Update from the world of Miller & Mullet

I've been tardy in getting the HV30 posts put together and online, but I've been busy with other stuff, too.


On or around Canada, or the 4th of July if you prefer, Miller & Mullet will be launching a whole bunch of stuff.


With artist Kam Gates, we're kicking off a weekly comic strip. Think of it as the Addams Family (the original Addams' strips) meets Ziggy, or Hitchcock meets Garfield. Something like that. At any rate, Mullet and Kam are coming up with some darkly funny stuff that works best in the 3-5 frame world of comic strips.


Alongside the strip, we're launching a tri-weekly radio series starring Miller and Mullet. I'm doing the post stuff on that project, as well as most of the writing. The nice thing about audio-only is that sound effects are a lot cheaper than visual effects, so we can finally put some ideas to work without having to worry about how much it costs. The radio show will be available on our website and will, hopefully, be available via iTunes as a podcast. Look for Miller & Mullet Radio.


And, as the third prong of our 2009 Extravaganza, we're posting our 2003 project, Babysitters, in chapters on Youtube and as video podcasts at iTunes. Each week, we'll release another chapter in our first major project. this will be the first time Babysitters has been seen since our rough cut screening at Christmas of 2002.


Back to work!

The New Camcorder Search, Part 1

My needs for a new camcorder are simple: I need mini-DV so that I can recapture stuff I’ve already shot, and I want to continue to use mini-DV tapes as that format still offers less compression than consumer-grade hard drive and DVD-burning camcorders.
The leader of the camcorder pack, out of the gates, is the Canon HV30. This is the successor model to the HV20, the camcorder that brought great excitement and joy to the indie filmmaking scene when it came out in 2007. The HV20 offered, for the first time, a decent HDV camera for less than $1000 USD. The HV30 ups the ante by offering 30p as well as the two formats the HV20 offered (24p and 1080i).
I wasn’t aware of what a CMOS camcorder was prior to the HV20’s arrival, but the image quality is high enough to offer HD capability, something I haven’t worked with yet.
Naturally, the first question is whether or not the HV30 will work with my Mac. I have a 1.6 GHz G5 equipped with Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger) and Final Cut Studio 1, and I don’t anticipate upgrading to anything any time soon. My Mac had no problems capturing 24p shot from Panasonic DVX100 and DVX100A cameras we’ve used, so the next step is to see if FCS 1 can cope with whatever pull-down process the HV30 uses for 24p.
The HV30 comes with a Firewire-400 (IEEE 1394) port (as well as USB-2, HDMI, and component video, and composite video ports), so it’s not a problem getting the signal from the camcorder to the computer. The question is, of course, whether or not the computer and the camcorder speak the same language.
Next time, the other camcorders in the running.

Web Video

Over the last few weeks, Mullet and I have been spending a lot of time discussing web video, and I realized haven’t written about it here very much.

When I started buying video gear seven years ago, the 3 major players in web video were QuickTime, Real Player, and Windows Media Player. All three played a range of codecs, but there weren’t easy ways of moving between the three formats. Being a Mac user, I used QuickTime by default, but I did have the other two players on my computer.

The players were all clunky and finicky. It wasn’t uncommon to see reduced frame-rates, lowered resolution, and even minimal action to make things look better.

Back then, I didn’t have a website or even an internet connection. The main means of delivering video was by running the signal from my capture card to my VCR. VHS was king—everyone, amateur or professional, used tape.

When I upgraded and got my G4, I suddenly had a DVD-R burner, and that led me to supplement Final Cut Pro with DVD Studio Pro (a couple months later, the Final Cut Studio bundle came out at a lower price than what it cost me to buy FCP and DVD-SP separately—thanks, Apple!).

Thus equipped, in 2003 I made history at the late, great Second Ciné video show by being the first to submit a video on DVD. But it was still a VHS world, and I backed up that DVD by exporting my clips to my VCR.

When I traded in my G4 for my G5, the new PCI expansion slot arrangement rendered my capture card useless, so I dropped the VHS option completely. By then, DVD burners were cheap enough that the indie world had shifted away from VHS.

