing them then running out of their reach. By the time they hit your main forces, they've been demoralized and depleted.

Independent filmmaking works in a similar (though hopefully less bloody) way. Without a huge budget to depend on, you need to spend a lot of time in prep, chipping away at the problems of getting locations, signing up vendors, raising money, finding cast and crew, etc. If you wait until just before you start, or count on being able to hire your buddies at the rate they promised you six months ago, you will inevitably burn through more cash than you want to and probably achieve suboptimal results.

So if you're the producer and director, start early. Do your line producer's script breakdown, and director's script analysis, as early as possible. You may have to do some of this work over again if you do a rewrite down the road, but that's okay. You'll be able to answer the 'big picture' questions:

• What are my characters' arcs in each scene, each sequence, in the whole script?
• How many locations?
• How many script days?
• How many characters?
• Special props/action/effects?
• How many shooting days does it look like I'll need?
• How are my characters' choices reflected in dialog vs. nonverbal (image/action/sound/wardrobe/makeup/hair/editing)?
• What can go wrong?

You will never know the complete answers to these questions. But getting some initial answers now will enable you to write up a shooting schedule, a budget, a scene-by-scene 'beat sheet,' and some creative notes to pass on to your department heads.

Leaning On Others

I had to lean on the people around me more than I would have if I'd had a full-on partner, especially during preproduction. My attorney, casting director, DP, and production sound mixer heard me bitch a lot. Since most of them had known me for a long time I think they were okay with it. (At least I hope so). On the other hand, I believe it gave them an opportunity to contribute more to the film creatively than they might otherwise have had. This is a very good thing. Your crew will almost always know more than you about their specific area. They've probably solved the problem you're facing before, and can find their way to the solution faster than you can.

Staying Organized

There's no real secret organization sauce. But if you're constantly looking for things, forgetting appointments, and leaning on other people to keep your life together, you had better find a system that you can work with. Nothing erodes people's confidence in their leader faster than seeing that the boss can't find the map, never mind the road. And since much of your job consists of communicating with others, it's also critical that your system be understandable by more than just you. That's the real basis for the seemingly endless paperwork that accompanies filmmaking - production reports, callsheets, sound reports, camera reports, lined scripts, location directions, crew and cast contracts, and even the script format itself.

Recognize and Contain Your Obsession

It happens to every director: you get fixated on something that you think is critical. My obsession was over some smaller props (paperwork, crayons, some other odds and ends) that had to look absolutely 100 percent right. Other directors I've worked for had a specific shot they insisted on (and which completely screwed up the schedule to shoot). Maybe you wanted a location to look just like the one you grew up in. Or you have a line you think is so important you'll shoot 50 takes until your actor gets it right (or he bites his tongue and chokes on it). As a director, you are completely convinced that the audience will not get your film if this ONE thing isn't right, and you will drag the entire budget and schedule (and your precious prep time) down to get it onscreen.

Guess what: in all likelihood, the audience isn't even going to register this ONE thing - assuming it even makes it into the final cut. Audiences overlook gaps and fill in details all the time. Use that to your advantage as a producer - push your director-self past your detail obsession (I realized I had to stop when I kept going on ebay to buy more crayons).

Be In the Moment AND The Moment After That

As a director, your focus should be on what's unfolding in front of you on set, in the rehearsal space, or in the editing room. As a producer, you should be thinking at least one step ahead, and preferably several.

To deal with this I did my producer's prep in the morning when I woke up, and when I first arrived on set. Then I tried to stay in director mode until lunch. I leaned a LOT on my PAs, giving them petty cash and problems to solve. They were awesome.

At lunch I tried to think about the schedule, reshuffle the day a bit, then I got back into director mode until wrap. Often I dropped off my DP, Ben Wolf, on the way home, so we both had a chance to talk over the ups and downs of the day. I often got some ideas from talking with him about the next day. At night I tried to slip back into director's mode by reading the sides and my scene analysis notes just before going to bed.

The main idea here is to not try to do both jobs at once, but do each one fully, when it makes the most sense.

