behind the scenes

The FLF crew is back in the office after a fun-filled 3 days on set last week!  The filming went really well, and it was smooth sailing for the most part.  The only exception being the mystery virus that struck Lauren, Garrett, and Larry on Friday!

 One of our favorite parts of last week was shooting with our little puppy star, Hamlet.  I’m happy to say that because it’s rare… thus the notorious film industry warning, “Never work with animals or babies.”  

Puppy Actor Hamlet

Having worked with animals on set numerous times, we’ve learned a couple things that have made it easier and made us more successful in getting what we need.  That said, here are some tips for shooting with animals:

1)  Don’t just cast for the animal… the handler will play an equally important role in your success or failure.  Communicate with the handler… A LOT.  Make sure you’re comfortable with, and confident in, his or her style, and make sure they’re comfortable with you.  

Erika with puppy talent, Hamlet

2)  Be extremely clear about the expectations and requirements.  What may seem like a no-brainer to you may be a big challenge or just an impossibility for the animal.  Wearing a hat?  Looking at camera?  Walking in deep snow?   The clearer you are about your expectations, the better chance you have of finding the right talent for your job.  Also, will you be running sync sound during the animal’s scene(s)?  If so, make sure the animal can understand visual cues from the handler, not just verbal ones.

3)  Be clear about the conditions where the animal will be working.  Hot lights?  Cold weather?  Let the handler know exactly what the working conditions will be like so the two of you can plan together.  A little extra planning in the outset can make the animal much more comfortable, and will help keep the handler relaxed and focused.  

4)  Consider the logistics well in advance.  Not every hotel will allow dogs and cats, and not every location may even allow animals on site.  When working with animals, bring up that subject in every step of the production…   Make sure human talent isn’t allergic/ phobic, confirm the property where you’re filming will allow that type of animal, make a plan for animal feeding, watering, waste disposal, etc.  

Actor Drew Taylor and Wrangler Lloyd Cooper on location

5)  When on set, ask the handler what they need.  If an animal has been cooped up in a trailer or on a plane, don’t rush them to get suited up and in place.  Ask the handler how to best get them adjusted and ready… Does the animal need some rest?  Water?  To be walked around the set and not touched for a few minutes?   Remember, every animal has its own distinct personality and needs.

Nurse puppy in an FLF toy commercial

6)   Don’t underestimate the value of prep time.   For working animals, everything is a factor of “getting used to it,” and that just takes time.  Our puppy last week needed to get used to wearing clothes and sitting in a chair.  Our horses in The Sierra (the Western short film) needed to be “gun broke” (meaning, they needed to get used to having guns fired from their backs).   Sarah, our excellent handler last week, videotaped and uploaded her prep sessions for us, so we could see what strategies would work the best to give us the shots we needed.  It helped tremendously, and our clients told us it was their best experience ever with a dog on set.

We just received first drafts of the scripts for our next toy commercial shoot. It’ll be three national girls’ spots, and the scripts look great so far… we’re excited to make them come to life!

I think the world of kids’ advertising is so interesting… It’s much more restrictive than the average TV-watcher might realize. Whenever we get into script writing, we have to watch for the following red flags:

1) Hard sell language like “Collect them all!”
2) Superlative language, like best, cutest, fastest, most stylish, coolest, etc.
3) Any implication that the product will make a kid cooler or more popular.
4) Shooting toys, water toys, etc: These toy spots usually need to show parental supervision in the background at some point, and should say “adult supervision required.”
5) Rigging and special effects: Everything we show must be “kid recreatable.” We can’t rig it or use special effects to make it look like a toy will do something it actually can’t.

There are also stringent rules about the disclaimers at the end: what the product includes, doesn’t include, etc. It’s all for a great reason, of course… making sure kids don’t get duped!

Here are a couple examples… Notice how there are always hands making the dolls move in this Hannah Montana spot?   Since the dolls don’t move on their own, we had to represent them accurately and show hands activating their movement.

Notice how the voiceover specifies 272 “scale” miles per hour in this spot?

The tricky part is with action toys. When they’re little pieces of plastic that drive and fly, they’re hard to control, and even harder to capture doing amazing stunts!   Jerry’s got a crazy knack for it though.

I can’t wait til late July when we can finally release our most recent action toy commercial. We’re pretty excited about the product, and the commercial is gonna blow you away!

It’s a quiet morning here at FLF, aside from Jamie’s (our freelance animator’s) iTunes playing over the office sound system.  Jerry’s in New York City today, Mike the Intern isn’t in on Tuesdays, and it’s a perfect opportunity to catch up on some work.

