STARS Pictures

I’ve never considered myself much of a writer.  I hated it in school growing up, and I’ve never thought I’m any good at it.  I guess that the real issue is that I just never found a writing format that works for me.  Until I started writing scripts.

Since 2007, I’ve written 7 full length movie scripts and I’m in various stages of three more.  During this time, I’ve used a lot of software to help me get a script formatted correctly: A Word macro called Drama Dog, Celtx, Final Draft, Trelby, Adobe Story and Fade In.  The last feature script I completed was the still unproduced “Leap: Revelation”, and that script was ran through four of the above mentioned programs.

As an artist and filmmaker, I’m always looking at my workflow and trying to improve it.  This goes for the writing stage too.  For the past three years, Fade In has been my software of choice.  It’s clean, elegant, stable and looks better than Final Draft.  As a bonus, the entire software interface can change it’s colors (not just the page color, but the entire program!)  Why is this helpful?  Sometimes, when I hit a writing block, I find a drastic UI change can be all that’s needed to get me out of my rut.  A simple thing like going from dark to light works wonders.

I’m not really sure where I was headed with this, but that’s what’s on my mind.  56 pages into the new script that Trex suggested, so that’s awesome!

Saturday, May 19, 2018

Once again, it has been sometime since I’ve updated on here.  Yes, I’m still looking for funding to shoot Leap 3.  No, I haven’t given up hope.

About six months ago, I started writing a movie script based on my experiences skydiving and how that has helped me deal with the aftermath of the fire three years ago.  I have a clear direction and goal in mind for that movie, but I need at least 200 jumps before I can start flying with a camera, so that slows things down a little.  Two months ago, my friend and producing partner, Chris Trechter, suggested I write a movie about my time being homeless.  I’m now almost thirty pages in and things are coming together nice.  The funny thing is that I had actually written a short film two years ago about this very subject.  Trying to make it into a feature has been a bit of a challenge, but I think I’ve found a tone and style that works for the film.

Trex is wanting to film all the behind the scenes of the making of the film to make a cool documentary, which is an interest of his.  The nice thing about this subject matter is that it doesn’t require anywhere near as much money as Leap 3 does.

Around two years ago, I switched over to Fade In as my screenwriting software of choice.  It has been used on Hollywood films like the new Star Wars, but the best part is that it is cross platform (Win, Mac, Linux).  These days, Celtx is crap and doesn’t hole a flame to Fade In or Final Draft.  And that is coming from someone who has uses Celtx extensively on at least half of his feature film scripts.  (I’m up to 8 complete scripts).

Two weeks ago I was able to get a GPU for my new computer (HP ZR800) (Nvidia 1060), it’s been amazing, allowing me to edit and grade 4K RAW footage with no lag whatsoever.  So that’s cool.

I’ve also been making a small name for myself with making tutorials for the open source compositing program, Natron.  I made a channel, Indie Rebel, that is being recognized as a good source of information regarding VFX in Natron (which is free).

Back to Leap 3, in recent months, I’ve kind of come full circle and have the same mindset I did when I shot the first leap movie.  Maybe that’s a good sign.

Other than all that, I have a new puppy, he’s about four months old now and I love him to death.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Happy Sabbath everyone!  Yesterday, the DVDs for Leap: Rise of the beast arrived!  They look and feel great!  In celebration, I had a Leap marathon last night where I watch both Leap films back to back.  This morning, as I’m getting ready for church, I felt the need to do a movie review, comparing the two films.  Although I am the director and would be considered biased, I think I can look at them unbiasedly.  Here we go!

Leap (2009)
Parkour. The art of A to B. But for a group of Christian traceurs, A to B is more than across campus. Shane Turner, an athlete in the art of pk, decides to teach a group of students, who in turn lead him to Christ. Through studying scripture, the group comes to the startling revelation that they are living on the brink of prophecy. Their faith will be tested and relationships strained as the Leap crew fights to spread the truth.
This film was shot in 12 days on a $200 budget with a consumer standard definition camera (Canon ZR800).  It’s packed with parkour and Bible studies, but it’s biggest downfall is that every Bible study brings the film to a screeching halt.   The film is great for teen youth groups, as the parkour is relevant to their culture and the Bible studies address issues such as sex and the end times.

