Homomech

High-Tech audio

noreply@blogger.com (Dex) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:46:00 +0000

One of our lead actors is moving out of the Bay Area, so even though our edit isn't quite finished, we had to re-record his dialogue. We replace virtually every sound and word in all of our productions. This technique allows us to move more quickly during location work because we don't have to wait for that fire engine ten blocks away to go away, and we don't have to worry about accidentally getting the microphone in the shot.

So, here's my high-tech setup for recording the actor's voice. It's rigged from light stands and some fabric from one of the characters' costume. Despite the improvised gear, the recording was great.

One of the reasons I love making movies is the need to figure out solutions to unexpected challenges.

-- Post From My iPhone

New Toy

noreply@blogger.com (Dex) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:36:00 +0000

I went to MacWorld in January here in San Francisco, and stopped by the Kensington booth where they were showing off their new "SlimBlade" trackball. I'm a big trackball fan, and have been for years, ever since I realized how much more accurate they could be when making selections in Photoshop. No more "the cursor moves when I click" stuff. The Kensington folks were taking names of folks who wanted to try out the SlimBlade Trackball, so I signed up. They asked all sorts of questions about what I like to do with my trackballs. I'll resist the temptation to make a juvenile joke here....

I use trackballs both at work and at home, and the Kensington folks seemed most interested in the fact that I use them on all my home computers, for photo editing, video work, 3D stuff, and so on. A week or so ago, they contacted me and said I'd been selected to participate in their promotional project, and that they'd be sending me a SlimBlade to try out. All they asked in return was that I'd post images of me using it, what my setup is, and eventually to tell how I liked using it.

So, here's the first post about it. Since we're working in post production on Inspector Hieronymus, I'm doing a lot of cursor controlling, which seemed like a great way to try it out. In the photo you can see me at work with our MacPro, editing Scene H (a lovely scene filled with drama and pathos). The SlimBlade is next to my Wacom Tablet. The USB Powered Robotic Owl sits perched atop the Blu-Ray Burner Drive, advising me on edit decisions. On the screen is Adobe Premiere Pro, CS4, with the Scene H sequence open. If you look closely, you can see an exclusive, first look at the mysterious pillars of Scene H!

My first impressions are this:

The SlimBlade looks really cool; I really dig the shiney, sheeny ball, and the smooth shape of the base is nice, too.
In addition to the usual trackball method of moving the cursor around, you can rotate the ball like a knob to scroll. It's like a scroll wheel, but different.
There are four buttons in the base. The left and right click buttons are where I tend to rest the heel of my hand, so I tend to click them accidentally. The other two buttons (the "Medium Mode" and the "View Mode" buttons) are where my instincts tell me the left and right click buttons should be. I haven't played with the settings for the SlimBlade to see if I can re-assign the buttons (though I did note that it doesn't put a new pane in my system preferences, but rather a new icon in the upper right of my computer, which is a little annoying). I need to play with the settings to see if I can assign the buttons myself.

Give me a while working with this device and I'll let you all know what I think about it....

In the meantime, I'm off to create some otherworldly energy fields for the movie.

No One Expects the Spanish Inquisition

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jack) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:48:00 +0000

Ah, the joys of renting. So one Wednesday during production, Dex and I arrived home from the day jobs to discover a notice from the property management company, informing us that they would be dropping by on Friday to inspect the premises.

Of course, many people in San Francisco have to clean up a bit before the landlord drops by. There's that pot stash that probably shouldn't be sitting on the kitchen counter, or those whips and chains that are perhaps better stored under the bed than over it, or that collection of HIV medications that are none of the landlord's damn business, and so on. Everybody has something in their abode that they'd rather not share with people with the power to evict.

For Dex and I, that was the Satanic Death Pit.

We'd built the Satanic Death Pit for the movie, of course, in the space occupied by our bed before we moved it to the kitchen. The Satanic Death Pit contained five faux granite pillars, one scarlet altar, various burgundy tapestries and one blood-inscribed stone pentagram, all of which had to be hidden from the prying eyes of the landlords within 48 hours, to say nothing of many lights, stands and tripods scattered throughout the apartment. Oh, and several sheets of 4' by 8' styrofoam, standing by in case of a set emergency.

The faux granite pillars presented the greatest challenge: They were too big to hide (say) under the bed, too tall to fit in the narrow unoccupied space in the attic, and too strange to just leave casually in the corner of a room. In the end, we decided the least weird thing to do was to stack the pillars horizontally, turning them into a tacky gay headboard, replete with draping burgundy fabric. We then had an object large enough to hide the styrofoam sheets behind. The light stands and tripods, when collapsed, easily fit inside the bottommost pillar, and the actual lights fit snugly under the bed, on top of the now out-of-sight blood-inscribed pentagram.

It actually didn't look that bad. I worked from home that day, to prevent the building inspectors from brushing the headboard and causing the whole fragile edifice of lies to collapse, but they only glanced at the room through the door, complimented me on my good taste, and asked about the four indentations in the floor of the kitchen. Heh heh. Ahem.

