Take Care. Preparing for the Madness of Crowdfunding

I’ve struggled with coming up with blog posts lately, because most of what I have been doing has involved preparing for our upcoming crowdfunding campaign on Seed&Spark (we’re launching this Wednesday the 25th!). I am opposed to writing posts with crowdfunding advice at this time, since this is my first campaign and I can’t say for certain what the results will be (although we are very optimistic!).

However, I have thought of one brief post I am comfortable with as we prepare for the month of madness ahead. And that is TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. As the brilliant Lynnaire MacDonald of Indie Film Sprites recently told me:

There’s no point working yourself to the point of exhaustion during campaign time and getting the funds only to suddenly come down with something exceptionally nasty that knocks you off your feet and delays production further.

As I’ve been preparing for this campaign I’ve already been slipping. Skipping meal, staying up too late, sitting all day, it’s no good. So here’s my plan:

GET ON A SCHEDULE. I’m going to find a bed time and a wake up time. This help me get enough sleep and prevent me from burning out! This is a marathon, not a sprint!

EAT ENOUGH AND EAT RIGHT. It’s really easy to just get fast food, believe me I know. But that crap quickly takes it’s toll. You’re metabolism is going to get all screwed up. Opt for coffee or tea over energy drinks.
EXERCISE. This is not only a great way to boost energy, but a way to relieve all the built up stress from the campaign.

STAND IF YOU CAN. I haven’t made the plunge yet, but I would really like to get a stand desk in the future. Not only is it better for your back, it increases productivity and energy.

And that’s my plan for a productive, energy-filled, and successful crowdfunding campaign. Wish us luck!

Lock That Shot Down! Quick Tips To Make Your Post-Production Life Easier

“I’ll worry about it in post.”

I think most of us have been guilty of saying this, or at the very least, thinking it. I know I have. It’s a bad mindset. But here’s the thing, there’s a strong possibility that there WILL be something you will have to try to salvage in Post. Sometimes stuff just happens. But if your Pre-Production or Production self spends just a little bit more time preparing, your future Post-Production self will hate you a little bit less. And one of the easiest ways to do that is by simply locking down your shot.

I’m primarily focusing on visual effects here. Not anything too CGI-ish and fancy, just simple After Effects compositing. Here’s a quick example of a simple composite I did for a scene in our Seed & Spark pitch video.

Great, now you know that this location is not actually next to the ocean and you’re going to look for that in the film 😉

In situations where you know you are going to be doing a composite, you always want to put forethought into how you are going to pull the effect off. Doing previsualization shots is a great idea. That way you know if you can pull it off and you know what to look for when you shoot the scene.  Locking down the shot makes pulling off these effects much easier, as you won’t have to track footage (or if there is something to track in the shot, your program will have a more accurate track). Is keeping the camera still too boring for you? You can always add camera shake. You can use expressions in After Effects (which works alright) OR you can use the more natural-looking method of using information from actual footage. All you need to do is take some hand-held footage, track it, then apply that tracking data to your still shot, and boom, natural-looking camera shake.

Locking down the shot is also a smart idea when you’re in situations where you have to move fast (not as much time to think), or if there are things in the frame that are out of your control. Or when you’re just plain ignorant. Case and point:

I made an amateur mistake when shooting this scene for our pitch video (which you can see in the frame on the left). I was taking things a little too easy and somehow missed all of the extra equipment hanging out in the background of the shot. This shot was VITAL. I would have had to scale the video way up to get that equipment out of the shot. Thankfully this was a planned visual effects shot, so we shot it locked down. I was able to use After Effect’s Clone Stamp tool to paint out the equipment and save the shot.

This mistake should have never happened because we had plenty of time to shoot this scene, so just imagine all the things that could slip into the frame when you are short on time! Trademarked logos, boom mics, or distracting people in the background if you’re out in public. If you lock down the shot and roll the camera roll a little longer with your actor out of frame you’ve just give yourself a much better shot of being able to paint out something unwanted. You can also plan for simple visual effects shot this way. Need your actor to be walking alone down a road that’s actually really busy? Let the camera roll for a few minutes after you’ve shot your actor, and you should be able to piece together all the various moments of emptiness throughout the frame to make it seem as if your character is all alone!

So to quickly sum up this post:

When in doubt, lock it down!