Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
TSP Ep 119 P2: Interview of Filmmaker Jake Borowski
34 Plays8 months ago
In the conclusion of the interview, Tom, Steve, and Jake go deep about photography and SFX. They finish off the interview with another script by Casper the Friendly Ghost.
So come along with us as we learn a thing or two!
If you would like to learn more about the Stan Winston School you can find the link here:
https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/
Recommended
Transcript
Jake's Filmmaking Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Well, the desert is is really a gem. So, Jake, have you worked with a lot of people out here in filmmaking? Not really. I mean, there was when I was in out of high school and I worked for a guy named Gerald lives. I think he still lives in his area, maybe.
00:00:23
Speaker
And, um, you know, that's when I was getting just learning, doing camera and editing and stuff. I have a friend, Jim McComas lives in Hesperia as well. And he was, uh, worked on a lot of movies in the electrical lighting department. He's a musician. He taught me a lot about lighting just in general.
00:00:49
Speaker
But yeah, I haven't really, I mean, I think what ends up happening is everyone just kind of bail leaves town at some point, either comes back or doesn't. And so, and there are, I mean, I keep in contact with friends I went to high school with who live down there and work in film and stuff.
00:01:09
Speaker
but I haven't really ran into too many people up here.
Innovative Movie Screenings
00:01:13
Speaker
I thought it'd be cool to maybe figure out licensing movies that don't get first runs up here and setting up a screening somewhere. That'd be amazing. That would really be amazing.
00:01:28
Speaker
Because there's there's a way to do it. And I don't think it makes sense for like, you know, the cinemarks and the AMC's of the world, or even like the, the Hesperia theater, you know, they kind of have to have their mix of tempoli type things just to
00:01:46
Speaker
stay the doors and marbles in their DCs. But I think it's like, it's higher risk, you know, but it's also sort of like everything, you know, it's getting that list of, you know, here's what's coming out theatrically around the world, you know, around the US or, and figured out like, okay, they're in these states are not in these states. And, you know, some movies they end up, they don't get much further than Los Angeles County. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
00:02:17
Speaker
You know, and especially around here, something that I like, and I do this, I didn't do it all this year though, but I have like a 200 inch screen in my backyard for outdoor movie nights. And I think out here, especially in the summer, it's so nice to watch movies outside. I'd love to see more of that. Like I tried the whole, if you build it, they will come thing and no one showed up.
00:02:43
Speaker
So, uh, you know, it was a little discouraging. I remember I put a little, probably a little too much effort into like trying to be like a horror host and everything like that. Um, Oh, you're, uh, back door movie nights. Yeah. Yeah. I think that would be well movie nights. Whoa. Back door movie night is a whole different kind of movie night. That's like a necklace and chill level two.
00:03:13
Speaker
Well, I think, I always thought it'd be fun to do like a pop-up screening somewhere, just like on the back of a wall, you know, and some shopping mart.
00:03:22
Speaker
But you'd probably get caught real fast. Well, see, there's the thing is you just need permission. Yeah. And I've been looking on eBay like used for repair Christie projectors. Oh, uh-huh. So you'd need that. You would need audio. You know, I was thinking maybe like an FM transmitter and you can do it like a drive-in so everyone can just come and go as they want. Well, it's 2023. We can do Bluetooth.
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah, Bluetooth is weak. I think there's some there's actually there are some good Bluetooth technologies I was gonna say it's it's a range I Mean if it's just to get the good stuff you got to spend a lot of money. Yeah, that makes sense Now there's some good Bluetooth shit out there some stuff though. It's like signals so weak
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, I could think of a few methods to get audio without even using speakers at all, letting people use headphones or their cars. Especially if you can get them to a website, we can build an SSID there if one connects to, and then it will just direct them to a webpage that we host, that hosts the stream or whatever of the audio. Yeah, I will say though that
00:04:39
Speaker
The one thing I've noticed between using a consumer projector in that range versus a Christie projector outside is that that's the way to go. If you really want people to be like, I'm going to show up to this, it has to be off a DCP through a theater projector outside. How much do those go for?
00:05:06
Speaker
There's a range. There's like, uh, I saw, I felt one. Yeah. There was one on eBay that was tested working with like a road case and some audio equipment for like five grand. Oh, that's not bad at all. No, cause I thought it was like 20 or 30 grand. Yeah. I thought you were going to say like, yeah, probably like 50, 60 grand. Like, okay. Yeah, that's nice. No, they're coming down. $400 one, you know, that's all I got. That's all I got. Captain.
00:05:35
Speaker
Then you need whatever the DCP hardware is. It's a SAS drive.
00:05:43
Speaker
connected to, I think, a small Linux server just on something. I think you could probably run it off a Raspberry Pi at this point, maybe. Probably. But just some small, like, micro project computer server running. Well, it doesn't need to be a server if you just have the one drive, but I know, like, you know, a CineMark might have a drive with a server that you could put a couple movies on and they could... Yeah. So they're not doing, like, one at a time. Yeah.
Community and Cultural Insights
00:06:13
Speaker
But...
00:06:13
Speaker
I think it's doable. I think it's doable. Yeah, I always thought about that just like pop up movies. Well, we had thought about that as like an ad campaign for our feature was like, uh, just screening the movie, like on the side of a wall somewhere in like LA or out here or something and just telling people, Hey, free showing.
00:06:31
Speaker
Come watch this movie on the side of a wall. Well, I think that's a great way to also, you know, buy into the whole desert thing, right? I mean, all these like broken down houses everywhere out in the desert, like even show it in like a house like that. Then someone kid goes, plays in there and dies. But dude, that's why it's all under the table. Illegal. We're out. Okay.
00:06:55
Speaker
I mean, that's, you know, it's, I think if you basically have permission from the property owner to do anything, you can get what you can. That's some, you know, I know down there when you throw, you know, there's places where it's anywhere really. We throw events and you have to have certain insurances, but I think there's enough people out there that are just like, yeah, that'd be cool. Let's watch a movie. You can use my backyard, you know?
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. You think Nick Cage would let us use his backyard? Is he out here? He's in Vegas. Someone said they saw a dude dressed as Batman driving one of those three-wheelers on Bear Valley Road that they thought was a Christian Bale, I think. Christian Bale's out here. Did you know the Christian Bale's in the desert? I said, no. I don't feel like that would be true.
00:07:48
Speaker
I know there's a guy in a wheelchair who weighs a bunch of Trump flags off of Bear Valley and Apple Valley Road. You can only see him. He's always there. Yeah. He's been there for years. It's like two stories tall. Yeah. Really? Just Trump flags, make America great again. Just lumping banners. U.S. flag. It's pretty impressive. I mean, that guy's got some dedication. I mean, he's probably making money. He's probably making bank.
00:08:12
Speaker
city there. There's a lot of truck, all those truck drivers that run around, drive around here, you know, those fucking bull testicles on the tow hitch. Oh yeah. You know, flags that say like, you know, like things that aren't good. They have a lot of things on them.
00:08:29
Speaker
Everyone just kind of think the thing up here though is like there's such a variety of people and perspectives and personalities and humans that it's just, but everyone's at home because it's fucking hot. You gotta drive everywhere, mostly. And it's just easier to say it all. But I think there's ways to draw people out of the house for fun stuff like,
00:08:53
Speaker
you know, renegade movie screenings. I mean, if we had it, I think people would do it. I mean, they do it in Palm Springs area. You know, all that area has something interesting always going on, interesting going on that people attend. There's nothing, no culture like that up here. Yeah. Palm Springs cultural center is pretty solid. They have a theater there that shows a lot of good movies, old movies too. Oh really? Yeah.
00:09:19
Speaker
I just go to the bars. They're all gay bars. Free drinks. You know, that's the thing that hurts the most. That one goddamn free drink. Aw, come on, man. Aren't I cute enough? Sorry, buddy. He's like, come on, buddy, you want to buy me a drink? Nope. Okay.
00:09:40
Speaker
I get free drinks. That's why I like the gay bar. Well, take me with you. Like, oh, this is what it feels like to be a woman. Oh, this is interesting. Oh, really quiet all of a sudden. Yeah, you said, all right.
00:09:58
Speaker
I mean, there's the Apple Valley Theater, the one, the old AMC, they're gonna, I mean, that town took over that. Yeah. There's probably, they're gonna have a theater with a screen and probably, there's projectors in there still probably. Yeah, they said they wanna make it into a cultural center. That's what it sounds like. Cool. Whatever that is. That would be cool. That sounds exciting. And you know, the sad thing about that AMC too, that was one of the few theaters where I could go to to find,
00:10:24
Speaker
like one showing of something random before it became AMC, whatever it was before that. It was still a chain. Yeah. And they would have like, oh, this movie's here. Okay. And I could go see like, you know, some smaller babes pig in the city too. That was not too bad. It's all right. So talking about film and then still photography,
00:10:53
Speaker
And all that, cause Steven is really into that and does that. Cause I know you like to shoot on film.
Exploring Film Photography
00:10:59
Speaker
So is that just a hobby or do you have projects that you do the fit like stills for? No, I'm just, I think I'm still kind of just learning with it.
00:11:09
Speaker
Because you expose differently than digital and it trains your mind. I realize my brain was stuck in that mode where you look at the monitor and you cut the highlights down so they don't clip and you can just either fill in or grade the shadows and you'd have enough latitude in there.
00:11:31
Speaker
But for film, you know, you can, you know, it's different. You want to make sure you're exposing for your shadow detail. Knowing that you can have a lot of latitude in the highlights. So just getting used to that, I think is what I've been messing around. I'll go home and like, I'll just take photos around home or.
00:11:51
Speaker
I've been shooting 16 millimeter on our Stan Winston courses. There was a bladder effects makeup that we did. It was kind of like a transformation thing, like a, you know, and, um, so there were latex bladders under latex appliances that were painted. And then, so we shot them digitally. And then I had, I did a couple of clips on 16 millimeter.
00:12:14
Speaker
And so just incorporating it that way has been fun. For stills, it's just, it's kind of just whatever. I'm still trying to find like labs and stuff. I don't like scanning all that much. Yeah. Just because it's my room, you know, it's dust. Desert's dusty.
00:12:33
Speaker
and you have to just be very diligent about wiping things down and making sure that you know you check what you're shooting and then look at it and oh there's all this dust maybe I could try it again. Well the reality is you just got to go all the way and get a dark room. No that's one way to do it. Honestly it's not that worse than scanning it. That's true. I mean scanning it's way faster but I mean
00:13:02
Speaker
It would be the way to go. I like the dark room. Then you scan the print if you want to make prints and you're done. You got the negative, you got the print. Boom, boom. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Larger than paper. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, in some instances it's even faster. I mean, there's also color, you know, you can't, I don't, they're like, can you, are there color photographic papers?