Give It Up

At a certain point, despite your best efforts, your director and producer selves will clash in a big way, and you'll have to make a decision that could cost you big bucks but save the film. My personal opinion is that the director should be allowed to win in this scenario. You can often find more money in the budget, or cut back on something else, or (worst case) raise more money. But having 3/4 of a movie that's on budget doesn't benefit anyone.

The trick is that you can only play this card once. On Found In Time I scheduled a over-ambitious day - combining soundstage work with a big chase scene. Stunts, set building and dressing, extras. Needless to say we went into OT. But there came a point where I just had to let it go, or we wouldn't have gotten the material we needed to make those scenes work. I ended up cutting back on a few other things for the rest of the shoot, and recouped some money through prop returns.

Okay, next time I'll get back to post production. But to sum all of the above up, the key things to being a director-producer are: do your prep ahead of time, stay organized, and get good people to work with you.

Breathing In During Post

Many thanks to the folks at the recent New York City Film and Finance event 'Eyes on the Film Festival' for providing valuable insight into the festival programmer side of this discussion.

There's always a lull in the post-production process, and it usually appears somewhere between picture editing and sound post. Typically the end of picture editing is marked by somewhat arduous, anticlimactic chores, to get the OMF and Quicktime files ready for your sound designer and composer. You might also be getting various comps and elements ready for the visual effects artist, and, depending on what you shot on, going back to your camera masters to conform for your colorist.

And then... there's very little to do. All the people that you're working with will need time and space. After thinking mechanically and technically for a few weeks, it's time to start looking a couple of moves ahead again. Which is where I'm at now.

How Do You Know You're Locked

Before you deal with any of what I've just described, ask yourself: are we really picture locked? It's worth taking some time before answering that question. There's really no magic formula. Dan and I watched the film several times, all the way through, then made minor changes after each viewing. I could tell we were close because the changes kept shrinking in scope. Sometimes a small change can make a big difference - a few frames left in can let a moment breathe, a few frames cut can trim the dead space out of a scene.

One way to gauge whether a film is locked is to look at your dissatisfaction with the film. Is it based on things that you can change in picture, is it because you don't like something that you can still fiddle with (like an audio or music cue), or is it due to factors absolutely beyond your control/budget? If you keep coming back to a performance or a moment you never got in production that you can't synthesize in the edit, then you're probably ready to move on to sound post (or you're headed towards further reshoots).

Another way is to look at the flow of the film - the moments within the scene, and the transitions between scenes. If you can allow yourself to relax a little, and not hang on every cut or word of dialog, are you still entertained by the film? Do you feel unsettled by a cut, or does it all seem to flow by smoothly? If you feel that it's all pretty smooth, then you're probably done.

Getting Back To The Big Picture

At a certain point, you have to throw your post schedule out the window. Not that you shouldn't be striving to finish the film in a timely way, but the film becomes the boss. And in a larger sense, the budget is as well. I've been lucky enough to snag really excellent people to work on Found In Time for very modest rates, in part because we understand that if a better paying gig comes along they'll have to take it for a little while. As long as the film isn't moldering on a hard drive for months on end, I think it's a fair way to work.

So while the film winds it's way through post, you should start thinking about what you need to move the film forward once it's 'done.'

• Press Kit: This should include a PDF with cast and crew bios, a synopsis of the film, photos (see below) some happy production stories, and ANY reasonably positive press you may have gotten during production.
• Photos: If you didn't grab stills on set, get the best-quality frame grabs you can. You'll need a set of 300dpi TIFF files for print, and a set of 72dpi JPGs (high quality) for the web.


• Short Teaser: This should be about a minute long and can contain rough audio and temp score elements (as long as the audio isn't completely awful). The idea is to deliver some sizzle, but not much steak - give the audience a taste of the film.
• Full-Length Trailer: Somewhere between two and four minutes long. You'll want to hold off on creating this until the sound post and color correction are further along. Uncorrected audio and picture can make a trailer unwatchable or at the very least unprofessional looking.
• Key Artwork You should at least be thinking about this at this stage. It's okay to send out sharpie-inscribed DVDs in sleeves for festival submissions (some will argue that even here better packaging helps). But for handing out to press, industry, producers reps, and even (who knows) selling a few units directly, you'll want to put together a central, iconic set of artwork - title logo, poster shot, and tagline that you can base a campaign around. Mock up a poster, one-sheet, DVD face and wraparound sleeve cover in Word or (better yet) InDesign or Photoshop. Print a few out at home to see if they're pleasing to the eye, before dropping money on a print run.
• Pitch: You probably developed this during the developing and financing stages, but revise it to reflect the film you actually made. Can you explain the film in one minute/three sentences or less?
• EPK: This can (and usually does) include all of the above, plus behind-the-scenes footage and/or interviews with key crew and cast members.
• Get on the Web - Build Your Site, IMDB, and Withoutabox Goes without saying. Also start getting people on your emailing list, or weed out the deadwood from your existing one.