After the building inspectors left, we had about 12 hours to convert the bedroom back into the Satanic Death Pit for our shoot on Saturday. In retrospect, it would have been far easier to convert the Satanic Death Pit into a Naughty Play Dungeon, as the building inspectors of San Francisco are probably used to that sort of thing, but live and learn.

One Can Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Dex) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 06:54:00 +0000

...but for now, we'll just have to make do with our bedroom.

All in all, shooting in the bedroom worked out just fine, despite
having to put up with lots of jokes about how easy it must be to get
to the whipped cream while our bed was in the kitchen. We certainly
could have used some extra production space, but for the most part it
wasn't too tough to work in the 14x12 foot room. Use of compact
fluorescent and LED lighting kept us from baking our cast and crew,
and while it did get a little tight, it came together.

That said, this weekend we wrapped principle photography, and so we're
back to sleeping in our studio. Uh, bedroom.

On Editing

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jack) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:03:00 +0000

Production schedules never go exactly as planned, but this past weekend Dex and I saw the upside of that chaos. We'd planned on shooting one sequence on Saturday and another two on Sunday, but we ended up getting all three on Saturday. That gave us an entire day off, and though it took us a while to adjust to such a completely alien concept, we managed to get in some serious leisure.

Our digital production process differs from more traditional methods of filmmaking in at least one major way. Usually, you'd film a "master" of an entire sequence, a wide shot that follows the action from start to finish. You'd then film the sequence again from another angle (perhaps a close-up of one of the actors), and repeat the process until you were comfortable that you had every possible combination covered. Then you'd decide what portions of those long shots to use in the editing room.

Instead, Dex and I storyboard the entire thing first, so we know exactly what we want the final product to look like. We plan a few more shots for coverage, but in general we go on set knowing exactly what shoots we need. Editing the footage goes much faster, because you've already decided what shots to use where, and we know exactly where those shots are on the tape due to production logging.

To make a long story short, we already have a final cut of about 80% of the movie. We still may make editing changes for pacing once the missing sequences are added, but we already have a pretty good feel for what went right and what went wrong on this production.

I'll save the full post-mortem for after we've fully wrapped production, but for now I can categorically state that Steadycam is more trouble than it's worth. Ah well, live and learn.

Smile! You're on Supernatural Camera!

noreply@blogger.com (Dex) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:56:00 +0000

Paul's script called for Inspector Hieronymus to use his "fabulous steampunk Polaroid" in our second short film chronicling the adventures of the intrepid occult detective. The camera needed to look like something that the Inspector would use to photograph supernatural activity, and in Paul's mind, I guess, that's "steampunk." The first Hieronymus short featured his "fabulous steampunk flashlight," and given it's brass fittings and such, I'd say it was, indeed, steampunk. (You can see the flashlight -- and the entire short -- here.) I'm pretty familiar with the historic line of Polaroid cameras, from the old Land to the Spectra and the "Go," but none of them were what I'd call "steampunk."

So, one Saturday a few weeks ago, I got together with JT Tepnapa of Star Trek Phase II, In the Closet (In the Closet isn't safe for work!) and Judas' Kiss for a walk through the Mission District of San Francisco to hit some thrift stores, looking for material to work with. We found a bunch of old cameras for cheap, and one awesome object that's a relic from the physical film days of home-movies (which I'm hanging on to for future projects!). Thrift-shopping for props is a great way to spend an afternoon hanging out with a friend.

Once home, I took apart one of the cameras, added some wood inlays, some brass brads, and some leather, but I still wasn't feeling it. It needed some brass fittings. So, I went to our local hardware store and spent more on brass lamp parts than I did on the rest of the camera and drilled, screwed and glued them on. The end result is the contraption you see the Inspector holding in the photo above. All in all I think it worked.

If we keep making these movies, we're going to build quite a collection of steampunk or para-Victorian items.

And that couldn't make me happier.

Genius at Work, Again

noreply@blogger.com (Dex) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:02:00 +0000

As part of our workflow on Inspector Hieronymus, we do a rough edit of
our shoots as soon as we can to make sure we haven't missed anything
before we strike the sets. I finished the rough cut hours ago (and we
discovered some things we want to get -- not so much that we missed,
but enhancements we hadn't thought of until we saw everything on the
timeline), but Paul, takes things to Eleven by performing a first
pass at color correction and image enhancement.... Here you can see
him at work with Adobe AfterEffects CS4, tweaking the exposure and
color of the good Inspector. This phone snapshot could use some of
that enhancement!

Inspector Hieronymus and the Case of the Comatose Filmmakers

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jack) — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 04:26:00 +0000

What a crazy week. We had to scramble to finish building the set and designing the props and storyboarding all the scenes, but somehow we managed to get it together in time for our first shoot on Saturday. We shot for seven hours and managed to get an two sequences in the can, breaking only for lunch, which involved the actors working the Castro in full costume and make-up. Unfortunately folk in the Castro are used to that sort of thing so I have nothing entertaining to blog about. *sigh*

Sunday we had an even bigger shoot, involving twice as many people, which made my tiny San Francisco apartment a bit claustrophobic. By the end our brains were all mushy, fit not even for zombie gumbo, but we completed the most difficult sequence of the movie—the one involving the total bloodbath—so it should be smooth sailing from here. What could possibly go wrong?