00:13:31
Speaker
Yeah, but working with color in a dark room is really hard. Everyone's always like, yeah, just don't do it. Just shoot digital for that. I've never done the dark room stuff. I've exposed a couple rolls of 35 millimeter in my kitchen, but I haven't done dark room printing. Yeah, really, you want to just do black and white. And honestly, it's fun, man. If you're all into that analog feel and just
00:13:58
Speaker
I mean, dealing with things that are a little antiquated in some respects, but far superior in others. Yeah, burning and spotting with a paper plate. Yeah. Well, just Darkroom has a ton of waste. But I mean, it's just fun to be in there, man, with the chemistry and the safe light on and just kind of...
00:14:25
Speaker
Especially when you see your picture develop that's always fun because you just see the solution wash over it and then just Pockets of it just slowly appear and then you see the saturation. I never use the tongs You suppose? Well, it depends on the on what you're working with but you don't have to feel that chemical burn my fingers Yeah, I mean I just I just go need deepen it but I mean there's literally some
00:14:49
Speaker
some chemicals that are pretty toxic. For instance, with film, I use this developer called Pyro. And it's just a beautiful, it produces a beautiful negative with a huge latitude. But it's very, very toxic. I mean, you get that in your skin, heavy metals instantly absorb in and stuff like that. So you got to be very careful with it.
00:15:14
Speaker
But it, I mean, that's all I use for developing. I haven't found a good developer for paper though, that I like, but for the negative pyro. And it's kind of a fun process. And interestingly enough with the pyro, cause it stains the negative, you could actually create a grainless image. Yeah. So you basically stain the image with the pyro and then you use another solution that would then wash away all the silver crystals. And then you would be left with just the stain and you would literally have a, um,
00:15:44
Speaker
grainless image, and then its fidelity is as sharp as the focus is. So it can enlarge to whatever until you lose that focus, right? Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, but then you gotta have a pretty tall table. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, you gotta have a really big table. But it's fun. And like, if you want to do large images, you would actually just project it on a wall. So you don't even need as much space as you would think in a dark room.
00:16:08
Speaker
Like I literally just wanna make a quick one out of a closet, like an outdoor closet to put in the backyard there and just have my dark room probably work when the moon's full. Use that as my safe light.
00:16:22
Speaker
There's, I have done negative D76 developer out of your Bamate. Okay. I found it in this zine. You should pick it up. It's actually really good called analog cookbook. Oh yeah. I think there's like five or six. Well, I have the, well, there's a book. No, it's just called the photographer's cookbook and it tells you all the different recipes.
00:16:44
Speaker
No, this is a zine and there was an issue with a lot of it was like, I think it was mostly developers, different types of developers. And I've, I have what we're friend, Alyssa has done Kool-Aid color negatives in Kool-Aid. Yeah. But I'm, I want to try the Yerba Mate D 76 with color negatives and see if it does anything. I mean, well, I mean, you can get some really weird effects. Like I used to, well, that image up there, that's actually just a regular piece of paper.
Creative Film Techniques and Challenges
00:17:15
Speaker
And, um, that was just, I forget what it's called, but it's basically a, uh, a liquid that you paint onto. Well, it worked best on paper, but you can hypothetically paint it on any surface. And then you can then expose it like a negative and that's your paper. And then you can develop it and you'll get an image on whatever surface you put it on.
00:17:38
Speaker
I like the contrast. Yeah, so that was me just painting it and trying to get brushstrokes in there and then doing the print on the back of an actual photo paper. Okay. So it's kind of fun. I mean, there's just so many things, so many random things you can get into. And in Photoshop, if you do it where it's much more easy, it looks cheap, you know, it's just kind of gimmicky. But there also is something to actually going through a long process to develop something like that.
00:18:06
Speaker
You know, cause like even before I've, I've done cyanotypes van dykes. And then we also did, um, it's not staining. That's not the word you use, but basically you run a print through more, um, solutions, different solutions. So you can run it through like gold for archival purposes. Coffee is a famous one where you just put it in coffee or print and then you get that sepia tone.
00:18:29
Speaker
Does it create like a fine, does it encapsulate it with something or is it just affecting the color? With the gold? Or any of them. They literally just change the, they interact with the silver so they'll be producing different effects and like with the gold,
00:18:49
Speaker
it does add an extra effect it kind of blows out this from what I saw and it was in a book it looked like it blew out the highlights more and kind of created this like soft look like this very dreamy look so you got a plan for that too in the dark room depending on how you want your print to look um but yeah just the way it interacts with
00:19:08
Speaker
the image there, it makes archival so that it can last hundreds of years. So then that's something people take into consideration for photographs is archival purposes, right? So yeah, it's pretty interesting doing stuff like that too, and you can get some crazy effects.
00:19:27
Speaker
Have you done medium format? That's what I shoot. Okay, cool. Yeah, that's what I shoot. I have a Mamiya RB67. And then when I travel, I have a Leica that I shoot on. And for a while, I was trying to build an eight by 10. Okay. Yeah, it's like modular. So you could do like outdoors eight by 10 in a studio eight by 10. So I was trying to build that up and I probably could because I'm sure it would be cheap. Well, for four by five. But, um,
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, I just kind of stopped with it because, you know, shooting with large format film like that's difficult.
00:20:04
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I mostly only shoot medium format. In fact, again, that image is shot with a Holga. Do you know the Holga? Yeah. So it's just shot on a little Holga. I think that shot on a Holga or it's shot on the medium. I have one and I have some roles. I just did a, I shot my first three roles on medium format in a possible odd 500 C. Oh, nice.
00:20:28
Speaker
that a friend lent and I was sort of trying to find a different lab, this looping back to the lab conversation, you know, it was, I haven't done much because it's just, it's kind of been like, well, which, where do I go? And
00:20:47
Speaker
And they're never, and nothing's ever really consistent. There are, there's some instances where, but I'm having a, I was having trouble being like, okay, here's what I'm doing. Here's what it's with the output and like taking note of what I'm changing. Like I need to be more systematic about like what I'm doing. Yeah. Cause if you're pushing or pulling the film, you got to know our, even if you're exposing it, like,
00:21:13
Speaker
I do like a pseudo zone system for exposing my images. Like you said, you're exposing for the shadows. Yeah, but I've been kind of aiming in the middle because that's just what my brain is trained to do. But I'm realizing like, oh, you know what? You could actually maybe just expose the highlights and then like cut the development time a little bit and see what that looks like. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, with the pushing and pulling. But I mean, it's better to do it centerline like you're doing it. That way when you do want to
00:21:40
Speaker
push and pull and because developer are, um, negatives and the process that the companies, you know, the, that they, uh, are the way they build the, the negative, right. The silver that it's arranged in there and all of that. Um, that's going to have its own reactions to exposure, right? Some films are more contrasty than others, for example. So you got to figure out your film and you got to figure out what that looks like.
00:22:09
Speaker
And then you also got to figure out your development time, figure out what you're getting for that. And then from there, maybe this film does better when it's, you know, underexposed to stop or overexposed to stop. And then you start pushing and pulling because like for Tri-X, for example, very contrasty film. I was told it was very good, so I bought it, used it. I don't think I've developed any of it yet, but.
00:22:32
Speaker
Then I found out it's super contrasty. So you're supposed to, I believe you're supposed to underexpose it by like a stop or two. And I was like, oh, fuck. So when I do produce my actual images, cause I'll just go with whatever the standard time is, cause that's how I exposed it.
00:22:47
Speaker
they're probably going to be contrasty. So it's good to kind of just keep that center line and then once you figure out what you really like, what looks you like, and then start pushing and pulling, missing with the developers, different developers, seeing all of that, even different temperatures. I mean, it gets deep, man, because temperature is enormous.
00:23:09
Speaker
and you're negative, if you want like a really high-end, high-quality negative, you gotta watch that temperature, you know? And you gotta be consistent and limit all the variables as much as possible.
00:23:20
Speaker
So even the way you agitate, cause you probably would do it by hand cause that's the easiest. Like just your fingers being on the can is heating that negative in that spot. So it's a little hotter and heat will affect exposure. So you kind of have to rotate that. And then you got to keep in mind there's bubbles on the film that might be hanging on. So you want to make sure you're knocking those loose. So yeah, it's pretty fun. Like,
00:23:48
Speaker
If you have that kind of mind that likes to go into the science realm, but you still want to be creative, photography is beautiful because you can just go so deep. I mean, just the optics of a lens for even shooting, you know, just how that's going to affect the image overall. I mean, you can.
00:24:05
Speaker
really go deep in understanding elements and the way the glass is coated and all that shit. And it's fun. You know, different companies, different bocas, different bocas, everything. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like Boca. Yeah. Something's so silly, but just the way it's going to affect that little blur, it's going to make it more circular or more starburst, more of a like, like a square shaped or something. Like, how do you want that? And then also.
00:24:29
Speaker
how severe it could be, right? Like different lenses are gonna really make that burst. And chromatic aberrations, right? That's lenses. And then once you finally delve into that, you'll want to get rid of all of that. And you want, I just want the cleanest image ever. And then you get in and say, ah, fuck, but I like the way it looks with all those aberrations and artifacts and everything. And then you go back to, you know, basics and you're shooting with the Holga.
00:24:55
Speaker
And you're shooting with a 1940s Russian lens that has just a little bit of fog in it. Yeah. There's some mold in there still from the 70s, but you like the way it is. Yeah. It adds just a weird glow to lights, the undertones. And it's like, you know, that lens is creating a unique image. And then if you even shoot in color, how that'll affect color, right? Because just the way the glass is responding to different color wavelengths, I mean,
00:25:23
Speaker
to affect things. I'm such a fucking, it gets deep. I'm such a hipster for those fucking old lenses, man. I love them. I got some Russian lenses for my BL4. And I wanted, the next step is going to be to experiment with taking anamorphic projector lenses and turning them into like anamorphic attachments for those. I think that'll be fun. Yeah. Yeah. Tom told me about anamorphics cause I didn't really know what they were. And then.
00:25:54
Speaker
I started looking into it more and my cousin Sean's really into anamorphics and was like, oh, okay, this seems like a really cool thing, what it can do. But then that's when the anamorphic craze went wild on YouTube. And then they jumped from like.