DVD seemed to be the new king, unbeatable with its portability and flexibility. You could play it on your TV with a regular DVD player, or you could put it in a DVD-equipped computer. DVD sprouted in rental stores and retailers, offering special features and all the things impossible on VHS (subtitles and audio tracks in different languages, commentary tracks, alternate endings, etc, etc). The disks didn’t wear out like all tape-based technologies do—with care and handling, you would see the same image quality on the 1000th play as you would on the first play.

For an indie producer, you could easily crank out a DVD (maybe not the DVD-9 dual-layer format, but something that worked in most players and nearly all computers) that looked and played the same as the big boys’ disks.

I bought the 3rd edition of Chris Gore’s excellent film festival book in 2005, and we started to base our video efforts on the advice given. Film festivals were still king, and most of the ones that encouraged indie contributions readily accepted all the digital formats.

I bought Gore’s follow-up book on producing indie DVDs and used it as the main guide for our first appearance at the San Diego Comicon in 2006.

But it was at San Diego that I saw the future, and its name was not DVD but web video.

The big 3 players were still in the game, but Apple had introduced a new wrinkle—the iPod and iTunes. With incredible ease, you could download podcasts and listen to them on your Mac or iPod. The arrival of video-capable iPods sparked video podcasting. Flash video had arrived in force, with the help of some serious web video sites like YouTube. The big three media players changed membership, with Real player becoming a distant fourth. In fact, by 2006, I didn’t even have Real installed on my G5 as nobody was putting out video that QuickTime or WMP wouldn’t handle.

Gore and Mark Bell from Film Threat hosted a couple of panels at the con’s film festival (where my costumed appearance got some nasty looks from the black-clad filmistas—clearly a line is drawn in some people’s minds between the film fest and the convention itself!), and I attended a couple of them.

In one panel, Gore and Bell introduced the two guys behind Ask a Ninja as well as a couple of people from Hope is Emo, two of the most popular podcasts. I was still sans-internet at home, so I wasn’t aware of how big podcasting and web video had become. More people were watching these online videos than hundreds of film festivals put together.

But the indie aspect of these productions—Ninja was shot in the star’s apartment (painted up for green-screen production)—made it clear that you didn’t need a lot of money, just enough technology and, of course, a good idea well executed, to build an audience.

DVD suddenly looked less essential, just like VHS. Apple introduced its TV interface, and with flatscreen TVs and computer monitors becoming essentially the same, the average consumer realized they didn’t need a disk or tape to watch movies, TV shows, and indie video. The messy blue laser fight didn’t help, with the traditional market split into 3 different camps—DVD loyalists, Blu-Ray, and HD-DVD. Even with HD-DVD losing the fight, most people I know aren’t rushing into the blue laser world. After seeing CDs largely replaced by web music, most people are expecting the same of video.

So… in the 9 years I have been dabbling with indie video, I have seen it change completely. A physical product is no longer the primary goal since you can find a larger audience thorugh the magic of internet pixels.

Mullet and I are prepping our old feature, Babysitters, for web in small chapters. Our long-in-development DVD project is now a web video project with a DVD version also available. We’ll follow the footsteps of successful web video people like Rob Schrab or the guys behind Chad Vader and put the videos online and make a full-quality DVD available for sale.

More on web video to come. After all, it’s Tuesday. There’ll probably be some new development on Wednesday….

