Robert Rodriquez, thoughts on making a Film Cheap!

Robert Rodriquez in 10 mins. tell you how to make a film without a lot of money!

Syncing ADR, Adobe's NEW Automatic Speech Alignment

In the new version of Adobes Audition 2014 they have added a nice feature for aligning your audio. check it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I660VJ2S_v0





Audio post via Dropbox for your next project?  www.binaryrecordingstudio.com

Skywalker Sound Production on Maleficent Film

Bean to Bar, a film about artisan Chocolate, At the Albuquerque Film and Media Festival.

My film screening at the historical Kimo Theater in Albuquerque NM.  Great orginazation putting on this festival, lots of great films, seminars, and film makers sharing idea's and future projects.

A few things filmmakers can learn from Picasso

Picasso’s life shows that being true to your vision doesn’t mean sacrificing success. He took a profound risk in his art, and it didn’t end his career – it made it.

 1. Blaze your own path

In her book Picasso, Gertrude Stein wrote, “To complicate things in a new way, that is easy, but to see things in a new way, that is really difficult, everything prevents one, habits, school, daily life, reason, necessities of daily life, indolence, everything prevents one…”

 It’s said that every year 50,000 films are made. How are you going to stand out from the abundantly mass-produced uniformity? Take inspiration from initiatives like Raindance, which was made for innovators by innovators: be daring in your craft.

2. The burial of the dead

Picasso: “People need to be woken up. Their way of identifying things, shattered. Unacceptable images should be created.”

Picasso bludgeoned to death the so-called immutable norms and dogmas of aesthetics and European art that had been stifling artists and starving humanity of the culture and beauty it desperately needed. Filmmakers at this point in history are on the verge of a similar problem, and a similar opportunity.

3. It’s always a good time for a Renaissance

Out of the destruction came a wild and fierce blossoming of creativity that was 20th century art, part of a larger cultural shift of which it’s a rare fortune to be a part of. We’re on the verge of another Renaissance. Why chain yourself down to what is comfortable and known when you can create the future we’re all waiting for?

Picasso in 1956: “I saw that everything had been done. A break was needed to create a revolution and start from scratch. I have put myself at the head of the new movement. The problem is how to go beyond, avoid the object and give artistic expression to the result. All this is my fight to shatter two-dimensional perspective.”

4. The union of art & business

 “Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.”

 By all means make a profit, but art and film have so much more potential. Revolutionary ideas aren’t marketable? Picasso was filthy, filthy rich. At first he was dismissed as a lunatic, but he continued to put his challenging innovative ideas onto canvas and charged hundreds of thousands of dollars for them, and people paid. Eventually he could draw on a napkin in a restaurant and sell it for thousands on the spot, and along with Van Gogh now holds records for the most expensive paintings ever sold.

Picasso’s friendships, love affairs, the subjects of his portraits, his art dealers, the places he lived, were all extremely intelligent and calculated moves advancing the trajectory of his career. A quick look at his biography and social life reveals the obviousness of why he became so famous. Every aspect of your life can be used to move you forward.

5. Success is no accident

 Picasso fabricated a brand of himself as the quintessential artist, and burned it into the psyche of the world: wearing a French beret, a black & white striped shirt, chain smoking and womanizing, demanding astronomical prices for his paintings… But it projected an interesting, cultured, and controversial person who became a celebrity, and whose work became highly sought after. Here’s an invaluable Raindance article on creating a Film Brand Strategy.

Picasso said: “It is not what the artist does that counts. But what he is. Cezanne would never have interested me if he had lived and thought like Jacques-Emile Blance, even if the apple he had painted had been ten times more beautiful. What interests us is the anxiety of Cezanne, the teaching of Cezanne, the anguish of Van Gogh, in short the inner drama of the man.”

6. Exhaust the limits of the possible

Oh and did I mention working your ass off 24/7/365 and pouring every moment of your life into what you love? As the legend goes Picasso was a child-laboring artist and produced a monstrous body of work up until days before his death at 91.

“Every child is an artist. The challenge for the artist is to remain a child.”

But it actually took him three or four decades of hard work to really break through and become famous – that’s an unusually long time, and most of his fame was enjoyed when he was very old.

 “I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

7. In the end there are no rules

He broke every rule he possibly could of the grand tradition of European art. Why? Because he could, and because he felt like it needed to be done.

“I merely try to place the greatest humanity possible in my paintings. It is just as valid if it offends some idolaters of conventional human effigies – they just need to look at themselves a little closer in the mirror. What is a face in truth? What we have in front of us? Inside? Behind?”

“Youth has no age.”

Picasso was of the most talented and successful artists of the 20th century. Those are a few details of his legacy that we can apply to our own lives. I’ll leave the last word to him:

“The essential thing is to do what you want to do.”