00:26:07
Speaker
you know, bargain bin, Victorville swap meet and now they're all super expensive. Yeah. That's, that's the shitty thing. All the vintage lenses, they, they're the hype hit and everyone was like, Oh, you can just get a meta bone speed booster and attach us onto a micro four thirds. Yeah. And then look at all of these good luck. That's really the big thing is micro four thirds. That kind of, I think chain that opened up a lot of opportunity for like, Oh, we can literally take anything and throw it on this thing. Yeah. Get an image.
00:26:37
Speaker
Yeah, and it's so funny too now, just the way, you know, people would talk about lenses and it'd be like all these flaws that they have, they're not doing anything, but then when you know they're into it, they say characteristics. Look at all this character this lens has, it's like, oh, okay. Yeah, but yeah, that micro, yeah, it was like the Micro Four Thirds camera started becoming better and better, right? You got the Pocket Cinema 4K from Blackmagic, which, I mean, that camera is a fucking workhorse for how much it costs.
00:27:06
Speaker
And then you can just throw any fucking lens that you want on there essentially, right? If you have the right adapter speed booster. I was putting an icon lenses on that. I didn't like, I was getting, I was running into an issue where like my computing power wasn't able to handle black magic raw. So I was like, eh, and I got rid of it. And I was happy with that decision.
00:27:35
Speaker
So have you been using, I remember you mentioned Resolve earlier. I wanted to ask you about it, but I was, I forgot. How do you like, are you using Resolve? How do you like Resolve? I remember we had talked about a new version. I think it's the best editing software. What did you use before Premiere then?
00:27:51
Speaker
Uh, yeah. Well, I had used, I had kind of used final cut seven as long as I possibly could. I know a lot of people love final cut. Yeah. It's starting to DVD studio pro finally. Shit the bed on my Mac pro final cut pro. I could still open up projects, kick them out as XMLs and bring them into resolve. Oh, do that. But I love resolve mainly because there's, you know, there were instances where.
00:28:20
Speaker
you know, you're editing on Premiere or Final Cut and you're getting a thing color graded and resolve. And there's a whole workflow for that, that at the time was exporting, you know, pro ress and then having a colors chop those up and color grade those and not really linking to any raw files or
00:28:43
Speaker
having a clear communication between the two. Oh, okay. Yeah. But, um, what had ended up happening was we were shooting for Stan Winston. We were shooting on, uh, five D's for a long time and syncing them and exporting basically a role per camera. So we'd have these giant ProRes files that would just line up.
00:29:07
Speaker
And then we got C three hundreds and started shooting onto MXF files. And then the MXF files couldn't load into final cut seven. So it became like, well, do we, what do we do? And the decision was made to go to premiere as they had MXF support and final cut X was not working well in our shared environment. And premiere was easier for that.
00:29:33
Speaker
But then eventually, man, I just got sick of it. It was getting, cause it's multicam. And I feel like with every update, you know, there was, there were new bugs and then they would make you update because you couldn't go too far back. And it was, and it was crashing all the time and.
00:29:52
Speaker
So I started looking at Resolve because I had been following DaVinci's incorporation of an editor in the color grading software for a while and it wasn't quite to where we needed it to
Transitioning Editing Software
00:30:06
Speaker
be able to do all the multicam stuff and not have it be too buggy.
00:30:13
Speaker
but I'm running it, I think it's 18.5 right now on the non-beta, or it might still be the beta version, but on a M2 Mac, a spec studio, and it's just so great, because
00:30:32
Speaker
Even with like DPX files for film scans, I could kick out proxies or render previews and those play back fine. And so you basically have, you're doing your edit with the originals, playing back without much of an issue.
00:30:54
Speaker
And then, you know, if you need to do any effects, you have Fusion right there, and Fusion's its whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. Is that pretty good too? Yeah. You can do most compositing tracking things that you would want to do in After Effects in there. So it's pretty comparable then. Yeah, but dude, the nodes, they're so intimidating. They're intimidating, but... What does the node go to?
00:31:19
Speaker
Dude, check out Casey Ferris' YouTube. He's got a lot of really good DaVinci tutorials and he's just like, he makes it really easy and he's funny. We really need to adopt it, but we don't promote Premiere so well. Yeah, that's the problem. Just pull the Band-Aid off. That's what everyone's saying and I'm like, okay, yeah, sure.
00:31:43
Speaker
It'll take, give yourself a window. Be like, okay, like if you want to do your feet, if you want to move your feature over, yeah, that would be a great learning experience. And it really would. You made my heart stop a little bit. What did you say? No, just not that way. It's almost done. We're almost there. Just try to promise. Like how many? I've cut some stuff in Resolve. It's nice, but it's just like you have to kind of relearn habits.
00:32:12
Speaker
Yeah, like I know ways to do things. Yeah, because like everything that Premier can do, I feel like Resolve does and probably better. It's just, you know, V, I'm used to hitting V for select instead of C or whatever you can change all that you can. And I remember I select the settings where it make it feel like Premier.
00:32:30
Speaker
And it still doesn't. Yeah, they have settings in DaVinci to make it feel like Premiere. Yeah, but it still doesn't. And I know I just need to start learning it because the coloring... The color grading tools are incredible. Unmatched. Well, everyone says how amazing it is. And then every time I'm on Premiere, I'm just like, I fucking hate this program. I fucking hate this program. I do have to switch over. Just jump. Just be brave.
00:32:58
Speaker
Well, yeah, I plan to. Well, I want to just finish the project we're doing in Premiere Pro and then switch over from there. Yeah, I mean, just I'm just worse. I just went so close. I want this edit to be done and just were so close. I just needed to be done, you know, buddy.
00:33:16
Speaker
Are you using like a lot of Premiere specific effects on like audio or picture or anything? A few, yes. But doing your compositing in there or something? No, no, it's more just the only thing we're using at least on the feature is just audio effects.
00:33:33
Speaker
I would look, I would do, I would start there and say, okay, do these effects exist in Fairlight? Oh, absolutely. If they do then, okay, you're cool there. Does it take VST plugins? Yeah. Oh, then yes. No, it exists for Fairlight. It's just, we have to buy the license for DaVinci. You have it. You have a black magic. Well, how much are you paying on your Adobe subscription? We're talking about waves, right? How much are you paying on your Adobe subscription? I don't pay anything because I work at a school. Oh.
00:34:02
Speaker
So that sells free right after you eat the initial purchase? Yeah, I think it's worth it. Resolve is mostly free and then every Blackmagic product you buy comes with like Resolve premium or whatever. Whatever the Resolve fancy is. No, I do want to switch over to you because
00:34:19
Speaker
This is our, this isn't Premiere Pro, but I run an old version of Premiere Pro cause it crashes so goddamn much and I don't want to switch. I'll wait a year before I switch over. Cause it's always so buggy. Cause they'll start making it obsolete on your desktop. Yeah. They'll just, and it's, it's. Yeah. And then you have to leave the new version and you have to then upgrade all your files to that version. So like Steven and I don't have the same version. We can't share back and forth.
00:34:45
Speaker
Well, just the amount of troubleshooting that goes into that program. I mean, I've spent probably close to a hundred hours just spending it troubleshooting. What's this error code? Why doesn't media encoder now render the file? Why is it working so well in Premiere Pro? And, you know, and then the worst part is I'm running into answers that don't exist on the internet. You know, so. They did get on core right though. I wish they would bring that back. That was their DVD.
00:35:18
Speaker
I used to make DVDs for people back in the day. I remember my friend Brandon. Is this a Velociraptor guy? Yeah, Brandon Tafoya. He wanted me to make them like a slideshow to kind of get, so he could get back with his girlfriend. And so I was making like this lovey-dovey like slideshow of pictures with them, and I burned it onto DVD using Encore.
00:35:43
Speaker
I'm crazy shit. They got, they got back together. You know, I was successful. I've never failed. I've never failed. So Jake, what's, what is next? Like, what are, what are you working on now? And, uh, what are you hoping to work on soon? Other than yuck a man. Well, I got the school takes up a lot of time and it's a lot of exploration, you know, it's always changing.
00:36:11
Speaker
Every new course we shoot, there's things that we've adjusted and, you know, they just keep getting better and better and it's fun.
Collaborations and Expanding Projects
00:36:18
Speaker
It's really fun. So I just put a lot of focus into that and I really like it. And, but beyond that, like some music videos, if I like the idea of working with desert musicians on
00:36:35
Speaker
film like with their music and film in the desert so uh yeah so yeah so just like you know the school stuff i like uh incorporating film to that and then it's mostly just kind of like just what what do i want to do with film is where i'm at there's i have my friend jim he's got an album it's a it's great it's called mahavi stars
00:36:58
Speaker
And I wrote a bunch of little anecdotes for each track just because I was I kind of like you know the wall and like those movies that were movies but they were mostly an album just with film on top of it. Yeah. And there's some of those out there still but I liked the idea of maybe doing something like that. I wrote a short with my friend Logan Valencia
00:37:22
Speaker
And he has four tracks that total to about 13 minutes. So we wrote a short that might end up being between like 10, 20 minutes to do on film. And it's really good. It was based on a story he told me.
00:37:42
Speaker
Um, about making flutes out of Yucca's, the, uh, like the century looking Yucca's from in his area, the big ones. Yeah. Or like along the past and stuff. Um, writing back to the Yucca, always back to the, I'm writing a feature. So that would be fun to do. It's a feature about, can you talk about it? You want to talk about it?
00:38:07
Speaker
Yeah, it's a Western. It's based on a character that I had produced a short about called Rufus Cannon. Is that available with another team? Yeah, it's on. Actually, no, it's not kind of lost in purgatory. Oh, OK. But it was done. It was like in 4K shot in 4K, I think.
00:38:33
Speaker
But it was just like the story that we dug up. And then I was working with my friend, Christopher Jones, who was the actor in that who played Rufus on like a feature version. So we've just been toying around with the history. It was a guy who lived in Kansas city.
00:38:49
Speaker
He ended up living for I think 104 years. He was born in 1848 or 9 and died around the early 1950s. Oh wow. So he saw this huge span of like change in the United States and technology and stuff. He's an actual Forrest Gump. The actual Forrest Gump, yeah.
