"When you can consciously put an horizon on the top or the bottom of the frame and not in the middle, then you may be ableto be a good picture maker. Now get out of my office." - John Ford to a fifteen year old Steven Speilberg

 

Alright, if I can rip somebody else's film in my online film school stint. I sure as shit can rip my own, right? Well here it goes.

My production was riddled in problems. Most I will blame on the lack of crew. We had three to be exact and one had to bail early due to frost bite. This does not make it easy to make a film and most of these examples of what not to do in filmmaking will all be contributed by the lack of crew, but either way, you may learn something.

 

LESSON #3

MAKE SHIFT CGI

This may end up being the best Film School Lesson I've given and may help you, may not. There are many ways to cover up screw ups in your film depending on what the screw up is. I got off easy... Kinda'. I had three incidents where I have been required to alter the picture in order to fix my film. I spoke of them in Lesson 1 on the Video Assist. I shot four takes of the Long Shot segment of the finale and in all four shots there were people in the distance walking around that I missed because I didn't have a second pair of eyes on the frame. I also missed, (and there was really no excuse for this one, but it happened,) a "Filming" sign and an unused Lowell light that was not use in the distance in the back windsheild of the MASTER!!! How Phil and I missed it I don't know. Maybe, because it was three o clock in the morning and our eye lids were beginning to freeze shut, I don't know. Nevertheless, I missed them. Thank the Gods that be, that in all the incidents the camera was locked off, making it ALMOST easy to fix with simple photo enhancement software. Sure, I could throw the footage into AE, Shake or Motion and keyframe my CGI through the spots needed and be done with it, but some filmmakers may not have that expensive Special Effects graphic Software, so I used the good ole' Photoshop platform. Photoshop, still to this day I claim is probably the pound for pound best piece of software ever created. For what it allows you to do with just about anything surpasses anything else in all around uses and whether it is PS 5 or CS, it works wonders for small video or photographic adjustments. In this case it did the trick as well. So here we go:

In the first fix, I exported a UNCOMPRESSED TIFF file of a frame where this woman just stopped on the side of the frame and watched the shooting in progress. As the shot came to a close she continued on her merry way. I eye sighted the distance from the stop to the walk. I exported the TIFF to Photoshop.

From there, I found in another take the same shot where the woman was not there. I exported it the same way. Brought it into Photoshop and with my Marquee Tool selected a chunk of the side of the frame and copied it. When doing this, if you can, you want to copy from a shadow, or dark area to a another dark area. It will assure you don't carry over any scanlines of any kind. Then you simply place your copied chunk onto your still frame of the actual shot from the clip. Make sure it is aligned perfectly. It should snap right to where it needs to be, but you never know. Once you have it in place, delete your Background Layer so that you just have your Transparent Layer with the small chunk on it.

Now save it as a PSD and import it back into your Vid Project. Grab it and overlay it over your clip and that's that. It should give you about 100 frames to cover and you can just copy and paste until it covers the whole period of time of the blemish. It also should not have to be resized or changed in anyway or you messed up.

Here is another example: Right when Charles blasts his wife. I have a guy strolling into the pool hall almost directly in the middle of the frame in the distance. He probably would have stopped and looked around had he heard a gun go off but he didn't so I wanted to get rid of his deaf ass as well. So I repeated the process.

Only this time. I took the image and used my Clone Tool combined with my Paint brush and just spotted him out. Then again, I erased my grey background and raw picture leaving just my little speck of light on the screen.

Save and import-- Repeat Process.

This next example is a little more sophisticated. In this scene, I dropped the ball and left a filming sign and unused light in the frame. Granted they are hard to make out but I don't want to take any chances if my movie should be seen on a HD 1900 inch Television. The process is the same as the above examples if you would use Photoshop. I personally am going to use Motion to fix this one, but again if you don't have the Effects programs here is Cheat Button.

The difference in this one is that Randle and Charles' heads move over the spot throughout the shot and overlaying the fixed spot is not going to do it all by itself. You will need to overlay it and then your keyframes to crop it left, right, up and down as your subject moves. It's a pain in the ass, but it is an easy way to fix little problems.

In this Video Example of what we have done, I did not keyframe the fix to show you what I am talking about having shrink it and size it to the motion of the actors. Other than that, good luck and all I can tell you is have a 'Continuity Crew Member' who's job is to make sure dumb shit like this does not happen.

LESSON #2

THE IMPORTANCE OF STORYBOARDS

OK, so despite the lack of crew and time to make the next Terence Malick movie, Meter, like I said, went over pretty smoothly. From my standpoint, sure there were things I had to compromise, but I got MOST of the angles I wanted. Through all the hoopla of that cold and long night, Phil and I had managed to go over my storyboards before hand meaning we both had a fresh view of what I wanted the film to look like. Although I wasn't bad in Public Speaking Classes, (Descriptive,) I was always better in Art Class, (Visual,) so if I can sketch out what I am trying to say better, chances are I will. With my sketched storyboards embedded in our minds, even when it got crazy we remembered and ended up shooting exactly what I was looking for. Even if it is stick figure, I suggest drawing boards. Even if it's not for the whole movie, do it for key scenes. Trust me--- It's worth the preparation before.

Here are just four of eight examples of small sketches that preserve my vision of the film.


 

LESSON #1

THE BIG OLE' VIDEO ASSIST

We were already an hour behind schedule when we popped off the first takes of the night. We had video assist on location, but felt the shots we were doing did not require them due to their simplicity and we felt setting it up would only put us further behind.... WRONG!! Because I didn't use Video Assist and was the man behind the eyepiece focusing on the actors themselves I missed not once, but four times people walking up the side of my frame of the LONG SHOT. Now normally that would be OK, (free extras are always a plus,) but considering "Charles" just walked up to his wife and lover in the middle of downtown and blew their heads off, the extras probably should be doing something besides just strolling on their merry way. Well, that's what they did and it doesn't work leaving me to have to cut and compromise the final shot of the movie. All because I could not see through the dusk light and action taking place on the right side of the frame through the viewfinder. Had we had the video assist running, Phil would have noticed it and we would have snapped a good clean one.