As I type, I’m actually listening in on a voiceover session.  Jerry’s on the call too, directing the talent from New York City.  Our client is listening in from Malibu, our sound engineer Matt Smith is recording the session in Las Vegas, and the talent, Kevin Lockhart, is reading his heart out from Colorado.  He’s actually shouting different versions of the word “Unstoppable!” into the phone right now… so fun to listen to.  Here’s the last commercial he voiced for us:

We have a pretty streamlined system for all of this…  Here’s how we select and record voiceovers for our commercial productions at FLF Films:

1. First, I send out the script to a few different sources and solicit auditions.
2. Once we have auditions, we pick our favorites.  If we can’t choose between our favorites, we’ll send the various auditions to the client and let them choose.  In other cases, we’ll just put our favorite voice in the rough cut and seek our client’s approval for it.
3. Once we’re all agreed on a voice, I schedule a recording session.  We always have to have the talent, the ad agency or client, Jerry, myself, and our sound engineer on the phone for it.  I usually just conference everyone through the magic of my iPhone.
4. I send out the final script to everyone involved, then we all get on the phone and record the session. We usually do a few full reads, and then get into line-by-line readings.  Jerry directs the talent.  Sound engineer Matt times the talent and keeps notes on which takes everyone likes.  The agency or client chimes in as much or as little as they like.

And that’s pretty much it… that’s how the announcer voice ends up in commercials!

Sometimes when we’re in the rough cutting process, we need placeholder footage for material we either haven’t shot or haven’t purchased yet.  It allows our clients to envision what the final cut will be like once all the right pieces are there, and we collect these placeholder pieces from sources all over the internet.  

Over the past year, our favorite footage-finders, “the Ryans,” had been using a program called Snapz Pro X to capture footage from the web.  Based on their description, you simply set your little selector tool (kind of like a crop tool) around any video frame on the internet… Hit record and it would screen capture everything happening inside the little box you set.  Pretty cool, no?  

Actually… not as cool as we initially thought.  It’s possible we didn’t delve deep enough into the settings and options Snapz Pro X offers, or perhaps we weren’t using it how it’s intended to be used, but editing with those screen captures was a nightmare!   There was no good way to get a consistent size/ frame rate of the videos we would capture, making it incredibly hard to use those videos on a timeline in a Final Cut project.  We had all sorts of issues with crashes, render errors, “slipping” of clip selections, etc.  Again, we probably weren’t using the software for its intended purpose.  I’d just caution anyone else considering using this software for the same goal. 

And then, a new discovery… just this week, Jerry  (a big believer in always having the right tools for the job) set out to find a new and better solution for a project we’re working on at the moment.  The project is a fundraising video for a large dinner that will benefit Nevada student scholarships and the Economic Development Authority of Western Nevada.  The script calls for us to intercut shots of a local community leader with some funny b-roll.  Jerry decided that, before we started collecting placeholder footage for the funny b-roll, we needed a better system.  He found a program called  TubeSock.  The program costs only $15 for an individual license, or $50 for a “family pack” of 5, and it allows you to download videos from YouTube, DailyMotion, and other sites, and saves them to your video iPod, Mac, or PlayStation Portable.  All you do is enter in the URL, and it does the rest for you… And most importantly for us, it saves the files in an FCP-friendly format (like m4v, mp4, etc), with consistent sizing and frame rate (no more render errors!).

Not sure if it’s the perfect solution — we haven’t tried it yet on other sites like Vimeo — but it seems to be our silver bullet for the moment.

As you guys know, I’m an intern at FLF.  I’m also a production assistant on most of our shoots.  It’s a hard job, but a great opportunity to learn.  Here’s some advice if you’re considering working as a PA:

1)  As a PA, you always need to be on your toes.  If you’re not on your toes, they are bound to get smashed.  

2)  It’s important to remember that the impression you make during your time as a PA will affect your chances of being asked to do it again.  It is critical to always be listening and problem solving.  

3)  If someone asks you to do something, and you don’t know how to do it, try and figure it out by yourself before bugging someone else about it.  

4)  When you have not been assigned a task, there are plenty of things that can continuously be done to help out.  For example: you can always pick up trash, you can make sure clients are happy and have what they need, you can straighten up around the set.  Also, if nobody has asked you to do anything, take the initiative to ask the individual departments if they could use a hand.  

5)  The most important rule of being a PA is you should never sit.  Sitting down on set shows that you do not want to be there and you have no drive to put your creative self into a project.  

6)  You should always be prepared for any task no matter the size.  