00:39:10
Speaker
And so it's kind of like structurally similar to Forrest Gump in that regard, but it's his kind of shows a portrait of his life. And then a couple little anecdotes of like things that happened during the reconstruction period, 1890s. Then there's just, there's a lot, I got a studio binder account and I was like, all right, start, you know, I have a, like a kind of a rough development process where I'm like, Oh,
00:39:39
Speaker
throw some notes into a spreadsheet and then I'll copy those notes into a final draft document. And then I might write some dialogue or some scenes or something. So I just, I'm like, here's the spreadsheet for the project that has stuff in it. Here's the final draft document that has stuff in it. You know, um, here's some reference images. Here's a timeline with some music and like some placeholders. And I just kind of build those pieces.
00:40:08
Speaker
And then for this feature, like I'm handwriting in a journal from memory, what I've been like the notes that I've been taking to see if I can like get to a point where I'm like, that's like, that'd be interesting to watch. And, but I'm like kind of editing it in analog style on paper first.
00:40:29
Speaker
But I like the spreadsheet thing because then you can kind of, I can also use it to kind of, you know, marry shots from storyboards that have the same number into the spreadsheet. And then I can copy that onto text layers or markers in Resolve and then export an EDL and then copy time codes over and kind of have like a paper edit of, here's how it looks now. These are the shots. These are the ones I need to get. This is how long they should be.
00:40:58
Speaker
And that's helped with film, like the economizing of like a roll of film. Yeah. Is knowing, you know, I've put these shots basically in a timeline and cut them down and I know how long they need to be. And you can start, you know, cutting or adding from different spots and, and arrange it that way too.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah. And just make good use of, because film itself is, it's been an exercise in like, how can I do this economically? Yeah. And like tell, and make the story work the way it, you know, wants to.
00:41:30
Speaker
Yeah, because that's absolutely the huge benefit of digital is infinite takes essentially. Yeah, you can shoot all day as long as you want like as long as lighting permits. You can shoot as long as you want. You can shoot takes you can shoot takes out an hour long if you really want it.
00:41:49
Speaker
And you do not get that luxury in film. You get 10 minutes a roll if you got a big roll, right? So you got to very, very much plan it out. Like you got to get that shot in two takes or, you know, you ain't getting pizza for lunch. I mean, you could rehearse as often as you want, you know, just rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and be like, all right, guys.
00:42:12
Speaker
Yeah. Everyone good? You happy? Cause we're going to burn this. Yeah. And you should only, I like, I think it's a cool exercise just to say, can I, you know, get what I need on film in one take? Is it usable, you know? Yeah. That's hard. That's scary. Cause I mean, like there's so many times where you're just like, you, you call action and then like,
00:42:37
Speaker
like boom trips or something or- But see, that's where when you break down your shot lists and you time them and you get a previs going and you kind of see what you're shooting and how long it needs to take, you can give yourself that freedom when those things occur. That's true too, yeah. Yeah, we've heard someone else say that, it was someone else who knew what they were doing. Remember they were telling us about that? That's the one we interviewed? The cargo. What?
00:43:05
Speaker
Oh no it's jared and clark remember they're like yeah just figure that all out that way just give yourself that more time at the end or when you actually are in that situation and then also more freedom when you are shooting to kinda.
00:43:19
Speaker
experiment, try something unplanned because, you know, like, okay, well, we're still within the margin that we need to be. So it's like a 10% contingency for everything, you know, give yourself, you know, undershoot, you know, give yourself 10% more film to shoot something with, you know, plan for this much, but leave this much. And
00:43:40
Speaker
Yeah. And, well, I mean, I don't know if you guys, I know Steven hasn't probably read that. There's a Don Costarelli, you know who that is? The guy that wrote- I probably haven't read it, huh? Take one look at me and be like, oh, it's really deep, right? Didn't do it. You know, I hate to call it kettle black. No, I'm kidding. Steven's a good reader. He reads good.
00:44:04
Speaker
No, but Don Castrelli, he made, why can't I? Well, Jesus, everything is just hitting me all at once. Fantasm. He did the Fantasm series, Beastmaster. But he made a book called The Life and Death Through Indie Filmmaking, like zero-budget indie, or low-budget indie filmmaking. And he just talks about how, oh yeah, yes, how rehearsals,
00:44:31
Speaker
There's pretty much no, it's hard to put a value on just being that prepared and just having the time to execute everything properly. I think my worry is, especially with wanting to shoot on film is,
00:44:46
Speaker
I like to have that, those takes to explore and like, I'll, I'll go, I'll go six to eight takes in this, in a shot. And I'm like, dude, can I do that with film? Like UK? Yeah. Just budget for it. You know, give yourself, if you're, if it's depending on how long the takes should reason.
00:45:03
Speaker
But yeah, but the the the real part of it is is looking at your story and saying like this shot like as it plays out can maybe be you know 10 seconds or 20 or a minute or whatever like whatever you can kind of just kind of have an idea before you shoot of how long a shot needs to be and think okay well if that's about
00:45:26
Speaker
about how long it needs to be. And I give myself a little bit of a 10% buffer, you know, a little pre-roll, post-roll. If you run audio, slate and then roll.
00:45:39
Speaker
you have like a, on my 35 millimeter, it beeps before. So you could basically, when I'm syncing, use the beep and the audio to kind of know when you're starting. And then you have the picture and you kind of just figure it out, you know, sync. So I don't think that you need to shoot a slate or you need to shoot a color target just so you have that as a reference. Yeah.
00:46:08
Speaker
But I realistically, like if it's, if you're going like bare bones, like I don't think you need to slate picture when you're shooting film. So that gives you a certain degree of savings on waste. And, you know, there might be a couple of frames or a second or whatever of pre and post role of the camera kind of getting to a consistent picture.
00:46:34
Speaker
depending on what you're doing. And then it's just like, you know, if you know, if you know, it should be about 10 seconds and you want to give yourself 12 seconds, you multiply that by eight and you figure out, you know, do I need one roll for this one shot to give myself those options for those takes? Yeah. Then you just do it. You just, that's just how you do it. And then maybe you shoot four takes, you know, and then you got a whole half roll left.
00:47:02
Speaker
That's true. I guess if you plan for it. Yeah, that's where it gets kind of fun. You're like, Oh, yeah. Yeah. And also, and there's like an added discipline that comes to set when you're shooting film. I think people are more serious about what you're doing. Yeah. And they're doing their, they take it more seriously. I think you take it more seriously.
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah, because you're really running dollars through the second, like the minutes, like the seconds. I mean, down to where every second can count. And I mean, as much film as you brought to set that day is how much you have to shoot.
00:47:37
Speaker
So once you're out, you're out, which is true man, pretty crazy. And then, and then you don't really see what you shot until it's been developed. And that's, that's wild. Right? That's where you're like, Oh, did we catch a highlight? Did we catch a reflection in the mirror? And you're not like, I don't think they do like side by sides, right? Or they'll do like a digital camera so you can kind of see.
00:48:01
Speaker
to see if you like caught a reflection. You can do that. Yeah. I was thinking like maybe do a GoPro. Uh-huh. Just yeah, for reference, you know, small camera, something just put on the tripod or whatever. Yeah, you can do that.
00:48:15
Speaker
That stuff's cheap. So something Steven and I always talk about is, especially with indie filmmaking, that sound is king. What kind of sound like equipment do you like to use? Do you have any experience or? Yeah, I'm getting more experience with it because like with the school stuff, we had always used labs and like a backup boom. But there's always shop noise and lots of variations in room tone and
00:48:43
Speaker
what's going on and fans and things like that. So I think for like talking head stuff, what I found that I like is, um, just capturing some sort of clean, as clean as possible, lab audio. And nowadays, you know, you can use, you don't need like a super fancy Sennheiser. You can get away with,
00:49:12
Speaker
something a little cheaper, but it's going to sound different. And that Sennheiser is also going to like take out a lot of the workload for you.
Audio Editing with iZotope RX8
00:49:21
Speaker
Like it's going to be clean, directional.
00:49:25
Speaker
Um, and then, so what I've been doing is getting, you know, that audio and running it through isotope RX eight. That's what I use. Should be seven. I might use seven. I was for the first few times I use it. I was kind of getting the setting still. And yeah, I go back and listen and I'm like, Oh, I understand.
00:49:46
Speaker
But it's still better than just raw audio and some volume adjustments. And nowadays I've got everything kind of set to where I'm doing like a, I'll do like a levels sort of, not normalized, but like a levels pass where it kind of targets a consistent
00:50:13
Speaker
a Luf's setting and an RMS setting and kind of... Oh, and it normalizes? Or it kind of just like balances everything. Yeah. It kind of gets everything pretty. Awesome. So it does all that. And there are, there are like little spikes and dips and things that you have to kind of like do, do, do, but it's not much. So I do that. I'll do a mouth de-click on the whole thing. Definitely. To a little... This motherfucker.
00:50:39
Speaker
Yeah, what can I say? She's speaking another language with how much she cleans them. Who are you talking to? I'm just looking at my microphone now. I'll do that. I'll try to cut like a low noise floor, but enough to where you can like, it's not... You like some of the noise, huh? Because you're in a log. Yeah. Well, it's also, I think if it's too silent with especially the long form, it'll drive you insane. You know, that's interesting. Yeah, you're absolutely right. But with the podcast,
00:51:08
Speaker
I do the noise gate. So it just crushes anything. Okay. You know, it's like a silence and what, but I'm going off of these monitors. So I could not be hearing it right. Cause normally you want that. Those are your house. Yeah. Yeah. The, I don't know the internet said by them. They're pretty good. Those are good ones. Yeah. And, and, uh, cause you want that noise for cause it just.
00:51:31
Speaker
At least in the film, you've noticed when there's no noise flooring when there is, like it sounds awful, but on the podcast, I guess we get away with it. Maybe because of the mics, you know, being so close to the mics, maybe we're able to get away with that. I don't know. That helps. Yeah. The mic definitely helps. I think the mic is a good start. Whatever your mic is.
00:51:47
Speaker
Yeah. Cause like in a film, I mean, you kind of want room and you want the room sound in there. Yeah. That's why we feel more live. That's why we take room tone. Yeah. My, my, my, what I'm going to do for this short is so like that's, that's educational. That has its own needs for audio. But if I'm doing like a narrative short, I think what I want to do is just take like an H six zoom.
00:52:16
Speaker
with a couple wireless labs popping into it. If it's a few people, you probably got to get to another type of recorder with more channels. But basically just doing labs into a recorder, just doing a quick test test and just shooting audio, just recording that straight. I don't need to record every take, you just hit record and leave it.
00:52:41
Speaker
And then just go shoot and shoot things. And then you get, you have the sound, you'll have the sound of the camera probably in some, some of the tanks. You can, but I have been messing with like removing gate click in isotope and that's pretty solid.