Ed & Red’s Night Party: Our Adventures in Multi-Camera

A couple of weekends ago, we shot an episode of Ed & Red’s Night Party, the great Canadian TV show hosted by a sarcastic sock. I won’t go into detail about the show’s history because the Wikipedia entry does that better than I could. Nevertheless, to see a homemade show from cable access channel become a Canadian late-night institution is encouraging to anyone who picks up a camera hoping to give up the day job.
I don’t know where I could verify this, but I suspect that Ed’s show is likely the longest running Canadian late-night talkshow. If it’s not the Canadian champ, it’s definitely the Toronto and Ontario champ. The national networks have both created and abandoned talk shows—CTV most notably with Open Mike with Mike Bullard, Global with subsequent The Mike Bullard Show, and CBC’s infamous Friday Night with Ralph Benmergui—but Ed the Sock has fended off all of them, probably by not trying to appeal to as broad an audience as the others did. He knows his audience and gives them exactly what they want: edgy late-night humour, a healthy dollop of pop culture’s highs and lows, and plenty of sex-related humour and features.
The current version of Ed’s show, partnering him with Liana “Red” K., doesn’t have the traditional guest interviews where the guest comes out and is interviewed, but in our two appearances, we’ve been interviewed while in the hot tub and lounging on a couch where we were watching the show. The interviews weren’t conventional by any means, but we managed to plug our stuff.
I’ve never taken a TV production course, so my exposure to multi-camera shooting has been limited to a couple of occasions where we happened to have 2 mini-DV cameras on shooting day, and we used both at the same time to speed things up. It wasn’t true multi-camera shooting—the 2nd camera usually shot the same angle but at a different focal length so that we could get the closeups done at the same times as the master shots.
When we appeared in the hot tub on Ed & Red’s, there was only one camera assigned to cover us, so it was a single-camera situation and we worked to just one camera.
For our second appearance, we had 3 segments during the show, with at least 3 cameras on us (one across the floor for a head-on angle, one beside the couch for a side view, and a third somewhere in the middle). We weren’t required to work towards any one camera, so it was similar to a stage appearance where you only have to be aware of a general zone to work to. Mullet, sitting on screen right, had a camera directly to his left with the others spread out in front of him, so he couldn’t really turn to face me without turning away from the audience. I, on screen left, was looking almost directly into a camera when I faced him, so I made sure I turned to my left (screen right) when we were seated during the 3 segments so that Mullet wouldn’t face away from the camera best positioned for his closeups (but, rest assured, I was also pointing my face at that camera, so I wasn’t doing him a favour—I was doing us both a favour).
We got progressively more physical through the 3 segments, so not having to worry about where the camera was definitely freed up how we worked.
For no-budget filmmaking, multi-camera likely isn’t an option. You need at least 2 cameras of the same quality, video format, etc., etc. Hollywood always drags out extra cameras for those thigns even they can’t afford to do more than once (I recall a making-of doc on the Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom DVD where Mr. Spielberg had 14 cameras rolling for the one-time-only destruction of a footbridge), but the same could apply on a no-budget scale. If I were shooting something where I had to get a lot of coverage done in a limited time (a well-known actor is giving you a break by doing a scene for you but can only give you an hour, for example), or you’re shooting something that can only be done in one take (like having your character jump into a parade), I would definitely budget for a 2nd camera and an extra person. Likewise, if I were shooting a scale model’s destruction, I’d have to weigh the costs of making multiple copies of said model for repeated takes or renting a 2nd camera to shoot it once.
Another aspect of multi-cam shooting is that the lighting has to be designed for multiple camera setups. This means a lot more work at the beginning of the day, but the lighting guys only had to make minor adjustments here and there during the shoot. This also means you can move the cameras, zoom in for a closeup, etc., on the fly. Our area was pretty well lit, and the crew defined our working areas for us, so your talent can be given an area to play in rather than being stuck on a mark. I think you could adapt this type of thinking for single-cam shooting on a set, and you’d be able to go from setup to setup without keeping warmed-up actors waiting for lights to change. It wouldn’t work in every situation, of course, but if you didn’t need special lighting, you could probably get away with it.
We won’t be using multi-camera for our DVD, but doing Ed & Red’s was still a good experience, and I’d recommend to any no-budget filmmaker that they check out a traditional 3-camera TV shoot if they ever get the chance—watch those cameras work!

The 74-Minute Skeleton in Our Closet, 3: Life in Production

So, what’s it like shooting a feature movie on a no-budget project? It’s a lot of work, but with enough preparation, you can get an enormous amount of work done.

