We’re trying something different. Rebekah and I are each writing a separate draft. No idea how this will work out, but we thought it might be beneficial.

Nothing much to report besides that. Rewriting on my end has been slow. But I did have a brainwave about half an hour ago. We’ll see how it pans out.

Until now. Read on to see what changed my mind.

I had heard how on indie films people had used a green or blue screen outdoors. This supposedly had the advantage of even lighting without any real work. I’d always wanted to try it, but I had no frame and I couldn’t think of anywhere else to hang the screen.

My dad came to the rescue last week with a great idea: Grab a few clamps and hang the blue screen from the gutter on our house. Hanging the screen in front of the garage door ensured enough room to back off for a wide shot.

I hurried outside to try it. The day was pretty windy, so the screen was constantly in motion. This is unfortunate, since that messed up the key a little. But still, I got results at least as good as those in iSundae II with about ten minutes of work. Compare that to the hours I spent on a single shot for iSundae II!

Here’s my test video:

I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do when the wind isn’t ruining my shot!

By the way, on the subject of chroma keying, I’ve been messing around with the demo of DVmatte Blast recently. It does a very nice job!

The Five C’s of Cinematography: Motion Picture Filming Techniques (Paperback)
by Joseph V. Mascelli
ISBN: 187950541X

Price: USD 19.77
66 used & new available from USD 16.78

Summary

A veteran cinematographer tells you practically everything you need to know about cinematography.

The Good

The text is very clear, with lots of photos to demonstrate almost every technique. Very in-depth.

The book covers not only theatrical filmmaking, but also applies the techniques to off-the-cuff documentary shooting.

Great overhead diagrams show how camera placement works.

The Bad

Not much to complain about. This is easily the most polite filmmaking book I’ve ever read.

The book was written in the 1960s, so some of the technology referenced is a bit outdated. (I got a kick out of the discussion of TVs being too small for good theatrical work and speculation about color television in the future.)

Black and white photos make the sections about color somewhat difficult to comprehend.

Overall

I want to have The Five C’s of Cinematography always close at hand to reference whenever I’m in doubt about how something should be done.

Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need (Paperback)
by Blake Snyder
ISBN: 1932907009

Price: USD 13.57
56 used & new available from USD 11.97

Summary

A successful screenwriter gives eight chapters of important pointers for writing your screenplay. The book is written from the perspective of marketing your script to a producer from page one.

The Good

Starting with the first chapter, where the reader defines the important “what is it?” about their script, the bulk of the book is designed to help you fix your story before you write FADE IN:

One chapter deals entirely with common screenwriter errors and how to fix them. The final chapter gives some brief pointers on selling your script to Hollywood when you’ve finished writing it.

Very clear and easy to read. Real-world analogies make more abstract concepts simple to grasp. And the last section of the book is a glossary of frequently used Hollywood slang surrounding screenwriting, which is useful for deciphering other materials later.

The Bad

A smattering of language. A few mildly inappropriate examples.

The author also seems to assume that you have viewed every movie he talks about.

Overall

Save the Cat is subtitled, “The last book on screenwriting you’ll ever need.” True? Not quite. While the book has certainly helped me to see where my current project could improve, it could have gone more in-depth on a few issues. The author himself mentions several important screenwriting books in the introduction. But for a good look at screenwriting from a marketing perspective, this is a keeper.

However, we’re currently taking about two weeks off to take a breath and work on a couple of other things. So things aren’t too bad.

For the most part, my ideas just come. There. Was that helpful? But sometimes I have to go after them (or myself) with a club, especially when it’s just plain easier to do something other than come up with brilliance. So, for lack of really good idea to write in this post, grab your club and come with me. We’re going to hunt some brainwaves.

Just Do It

By now maybe you’ve realized that there’s always some effort to getting ideas. Sometimes (wonderful times) they just pop into my head, but other times I have to really think. And think hard. This is where the club becomes a two-edged weapon. While it may scare ideas out of the bushes, it can also scare the daylights out of me, resulting in complete “idea-generator” shut down. (Read that as: I don’t handle pressure well.)

