Am I too OCD in my filmmaking?

H

harmonica44

My friends say that I worry to much about the shots after showing them. That it's okay if one shot in a scene has more noise, than the next shot, or that the color is a little different in one shot, than the next, or if an actor goes out of frame for a third of a second, cause the camera couldn't keep up.

Other people who have sent their films into film festivals, or got to people to get them critiqued, have gotten feed back over things like more noise in one shot than the other, and so the only reason why I am being very OCD, is because the experienced people say, that critics like to nitpick, about those things. So I am only being OC cause they might be, from what other's have to say, but do you think my friends are right, and if most viewers won't care, that the critics won't care?
 
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Maybe finding a colorist is the way to go...?
(Even if it's just to match colors...)

Btw, if you sharping blurry parts to make them sharper and you sharpen in focus shots to make them even more sharp, you are not bridging the gap between the in and out of focus shots. Using logic can be helpfull now and then; even when you are not Vulcan. :P
(One soup has only five tomatoes, while the others have 8. Adding 3 helps to improve taste on the 5-tomatoessoup.
Should I add 3 to the rest as well? = > NO)
 
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Okay thanks. I thought that I should only keep the blurry parts sharpened, the but sharpened shots look different, so I thought I had to do something to make them match. I have been trying to adjust the colors myself using curves as I was told but it doesn't really seem to match them as much. I need to learn to curve the light in the background, without the light in the foreground being effected. I will get a colorist for that.
 
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Sharpened blurry shots will alway look different than in focus shots, because sharpening is a different proces than focussing.
Sharpening will help to bridge the gap a bit, but it will hardly ever truely match in focus shots.

(But don't worry about that too much: you can get away with a lot :) )
 
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GuerrillaAngel said:
Here's the thing . . . all these things are easily fixed in post. If they bother you, fix them. It'll cost you nothing.
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ummm... yeah... not.

get it right when you shoot and leave post for making your film better, not for rescuing a lazy crew in production.


cheers
geo

Georgia Hilton MPE MPSE CAS
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Obsessing is not necessarily a bad thing, unless it bogs you down and makes you unproductive or unless you're obsessing about just one area of film making. If for example you're obsessing only over the shots, the other elements of your films are going to appear weak and pull the whole level of your film down. It's a bit like building a car and obsessing only over the engine. You might impress people into engine specs but the car itself may well be undrivable!

GuerrillaAngel said:
Here's the thing . . . all these things are easily fixed in post. If they bother you, fix them. It'll cost you nothing.
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It's not uncommon to hear on set the phrase "fix it in post", it's the kiss of death. Often it costs 10 times more to fix in post and what do you get for 10 times more money? ... usually a worse quality finished product. Listen to what Georgia said, she knows what she's talking about!

GuerrillaAngel said:
Just do your best in post to match it and move on. Nobody here is going to fault you for not doing the best with what you have.
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If what you say is true, then no problem... Provided of course that the only people who are ever going to see your film are members of this forum. Otherwise, most people don't care why something is wrong, just that it is wrong.

G
 
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This thread is turning interesting. Georgia and AudioPostExpert... H44 (click on his name and click "find more posts by...") has obsessed over every single detail of his production very publicly, rom pre-production forward. From a forum standpoint, it has been a great opportunity to add searchable question and answer pairs.

During production for this neophyte filmmaker, a contact he made has indicated that they are going to put the work on the desk of someone with industry clout. This hasn't helped his insecurity at all (generally the goal of early projects -- and this community's response to them).

Yes, given resources and funding and professional crew and ... and ... and... the recommendations to have gone back in time and get it right on set should have been obvious, but to the folks starting out (which is where I was 10 years ago -- ah, the hubris), the only way to learn these things is to make the mistakes and have to learn to deal with them.

The shoot is "in the can," our job now is to help push H44 to the finish line so he can actually get the work in front of the set of eyes he's targeting... as it is, any more floundering and the opportunity will pass. This kind of opportunity is a dream to most of us who are struggling to start making a living doing the work we love.

So, H44 -- do you see the finish line? That's where you're headed. Stop looking at the texture of the grains of sand under your feet, it's time to move forward. If you search for the phrase "ever forward" you'll find a ton of posts by me saying exactly that, it's my internal on-set mantra and my post workflow. If I'm not moving forward, I'm dead in the water and I may as well get into macrame or hula hooping.

Ever Forward, never stop moving to the finish line, you owe it to everyone on the production to finish the project. Unfinished work on a copy and credit shoot takes away your cast and crew's promised payment. 30% of your time on a project will get you 70% finished, your other 30% of the project will take 70% of your time... budget your time well, finish the edit, grade and sound, set a deadline and finish the polishing that you can within that deadline... after that, move on with your life.

A movie is released, never finished -- modified George Lucas Quote (he said abandoned, but we've seen what he did to his old films when he kept working on them after they were released).
 
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knightly said:
Yes, given resources and funding and professional crew and ... and ... and... the recommendations to have gone back in time and get it right on set should have been obvious, but to the folks starting out (which is where I was 10 years ago -- ah, the hubris), the only way to learn these things is to make the mistakes and have to learn to deal with them.
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I have to say, this seems backwards (the wrong way around) to me. Maybe this approach would work for the hobbyist but I can't see how it would work for someone wanting to be a professional.

G
 
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Yes, but without access to people to mentor you on their sets, the struggle to learn these lessons may seem backwards, I want to be a professional and do this for a living, but I'm not in LA or NY... I had to learn these things on my own... this community here was the big one that took me from clueless to clueful... learning over shoot after shoot what to do and not to do took time and errors to correct.

