October 18, 2023 • 58 mins
Get ready for a deep-dive into the world of independent filmmaking with Peter Paul Basler, a talented director and filmmaker whose craft is steeped in the magical realm of visual effects. Peter shares stories of the challenges he faced creating crowd replication on a sports movie and the complexities of filming dynamic scenes on ice. Join us as we get a peek behind the lens, revealing how VFX is shaping the way directors create gripping cinematic realities that captivate audiences.
Peter doesn't stop at VFX. With an enthusiasm matched only by his knowledge, he recounts his innovative use of practical effects in a desert-set movie. From creating a mold of a lead actor's head for a memorable zombie scene to perfecting the art of blood shots, Peter's stories are a masterclass in using effects both practical and digital to tell a story. We also explore how having a tangible reference can bring a certain delight and texture to the filmmaking process.
In the final segment, we talk about the significant and ever-growing impact of VFX on independent filmmaking. With advancements in technology, filmmakers are now able to see results in near real-time, revolutionizing the way movies are made. Peter offers valuable tips for filmmakers on making the most of their VFX budget and finding the right VFX company for their projects. As we wrap up, Peter offers a sneak peek into his upcoming projects - a time travel thriller and a sitcom-style series. This episode is a treasure trove of insight, inspiration, and indispensable advice for all who are passionate about the blend of VFX and independent filmmaking.
Peter's website: https://www.peterpaulbasler.com/
Hosted by Foxtrot X-Ray’s founder and “chief pixel pusher” Paul DeNigris, who brings to the conversation 30 years of experience in both independent filmmaking and visual effects, as well as 20 years of experience in teaching all aspects of digital filmmaking at the university level.
For episodes, transcripts, and more, visit http://vfxforindies.com
For more information about what Foxtrot X-Ray can do for your film, visit https://foxtrotxray.com
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(00:00):
When it comes to working with visual effects, director and lifelong boy scout, Peter Paul Baslerhas learned the hard way to always be prepared...
on this episode of VFX for IndiesWelcome to this episode of
(00:32):
VFX for Indies, the podcast about the intersectionof visual effects and independent
filmmaking. I'm your host, Paul DeNigris,visual effects artist, filmmaker,
and CEO of boutique VFX shop, Foxtrot X-Ray.
With me today is a director,filmmaker, title designer, all around Renaissance
man, who has collaborated withme and my team over the years, a number of
(00:55):
times, and in fact, directedthe very first official Foxtrot X-Ray project.
So, He holds a special placein our heart here. I would like to welcome
to the podcast, Peter PaulBasler.
[Peter (01:06):
Hello, thanks for having me, Paul. It's great to be here.
[Pau (01:09):
Thanks for being here. Why don't you fill the audience in a little bit
about yourself, who you are,what you've done, what your career has kind
of looked like.
[Peter (01:17):
Sure, I like to consider myself an independent filmmaker. If I put a
title to it, I'm a writer,director and producer. I think I've held every
job in the industry, asidefrom lead actress, I guess. But I've even,
because I've been an assistantdirector, I've even been pressed into putting
(01:37):
on a suit and hopping intoa scene. So I've done it for a while, and I
was thinking about comingon this podcast with you today, Paul. And the
first project I ever did,VFX was the furthest thing from my mind. It
wasn't even something thatwas sort of within my reach. It wasn't a tangible
thing that I thought thatI could do. That was 20 years ago. And has
(02:04):
certainly working withfolks like you and then working in different
movies with different typesof VFX and understanding what they can achieve
has changed my perspectiveon how I operate on set as a director, and
then when I wear my producercap, and as a producer as well, making a movie
happen quickly, but lookingthe best it can be.
[P (02:28):
Right. And I could tell, you know, from our very first collaboration that
you had a good sense of theVFX process and kind of what you needed to
provide to VFX artists to beable to accomplish what you were asking. Right.
So the first project that Peterand I collaborated on was a sports movie and
it required a lot of crowdreplication. Right. They were in an enclosed
(02:50):
arena and there weren't a number,there just wasn't enough people, enough extras
on set to fill the stands.