00:52:59
Speaker
Even if it intersects with what someone's saying, ADR is always an option. And then also, these things, our phones have such a high fidelity range in the highs because of just phone... It's easier to hear, yeah.
00:53:19
Speaker
the audio recorder straight from the base mic is like, it gives you a lot of information. Yeah. Well, like we were talking about the black magic earlier, those microphones on that thing are really good. And it's just, you know, just a mic on a camera, but I think it's proximity. You just need to figure out like, you know, how far are we from the camera? How should this sound based on that distance? And I think like labs give you a good starting point to be able to
00:53:50
Speaker
manipulate the perspective of what that distance is to the sound.
00:53:56
Speaker
You know, I think you can pretty much just fudge all that as much as you want. I don't think you necessarily need like a boom. And you could set up like a boom on a stand and just get some room audio. You could hide mics. You could collect some room audio and just kind of round it out with that and sculpt it a little. But I would like to try just like not even really worrying about sound, running on some mics. No, yeah. I mean, that's why I was really investing in Lofts. It's kind of like, well, why not just go Lofts?
00:54:26
Speaker
You can kind of just run and go. And I mean, I'm sure there's some applications where yes, that is the standard. Well, in the orgy scene in Yuckaman, we won't have, how are we going to hide them up? You do a, it's a, don't ask me how I know this. You put, um, you like attach these small like hideaway packs to like your shirt or something. And you run a line up here, hide it in the hair and you basically have it.
00:54:55
Speaker
They're not going to be wearing shirts. It doesn't matter. Well, then you can hide it in the hair. You can like tuck it up into the hair or give him a necklace, a chain, jewelry. Yeah, that's a good idea. You can orgy with necklaces.
00:55:11
Speaker
Could also just have like a really long boom pole, just right. Just drop a condenser mic, like straight into the pile and just hold on one single source. Well, you know, uh, cause we're talking about sound. I was at NAB the, um, this year. No. Yes. Yeah. And what I've been getting into is just, um, creating a rich sound and I forgot, maybe it was psychotic.
00:55:39
Speaker
Maybe. No. Psychonics cameras, right? What is psychotic? I don't know. I don't know. It's light meters. Light meters. Jesus Christ. My brain's all over the place. It must've been Sennheiser then. I don't know. They might make something else. No, I don't think they make. I just know they're light meters. I don't think they make mics. But they had this really cool mic that I want to get. I'm kind of giving away a secret here. But it was basically
00:56:01
Speaker
I don't know if it ran on different channels. That's, that's what I wasn't clear on, but it was basically a mic going up or a stick going up. And then in a ball you had like eight different mics. So it's capturing the entire 360 degree. Yeah.
00:56:17
Speaker
Like a 360 mic. Yeah, but it's not going to be something you have to rig up. It would just be the standalone unit you buy, and it has all these different mics and all these different arrays. And they said, like, you can even customize it depending on what you want to capture. Because the way they imagined it would be used was in sporting events, you know? But I was like, damn, that sounds so cool. And that's why I asked them. I was like, well, is it separated into different channels? Because then you might want to isolate, you know, to really create a soundscape.
00:56:47
Speaker
But yeah, that's what I'm really trying to get into is just creating that live sound. I guess it's probably impossible maybe. No dude, you'll figure it out. Sound is fun. But I was thinking like a camera, right? Like cameras just don't capture what we see. Like for instance, if you see a beautiful sunset in the desert, you look at it, it's like, it's beautiful. And take a picture with it on your phone or something. It looks like shit, right? All the time. Or if you really try to capture scale, a lot of times it just gets muddled
00:57:18
Speaker
Maybe also how so for scale. Yeah. Like, do you have an example? You know, like, let's say you have a telephoto. So you have a wide view of the image, but you're trying to capture the size of how big something is and just the way it compresses things in that 2d space. It just never captures the magnitude of something large. Or even if you go in tight on something large, you can get key stoning effects when you're looking up. Right.
00:57:42
Speaker
Yeah. Doesn't, um, do you have you ever shot with tilt shift lenses? Yeah. Uh, the four by five. Does that, that's why you would use four by fives. Yeah, it corrects it. Yeah. It corrects key stoning. Um, and interestingly enough in product photography, it corrects key stoning, but, um, that's just me nerdy now, but yeah, like just.
Film vs Digital: The Debate Continues
00:58:03
Speaker
The human eye just sees such wonders that the camera just hasn't been able to capture yet. Right. I think that's one of the advantages of film. I think film is the closest thing color.
00:58:16
Speaker
color motion picture film at 24 frames per second at variable shutter, different shutters, you know, there's so much nuance just in like your shutter angle. And I, but I think that's the closest because like when you watch a sunrise or sunset and your eyes are closed and you see the infrared pattern of the sun on your eyelids and you know, you can see that gradient from the center of the source.
00:58:47
Speaker
You know, you're not supposed to look at the sun, right, Jay? Well, I mean, with your eyes closed, with your eyes closed. Like, if you look at the sun with your eyes closed, or like face the sun with your eyes closed, and you kind of see where the heat is concentrated, or like the light is concentrated,
00:59:03
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it's wider. It's on the, it's in, you're seeing an infrared scale of color. The, the back to, you know, towards the back of your eye, it gets darker. Yeah. So you have that infrared scale there. And, um, I've been curious about, uh, UV, like an inf, you know, like spectrum and how to, how to find like what's going on there.
00:59:30
Speaker
Yeah, because I wanted to do a whole series with infrared film. Because you know, on certain people, it makes their veins pop out. What? Yeah. So I think it's on lighter skinned people, like really white skinned. Yeah, you can see the veins through their face and all of that. So I was like, man, that'd be a really cool thing to do like a collection of figures with the veins and everything. Do you know of anybody who's making infrared film? They don't make it anymore? I don't think so. I don't think anyone makes it.
00:59:59
Speaker
Well, if you really want some, I think I have some, I can. It's medium format though. That's cool. Yeah, I can give you some. That'd be cool, man. Yeah, you know, and it's so fucking sad, man. Cause like Polaroids, Polaroids don't exist anymore. And they're like a million dollars a batch. They used to be $5, right? When everyone had Polaroid cameras and it went up to 15, whereas like no one shoots Polaroid, but we'll still make it. Cause you can use it for commercial applications. Like you don't have a digital camera, you need to get the shot. You have the Polaroid.
01:00:29
Speaker
And then, and then it would, you know, it just went out of business because of digital. And then it kind of got brought back. Then it went out and now it's like 200 or like a hundred bucks, a box of 16 shots. That's wild. And someone was throwing out Polaroids. So they threw their Polaroids out and I kept them. I have like a box full.
01:00:51
Speaker
Are they, they're exposed? I have no idea. They were in the, it's in the desert and they were not a garage. So most likely they're fogged. But if they're not, I'm like, man, this is a gold mine of Polaroids. But it's sad because if you shoot film, and I'm sure this is even more so for, uh, you know, film for, for movies.
01:01:14
Speaker
A lot of these film stocks are going away, you know? And they're gone. And they're fucking gone, man. Like Plus X, Kodak Plus X, it's just fucking gone. And it's never coming back unless someone steals the recipe. And even still, you know, it's not coming back to the same quality. Or was making motion picture film now. They have some good, some motion picture stocks. They've got somewhere else.
01:01:40
Speaker
I think a lot of it's, I don't know if they're using like the Kodak's, like the emulsion base. Yeah. Or not the emulsion, like the plastic, like the backing part, like the actual piece of plastic. Yeah. I don't know if they build it off that because I know like there's, I was watching a multi-parter on Kodak's manufacturing process.
01:02:03
Speaker
And I think there's a spot where they create the backing and then that in some instances gets sold off for different purposes that like plastic film. Oh, and then they add the emulsion later. So they add the cyan, you know, the three, the multi multiple colors and things for color film into that emotion. Yeah. But, um,
01:02:26
Speaker
I don't, you know, I think like, um, for archival, we'll probably always have to have film because I don't film, right? Yeah. So you'll always have black and white. You'll have a black and white stock. You might have it in.
01:02:42
Speaker
I like it. It's reassuring. It's like, yeah, you're right. There should always be some sort of analog solution to all of this. Totally. But then I also, I think theatrical projection is going to create demand for more, um, 70 millimeter stocks for just for projection purposes. Oppenheimer kind of made that a thing too. I think so. Yeah. They also shot another film on it. So I think that demand is just going to, I mean, if you're into Magnolia. No, something else.
01:03:11
Speaker
Oh, but Magnolia was shot on 70, right? I know PT likes to use it, but there's someone else who used IMAX and they're like, Oh yeah, it's amazing. Use IMAX for X, Y, and Z. It wasn't necessarily for just the look. It was for more practical reasons. You can't remember though. Do you remember what those reasons were? Uh, yeah, it was, I believe it was just fidelity reasons, you know, just the larger negative. And then.
01:03:40
Speaker
I don't remember what else it was. It was other practical reasons. Those can kind of go over my head real quick, you know, depending on how in depth it's getting on the logistics of that. Magnolia was done in 70 millimeter. I believe so. You gotta look that up. A lot of his films. Yeah. Cool. I love that movie. That's a good one.
01:04:02
Speaker
But I think from, if you're making sheets of plastic and coating it in emulsion and cutting it up for 70 millimeter, you're gonna still be able to get 35 off of that and maybe 16. I mean, maybe one day they'll get rid of eight millimeter, but I doubt it. I mean, there's still enough cameras out. You still need it for microfilm archival purposes.
01:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, that'll be all that keeps it alive, you know, which is scary.
01:04:34
Speaker
Well, I mean, they have like you have people out there that are just recognizing the difference. Right. That too. Yeah. I mean, you have I think that's a but also was talking about with those niche audiences. I think those are going to keep things alive because the Internet has been able to bring all the like weirdos together. I'm like, yeah, that's true. Create an echo chamber echo chamber. Because, you know, honestly, like I love film, but as of late now, I'm like sold on film.