I was working full-time at my day job, so I did all my prep on weeknights. There were weeks where we didn’t shoot anything (we didn’t shoot on long weekends or for most of December and early January, for example), but for the most part the process took up the bulk of my free time once we’d started production. Every hour and minute spent on preproduction is worth it—don’t scrimp here or you’ll pay for it on shooting day.

Before we started shooting, I created a master shot list during my script breakdown process, plus the schedule itself. Each week, I updated the rough plans for each shooting day to prepare a call sheet to e-mail to our cast and crew, rechecked the shot list, made sure we had the locations lined up, props ready, cast contacted, and all the little details, like “Do I have enough makeup for next week?” or “where can we get a ceramic dog?”

For exteriors, I’d also track weather forecasts. Probability of precipitation [POP] was the key as we would go ahead whenever it was 60% or less. I used several local sources, just to build concensus on how the weather was going to turn out.

I spend my Friday nights pulling together everything together to make the day go as smoothly. I’d gather my bags of gear, charge or change batteries, made sure I had enough mini-DV tapes, went out and bought food and beverages.

I can’t stress the importance of checklists. Any time I forget something important, like camera batteries or blank tapes, it’s always because I haven’t opened up the bags and cross-checked with my checklist. When you’re tired and your head is filled with details of what you’re shooting, you will miss something crucial, like your battery pack or tapes.

For all shoots I’d bring a bag containing the camcorder, battery pack, microphone cables, daylight gels, clothespins, clamps, extra battery for the mike, desktop mike stand, duct tape, clapper, markers, chalk, camcorder shoe accessory adapter, screwdrivers, and pliers. For interiors, I’d add work lights, three 25’ extension cords, spare bulbs, and work gloves. In a padded 3-ring binder, I’d have copies of the script, pens, markers, shot lists, and continuity forms. I’d also have props and a cooler for food.

The day of the shoot, Mullet would get up around 6 a.m. and start getting ready. I’d get up at 7 to check the weather to make sure it was still a go. It was a very dry year and I think we only had one or two rain-outs, and one fog-out where I couldn’t see across the street.

Once we’d decided to go ahead, I’d check the mountain of gear in the living room to make sure I had everyhing. Mullet would arrive in his car by 8:30 or 9 a.m., and we’d head out to pick up the cast and crew.

We were usually at our first location by 9:30 with the first setup started by 10. Once we’d warmed up with some rehearsal takes, we’d get right into it, and our mornings were always productive—our best work was usually during that time. Our afternoons were usually productive, but once it started getting hot in that May-July period, our pace from mid-afternoon onwards wasn’t always as peppy.

On set, I set up the shots and gear with the help of whoever was our crew that day. Meanwhile, Mullet briefed the actors, ran the lines, and brought them in to do the blocking, giving notes as needed.

Since then, we’ve changed the way we work. It’s still collaborative, to be sure, but I direct the actors now, and with using filmmaking buddies on our projects, I don’t have to worry about setting up the gear as much (or even picking where to put the camera).

We’d shoot a couple of rehearsal takes just to find the beats and figure out the blocking. We’d then shoot a few takes as rehearsed, repeating until we got at least 2 good takes on tape (always have a safety take just in case…). If there was time, we’d start improvising a bit, just to see what else we could find. If a scene or shot wasn’t working, we’d rewrite on the spot, sometimes using improv but mostly huddling together with the script and a pen. Most of the time, we shortened things or adapted to take better advantage of the location.

For scheduling, we’d always try to have the cast wrapped by mid-afternoon, leaving any Miller & Mullet-only shots to the end of the day if needed. Most of the cast didn’t have to give us a full day, but those who played the more important characters, like Marcel St. Pierre, generously gave us a full day’s work. Marcel volunteered for 4 shooting days, with one of them being cancelled due to dense fog. One way to pay back for your cast’s generosity is to not waste their time and get them done as early as possible.

We’d normally wrap by 4 o’clock, but sometimes we went to 5, and I think we had a couple of 6 p.m. finishes. We also had a couple 2-hour shoots where we wrapped in time for lunch. Your schedule will vary, mostly depending upon cast and location availability.