Leap: Rise of the Beast (2011)
Two years after the events of the first film, the world leaders have given up their power to Vatican City. While most rejoice at the thought of world peace and religious tolerance, Shane Turner and his Leap Crew aren’t buying into it. It’s not long before they identify the papal power as the Beast of Revelation and speak out against it. In response, the Vatican sets out to hunt down the Leap Crew. The end has begun.
This film was shot over 30 days spread over 6 months with a $2000 budget.  It was the first feature film completed that was shot with the Canon Rebel T2i and also used only the kit lens that comes with the camera.  The film is leaps and bounds (no pun intended) above the first.  A Christian action film, ROTB pays homage to the Bourne films.  Rather than stopping for studies, information is explained on the go, making the pace much faster and engaging.

Comparison
Below are two similar images showing the quality difference between the two films:

I guess I’m a few weeks late, but looking through my blog the other day, I realized that Valentines weekend marked my six year anniversary of shooting HD. My first encounter with Hi-Definition was borrowing a Sony FX1 to shoot a teaser for Rise of the Beast. Because it was HDV, my then eight year old computer actually handled the footage okay.

A few months later, I purchased the Canon 550D or Rebel T2i to shoot my third feature film, Leap: Rise of the Beast (the first completed T2i feature, as well as the first shot with just the kit lens). This was about a year into the DSLR craze and I was so excited to finally have my own HD camera that shot 24 fps, had shallow depth of field, and shot 1080p (At the time, 1080i was pretty much the norm)!

I shot with the T2i for five years and I grew tenfold during that time as a cinematographer and filmmaker. I had to understand white balance, f-stop, framerate, and shutter speed, as well as how they all worked together. I experimented with picture styles and lighting, and I discovered new ways to move the camera with sliders and a Glidecam, as well as get interesting shots by controlling the depth of field. Because my computer was so old, I created my own offline/online workflow just to edit my movies. For me, the 550D helped me become a better and more knowledgeable filmmaker. I had gone from outdated SD cameras to cutting edge HD.

If you follow me on YouTube or Facebook, you’re aware that in May of 2015, my house caught fire. It destroyed most of my filmmaking gear. Even things that didn’t melt no longer worked the same, including my camera. I began researching what the current cameras were and I almost settled on the latest iteration of the Rebel series, but then I got to thinking. As much as I loved the images I was getting, there were some issues: Rolling Shutter, Moire, and Aliasing. The more I began to look at the current options, the more glaring those issues became to me. So I made up my mind to purchase a camera that solved those issues, as well as be a camera that I would be able to grow with, as I had with the 550D. Ultimately, I found that the URSA Mini 4k was my dream camera and could give me everything I wanted. So in January, I pulled the trigger and bought the camera and accessories.

The images that the URSA Mini can produce are incredible, but the camera comes with it’s own learning curve that I can explore over time as I’m ready. I can shoot in what I call “DSLR Mode”, which is a nice, colorful and contrasty image, or I can shoot in LOG, which is nice and flat, perfect for grading. I spent almost six years with the DLSR, so I’m teaching myself LOG. As computer storage becomes more affordable, I’ll be able to grow into 4K and even RAW video, so this is definetly a camera that will last me another five years.