01:05:02
Speaker
You know, now it's like, Oh, well, if I can shoot it on film, I want to. Whereas before it was like, Hey, whatever. I think it's the best for this film. Yeah. Whatever its demands would say are the best. But now it's like, no film. Yeah. Don't you, don't you get it? Don't you get it? Right. Aren't you seeing it? People see it. I think when you shoot practical effects too, it becomes,
01:05:27
Speaker
Becomes apparent. Well, yeah. Cause it's really, I was telling you, Tom, cause we were even talking about miniatures. I'm like, dude, even if it's a miniature, it's real. Like you are seeing what is there, you know, the, yeah, the scales not there. And just, I don't know. It just translates through that frame where you can touch it and feel it. You know, maybe it's our, our education and photography and being
01:05:54
Speaker
familiar with that medium that when we see a film, it feels so much more tangible. But at least for right now, it's digital just doesn't have it. And I mean, I feel like one day digital will like technology is only going to get more advanced, right? But
01:06:15
Speaker
And maybe I'm being a, what is it, a Luddite? But I just, man, just give me that practical effect. It just has heart. Whatever that means. Well, it's different too. I think it's just the toolbox is getting bigger and you have different tools for different things, you know, and maybe one tool is not as good as the other for what you're talking about, you know, like a narrative storytelling experience versus like a football game.
01:06:42
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's very true too. That's right. I do like the effects and sporting events. Or like 3D scanning, 3D scanning a mountain, you know, you can shoot those reds getting up to larger image sizes, you know, it makes it really cool for, you know, if you're going to take a drone and 3D scan a mountain, you want that fidelity to map that as a thing.
01:07:06
Speaker
Well, yeah, even like just image sensor size, I was getting turned on to that because they have the medium format, uh, digital cameras, right? Yeah. And I was like, damn, that looks good looking. Well, I guess is that like a digital, like a digital Hasselblad back type of thing? They have those, but those are so expensive.
01:07:24
Speaker
Um, no, it was like they're building cameras. Fuji has a medium format. Yeah. And it looks gorgeous. It produces a gorgeous cause it also has, cause it's a larger negative size. So it also follows the same rules for like focal lengths and how it affects that in the larger formats. You know, Have you looked into that camera at all that was built for shooting content for that sphere in Vegas? Oh, uh-uh.
01:07:51
Speaker
There's some there is an article I found, but I'll send it to you guys. But it was. I remember all the details, but they basically built like a sensor that was. Oops, sorry. I think concave a little or convex, depending on how it's. Yeah. But it would and then piece together this like huge ass image.
01:08:11
Speaker
Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. So you keep the, you don't distort, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's a, it's in, it's, there's an article about it that actually explains it properly. That wasn't a good explanation, but it's, they had a specific type of camera for it.
01:08:26
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. First thing is cool. You, did you go even yet? I was there before it was operational and I kept calling it the death star, man. That's what it's fucking ominous, man. It feels fucking dark. I don't know. I just saw it from the 15. Like I was like, Oh, there it is. Well, when I went to NEB, cause you, the train, the monorail you take takes you right past it to get to the convention center. So I was like, what the fuck?
01:08:53
Speaker
I mean, it looks cool because it's a sphere, you know, how many spheres do you see in architecture? So it does stand out, but I don't know, man. It just felt like the real Death Star. I was like, man, that really isn't a moon. That's pretty cool, though. I'm curious to check out the show that they do in there. You two supposed to do a residency in there. Oh, no, thanks. And I think it's supposed to be for basketball. That's what I heard. Basketball. Yeah. Vegas wants a whole every sports team, man.
01:09:22
Speaker
play. Oh, but they're just going to put basketball in there. No, I think they're going to concerts too. Yeah. Cause I heard you two supposed to do the residency inside of it. I would check the two L man. He probably would. Yeah. Should we read the script? Yeah. Let's jump into the script. We can, uh,
01:09:47
Speaker
Get this little toasty. OK, so there are three characters, Danny, obviously, who also will read the action. OK. And then there is Marv, who is the younger, more intelligent and then Elmer, who's like a three stooges character. OK, so Jake, you are a guest, so you get to pick who you want to be. Mr. Director. Hmm.
01:10:16
Speaker
I'll be, I'll be Elmer. Okay. Oh, he's going for the hard roll. Is that the hard one? I thought that would be the easy one. I feel like it's the hard one, but, uh, I'll do the voices are encouraged. Uh, if you can keep it up, Steven, you can, uh, you tell me buddy, do you want Danny or, or Marv? You tell me. Do you want to read the action or do you plan with reading action? Then you're going to be Danny. Do you want to tell us our characters? Yeah. You're Danny.
01:10:47
Speaker
He's Elmer. I am Marv. All right, cool. You'll figure it out. Danny is Dead, written by Casper the Friendly Ghost. Is that your pseudonym for screenwriting, Tom? What? Is that your pseudonym for screenwriting? I do many pseudonyms. Cool. I bet you got teased about that a lot too, huh? Oh, yeah.
01:11:14
Speaker
Okay, sorry. Fade-in interior Danny's second floor bedroom night. My name is Danny and I am nearly dead. Come on, okay, hold on, hold on, let's take it back. How many times have you read this? You got it. There's always a twist, so it's better to not read it. I thought you said I would figure it out. Okay, can you do like an old man? An old man. Very old man.
01:11:44
Speaker
What the fuck does an old man sound like? I don't know man. Sounds like you. I don't know. My name is Danny and I am, and I'm nearly dead. My two companions here are attempting to resurrect me. My fate is in their hands. Fuck.
01:12:01
Speaker
Part one, the spell. The witching hour approaches as two men stand over a dying man in bed. The dying man is Danny. He is in his 70s. Really? Like 70s is old, huh, to you? I mean, can't we give him like 80? He's pretty fucking old. Give me a break. And cancer has destroyed his body. The old warlock wheezes his final few breaths. Standing over his bed are his two acolytes, young in their practice. Marv and Elmer read from the grimoire.
01:12:32
Speaker
It says here, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Oh, you make fun of me, eh? It says here, we need to dip the wick of each black candle in the caster's blood. Almer sorts through the large cardboard box filled with all the supplies. And where do the candles go? In a circle around Danny's body. It doesn't have to be a perfect circle. It doesn't have to be a perfect circle or anything.
01:13:00
Speaker
Danny wheezes and groans, too weak to speak or even lift his arms. Okay, I need some blood from you.
Mysterious Ritual Gone Awry
01:13:08
Speaker
How much blood do you think the spell requires? Just enough to dip the candles.
01:13:14
Speaker
In would be my guess. If I could read, it would be helpful. All right, read that as one sentence this time. Just enough to dip the candles in would be my guess. First time doing a major spell like this. Danny closed his eyes wishing for death. Give me your arm. Mar still holding the book firmly in one hand reaches out across the bed. Elmer brings a small bowl under and what looks like a rusty steak knife.
01:13:41
Speaker
Oh, that's the knife. Are you trying to give me some tetanus? It's the one the master had in his box of supplies. I didn't think of it. You never think of anything, Albert. You go first.
01:13:54
Speaker
Elmer can't figure out how to cut his arm and hold the bowl. He sets the blood on the nearly dead body of Danny. Elmer then slices his rest open, bloody, spurting blood around the room, missing the bowl. He drops a knife, capturing some blood, a stream splashes on Marv's face. Jesus fucking Christ, Elmer. You don't have to chop your arm off. You got blood everywhere. Look at the mess you made. You better believe you're cleaning this up.
01:14:22
Speaker
Sorry Marv, I wasn't sure and I just pressed and it sliced through so easily. Alma wraps bandages around his arm and the blood pools inside the bowl. He reaches over and slices gently into Marv who hisses as a nice stream enters the bowl. That was much better, very clean. See, I can learn.
01:14:45
Speaker
Marv retracts his arm, wrapping it in the bandages set on the bed. All right, let's dip the candles. Light them. We need exactly 13 candles. Perfect. We have exactly that many. What happened to the spares? I only had enough money for these 13. The black candles were not cheap. Marv places a large tome onto Danny's chest. It begins to suffocate him. Hey, just how about you hand me the candles? You want six or seven? Just give me a handful. I don't care.
01:15:15
Speaker
All right, if you say so. Almer hands the candles over and they each begin to dip them in the blood. Denny coughs and wheezes as a tome crushes him. Almer finally notices and lifts the book off his chest. Oh shit, sorry Denny. I didn't mean to kill you yet, though soon enough.
01:15:33
Speaker
Be careful with the Master Mars. Yo, hand me the lighter, okay? Let's get this thing started. He doesn't look so good.
01:15:51
Speaker
All the candles are lit and the room glows with a warm orange luminance. Lightning strikes outside and the window crashes open. Hey, close the window. Hurry. We don't want many of these goddamn candles to blow out. Elmore rushes to the window, slamming it shut, but it suddenly hits with a torrent of cold air.
01:16:09
Speaker
It's freezing right here. A cold spot. Is that a good sign? A worried look dances across Mars' face. Yeah, we better hurry. We may have some unwanted guests. Draw a circle on the floor with the remaining blood. That will hold Danny's spirit here. Elmer takes the bowl and traces out a circle using his fingers. The circle is very small at the foot of the bed. Done. What is next? He needs to die.
01:16:36
Speaker
Elmer and Marv move to stand over Dany. Again, they make eye contact. Everything is set for the spell, Master. We just need you to die now. If you could be so kind. You can release yourself from this mortal coil. Awaken in a new, young body. Dany closed his eyes, attempting to hold the breath and let go, and finally die. Yet his body would not quit.
01:17:03
Speaker
A few minutes pass as the two quietly stand over the bed. Hey, this is taking a while. What should we do? Kill him, I guess? We don't have all night. Kill the master? I mean, I know that's what we need to do. I just hoped, you know, he might just die on his own. Well, that clearly isn't happening. We have the knife, or maybe the pillow, or do you have any ideas? No. I think the pillow is the better idea.
01:17:33
Speaker
Denny opens his eyes with a worried look as the two above him discuss his manner of death. All right, the pillow it is. Emmer, Elmer, just gently press it over his face. He'll be fine. Elmer leaps back away from the bed, colliding into the wall. I can't, I can't do it. Maybe you should do it. Maybe we can wait a few more minutes. He looks pretty dead, actually.
01:17:58
Speaker
Danny Koff's signaling he is in fact not dead. Come on, die, motherfucker. Marv picks up and throws a pillow across the bed at Elmer who catches it and throws it back. Marv throws it back like a game of hot potato. This goes on for some time.
01:18:19
Speaker
Marv tosses a pillow to Elmer one final time and holds up his hand. Stop this nonsense now. He isn't dead and we have, well, only 30 minutes to get him into his new body. At 4am, poof, spell fizzles, we lose him forever. So come here and kill him.
01:18:36
Speaker
Rock, paper, scissors. Best of one. Lightning strikes outside the window. Enough! Fuck! I'll do it. Hand me the pillow. Alma slips closer to the bed and hands the pillow over Danny's body. Danny, I'm sorry about this, but I'll see you in a minute. Marv presses the pillow over the dying Danny's face and starts counting to 60 in his head.