Written by Andre Schugt

Free Video Plugins "Red Giant" Universe

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What makes a good short film?

There are 7 rules you should remember when writing a short film:

1.   THE SHORTER THE BETTER

A short film can be anything from fifteen seconds to forty five minutes in length. Make your short film script as short as possible because the shorter the short, the less costly it will be to produce. Of course, digital technology frees up filmmakers, yet time still costs money, so does feeding a hungry crew, and if you shoot too fast your short film might end up looking amateurish. It has to be cheap but shouldn’t LOOK cheap! Plus, if you want to get your short into a festival, then keep it to no more than ten minutes, which is usually 7-8 pages maximum. Why? Because if your short film is longer, it will eat up a longer slot and festivals love to play as many shorts as possible! You can also create real emotion in just a few minutes.

Look at Sebastian’s Voodoo. It’s a 4 minute animated short about a Voodoo doll who must pierce his own heart to save his friend from being impaled and it is absolutely heartbreaking.

2.   KEEP THE PRACTICALITIES OF WRITING IN MIND

The great thing about shorts is that they can be anything since you don!’ have studio execs on your tail. However, don’t discard the practicalities of writing your script. I have read scripts with pages of chase-action scenes and car crashes, and many writers seem not to realize how time consuming it would be to actually shoot. In fact, see the writing of a short as an opportunity to become more aware of what each line you put down on paper implies and costs. Visions of white horses galloping in the moonlight certainly look amazing in your mind but are you sure you’re good friends with a wrangler and/or a CGI specialist? If you only have access to modest resources, think small.

Apricot  is a good example of short film that could have been done on a low budget (it shows such impeccable production value I doubt it was actually done on the cheap) because it deals with two people sitting at a table at a cafe yet manages to show a wide range of emotion. Along the same lines, the Asian short film Just a Love Story   takes place almost entirely in an elevator. Write for locations that are interesting yet practical, think of access and control, and avoid remote locations requiring driving for miles.

3.   MAKE IT VISUAL

“Film is a visual medium”. “Show, don’t tell.” Those are the golden rules of screenwriting the gurus keep telling us. Yet it’s astonishing to see how talky most scripts are. Film is about telling stories in pictures, which is the most economical way of telling a story – and when you make a short film, economy is everything. Create visual backstories for your characters. Externalize through visual images their temperament, their profession, their status, etc.

In the Lunch Date  the posh lady polishes her fork before using it. What does it tell you about her? Note how there is no dialogue in this short film, a short film that went on to win an Academy Award for best live action short film.

4.   FIND SINGLE MOMENTS

The best short films are often a single moment that is played out, but one that has a story at its heart. What do I mean by story? I mean a conflict that has to be resolved, where there’s a dilemma at stake and a choice that the protagonist has to make. Strive to add a deadline, or ticking clock. It is not necessary but it will add some tension to your short film. The short On Time is a good example of a short film that meets all these conditions. It tells the story of a heart-broken young man can peek into the future and must act on it on the spot.

5.   TELL A STORY

You should always try to tell a compelling story. Beware of ideas that are concept-driven or just aim at breaking all the rules for the sake of breaking rules. Short films are a great opportunity to push the boundaries of what cinematic storytelling can do, yet they must still engage your audience emotionally. As a rule of thumb, unless it is extremely brief a short film should have a hero with a goal and an obstacle/antagonist in the way. Watch I love Sarah Jane. It shows a bunch of teenagers in a ghost town where adults have turned into zombies, yet at the core it is a love story about a young boy who can’t reach through to the older girl he loves.

6.   ENGAGE THE READER

Since you have so little time to make an impression the impact of page one is crucial, just as it is crucial to hook the reader in the first 10 pages of a feature length script. What is the world of the film? Do we root for the main character? Does the world and story of the film feel authentic? The ending is also essential as it’s rare to truly feel moved at the end of a short, so work towards a meaningful, satisfying ending.

7.   BEWARE OF CLICHES

There are many clichés in short films, and much navel gazing. How come everybody feels the need to write about hit men for hire, heists, people seeing themselves die, children representing innocence, incestuous relationships, etc? Avoid stereotypes unless you have a fresh slant on them. That’s what The Descendent does. In this short film a couple of bewildered hit men actually have to kill a seemingly cute little boy and one of them gets cold feet until he realizes that the child is a supernatural being who terrifies his mother. Write what you’re familiar with and what resonates with you rather than writing something you borrowed from other films. Don’t shy away from small stories, short formats are the perfect vehicle for them and you won’t often get the opportunity to tell small stories as a professional writer.

Last but not least, watch as many short films as possible. There is no replacement for knowing what is out there, and knowing what you as an audience (as well as a writer) think and feel about it.

written by Stephanie Joalland in Indie Tips.