I never had anyone directly on set saying, nope, let's do this now instead of later (nor did H44). Had you been on set, these wouldn't have been an issue -- had I been on set, it wouldn't have happened either, but we weren't... so here we are. Saying "you should have known" doesn't solve the current issues H44 is having, so it's more helpful to help him/her find solutions rather than problems... which type of person are you? problem or solution? I ask this question to myself every morning and let it drive my decision making every single day. I prefer to try to be a solution rather than a problem.
 
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Knightly: My response (post #32) took into account that I did not know H44's precise situation. The first sentence of that post provides advice/information which I feel addresses the original question well. The rest of the paragraph provides decent information too, although now understanding H44's position a little better it's maybe not so applicable to his situation.

The other paragraphs were aimed at GorillaAngel.

knightly said:
I never had anyone directly on set saying, nope, let's do this now instead of later (nor did H44).
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Although my usual work doesn't require me to be on set, I have been on set on many occasions and to the best of my recollection, I've never heard these exact words either! Because, it's not really a question of going back and doing it again, most of the time the need to use the phrase "we'll fix it in post" should have been completely avoided in the first place by proper planning and on set discipline. Anyone who works in post (audio or visual) suffers consistently from the avoidable uses of that phrase. With the tight schedules of the modern industry, the result is that I have to spend much of my time, if not virtually all of it, fixing problems which could easily (and usually at no additional expense) have been avoided. All my time spent fixing problems is time I'm not spending doing what I'm best at, using my creativity to help tell the story in fresh and/or more engaging ways. I don't know of a single professional in post who doesn't feel the same way. I'm not just talking about indi films, I'm talking about all films; indi films, TV dramas, all the way up to the huge budget blockbusters. In fact the situation got so bad that a collection of the most respected (and successful) sound men in the business wrote an open letter to the world of directors and producers. I posted a link on another thread but here it is again (for anyone interested).

It may have been unwittingly, but GorillaAngel hit a raw nerve with his advice because that phrase "we'll fix it in post" not only causes untold frustration and poorer quality products but must have cost the film industry millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars of additional and unnecessary expense over the years!

G
 
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AudioPostExpert said:
GorillaAngel hit a raw nerve with his advice because that phrase "we'll fix it in post"
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You really ought to read the posts in the thread you're commenting in. Indeed, I already responded to your earlier comment on that and I made it clear I was talking about him and what he should do.

And for the record, a lot of stuff CAN be fixed in post, but the results won't be what the director had in mind when he yelled "action".
 
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Cool, thanks for the clarification... I've actually been on set and been the one to speak up and request we can get 15 more minutes to fix something on set before resorting to "fix it in post." A decade of hobbyist experience making all the standard mistakes, has made me the on set mentor in my area for many productions. I wish I had had an onset mentor, but bad footage and horrible sound have pushed me harder to improve than reading books, blogs, tutorials or forum posts.

I'm glad H44 is making mistakes and having to deal with them in post... learning how hard it is to fix in post is only taught by screwing it up on set and having to fix it yourself. I would venture a guess the lesson is learned and a laundry list of "to learn" has been generated.
 
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Before the digital age you had no choice but to get it right on the set. The DP had to get the color and lighting to correctly match on film before it ever went into editing. Sound was also carefully captured, and dialog "editing" was reduced to looping only the worst dialog. Audio post was adding one or two tracks of Foley & sound FX and adding the score. There were NO digital corrections because they had no computers - you COULD NOT fix it in post.

In the music world there wasn't any punching or multitracking until the the mid-50's, and the performances still had to be right. Sure, you could overdub, but there was no digital editing. My uncle, Rudy Adler, was a session musician from the 30's through the 50's, big bands mostly. He related to me that mixing was rearranging the musicians around the single microphone, or, at best two or three mics, for a group of 20 or more; they just kept playing until the mix was right, then went for the performance.

I bring all this up because for many decades you had to keep doing it on the set or in the recording studio until you got it right. This is a mentality that has all but disappeared in the last 30 years or so; too much reliance on digital trickery to fix problems that should never have occurred in the first place. All of the wonderful toys we have are really only meant to enhance what is already there, not to compensate for inadequacies and deficiencies.

As I keep preaching about sound - and it is probably true for many other aspects of filmmaking - every dollar/minute you spend on-set will save you ten in post.
 
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Alcove Audio said:
.............

As I keep preaching about sound - and it is probably true for many other aspects of filmmaking - every dollar/minute you spend on-set will save you ten in post.
Click to expand...

Very true. Very very very true.
Get it right (as much as you can).

Few months ago I spend a few hours on 2 shots of a few seconds to correct the color of the daylight shown through the window and door. The sky/light was already far to blue.
Why?
Due to the weatherforcast I moved some interior shots to the end of the day, because rain was forcast.
Dusk was starting and the exterior light was reallt getting blue.
It was unfortunate, so I accepted a few hours of keying, masking and correcting.
If I had the change to shoot it earlier (and shoot outside without rain later that day), I would have saved me a lot of time in post without really spending extra time on set.

Timepressure and 'production-limits' can cause less than optimal conditions, but getting it right on set is always a timesaver in post.

And if it isn't perfect: you don't always have to try to make it perfect in post. :P


PS.
Although I'm not a great musician (or producer) I recorded a few tracks a few years ago on a Yamaha MT-8X, that's an analogue 8 track cassetterecorder. You can record with it and mix the 8 tracks (not automated). Every mistake meant rewind and start again with recording or mixing.
I had a computer and software to record guitars, but I already spent enough time on computers and I wanted it to do it the old fashioned way: I just had to play it right. A great way to force yourself to practise a lot.
 
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