And so. What I was provided with was the principalphotography of the actors doing
their thing. And then the, it was mostly emptystands. You usually, almost
every shot, the stands were completely empty.
(03:10):
But then Peter and his teamshot, uh, you know, plates, right? So they,
they fill a section of thestadium and shoot a plate and then move everybody
to another section. So we,you know, we sort of had a straight on section.
We had a corner curve section.
We had another angle section. And so we hadthese different pieces and
they'd move people around. Uh, and so we hadall of these, uh, these plates
(03:31):
to, to put it together. And it was, um, itwas really refreshing because
I've been in situations where people come tome and say, I need to put crowd
here and I say, well, what did you, what haveyou shot? And they say, nothing.
Can't you just make people in the computer?
And I say, sure. It's...
That's way outside your budget. Right. But.
Peter and his team, they gaveus what we needed. And so we were able to pull
(03:54):
those shots off in a reasonableamount of time with a very modest budget. So
Peter, talk about like goinginto that project, obviously you were prepared.
So what got you to that pointwhere you and I hadn't even had a conversation
(04:15):
yet. We didn't even know eachother when you filmed this, right? So it wasn't
a case of you, you talked tome. Maybe you talked to another VFX supervisor?
I don't know kind of what wentinto the preparation that got us to that.
[Peter (04:26):
Well, I think I'll back up a little bit and say that project was all
shot on location in Colorado.
We did some pick up work in interior shotsin some arenas here in
Southern California, but that gives you a verydifferent look than Colorado,
obviously, in the winter. And one of the thingsthat we couldn't get on
our schedule was how we're going to shoot thisfinale. And if you've done
your work on the setup to your third act, youreally want it to look as good
(04:52):
as possible. And I had luckily done a few projectsand had, and they were
VFX heavy. So I had a bit of an understandingabout what we would need
as a filmmaker to provide to you and your teamto make it look good. One
of the things that was the most challengingand I believe you talked
(05:12):
to me, Paul, and sort of baby stepped me through,which sometimes director
needs that, is we were shooting actors on theice. with a camera operator
on the ice who was moving left to right, butalso forwards and back.
And sometimes left, right, forwards, back,all in the same sequence.
So the parallax, the way that you see the crowdand the audience was changing,
(05:38):
which made it very difficult. And to your question,yes, we did go to a few
other houses and they were either flummoxedon how they would actually
do it or... or there's just no way for a lowbudget movie. And to your
credit, your team took it on and said, we knowhow to do this. And I think
(05:59):
the end results on that is something that youdon't think about it. It's
not a VFX that is showy, like an explosionor a monster where your
brain goes, we know that this is pretend. Thatdidn't happen. They didn't
blow up Tom Cruise or whoever's in your movie.
(06:22):
And you, as an audience,engage it in a certain way. This is, and it's
really funny, because alot of the work, and I'm sure you can attest
to this and other filmmakershave talked about it, is doing stuff that if
you do your job right,no one knows you even did anything. And
it's hours and hours andhours of work. And this is definitely one of
those. The crowd is respondingto the nationals of a figure skating competition,
(06:48):
and they needed to lookas natural and real as possible and not be
showy and not call attentionto themselves and fill what was a 10,000 seat
arena. And we had like300 actual background. And I used as many tricks
as I could to reuse those300 extras again and again and again and move
(07:10):
them around and pick shotswhere I wasn't showcasing the crowd. But one
of the things that I didalso in my homework is I watched some of the
movies that have been donebefore with either ice hockey or figure skating.
And one of the ones thatis the most popular is a movie called The Cutting
Edge. Early 90s,it is the breakthrough
figure skating movie at the time. And whatthey ended up doing was
(07:32):
the sequence, which was the finale of watchingthese two skaters compete,
was it was a single spotlight in a... darkenedarena that followed them
around and you go wow, that's dramatic. That'sover-the-top. Why are they
doing that? From a practical sense, this isearly 90s, they're either
(07:55):
gonna fill up the arena with extras and they'regonna pay to feed them
and clothe them and all this stuffor they chose that so you
don't see them. And I didn't want to go thatroute I wanted it to feel
like there was a crowd and so I think anytimeas an independent filmmaker,
you start to do a project, there's a littlebit of a leap of faith.