7)  A PA should always have on them:

      A pen or pencil
      A little notebook or something to write on
      Walkie-talkie
      Callsheet
      Cell phone
      Petty Cash for possible errands

In a nutshell, the position of a PA is to make sure that everyone is happy and has everything they need to do their job effectively and efficiently.  Reliable PA’s make everything a little easier.  It’s definitely a tough job — you’re the first on set and the last to leave — but if the passion is there, time doesn’t matter and the learning experience will be gnarly.

As some of you know, we just wrapped a Western short film “The Sierra” shot entirely in the snow.  We were at a beautiful location called White Wolf.  Amazing, amazing amazing.  It was fast, fun and furious with gunfights, stunts, horses, cowboys and indians.  We shot a 25-minute film in about 6 days.    

It brought me back to the old days of making snowboard films, minus the cowboys and indians, probably about as many guns.  I spent a lot of years trudging around the snow with an Arri SB and a tripod strapped to my back.  Times have changed and my back has gotten weaker, but I hopefully have become a bit wiser.  That said, I believe  many of the lessons I learned still hold true. So I thought I would throw out a couple of useful tips for shooting in the snow….

1.  Lots of manpower, the more the better.  It always takes twice as long to get around and set positions.  It just physically takes more energy to move, especially carrying equipment.

2.  Always have foul weather gear for your camera.  Even if it’s not snowing, you’ll get blowing crystals or falling snow debris off of  tree limbs that will scuttle even the best camera, or spot your lens at the least.

3.  Neutral density filters are your friend. You should have no lack of light or fill while out in the winter wonderland but you might have way too much DOF with all the exposure.  I like to run with an N9 and a Pola depending on time of day and direction.  On this shoot we were shooting a RED ONE camera with an N9, IR and Pola most of the time.  Occasionally we would go to the N1.2, which should take about 4 stops out of the equation.

4.  When we were making snowboard films, we would do our follow work hand-held on a snowboard or skis just “suitcasing” the camera.  For this shoot, we used a combo of hand-held and steadi-cam, jib arm and dolly.  For the steadi-cam, it was super important to pack down a trail for the operator to have the smoothest possible track. The same applies to hand-held.

For the dolly we brought 10ft long 2×12 planks to lay first and level the dolly track on.  Wood has a slower sink rate and this is important when trying to maintain a level dolly.  When you put the metal down on the snow, it just kinda sinks no matter how firm it is.

5.  When shooting film, I would always expose for the ambient fill.  Basically put the ball of the meter towards camera without angling towards the ground or sky.  I was looking for a very average reading, knowing that the snow would reflect way hotter than other more neutral shooting environments.  If a little sun snuck onto the ball from the backlight that was ok, or conversely if it were front lit, letting the ball of the meter take what light the sun was throwing.  Just once again not angling any other way than towards the camera.  This was a very simple and effective way to get a fat negative and compensate for the abundance of fill.

Now with the RED ONE camera, protecting highlights is key and especially important in the snow.  Usually in the morning I would set my meter to the native ISO of the RED (320) and check what that looked like on the monitor —  maybe even transfer a shot to RED Alert to see what was holding and what wasn’t.  I also had my camera set up in Redspace.  This allowed me to see a higher key image on the monitors.  This was important because of the snow blinding that happens after a full day in the snow.  Brights start to seem duller and your inclination is to open up a little more.  Having a hotter image on the screens helped to keep me honest and true to my original exposure ideals.

6. Bring lots of sunscreen and reapply as much as you drink water.  You’re gonna be at elevation and you can get dehydration and altitude sickness in a heart beat.  Just ask Erika about that.

Cheers

J

Strong winds are blowing in Reno today and I’m in our upstairs edit bay, color correcting a project for the Tahoe Forest Hospital’s cancer program.

It’s always interesting finding ‘the look’ for a project.  This one, in particular, needed to be soft yet real.  Not as soft as you’d make a leading lady or a pop diva, but approachable and warm.

In contrast, we had another recent project which required the exact opposite.  It was a large-scale original artwork commissioned by the Nevada Museum of Art.  The piece was based on legendary Texas poet Buck Ramsey’s Grass, and the coordinating artist Nik Hafermaas wanted the faces to look like road maps, so I increased the contrast to give them more weather.   Here are a few of the images from the cowboy poetry piece: 

Joel Nelson, cowboy featured in "Grass"

Joel Nelson Close Up

Here’s the final cowboy poetry piece by FLF Films in its entirety.

For comparison, here are some stills from the cancer piece.

Before Color Correcting

After Color Correcting

Notice the added warmth and contrast in the “After” still.  I also softened the edges and a bit of the underlying gamma channel.  

You probably won’t cry as much seeing the stills as I did while I was editing it.