Tulsa loves the SoCallers!

The Tulsa Uncensored Film Festival has welcomed My Life in Subtitles and Quiet into their fest! Many thanks to the T.U.F.F. gang - if yer in Tulsa, grab yer gal 'n' go!

Adding Production Value: Post Production

We got into filmmaking to tell stories. Most of us would be more satisfied making a crappy looking internet film that’s passed around the public than we would making an expensive, boring piece of crap. But, even though story is the most important part of your film, it’s isn’t the only important part.

In July, we went over some tricks for adding production value while you're on the set. So you shot your film, and the story’s coming together nicely in the edit room. Or it's not, and it's driving you mad. Either way, it’s time to push your piece up a level.


Titles, Text, and Graphics

The audience’s first impression of your movie isn’t the story, it’s the opening credits (or the DVD box, but that’s a whole other post). Try to have the audience impressed with you by the time ten seconds roll by.

1. Animate your title.

It’s best if you can create your title in a program like After Effects, Motion, or Live Type. Find a creative way for the text to enter and exit, and try to make it something you can’t do easily in typical editing software. Blurs are effective, jittery motion is also effective but a little over-done. It doesn’t take much to add a professional feel to the text.

2. Don’t make the text too big.

If you aren’t lucky enough to have a TV monitor hooked up to your editing system, and you’re watching the video play on the computer monitor, your instinct will be to make the text too large. Even if you have a TV, remember that the text on films is actually quite small. Next time you watch a video, take note.

3. Fonts

I hate fonts. They are pain to install, the names have nothing to do with what the font looks like, and I really don’t care about the difference between futura light condenced and regular futura. It completely bores me.

But fonts are one of the things that separates the pro films from the amateur films, and a bad font can kill any production value and graphic design that you have. So some notes about fonts:

-Try to avoid really common fonts. Times New Roman, Helvetica, Arial, Chicago, Geneva. If it has the perfect look you want, then go ahead, but don't get lazy and use it by default.
-You can use more than one font, for sure, but don’t use too many. Have a scheme.
-Play with bolding and italics as part of the overall style. A font that’s bland in its standard form may look perfect when italicized. Also, play with different bold/italic settings on different parts of the text. For example, this has the first line italicized, second line bold and italicized (this looks wretched here, because of the font of the blogger, but it shows the concept).

produced by
Andy Wardlaw

4. Add sound to the graphics.

It’s not always called for, but don’t be afraid to add some sound to the titles. A subtle hit as it slides in, or maybe a buzz or some other sound-designy thing can be the difference between an okay title and a slick title. (If you can only get one Sound FX CD, make it a CD of trailer sounds/promo sounds.)

5. Keep the credits short.

If you’re in the habit of reading tips for short films, you’ve already read this one before; Keep your credits short. Try to avoid putting up any one name more than once, it can cheapen the film (If the director was also doing make-up, one of those jobs was probably neglected at some point), but there are dozens of exceptions, though, so use common sense.

5. Don’t go too crazy.

Simple and tasteful animation is almost always better. If you want flashy text, a good idea is better than millions of effects.


Post Sound

1. Avoid well known music.

If someone sees your film and hears Green Day as part of the soundtrack, they’ll instantly think “Oh, they put Green Day in their movie,” which not only knocks the audience out of the movie, but it also lets everyone know that you don’t have the rights to your music. While most places will not ask if you’ve cleared your music, no need to broadcast it if you haven’t.

1b. Use really good music.

You probably can’t get the rights to the best music. But, if you are simply planning on handing a DVD of your short to a producer you know, go ahead and leave that awesome scratch music in there.

As you get into the festival circuit, showing a piece with unlicensed music is illegal. I’ve never heard of anyone getting busted for this, but I certainly can’t advise you to do it. Absolutely don’t sell your short with unlicensed music, don’t even try to pull a fast one; you’ll get into big trouble.

2. Use sound effects.

If you’re all on your own, this will be hard. Sound effect libraries are expensive and bulky, and those single discs of 99 sound effects won’t get you very far. If you can’t get your hands on a good library, try to find someone does have access and cash in a favor.

If you don’t know anyone, than it’s up to you to record your own. During production, do a pass where you have the boom mic record the footsteps, etc, and cut those in. I’ve heard reports that a car parked in a quiet neighborhood can make a great foley stage. But find a way; a good, subtle sound effect is worth fighting for.

3. Use Ambiences

Finding good ambiences will make the movie-world seem much bigger. For instance, if it’s a conversation on the city street, add some traffic ambience to the background. Now it seems like a whole city is part of the scope of your film. Even if it’s a conversation inside, some noises drifting in from the street will add gobs of atmosphere. This note has all the problems of normal sound effects.