(08:17):
And I said, I'm gonna do my best to get goodclean images. I'm gonna
do these plates and give them material andthen hope I find the right
VFX team. And luckily we did.
Well, thanks. It was a definitelearning curve for us. It was one of those
classic scenarios where somebodysays, can you do this? And you say yes. And
(08:38):
then you scramble with yourteam to figure out how to do it. You know,
and some of the shots weresuper straightforward. And some of them where
the camera is moving in, youknow, six degrees of freedom, panning, tilting,
you know, moving on X, Y andZ all at the same time, because you had a great
skater as your camera op. Yeah,some of those were a challenge. And it required,
(08:59):
you know, breaking those platesup into multiple little layers, you know, one,
one row of seats at a timeand putting them on 3d cards and all of that
sort of stuff. Let me tellyou though, great training for the post-COVID
era. Wedo that a lot now we do a
lot of crowd replication nowbecause of because of COVID because you know,
(09:19):
because there aren't big crowdsanymore. Even you know, we did a Christmas
movie last year, where it waslike you know, a 400 seat little community
theater and they brought in20 extras and we replicated them 20 times,
right? Because of COVID, becausethey don't wanna deal with the health implications
or the cost of screening everybodyand all of that. And so they, you know, they
(09:41):
had a bunch of people thatwere friends and family of the crew and cast
that were in the bubble andthey brought them in and we just replicated
them all around and changedred sweaters to green and you know, things
like that.
And it's all... Like we'rereally good at that now because we kind of
went to film school on that,on your movie to figure out how to do that.
[Peter P (10:05):
I'm happy to help, I'm happy to help, Paul.
[ (10:07):
I haven't thanked you before, thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank
you for the faith that we couldpull it off. So like I said, Peter and I have
then collaborated on a numberof projects and Peter's a close collaborator
with my VFX producer, Jai Sathyan,who I met on this film and who has continued
to work with me since then.
So again, that movie, you know, just kind oflike set the tone for my company
(10:30):
and the team. And so it's a situation where,you know, now when Peter has
VFX, he's bringing Jai and I on when we haveprojects like there was a title
sequence on a horror movie that we did a coupleof years ago, where we needed
somebody with a vision to direct the openingtitle sequence and really shoot
(10:53):
some interesting creepy stuff, you know, Peter,we brought Peter in. So it's
kind of like a nice little family unit thatwe've got here that we continue
to work together. So one of the things thatwe did was a zombie horror
movie called DJZ that Peter directed and wasa fun combo of practical on-set
gore and some stuff that we did in post. Peter,why don't you talk about DJZ
(11:18):
and kind of how that project came about.
[Pete (11:21):
Yeah, so right as we were finishing up the sports film about 2016, 17,
a good friend of mine whohad shot a creature feature, a mega creature
feature that I had done,which was very VFX heavy, he had gone on to
be the DP of note on aTV show called Z Nation, which was a SyFy
(11:42):
Channel, sort of low budgetversion of The Walking Dead. I was able to in
2017 fly out to Spokane,Washington and I shadowed on two episodes of
the show, not episodesthat my friend was directing, which was weird,
but he and I had such agood rapport that he pitched me to some other
(12:03):
directors on the show becauseI was friends with him. They said, yeah, sure,
come on and check me out.
I don't know you, but Alex vouches for you.
You're a good guy. So Icame off of that shadowing and I had I had
dipped my toe into themythology of Z Nation it was in its fourth
season so there were alot of episodes and what I wanted to do was
(12:24):
my own version of Z Nationmy interpretation of Z Nation, and show
off my directing skillsbecause I wanted to be in the mix on the next
season, if I could, to direct.