As you can see, this is a lot of work to tackle. But now is the perfect time to do it, while the film doesn't require as much of your attention.

The Bigger Picture

When you're doing all of the above things, it's important to figure out what the story of your film - as a product - is about. It's difficult to think in these terms, especially if you're the creator. It's like trying to justify your child to a bunch of strangers. But it's essential in order to create publicity materials that are enticing and organic to the story. Think of it this way: people have a LOT of choices - perhaps too many - and limited time and attention spans. Why should they choose to plunk down their hard-earned dollars on your film, rather than another (or watch tv or a webisode, or play a video game, for that matter)? What is special about your film?

The easiest way to tackle this is to ask yourself some questions: Who is your film good for? What films is it like? What films is it not like? Do you have niche appeal - for example, do you have a film that tackles a specific issue or fits a specific genre?

Look at the ad campaigns for films that are similar to yours. Is there a common graphical element, something that separates them from other films? It could be a typeface (I remember in the 80s horror films often had red, dripping titles), how the photo elements are arranged, or the tagline ("this time it's personal" or "the girl is out there"). Perhaps the trailers had similar music.

The trick is to stand out from the crowd, without pushing producer's reps, festival programmers, and sales agents out of their comfort zones. So while you're looking OUTWARD at other films, you need to also look INWARD at your own project. Is there an iconic image, scene, or even line of dialog that captures what you're trying to say? This will (hopefully) supply you with the inspiration to craft a publicity campaign that highlights the uniqueness of your work, while retaining the conventions of the genre your film is in.

While you probably did a version of this work early on during the financing stage (so you could put it in your business plan), the film that's in your hands now is doubtless very different from the one you set out to make. So you'll need to reappraise and readjust your artwork.

Graphic Language

Part of how you get people to respond positively to your DVD cover or poster rests on your ability to command the language of graphic design. It's similar to, but not the same as, the language of film. It's too big of a discussion to get into here, but if you don't have a good print/web design sense, or if you don't really know the difference between CMYK and RGB, work with someone who does to create your media.

Last point: for DVDs that are going out to reps, agents, and festivals, you're better off eschewing graphics for readable text. Whether you handwrite on your DVD or have them printed, make sure you include the title, your name, phone number, email address, total running time, language, sound type (stereo, 5.1), the DVD type (region code), the video type (NTSC/PAL), year completed, and whether it's in color or black and white. This may seem like common sense, but I've gotten a LOT of screeners over the years that lacked this information, which forced me to have to hunt down the missing information from the press kit or email. So I'm already in a bad mood by the time I start watching the film. And I'm not even a festival programmer - they watch thousands of Da YEAR generally.

Working With Your Editor, Part 2

Because pictures of cats are always good to post

In the last entry (wow, that month went by too fast) I talked a bit about the alchemy of editing and the director/editor relationship, and got as far as the rough cut. This time around I'd like to talk a bit about how to get from the rough to the final cut.

The Dead Spots

As I mentioned before, I have a hard time going back to the big picture after a screening. I get caught up in the atomic structure of the film, especially the dead spots. I'm always afraid of boring the audience, or myself. My first instinct was to cut cut cut. Dan never lost his sense of the big picture. He warned me about cutting too much too soon, because we ran the risk of losing the moments that were buried in the middle of the dead spots.

He was correct. The first thing he did after the rough cut was to simply go through the film and trim out small bits from many of the shots. This meant cutting a few frames from the head and tail of a series of shots in a scene, to keep the tension from flagging. Sometimes it meant getting out of a scene a little sooner (again, just a few frames). Sometimes it meant starting a scene a little later, so that the actors were already warmed up or in the frame. These small changes can make big improvements, without requiring you to rethink the work as a whole.