01:18:57
Speaker
Do you think it's been long enough? Don't interrupt me, I'm trying to count. Sorry, I didn't realize you were... Marv lifts a pill and looks down at Danny. He presses his head against his chest, hearing for any breathing or heartbeat. Think he's dead? A huge long full of air lifts Danny's body and he gasps and coughs.
01:19:21
Speaker
He just won't die. Marr frustrated, grabs the knife and stabs it into Danny's chest. Blood pours and pools around the side of the bed, but within seconds, Danny dies. Cut to the sudden rush of death. Can you do it like there will be blood? You want me to do it like Daniel Plainview? Yeah, Danny Daniel Plainview.
01:19:54
Speaker
The sudden rush of death catapulted my spirit out to the circle trapping me in place. I turned to look at myself, knives sticking out of my chest. Marvin Elmer had done it. I was free of that old body, but my new body was nowhere to be seen.
01:20:13
Speaker
Part two of the body, interior Denny's room 330. Marv and Almer walk to the foot of the bed and the spirit of their master floats between them. It worked, holy shit. Master, can you hear us? Yes, yes, I can hear you. I'm not deaf, I'm dead. Now where is my pretty young body? Downstairs on the table. Didn't want to trip over it.
01:20:38
Speaker
This spell summons all the nearby spirits, and you left my new body downstairs unattended. A crash can't be heard from downstairs. You don't suppose? Oh, I suppose. You two fucked it all up. I just had a feeling, more than a feeling, it was fucking destined to get royally fucked. We don't have much time.
01:21:03
Speaker
Listen carefully. Almer, you need salt. Please tell me you brought salt. Almer lifted a box of salt from the supplies. Good. Thank you, Almer. Now will one of you go put some salt in that body's mouth? It will force out the spirit. A rumbling can be heard slamming crashing windows shattering. Quickly before my house is destroyed, poltergeists.
01:21:31
Speaker
I'll do it, master. I'll do it. Oh, that's not me. Correct. I'll do it, master. Alma rushes towards the heavy oak door, but as soon as he reaches for the knob, a metal purring roars through the door. Stop. The fuck is that noise? Marv walks up to the door with Alma. The purring grows louder until the sound becomes clear to them both. The chainsaw.
01:21:57
Speaker
The ripcord roars the chainsaw to life from outside the door as the poltergeist begins to chop down the door. Oh, fucking shit, how the fuck did I get a chainsaw? I left it on the table by the body. Why the fuck did you do that?
01:22:11
Speaker
Get back from the door. The blades of the chainsaw easily cut through the door, collapsing it into the room. The naked body of a 20-year-old well-built man stands there with a twisted stare. The poultry guy steps into the room, but trips over the fallen door and lands on a still rolling chainsaw. Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck.
01:22:32
Speaker
Blood and gore shower Marv and Elmer until they are completely drenched. The body saws completely in half. The hands still firmly pressed on the chainsaw blade as it spins out of control, stopping as it crashes into the wall. Elmer steps down and fills the mouth with salt. The poltergeist flies out, screeching through the air. My body, you idiots! Oh, did you learn nothing?
01:22:59
Speaker
What do we do now? Danny looks back and forth between the two Marv, has the better build, but is also older than Elmer. Elmer just, no. Elmer, kill Marv, I will take his body. Marv shoots a glance at Danny, and then to Elmer, who is picking up the chainsaw. Whoa, whoa, Elmer, we can talk about this. You can't use the chainsaw, it will ruin my body.
01:23:28
Speaker
Alma drops the chainsaw, rushes, bounding over the corpse, and tackles Marv to the ground. The two crash into the wall, which knocks off the candle above them, causing it to go out. Cut to, my name is Danny, and I am dead. My two asshole acolytes fizzled my spell, and now my spirits will be trapped here in this house until I lose my memory and go mad.
01:23:56
Speaker
My last wish is that these two both die horrible deaths. Denny vanishes. Part three, the fizzle. Interior Denny's room 350. The two stop wrestling enough to notice that daddy has vanished. They stop their fighting and get to their feet. Hey, dude, I can't believe you're gonna kill me. I like the master more than you. You're good to know, prick.
01:24:24
Speaker
It's just the truth. We really fucked things up. I think I got a piece of brain in my mouth. Marv spits out a chunk of fleshy brain onto the floor. I can feel gore running down my pants. How did that even happen? Oh, I really don't know, but what do we do now? Take the book, then set the house on fire. Marv looks over at the body, the broken circle on the ground, then to Elmer.
01:24:52
Speaker
Ah, sure. I'll grab the book. You want to just throw the rest of the candles on the bed? Almer does as instructed and the bed catches quickly burning hot and fast. Cut to exterior outside Danny's home, 4.15 AM. Almer and Marr stand side by side watching as the house is engulfed in flames. The two still covered in dried gore and blood slide into their car. Marr motions for Almer to roll down the window.
01:25:21
Speaker
Want to get some breakfast and get cleaned up? Sounds rather nice actually. Sorry about trying to kill you. Marv laughs. Well, you never had a chance. I would have got you in the end, kiddo. Old man, you were so close. Well, I guess that means breakfast is on me. Nice. I need to have you trying to kill me more often.
01:25:45
Speaker
The two roll their windows back and drive off together down the road. The house collapses on itself as the sound of a fire truck roars out in the distance. Fade out the end. All right. What do you guys think of that one? That sounds fun. I think you could do it. Just shoot it, man. Yeah. Just break it down.
01:26:11
Speaker
Would you shoot that on film? Now keep in mind how expensive film is. And we do have a free digital. There's a lot of dialogue. There's a lot of dialogue. But, um, I mean, if you, yeah, if you, you could shoot it on film. I mean, it's, there's a cost. Depends on which format. All right. How would you, would you build a body for the chainsaw to squirt blood? Let me see. So for the body.
01:26:36
Speaker
with your Stan Winston school knowledge. You know what you could do is you could put him, I mean, you could put the body on or, um, you can just hide him in a bed, you know, like build a box for you. It's like just his head, you know, with a prosthetic body and just start, you know, having pieces, you know, you don't, the, the arm could be a detached, you could just be like a detachable arm that you rent or make. And I mean, it could be as cheesy or not as you want.
01:27:05
Speaker
Is he Danny's dressed while he's dying? Yeah. Yeah. So you have like, you know.
01:27:13
Speaker
you have wardrobe that you can hide things in. You can do blood effects. We actually have a very good course on blood effects using pressure pots, like the can, like the pressure cans that they sell for brewing beer at home. So you, you know, you can, it has a lid and a little valve and you can pressurize, you could basically fill it with blood, pressurize it, plug in a hose and have a very controlled directional, like,
01:27:45
Speaker
I'll send you a link. It's a really great course. And honestly, like just messing around with blood. Yeah. Just throughout my life, fake blood throughout my life has been it. Watching it was like, holy shit. Like this is the way to go. Cause you can do different types of things. There's also, um, like you can fill little, um,
01:28:11
Speaker
like inflatable deals with blood and just push it through a tube manually and let it kind of lose. There's different ways. I would definitely check out that course because Mike McCash goes through a lot of it. He does blood effects on American Horror Story and other movies and stuff. He's really knowledgeable. We'll work on all of our listeners out there, find the course. On stamblinsonschool.com. Oh, that's actually pretty easy to remember, huh?
01:28:40
Speaker
You guys can figure that one out. But that's that's a great for filmmaking. That's like a great blood course. And then there's you know, there's other courses that use blood.
01:28:52
Speaker
And it's a lot of it's hidden in prosthetics and stuff, but like, if you're, you know, you don't have to do makeup effects on an arm. If you're going to rip it off, you can just use a, you know, it can ooze blood down the dude's arm and then have it, have a detect, you know, it could be the detachable version too, that you cut away to during, for the rip, you know, there's a lot of value in,
01:29:20
Speaker
kind of using what you can creative. It's all problem solving. That's kind of what we talk about a lot is just makeup effects and practical effects is just all problem solving. Yeah. But you can save yourself a lot of time and effort if you just kind of look at it shot by shot and you frame you. Cause something that I've picked up over time is that a lot of the effect shots are done after principal photography for some, you know, a lot of movies and
01:29:48
Speaker
that it had been done that way in the past. And what that allows you to do is kind of just like shoot everything, maybe shoot of, you know,
01:29:58
Speaker
an insert or something later, or just save those scenes for the end. And then what you can also do is just, you know, frame the effect in a way where you only need like a second or two of a reveal on a certain detail or something. Yeah. You don't need like a whole ass mechanical, like you don't need an arm flopping on the floor. Try to grab at these.
01:30:22
Speaker
Like if you're just like showing like, if you want to sell the idea of an arm detaching, falling on the floor and moving, you can have like some preliminary blood on a real arm. You can cut to the fake arm flying off for like 10 frames. You can cut to a real arm, just kind of like flopping on the ground, doing whatever. You know, if you want to show the whole thing, then maybe you need like an animatronic.
01:30:50
Speaker
You know, that's really cool. It's really just how you want to frame it. And then, you know, how can you build the magic trick out of frame? Yeah. If it needs to all be in frame, then you have to build it on in frame, you know. And the courses teach all of this? Essentially, yeah. That's where you go out there. I will say, you know, how much do those courses run then? It's a subscription model. So there's an annual subscription and a monthly.
01:31:20
Speaker
And then once you buy that subscription, you just watch whatever the hell you want from there. You get access to everything. You just pick and choose. So it takes the way I would do it because I'd figure out like, what do I want to learn? Yeah. And then you find the courses and you kind of build your own curriculum. There's also pathways. So like you could learn broadly, you know, beginning sculpture, advanced sculpture, that type of thing.
01:31:42
Speaker
But if you just go through and you're like, you know, I want to make a detachable arm, then maybe you pick up a couple of like the Gary Tunnicliff Halloween effects, blood effects courses, you know, and get some blood effects from there.
01:31:59
Speaker
and then you go and you look at the Mike McCash one and you figure out what he covers and you kind of like time it to where you know if you do a monthly or an annual or whatever but you're only you know wanting to use a handful you can kind of time it and just get the information. Yeah.
01:32:18
Speaker
and piece together what you want to create i mean there's so much there's a lot of like blood gags courses there's a lot of incorporating blood with like prosthetic makeup effects yeah there's things you can
01:32:35
Speaker
I don't think we have any that there's like you kind of take an animatronics course and then kind of piece it together in your head like oh then I can run this tube with this thing through this mechanical head and then it'll spread out the eyes or something.