Directing television is something that I'veaspired to do for a long
time and with my indie background I felt. Sowe shot that movie up in
(12:46):
the Mojave Desert. We used my garage as thebunker for the mysterious
DJ who is broadcasting during the zombie apocalypse.
And we really wanted togo practical, frankly. I, we created a mold
of one of my lead actor'sheads. We matched his hair perfectly. The switch
(13:08):
from the real actor tothe dummy, you cannot tell. And we filled the
rubber head with all sortsof goo and grossness and bits of brain as you
do. I'm sure just a typicalTuesday for any filmmaker. And on the day,
(13:28):
of course, because we'reworking with practical effects and liquid and
so on, we tried it andit looked very unimpressive. Instead of a large
squirt and something thatwould make you react, emotionally, viscerally,
gutturaly and go gross,you just went, that's it. And I was a little
(13:49):
bit defeated. We had alreadystarted a collaboration on the sports film
and I brought that to youthrough Jai and got really what I was looking
for. One of the thingsI had to overcome as a filmmaker was having
done some VFX stuff inthe early 2010s. In my mind, VFX hadn't got
(14:14):
to the point where liquidslook like liquids. I'm also a big James Bond
fan. Die Another Day hasa terrible, terrible CG sequence. It's one
of the worst in Bond history.
Because they did that sequence, they rebootedwith Casino Royale, which
is a great, great film. So I'm thankful that it exists,terrible. And so I had
(14:37):
this negativeness about it. And Jai said, letme bring it to Paul, let's
see what we can do on this. And one of thethings that you did Paul
and your team, which I really loved is we hadthis little shot after,
so you made the blood and we were now, nowwe're getting into as a
director where I have the ability, you know,you showed me it, I went,
(14:59):
no, I need bigger spurt. And then, you know,you're giving me the options,
you're giving me those tools so that I canreact creatively, which
is always the dream of a director. Give meoptions. Let me make choices.
That's your job as a director. Um, right after,so this head gets squashed,
the brains and guts fly out of this zombiehead. We cut back to it.
Um, and you had the, the actual head brainmatter, like sliding, which
(15:25):
was just that little like cherry on top oflike, if you watch it,
and I've seen it with a crowd where peoplego like this, they turn
away, then they look back and we get them again.
So we go right to that.
And they get that little bit of. So I alwaysloved that. And it changed
my confidence in what could be done with VFXas an indie filmmaker.
[Pa (15:49):
Great, yeah, that was a lot of fun because, you know, blood is a tricky
thing. I always say that, youknow, among the hardest things that
we ever do is, are shots thathave blood. Because everybody has an opinion
on what looks right. We allthink we know what blood looks like, right?
And how it behaves and howit sprays and how it moves. Most of which is
(16:11):
informed by horror movies.
Some of it informed by reality. And the truthis, no two instances of blood
ever look alike in the real world, in movies,you know, no matter what, right?
Depends on a whole bunch of things like whereit comes from, if it's oxygenated,
you know, is it under pressure? Is theperson dead already? Not dead,
you know, there's all sorts of things theyhave to take into effect and
(16:34):
into account. And everybody is like, it's notred enough. It's too red. It's
not, it's not shiny enough. It's too shiny.
It's too transparent. It'stoo this, it's too that. And so we end up going.
Lots and lots of revisionson most blood shots, specifically because of
that. But what was fun herewas you had that practical reference. You did
have practical blood, somethat came out. So we had viscosity, we had
(16:58):
color, we had gloss. So allwe were doing was matching. In other words,
we weren't creating it fromour imaginations or from what we thought it
should look like. And you weren'tresponding to it from what you thought it should
look like. It was always...
does it match what we got on camera? Does itlook like it's in the frame
with the other practical blood that didn'twork as well but is still there
(17:19):
and is setting the tone? So that was greatbecause that's kind of the
ideal scenario. Anytime a filmmaker comes tome with a shot where it's,
we didn't do anything and I need you to addblood, that's when we're like,
okay, we're off in fantasy land and it's gonnabe 10 revisions before we get
this shot dialed in. But a filmmaker comesin and says, I have some practical
(17:43):
blood in here. I want more of that. That's,you know, we're not, we're
knocking that out and you know, three or fourrevisions and everybody's happy.