4. Have a good mix.

Sadly, a lot about the quality of your mix will depend on what toys you have access to, but even a solid session in your editing program can work wonders. If it means extra effort to setup good speakers to your computer, do it. Also, once you’ve mixed it on the good speakers, play it through the speakers on your TV before mastering everything out, you might find some surprises. Avoid mixing while using headphones, those tend to make everything clear, even if it’s poorly mixed.


Color Correction and Finishing

A little color correction can go a long way. Even if your footage already looks good, odds are that it can look better. A tutorial on FCPs color corrector should be a must for every indie filmmaker.

1. Have a good colorist.

It’s cashing in a favor, but it’s good to get the best colorist that you can.

2. Be picky about the monitor.

It’s best to correct to a color-correct TV monitor, but those are hard to come by if you’re poor. If you're correcting to your computer monitor, make sure that it has a wide viewable area. Cheaper LCD monitors will change contrast when viewed from different angles. That makes them almost worthless. Make sure you run a color calibrator before getting started.

Be careful using a household TV to color correct. In fact, don’t do it at all.

3. Try to avoid outputting to tape.

If you can, get the DVD encoder on the same machine you used to color correct your film, or have the finishing machine kick out a super-high-better-than-best-quality quicktime and put that on a drive that you bring to the encoder. (Output a tape for back-up, of course, but try to go tapeless when you make your DVD.) Almost all digital tape formats have some compression, keep them out of the loop, if you can.

Now, I know what you're thinking, probably something along the lines of “but firewire makes a perfect copy or the information” or something like that. I don't believe it (and I have sound reasons for not believing it, but they are intolerrably techie). Which is brings us to:

4. Don’t trust Apple.

I’m not just saying this because they want to take over the world (and they do), I’m saying it because Apple markets post-production to look easy. They promise that with thier programs, you can be creating professional quality video/animations/music with no effort at all. And it’s half true: FCP/Motion/Soundtrack are solid pieces of software, and you can absolutely use them to make a professional quality film. What Apple doesn’t advertise is that to make it look pro, it still takes some skill.

So, by all means, consider using Soundtrack to punch-up your audio mix. But prepare to spend some time learning to do it *right*. No templates. Don't let it hold your hand through the process. Make it yours. Remember, if it’s easy, everyone’s doing it. And if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing better than everyone else.

From the SoCal Film Group Mailbag: Who's on the Crew?

"Hello and hello again.

I am a film student who found your site through Wordplayer. Actually, some of the members gave me great advice on how to shoot a film using 8mm tape stock and camera. Now I am beginning production on a short film (16 pages, so roughly 18 minutes) and have been asked to create a crew list. The reason being I am involved in this film student network program, and I must have a list before I can receive my crew information. For a short film, do you get as intensive as a large scale (low budgie) production? Should I simply list -- Director, director of photography, make up, production design, sound, and leave it at that? Or must I list grips, gaffers, art design, etc?

How do you usually go about it? (Hopefully you don't lean over and tap your buddy Joe on the shoulder and say, "Wanna make a movie?")

Hopefully you can help. Thanks!

Michael Martin"

Hey Michael,

A lot of your crew list decisions will depend on your budget.

Since we work with very low budgets, we typically use the smallest crew we can have and still get the work done. This will change, obviously, depending on what kind of location we're in, how many actors we have, and other variables like that, but a typical crew for us is:

Director
Writer (if it's a different person than the director)*
Producer / 1st AD
DP (who often operates the camera himself/herself)
Boom operator / general sound
2 Gripticians
Craft Service / PA

To that, we often add:

Script supervisor
Sound mixer
another griptician
another PA

And then, as needed, we'll add:

Hair / makeup
Location manager
Production designer / set dresser
Costumer
Camera op
Camera assistant
Fight / Stunt coordinator
Props
practical EFX
another griptician

Other people would give you a different list (and would probably say that some of my "optional" crew members are absolutely necessary) and that's cool. There are few hard-and-fast rules when working with very low budgets. It's all about getting the shots as good and as fast as you can, without breaking the bank. Since we're a cross-training collective, most of us do several different jobs on any given shoot day, which cuts down on the number of people who are just waiting around until they're needed. That's not how it usually works in the real world, though.

*(Speaking of the real world, many "real world" movies don't invite the writer to the set. We think this is stupid.)

When thinking about your crew, consider these questions -- what kind of budget are you looking at? What location(s)? How many actor(s)? Any other variables that should be considered?

(It occurred to me, since you're in film school, your professors might want you to work with large crews, just so you can learn how to deal with them.)

Hope that helps,

Steve Barr

The Windy City is going to get QUIET

We just got word that SoCal Film Group project QUIET has been accepted to the Chicago International Reel Shorts festival. It'll be playing at 7:00 PM on Saturday, September 30th; follow the link for more info.

Tell your friends who live in Chi-town. Gunsels and Molls are expecially welcome. The event is BYOTG (Bring Your Own Tommy Gun).