Usually that same night, Mullet would come over and we’d watch our rushes. I’d take notes on what we liked or disliked to add to the spreadsheet I’d set up to use during editing. This saved a lot of time when we sat down to edit, and for anything with more than a few shots, I still do it today.

I also made notes on the bad takes, indicating what went wrong, just in case we could use part of a bad take and edit around the mistake with another take. Otherwise, we would have had to watch all the takes for a particular shot when we were editing (we did do that a number of times, of course, but not as frequently as it would have been otherwise).

Our Saturdays were long, usually 12-15 hours by the time we watched the rushes. But we only did we two shooting days back to back once—the last scheduled weekend we shot both the Saturday and Sunday, all exteriors, during the hottest weekend of the year. I don’t even remember what we shot on the last day.

Sunday mornings, I’d log the tapes in Adobe Premiere and let the computer batch capture all the footage to my hard drives. Because I’d made my notes the night before, I didn’t need a lot of time to do the logging, and I’d leave the computer to do the capture itself.

On Monday nights, I’d start the process over again. Even if you're shooting a 5-minute short, you should expect to have a similar workload. Being a producer is the unsung role of no-budget filmmaking--no executive mansions or fat paycheques....

Next time, post-production.

Third Shoot in the Can

My plan to do this biweekly blog hasn't worked out very well....

On Saturday, we did our third shoot for the DVD project, doing a few scenes with Alastair Forbes, an up-and-coming improviser who graciously let us use his bedroom as the location. We didn't have anyone to crew it for us (it sort of happened last minute), but we were able to get the shots done. Just one shot actually had me, Mullet, and Alastair in it, so it wasn't really difficult to manage; the camera was locked down for all the shots, so we didn't need someone to pan or zoom.

This was the second shoot for Bags (working title was Dressing Room). We'd shot most of the dressing room scenes despite my laryngitis in the first shoot, and this weekend, we did the scenes outside the dressing room. Alastair plays the stage manager (probably the assistant to the assistant of the stage manager) who brings us to the dressing room for the unseen variety show. We changed the script quite a bit during the first shoot, but we stuck to what was written in the revised script to come up with some fun stuff. Alastair and I go nose to nose at one point, and we found the beats pretty quickly. Alastair came up with some gems, both verbal and physical, that built on and improved the scenes as written. We've certainly gotten adept at cutting out the non-essential and for allowing the room to come up with new and better things.

Our shooting style, in terms of film grammar, has really evolved since we worked with Andrew Currie. We always had what I'd call a theatrical preference for wide shots over closeups, probably from our stage origins. A singular failure we've had in our older projects was a lack of closeups, and a really limited film grammar in terms of framing action and composing shots. AC's shooting style opened our eyes to a new (and better) approach, and I think the lessons we learned were enhanced by our long delay between projects and my involvement in NeutrinoPlex this summer. I should explain.

We haven't shot much since we did fragments of a short called Temptation almost 2 years ago. We were trying to shoot 22 minutes (a broadcast half-hour) with 4-5 shorts, but with the rise of YouTube, we scrapped that idea and focused on 2-5 minute shorts, which we've completed shooting for 2 scripts (Can and Bags), with 4-6 more to go. Coming back after a long break makes it easier to incorporate new ideas, I think, so we've changed how we shoot more easily than if we'd continued to shoot.

With Neutrinoplex, I've been exposed to hand-held improvised filmmaking shot with a hard deadline of minutes. The shooters and their teams of improvisers rely upon quick shots, closeups, and existing light sources to do their thing. In less than 30 minutes, they produce 3 scenes on 3 tapes using the area around the Bad Dog as their locations. My role is "technical director," which means I run the tapes for the audience, using 2 camcorders and a portable DVD player linked to a video projector via a Radio Shack switcher --very low-tech, but it's worked (the only glitches are human ones, mine or the shooters). The show starts at 10 p.m., so the shooters use the light from streetlamps, store windows, the marquee from the Music Hall across the street, etc. Even with 3-chip cameras, the images aren't very bright, so closeups are necessary in most situations.

So, the closeup is our friend now.