01:32:50
Speaker
Yeah. But it's all just a combination of like, you know, if you have, if you like have an arm moving and you want it to like stand up and do this thing and be all weird, you could do that with like servos. Yeah. You know, painted with a blue screen sort of like chroma blue cover.
01:33:08
Speaker
and cast your own arm, mold it, build an animatronic into the mold, run like a silicone version of it, have that be the mechanical thing and control it with a little race car control. It's really just like, what's available? They're all tools. And I think just watching these courses as we've shot them and edited them,
01:33:35
Speaker
I've kind of pieced together like you know okay well here's fabric foam fabrication and here's puppetry and here's all the things you know you don't have to sculpt an arm from scratch if you can just cast someone's arm yeah hold someone's arm
01:33:51
Speaker
and then cast it as like a silicone piece. But it's really just kind of like thinking about the shot, thinking about how it's framed, thinking about the action. You know, if the arm was on the ground and you saw the whole thing and it just kind of flopped like a dead fish, that would be something different from it, like hopping up Cousin It style.
01:34:14
Speaker
But then even then, you know, you could build like a chroma green or blue screen for an arm and just do this and run off the frame and key it out and background, replace it, lock it off. Don't move it. And you've got your shot. This is my one suggestion and question. Do you guys have like a editing class or to show how to put this in, you know, that because I think that'd be good because then it gets interesting. The directors like me who don't know anything
01:34:44
Speaker
Like, okay, this is actually how you would arrange all these different pieces to then complete the shot. That's interesting. You know, because I was watching a review on, what's the Peter Jackson film Dead Alive? Dead Alive, yeah. And they were showing all the tricks he used to, you know, for all his practicals. And they're like, yeah, look, see here, he's doing this thing and now it's cutting to this shot. And I was like, huh?
01:35:08
Speaker
I still don't catch it. Like what's going on? So, you know, just really breaking it down. So the director or the people putting the film together shot wise will understand like, okay, we do this element. Then we have to cut to this element and then this element to sell that effect.
01:35:27
Speaker
That's pretty nice. I would also like to do a chorus. I think it'd be fun if we did Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark style melting head, how that's all made. Oh, that'd be awesome. I don't know exactly how it's done, but I know that they kind of just shoot the whole thing and then speed it up and it makes it look like it goes faster than it does.
01:35:50
Speaker
It's just kind of like, I think it just disintegrates over time based on whatever the materials are or something. I don't know. Yeah, well, yeah, because they disintegrate into light, right? Yeah. And that effect. That's got to be somewhere. I think it's also a combination of like drop, like adding stuff as it's melting and tearing pieces off. Well, well, that gets so fascinating because like my brain just doesn't
01:36:14
Speaker
conceive of how this is done. That's just not something I instinctively can wrap my head around. We have a BTS thing on YouTube of the Terminator. I think it was Terminator 2, the blade that comes out of the mouth. Oh yeah. Like that whole effect. Oh wow. That's in there.
01:36:35
Speaker
Terminator's got a lot of those types of effects, those weird slight of hand optical things. Yeah. Special effects artists are just magicians. Yeah, man. Yeah, they are. It just says shit they can create. It's like about hiding the trick. Yeah, it's fucking awesome.
01:36:51
Speaker
I'm in awe, like every time we shoot something new and it's, even in the past, it's been like, you know, you watch this process over hours. It's basically you roll slate and you just like let it go for hours, like swapping cards as we shoot. So you get hours and hours on cards and it's just one continuous multi-hour take. But you do that and you see these processes from start to finish and then all of a sudden it comes together and you're just like,
01:37:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah, that's that's got to be really cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's always like when you watched Bob Ross. Yeah. It's like this looks like shit. And then all of a sudden he goes. It's a it's a field of flowers. How'd you do that? And then you try it right. It just looks like scrambles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like it looks bad.
01:37:44
Speaker
So, uh, but yeah, dude, um, just that's, you know, there's, you got a lot of good shit in there. And then the pyro stuff, I mean, you could just be cheeseball with it and shoot your house and like a breakdown of visually of just like, here's like maybe a miniature Bernie, actually burning, or you just like take the photo and chop it up in Photoshop and like, you know, change it to charred remains of your house and piece together. Each frame is just like a new version of that house. It's like,
01:38:14
Speaker
burning and collapse or like collapsing into pieces. All of that stuff's so fascinating to me because it's like, damn, what what can be done? You know, and that's a huge limitation, like in writing, it's just. I don't know how that's achieved. And I've seen people who understand they know how to achieve that. But for me, I have no concept whatsoever. And there's not a lot of resources out there. I think something that changed my perspective on like what's possible.
01:38:42
Speaker
for in practically versus digitally has been, um, there's, I'll send you the book. I forgot what it was called, but it's a cinematography book and there's a table in there that shows you the formula you use for miniatures to translate perspective into frame rate so that you shoot at a frame rate relative to what the scale is of the thing. Oh, wow. Um, so if it's like, uh, if you're shooting like, um,
01:39:10
Speaker
You're like filming an airplane, taxiing or something. Yeah. That plane, depending on what scale it's at, if shot at a certain frame rate will make it look real. Really? Okay. So how they do like the old like rubber suit Godzilla's?
01:39:26
Speaker
Yeah. So like if it, you know, maybe the scale and the frame rate were a little off. Like if you shoot a Godzilla suit at 24 frames per second on a miniature set, it might look kind of funny. Right. Yeah. But if you shot it at, I don't know, like 150 frames per second, it would probably, it would, the idea is that it would look like it's bigger than. So there's like a mathematical equation to figure that out. It's so wild.
01:39:56
Speaker
I'll send you like I forgot what the title of that book was called. That's cool. It's like special effects cinematography. I'll definitely check that out. Yeah, I would love to. I love the I love miniatures. I always think about
01:40:13
Speaker
those Godzilla movies from that era. And it's like, man, the work they would go into to just like get every little detail for it. So Godzilla can just destroy it, right? It's like you're building this perfect little replica just to be destroyed. It's kind of wild.
01:40:32
Speaker
That's what we have a miniatures course. That's really, it's about, uh, buildings and facade, like scale perspective taught by Ian Hunter, who's a great miniature effects wizard. He has multiple academy awards, I believe now, but, um, there's, you know, we can, he constructs a couple different facades out of different materials. He shows like 3d printed facades, um, like trees and foliage and Hills. And then like, um,
01:41:01
Speaker
motorizing like miniature toy cars and model cars and planes. And then we do one shot with Richie Helmer. You can't do an actual course on it, but he just kind of demonstrates putting little pyro loads in a miniature tank in a brass tube. So it's like you replace this tank.
01:41:24
Speaker
turret with a brass tube and paint it like a turret. Then you can throw like a wad in there with a little bit of powder and make a little spark come out type of thing. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, what those guys have figured out is so fucking cool. And then they get scale so well. Yeah.
01:41:43
Speaker
But I think it's a lot of its frame rate. It's just messing around with the frame rate. So that's, that's kind of something, another thing I would like to try at one point, maybe with this, you know, is shooting like the house in 16 millimeter at like a, like a miniature house burning in 16 millimeter at a high frame rate and compositing it in like
Practical Effects and Recommendations
01:42:06
Speaker
a real environment or something or not, or just making that the facade. Use this as your interior and you build a little miniature neighborhood and light it on fire and piece together some other flames. Why do you want to see a neighborhood burn? No, just your house. You wrote it. Is that what this is? Tom wrote it. Tom wrote it.
01:42:32
Speaker
I want to see it all burn, man. I ain't got no really should add that because I just saw the house. I just read the house. I pictured like one of those old Victorian mansions like out in the middle of nowhere. OK, like that one. Have you ever been by that one in Fontana?
01:42:52
Speaker
I think so. It's like between Summit and Sierra, kind of just off in the distance. It looks like this creepy old, like huge Victorian house. Is that the solution? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you can rent it.
01:43:06
Speaker
No, it's off the 15. It's like between Sierra and Summit and Fontana, if you're looking east. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That burned down at one point, too. What? Yeah, that whole area caught on fire. But yeah, that Victorian house, and then it's two houses, right? I think so, yeah. Yeah, that's been there forever, because there's also another house like that off of 395. Oh, really? Uh-huh. Yeah, close to, well, 395 and Bear Valley Road around that corner. Okay. Nice. You didn't burn that one down.
01:43:35
Speaker
Have you seen that stone house on, um, central off central? No, it's like, um, past sitting bull, I think on the left or might be before, but it's like an old stone house. It's got a stone basement. It's pretty cool. Yeah, that is really, it's like pioneer times. Um, but yeah, dude, shoot your film. You want to shoot your film? I mean, the dialogue's pretty heavy.
01:44:06
Speaker
Well, you could do both. You could you could do like a I would say the dialogues have because it's for the podcast. OK, right. Or the podcast. I would cut a lot of that out. You can make it a few minutes. I think you can cut it down. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's fun. It's cool. But yeah, you can chop it down. Get the point across. All right.
01:44:26
Speaker
Well, Jake, do you have, uh, where can people find you if you want them to find you? I don't want anyone to find me. All right. No, uh, yeah. Any final words before we wrap this, this bad boy up? Um, not man. I appreciate what you guys are doing and had the discussions that you're having. I listened to some of the, some of your episodes. They're pretty cool. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. We try. We really try a lot.
01:44:55
Speaker
I would actually say that you should maybe subscribe to the celluloid ashram, which is a film specific podcast. Oh, okay. About shooting on celluloid. Oh yeah. With people who do that. Um, I don't know. Do you guys have, what do you guys listen to? I listen to a lot of books and then, uh, the deacons podcast. I listened to that quite a bit, but yeah.
01:45:26
Speaker
Cool. Yeah. Me, it's just mostly. I really like the new Beverly or the video archives podcast that Tarantino did with Roger Avery. Oh, that's a good one. You haven't heard of it. If you like Tarantino, it's a fun. If you like Tarantino and you like old movies, it's great because they pretty much just review movies that were in the video store. OK. And they talk about them and it's they're pretty obscure, like Roy, like Roy Schneider.
01:45:54
Speaker
old movies, like the illustrated man. That's one of them. Uh, it's pretty cool. Good podcast. Oh man. Yeah. It makes you love movies. Sick. Thanks. Yeah. It was fun. Thank you. Good talk. And I think that's a wraps up episode. Uh, I don't know what number it is, but this is a Jake's episodes. It's our episode, our episode, our episode cut.