I mean, I’ve made videos and stuff (check the Slacktory videos on my media page), but this is the first one I’m taking (somewhat) seriously. But I know your first question: why am I posting stuff about a film on my theatre page? Good question friend! Two answers: 1) Because the film is based on my play, ‘The Following is Based on True Events (from a Video Game)‘, and 2) Because I don’t really have a better place to write about this. Sure, I could put it on my media page, but if you look at it, well, it doesn’t really want anything text-based.

 

A little background: from the day I finished writing this play, I thought it could work as a short film. There were a lot of things that that we did in the play with the projector and, well, Dan pretending to be a mouse clicker, that are quite simply better-suited to post-production. I didn’t pursue this for a while, but then one day brought it up to my good friend Alex Schmidt (who introduced me to Nick Douglas at Slacktory), and he said that he’d be thrilled to help me make it happen, so he set off to try to find a director. There were a couple times when it looked like it might happen, but then something would go wrong and we were back at square one. Then in December, something silly happened: Nick Douglas sent me an e-mail with the jist: ‘hey, I love your Sims play. Would you mind if Slacktory made a short film out of it?’ Alex Schmidt and I had to laugh a little; why had neither of us thought to ask him in the first place?

 

Fast forward to Monday January 27th. I’ve recast TJ Clark and Mike Finn who played Mortimer Goth and Bob Newbie, respectively, in the original play. We’re in the apartment of a friend of Nick’s who has a sizable green screen. Nick is running sound. I’m directing and camera-operating. Alex Schmidt is there doing every conceivable other task, from operating B-camera, to fixing falling green screen, to running to Wendy’s to get burgers (for the burger scene). We filmed from 10 AM to 2 PM and everything went great (I think).  We worked out a SAG New Media contract, used two $100 Panasonic Handycams, and I’m thrilled we were able to use nice audio equipment (audio is always the quickest way I’m able to tell if something is professional or not). The only real problem was lighting, since the apartment wasn’t really set up to handle greenscreen so we relied on a skylight, providing inconsistent lighting.

 

Anyway, I’ve got a ton of lead time on this– it’s going to be a 5 minute-or-so sketch video, and doesn’t need to be done until The Sims 4 comes out sometime in the Fall. Since I can take my time and really do this right, I thought it would be neat to chronicle my progress; I’ll articulate my thoughts, problems, and questions as I progress through the post-production process, and hopefully you’ll give me your advice and ask me the kinds of questions that will lead to a better product. It’s also nice to imagine that many of the struggles I’m bound to go through in the coming months will be common ones, and hopefully solutions we find to my issues will be helpful to others as well.

 

Here’s some things I currently know very little about that I’m going to have to learn a lot about:

 

  • Color grading
  • Camera tracking/stabilization
  • Chroma Key (I made this Breaking Bad Parody for my office’s Holiday Party a few weeks ago, but that’s about it)
  • Inserting virtual 3D models into real-life footage
  • Simulating fire/explosions/smoke
  • Simulating stuff appearing and disappearing out of nowhere
  • Matching shots of this with shots from the actual Sims video game
  • A whole host of things I don’t even know that I’ll need to know about yet

To start, I’ve decided to upload all of my footage at private links on youtube so that I can peruse what we captured at my leisure and use youtube’s comment section to call out anything from takes I like to issues that will need addressing. If you’d like to make such comments, you’re more than welcome!

 

Footage from Camera A

Footage from Camera B

Random Photos

 

Here’s some of the software I’ll be using:

  • Adobe Premiere CS6
  • Adobe After Effects CS6
  • Adobe Photoshop CS6
  • Audacity (never really liked Adobe Audition)
  • 3ds Max 2014
  • Vray 2.0

If you plan on following this, thanks~! I look forward to your feedback and hopefully teaching each other a few things. I’ll also be charting these posts over at Filmpunch. So what am I doing right now? Watching all that footage (obviously), but also watching lots of tutorials regarding After Effects and Premiere Pro.

 

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

 

AfterEffects:

  • don’t use AfterEffects for Camera Tracking. Use Mocha.
  • don’t use AfterEffects for Rotoscoping. Use Mocha.

Premiere Pro:

  • use the shortcut keys while editing to seamlessly switch between ripple edits, sliding edits, double-sided edits, etc.
  • delete that pesky cuda_supported_cards.txt file in the Premiere Pro directory to make everything a thousand times better. Geezum crow how did I not know this?

 

More soon!