So here’s my first tip. Learn your limitations. Figure out just how long you can rack your brains successfully, and stop before you fall over the edge. And take what you can get. If amazing ideas aren’t coming, I grab the little ones. They make great jumping off points. And if all else fails, I throw away my club, and get out my little friend the magic rabbit and chase him down some rabbit trails…

Introducing The Magic Rabbit

I’m a very active, visual thinker. I need space, quiet, next-to-no pressure, and writing utensils to be able to focus and play with scenes in my head. Which doesn’t work so well in chats and business meetings. So I rely on what I’ll call (for lack of a better term) my magic rabbit brain. Toss an idea around and, hey presto! see what emerges.

For instance, this last chat we were stuck for a conversation between two characters in a ticklish, but static, situation. Jordan had typed a partial sentence and it hadn’t finished coming through, so all it said was, “The cell was small.” I glanced at the sentence from a ways away and accidentally read “the cell was snail.” I got a chuckle out of that, then started playing with the concept of having a cell that was shaped like a snail. Eventually we wound up with a set design, a way to introduce two characters, a set-up for some neat scenes, more of the villain’s personality, and a way to get the dialogue rolling—just by playing with a misread.

That’s why you play with those little “okay” ideas. Mess with them and things happen. But keep your antennae moving while you’re doing it. If an idea starts going the wrong direction, drop it, or at least hold it loosely. The last thing you want to do is be stuck hanging on to an idea that doesn’t work. One that nobody else likes and you just know it would work if they’d only stop and listen to you . . . and maybe change half the script while they’re at it. I’ve been guilty of that a couple of times. Believe me, it gets messy.

Follow the Scene

Next to the Magic Rabbit my most important idea generator is my “antennae.” Or perhaps I should say “whiskers” to keep with rabbit theme. Anyway, unlike the little bunny these feelers generate and moderate ideas. We talked about “feelings” in an earlier post. Moderating is the ability to tell if a scene is working. If it “feels” right. If you’re in the middle of a hold-up, and there are secret service all over the place, the world is at stake, the victim just found out that the main badguy is their old friend, etc. etc. etc. You don’t want someone to suddenly crack a “Why did the chicken cross the road?” joke. It doesn’t fit! This applies to sets, props, costumes, dialogue, action, just about anything in the filmmaking world.

But the cool part is that, for me, this method can also generate ideas. I get into the general mood of the scene and see what comes. Maybe this works because I’ve watched lots of movies and read lots more books. Maybe I’ve just had too much sugar. I don’t know. It just works. If I can get in the moment and visualize what the characters are trying to do, look out! Stuff happens.

It’s Not Personal

No, I’m not going to go into how to make the audience connect with an idea. I’m talking about you. About your ideas. Your ideas that you have slaved over, polished, perfected, and joyously presented them to whatever group you’re working with, only to have them shot down. Blown up. Stuffed in a box and sunk in the Pacific somewhere about fifty miles off the coast of California.

What do you do?

If I’ve had a rough day I tend to take the easy way out and go “sulk” in the corner. No more ideas from me! You didn’t like the last ones so, humph, catch me giving you any more.

This is the wrong response.

It hurts, yes. But you’ve got to be able to keep coming up with ideas or you’ll spend the next hour trying to get somewhere, and then have to start over. Sulking is not worth it! People say to not think of someone’s reaction to your ideas as a reflection on yourself. With me, that’s much easier said than done. In fact, I don’t think there really is a three-step process to growing an instant thick skin. (Something between armored plating and a rhinoceros, preferably.) It comes slowly and with practice. And you don’t learn to let go of good ideas without, guess what? Letting go of ideas. Ouch.

But remember this. You have a brain. And it works. (With me so far?) You come up with ideas every day. Whether other people like them or not is not something to lose sleep over. (And believe me, I struggle with this a lot.) You’re part of a team. You bring ideas to the table that no one else there has thought of. It’s this mix that makes movies so unique. Anyone can come up with an idea. But it’s how you work with each other that counts.

After, “How did you do that?” the question I get asked the most often is probably, “Where do you come up with your ideas?” My idea generation process is at times crazy. I’ll start with a couple that aren’t too off-the-wall and work up to a crazy one.