This coming Saturday, we are doing my half of the dressing room scenes now that I've regained my voice. I'll try to get another post up next week....

Script Deadline Day, Inspiration for Writing

Blog Mar 16/07

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by”
--Douglas Adams

My self-imposed deadline for having the scripts done, March 15th, has come and gone. Are the scripts ready? Nope. But I have started 4 more since the last blog entry, so I’m still, sort of, on track to get to my goal of 12 scripts by March 15th. I have 11 first-draft scripts done.
Did I slack off? Not much, but with a live appearance, our first 30-minute gig, an impending move, a stubborn chest cold… the scripts fell by the wayside. The gig has renewed our interest in doing live shows again, so after we see how San Diego is going, we’re adding a variety show to the list of things to do.
Meanhwile, with the shorts, I’ve had several sources of inspiration in the last couple of weeks. First, I’ve been rewatching my small collection of Laurel & Hardy shorts. Second, I bought a book, DV Rebel’s Guide, by Stu Maschwitz. Third, I’ve been reviewing my favourite videos online, particularly Channels 101 and 102.
The L&H shorts are great, and it’s been instructive to see how they build a gag, top it, top it again, and then build to the next gag, forwarding the plot as they go. If there’s anything that seems dated by today’s standards, it’s the pacing, but comedies even 10 years ago aren’t as fast as they are now, much less those from the 1930’s.
The DV Rebel’s Guide is designed for the no-budget, “action flick” filmmaker, but most of it applies to any no-budget filmmaker. It’s a solid book, and I realize I need to buy AfterEffects given all the enhancements Maschwitz explains you can do to a DV short with AE –there goes the postproduction budget…. I’ve been stumbling through Apple’s Motion lately, but I do have an ancient copy of AE 3.0 I got to know when I first got into video. That AE 3.0 has followed me from my original Mac, an 8600, through my G4 and now in my trusty G5. Good thing I still have Classic mode and didn’t go for a new Mac yet again.
In any event, DV Rebel’s has inspired a space capsule script called “Space” (I’m maintaining our tradition of keeping to one-word titles, although the eventual title will be Miller & Mullet in Space, should it be one of the lucky scripts put into production, so the one-word working title keeps it easy).
The videos I’ve been watching from the wonderful world of the internet are mostly from Channel 101 and Channel 102. From 101, I rewatched the Cosby shorts, Laser Fart, the ‘Bu, Classroom, Yacht Rock, Fire Guys, the 2 Magic Touched Me series, and Ringwald & Molly, plus the various David Hartman shorts (Magick Haus being my favourite).
From 102, I’ve downloaded Gemberling, Cakey, and Jesus Christ Supercop, among others. Channel 102 has a higher rate of attrition than 101, and the shows are much more uneven from month to month –101 is more consistent with 2-3 really good shows each month. Maybe 101 benefits from the concentration of writing/performing talent in L.A., but I’d think that New York could match them in no-budget video. But, if our shorts turn out as well as they do on either 101 or 102, I’ll be happy.
One problem I’ve run into when trying to write is that I just don’t want to, at some level, write for a character that was developed largely through improv and clown techniques. I’ve never mastered memorizing lines, and I usually have flashbacks to horrid French classes where I struggled to conjugate and translate… by trying to memorize.
So, now armed with self-knowledge and some renewed inspiration, I have blocked out some new plots. Despite being behind schedule, I’m only pushing into time I’d set aside for preproduction, which means rewriting.
The weather’s still too unpredictable (and cold) to shoot outdoors, so we’ll likely end up shooting in late April, May, and June. I’ll need July to do post and put the DVD together, which is okay because shooting in July in Toronto means trying to shoot in the hot muggy weather that plagues Great Lake cities in the summer. Our interiors are easy enough to schedule, and I think I recall thinking we should shoot one in March, but Mullet’s still slaving away on the script for issue 2 of the comic book, so it’s probably best that we don’t go until April.
As of last night, I had 11 scripts, all first drafts. For the next 2 weeks, I’ll be writing, rewriting, and polishing (hopefully turds into diamonds, or something like that).