Director at work!

noreply@blogger.com (Dex) — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 08:10:00 +0000

Today we held a read-through/blocking session with all but one actor for the upcoming Hieronymus production.... Here we see Paul (in pajamas, as is his directorial wont) with Christopher Sugarman and Don Hardy. They're in our ~~bedroom~~ studio that Paul blogged about a couple days ago. We're starting filming next week.

The process of making a movie is in no small part one of organization. That's what today was about -- getting ourselves organized and ready to go once we start filming next week. Since this installment in the Inspector Hieronymus series has five characters, it's important that we all know what we're doing, and where we need to move on screen. So, we spent about 4 hours today planning the blocking before we have all those cumbersome lights and cameras and set pieces in place. It was a very useful few hours and should make the actual shoot go much more smoothly.

The cast really clicks well; they bounce ideas off one another and display a great deal of chemistry. It's great to find such a group of talented actors who work well together and seem to have a good time at it, too. I'm really looking forward to getting their performances into the computer and onto the screen.

Now, all that we have to do is finish building the sets, finish designing the shots and storyboarding, build a few more props, and finish costumes. Ah, the non-stop world of making movies!

I love it.

Storyboarding

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jack) — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:10:00 +0000

And here you see the sophisticated, state-of-the-art 3D pre-visualization technology we deploy during preproduction to plan out every shot of our film. It's this level of meticulous planning, possible only with the very best tools available in the professional market, that separates the austere autere from the hauteur amateur. After years of careful study, you too can achieve the level of sheer artistic genius necessary to master such intricate instruments.

Behold the Glamorous Life of the Independent Filmmaker

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jack) — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 04:08:00 +0000

We needed an empty room to dress as a set for the new short film we're making. After a fruitless search for affordable studio space in San Francisco, this is what my bedroom now looks like:

And this is what my kitchen looks like:

We decided to build the set in our own bedroom. Which means we're now sleeping in the kitchen. You too could have all this. *sob*

And So It Begins

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jack) — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 03:35:00 +0000

So yesterday I brought a group of actors together for a read-through of the new script. I love working with new actors, and of course it's always amazing to see your words on paper given life.

I also got the chance to grill people on whether or not they understood everything in the 15-page treatment, which they didn't, because I am apparently incapable of writing clear stories. Luckily there's still time for a better draft to emerge.

At any rate, I'll be introducing you to this rag-tag group of players shortly. For now let me just say that I'm already amazed at the work they do, and can't wait to get them on screen.

(The amazing image above is the work of one Foxtongue on Flickr.)

Homo Promo Art

noreply@blogger.com (Dex) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:46:00 +0000

Hey, everyone! Just thought I'd share an early sketch/painting/photo-
manipulation I did as a concept for the art on an "Inspector
Hieronymus" period style poster.

What do you think? I think it captures the feel of a 1940's noir
poster while still conveying the sexiness that Don oozes as the
Inspector. I also like the "what's that, Nancy Drew?" look on his
face....

As we work on more stories featuring our darkly heroic Inspector, I'm
thinking we'll want one poster image to rule them all! Is this one
close? Please make suggestions or just give up your opinion in the
comments!

- Dex, posting from my phone.

Obviously

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Jack) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:35:00 +0000

I was battling depression, hopelessly alone and living a miserable meaningless existence, and therefore I obviously decided to produce a 91-minute microbudget gay superhero action adventure comedy romance epic masterpiece. What else does one do?

You may be wondering where one goes when one wants to produce a 91-minute microbudget gay superhero action adventure romance epic masterpiece, but, obviously, that place is craigslist. I quickly gathered a cast and crew—

—well, OK, I quickly gathered a cast. By “crew” I mean Dex Craig, who did everything else, partly because he has decades of experience doing media production work for everything from Hollywood blockbusters to TV movies to training kids in developing countries how to make their own movies, but mostly because he was the only adult. To my production he brought sophisticated lighting equipment, a huge stack of video editing and compositing software, an excellent design sense and a professional demeanor. I brought my pajamas.

We fell in love, obviously. Here's us getting married a year later:

Aw! Later that evening, we premiered the 91-minute microbudget gay superhero action adventure romance epic masterpiece to a packed theater, raising $1,400 for AIDS/LifeCycle in the process. What a great day!

The movie went on to be ignored by only the finest film festivals, and then we made an animated short that won an award. Emboldened, we designed an animated series about particle physics, esoteric philosophies, and the totality of human existence as expressed by a practically omnipotent gay couple and their teddy bear, which, obviously, went nowhere.

But now we’re making live action gay occult film noir steampunk short films, so it’s cool. The first in the series is titled Inspector Hieronymus and the Case of the Mischievous Houseboy, obviously, and you can follow the development of the second installment on this here blog. Web 2.0 has a lot to answer for. Obviously.