Without being too psychowacky, one of my biggest idea generators is the fact that I can’t ever seem to sleep in. I find that when I’m lying in bed waiting for a decent hour to arise is a great time to just let ideas float by until something interesting comes along. This works better when I’m actively wondering about a place in my story I’m stuck on.

Ask Rebekah anytime, and if cornered, you might get her to say that when we collaborate on a script, a huge portion of my ideas are off-the-wall silly. Now, we made a movie based on that, but when you’re shooting for a dramatic production, silliness doesn’t always help. For me a big means of coming up with good ideas is to ignore the first three or four things I think of. Those are the silly ideas, and then I usually start getting serious. Your silly-milage may vary.

Okay, I said I had a crazy way of getting ideas. Here it is:

I know you’re going, “What in the world…?” but let me explain. This is a story. All of those little guys are characters. Some of them are good guys, some are bad guys, some will change “sides” at whim. At many times during the day, my siblings and I will walk by this shelf and make a few changes. Then we explain what’s going on to everybody else. The story changes and the plot twists almost daily. It sounds crazy, but I really think that this helps me to think on my feet while writing a script.

So there are three ways I get ideas. Stay tuned for Rebekah’s idea generation techniques.

Amazon has the H4 in stock for a great price. You might want to check it out if you need a nice portable studio solution. I had used one on-set previously, and the results were fantastic.

Seriously, though. Recently, I learned about a very neat transition in Final Cut. Introducing… The Gradient Wipe!

(Disclaimer: Remember when I talked about cheesy transitions? A gradient wipe can be just as cheesy if you overdo it. Don’t.)

Okay, with that out of the way, let’s jump in. First of all, what is a gradient wipe? My local dictionary says nothing on the subject, so you can make up your own definition based on the explanation. Let’s play with a gradient wipe.

Add a gradient wipe between two clips just like you would any other transition. Now, for basic experimentation, find the second clip in your browser and drag it into the slot I’ve pointed out in the picture. Drag the softness slider up a bit, play the video, and you should see something pretty interesting. Here’s what I got:

Gradient Wipe from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

Pretty neat, huh? Let me explain how it works. When you added the clip to the slot, you added a matte. Final Cut uses this matte to decide which areas of the shot to transition first. Darker areas at the beginning, lighter areas last. We can use this to our advantage to make a very artsy transition.

You’re going to need Photoshop or some similar photo editing application for these next examples. Launch Photoshop and create a new image the size of your video. Make sure your foreground and background colors are black and white, then do Filter>Render>Clouds. Save that image and bring it into Final Cut.

Drop your new cloud picture into the matte slot on your gradient wipe. Play it and see what happened. Here’s mine:

Cloud Gradient Wipe from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

Let’s make this even more interesting. Remember the movie National Treasure? When Riley is explaining to Ben the security surrounding the Declaration of Independence, there’s a really neat shot of “kids on their eighth grade field trip.” The kids come in first, and then the background fades in behind them.

The filmmakers probably did a lot of motion tracking and matting and such to pull off this shot. Here’s a low-budget/lower-time way to get the same effect with a gradient wipe.

First, shoot some video of your people walking in front of something. Plan ahead more than I did and make sure they stand out against the background. The key to making this work without too much hassle is to have your subject stay still for a few seconds before they start to move.

Bring that video into Final Cut, and then export a frame of the part where your subject is standing still. Open the image in Photoshop.

Do a nice cutout job of your subject and get them on a separate layer. Get rid of the background and make it white. For the foreground, you have two options. You can either shade your subject all black to make them fade in all at once, or, as in the National Treasure effect, paint your subject in gradually lightening shades. Remember, darker fades in first.

Once you’ve saved that, bring it back into Final Cut and drop it in the matte slot. You may have to do some adjustments, but you should come out with something like this:

Complex Gradient Wipe from Phantom Moose Films on Vimeo.

As you can see, the possibilities are nearly endless. If you come up with anything interesting, leave a comment linking to your video. I’d love to see it!