During my time with HD, I’ve come to notice some trends. During the heyday of the DSLR, almost every video you’d see included some sort of timelapse. They were easy to do, much easier than ever before. Now, as higher framerates are becoming standard on cameras, slow motion is all the rage. It’s almost impossible to find a camera test today that doesn’t include a slow motion shot of a beautiful woman in the breeze or some body of water gracefully making it’s way across the image. As 4K becomes more common as an acquisition format, there is another trend that I’m actually disappointed in: Repos. A repo is where you reposition/re-frame a shot, or add a camera motion to it where non existed before. Why don’t I like this? Because it encourages lazy cinematography. Most films are still mastered at 1080/2K, so the extra resolution allows you to re-frame a shot without losing an quality. While I do believe this can be useful on the rare occasion, many filmmakers today are getting lazy about their composition and camera movement, instead choosing to make those decisions in the edit.

As cynical as I am about the current trend, I truly love how technology has challenged me to grow as a filmmaker these past six years and I’m excited to see what the next six have in store for me.

Monday, July 20, 2015

It’s been a rough past few months.  On May 13th, my house caught fire and I lost my dog, as well as all my filmmaking gear.  It’s been quite a process trying to rebuild my life, but God is good and I’m doing better.

One thing as of late that has been especially frustrating though is Adobe.  I had switched to the Adobe suite for all my post production at version CS6 after almost ten years in Sony Vegas.  At the time, I thought Adobe was a dream come true.  A stable editor (Premiere) that talked to my effects software (After Effects), and had a link to audio (Audition).  Lately however, I had found myself getting frustrated with After Effects.  A lot of my shots required numerous precomps and it was difficult to come back to a comp later and figure out what I had done to the shot if I needed to change something.

Fortunately, there was a solution: Blackmagic Design Fusion 7.  Blackmagic bought up the original creators of Fusion and then proceeded to release it for free.  I’ve been teaching myself how to use it and I have to say that I like it more than After Effects!  It’s very stable, and the node based compositing is heaps better than the layer based method After Effects uses.

Up until recently, Premiere has been a wonderful editor for me.  It was solid, it worked, and it was clean.  With the release of CC 2015 however, all that changed.  Both at work and on my personal computer, Premiere has been nothing but problems.  Buggy, crashing, just using it feels like I’ll break it.  So for the past week I’ve been on the hunt for a new editor.  I tried going back to Vegas but the interface just seems so dated to me.  I tried Resolve, which has added some editing abilities lately, but it’s a resource hog and doesn’t play footage smoothly.  I even tried HitFilm and had the same issue-stuttery playback.  Finally, I had an epiphany:  I make movies.  I have a Hollywood level compositor (Fusion), I have a Hollywood level finishing suite (Resolve), I need a Hollywood level editor.  In the world of feature film editing, there really is only one name in town: Avid.

I skeptically signed up and downloaded the latest release.  I had heard that Avid was difficult to get used to.  That it doesn’t like certain video formats.  At a download size of 2 GB, I was worried it wouldn’t even play my footage smoothly.  Now- all that’s changed.  I fired it up for the first time, and using a few quickstart videos on Avid’s website, I was up and running.  It’s stable, it’s smooth, I love it!  So far, I’ve only just played with about ten minutes of footage and haven’t had any issues.  I think the best way to test out my new suite of applications is to apply them to a short film.  Fortunately, I shot one back in November that I haven’t finished yet.  The edit was completed in Premiere, but lately I haven’t finished the effects due to my issues with AE.  I think the best plan is to just recut the film in Avid and then do all the VFX in Fuision.  When I’m done, I’ll export my cut to Resolve for grading and probably stick with Audition for the audio mix-for now.  This should give me a good idea of my workflow and if I need to refine anything for the movie this summer.

This route will require some learning on my part, but I really feel it’s for the best.  I want the least amount of headache possible on this film and using these “industry standards” should help me with that.  The best part is that both Fusion and Resolve are free!  The only one I have to pay for is Avid, but they have a great subscription plan that’s very affordable.

As far as shooting goes, I’m still hoping and praying for the funds to shoot this.  We at least need to be able to pay for actors, the rest I can do out of pocket if need be, but paying actors is very important so that we can shoot on my timetable and not have to drag it out for six months like the last one.  Keep us in prayers!