Just by making these kinds of cuts, Dan trimmed about six minutes out of the film. The result was much, much tighter. During this time I made suggestions but mostly stayed out of Dan's way (at least, that's what I recall). I started working on putting rough F/X composites and titles together, and thinking about music.

When To Bring the Music In

On Caleb's Door, I started working with a temp score only towards the very end of the picture edit. Dan suggested bringing music much earlier into the process. This made a lot more sense, particularly given the somewhat extreme state of the character's realities, and the pacing of the chase/action scenes in the film. Also, as Dan said, a shot that seems overly long without music can sometimes seem fine with it.

Fortunately, we both found common musical ground. Dan's a big fan of Egyptian music, and I'd been thinking about a scoring around a particular instrument - the oud. The oud is a stringed instrument that produces a very bluesy sound, and in some musical forms plays a role similar to that of a guitar in rock music. So we started dropping in temp tracks from an Egyptian composer he's worked with, and I looked at a bunch of different sources, including artists like Stellamarra, Rabih Abou-Khalil, and others. The initial idea was to use a Middle Eastern theme to underscore the idea that that this film was taking place in an altered version of New York.

I should tell you now, DO NOT GET TOO ATTACHED TO YOUR TEMP SCORE. Chances are that unless your composer has specifically written it for you, that you're not going to be able to afford it. I've seen it happen more times than I care to recount. The record labels and publishers are only too happy to give you a great deal on a festival license, because they know that you'll be back once a deal is on the table. At that point they're counting on you being in a terrible bargaining position - you'll cave into the time pressure to deliver the film to a distributor (before you see any money) so you'll ransom your cats or your unborn grandkids to pay for the score, rather than lose both money AND time to on a sound remix.

How Often To Meet

On Found In Time Dan and I generally met a couple of times a week. My 'homework' in between meetings was to put together rough F/X composites and titles, and pick out temp tracks. Having things to do in between meetings helped keep me from getting too obsessed. During the actual sessions we'd drop in my temp material, look at cuts that Dan had made, and run the film through (usually from start to finish). We focused a lot on the first half-hour, since that was the most problematic part of the film.

We generally worked for three or four hours during the week, and then a longer session on the weekend. Working this way, we averaged about one cut of the film per week. With each cut we got closer to the target running time - about ninety minutes. We stopped and talked a lot during the process. Not just about the film, but about life, love and film. Far from distracting us, these chats strengthened our working relationship, and helped me get over my anxiety and deal with the film in smaller chunks.

The Feedback Screening

After about nine weeks, we had a feedback screening. It's an important part of the process, but the feedback should not be taken too literally. There are two important factors: inviting the right people, and taking the right attitude.

You want to invite people who will give you honest, direct feedback, and are willing to get specific. A mix of film and non-film people is good. A small group is better than a bigger one.

The right attitude to take is to be open to everything, to withhold your defensiveness and feedback until after everyone's gone. The best response to criticism is 'can you elaborate on that' or 'that's really interesting. What else?' No matter how ridiculous the suggestion or feedback, look at the person and try to take it seriously. You may know out of the gate that what they're asking for is impossible - you can't afford reshoots, you don't have the material, it would create too many problems in the third act. But what they're responding to is a real problem that may have a solution that IS within your reach. Plus, these people are spending their precious time with you, so do them the courtesy of being polite and encouraging.

What you're looking for are patterns. If one or two people have problems with something, then they may be more perceptive than everyone else, or they may have differing tastes than you. But if everyone has issues with the same scenes or characters, then you have an actual problem that needs to be addressed. Often good sound design and music can get people more involved in the story - watching a fine cut without corrected sound is a lot like looking at a really great sketch for a painting. Adjusting the pacing can solve a lot of problems.

What became apparent to me was that the first act was too slow. It took too long to get into the story, and Chris's problems were over-commented on. So this is where Dan and I concentrated our efforts over the next two weeks.

In the next blog entry, I'll talk about the transition from picture to sound editing, and how best to think about your score.