And it, and that was great. And then, yeah,then to add those little, those
little extra textural elements like the, thehead, you know, the, the practical
head sort of collapsed a little bit kind ofas it sort of, you know, ran
(18:05):
out of stuff inside it after the stomp. Andso adding that extra little,
you know, squish of brain matter inside it.
And then, and then to me, myfavorite shot of the sequence is the guy who's
stomped looks at the bottomof his shoe and we put a piece of bloody scalp
on there and had it slide off.
[Peter (18:25):
Yeah, it drops it drops off right before you cut away, which is awesome
[P (18:29):
Yeah, yeah. So that was that was a lot of fun. And again, it's you know,
your practical effects peoplewere setting the tone and then we were we were
just playing in the sandboxthat they had they had set up for us, right.
As opposed to coming up withsomething from whole cloth, which is always
a challenge. So you referencethis earlier movie that you worked on that
was very VFX heavy. And you'vementioned it to me before that you learned
(18:53):
a lot of lessons on that. Andthat's Big Bad Bugs, correct?
[Peter (18:56):
Yeah, it was released as The Vortex. This is before streaming was as
popular as it is, but itstill was a V word at the end of any list that
you had alphabetized. Andwe had done this movie before Big Ass Spider,
before Sharknado, and beforethe sort of tongue-in-cheek low-budge action
(19:22):
thing was celebrated asmuch as it was. So it was originally called
Big Bad Bugs, and likeany great, good, low budget, we leaned into
the comedy because I had,I was like every five pages I can do something
(19:42):
VFX-wise, but I just don'thave the budget for every two pages, right?
That kind of math was goinginto it. And the distributor at the time said,
no, The Vortex, that'swhat it's gotta be. We said, hey, you're the
expert. And we had a five-yeardeal. So after five years, we got it back,
and we've released it asBig Bad Bugs. It was a mega creature film.
(20:08):
So these crystals are comingthrough a wormhole. When they hit these little
creatures, they becomemega creatures. So we have a mega scorpion.
We have a mega hornet,mega snakes at the end, as you do, as you see
in these type of films.
I was shooting the endof the movie on a location that was a rental
(20:30):
I was shooting the endof the movie on a location that was a rental
in Santa Clarita. The BlueCloud movie ranch has a full Iraqi village
set that they built forthe opening of the original Iron Man. So that
whole Iraq sequence isstill standing and it's been redressed to all
sorts of Middle Eastern. It'snot inexpensive for what
it is because it's a massive facility. Andas you do on low budget
(20:55):
films, and I'd like to talk about this a littlebit more too, is you do
sort of a backend page count. You say, well,this is the money I've
got. Every day that I add, I gotta feed allthese folks and pay these
folks and pay for blah blah blah. So the easy mathwas we're gonna shoot 10
to 12 pages a day, which is very ambitious,
[Paul DeNigris] (21:19):
Mm-hmm.
[Peter (21:19):
which means you're doing very few takes. You're doing limited coverage.
And you just got to rockand roll because you just got to get it done.
And so we had this locationfor a day and a half. That's as much as we
could. And I really feltas a filmmaker that I was just, I hope there's
a VFX team that can, becauseat the end it was going to be snakes fighting.
(21:39):
There were these crystalsthat were flying out. We had our lead actors
ducking crystals that weren'tthere. There was so much in my head of what
this end visual was goingto be. And it's pretty good. You know, again,
it's dated, it's 2011.
Luckily, again, my tone was comedic. So wecould lean into some of
(22:00):
the flaws as if we meant to do that if that makes sense. And it was a crash course, it was it was my learning curveon what how much you could
get away with VFX and how costly theywere going to be and what
the expectation from the industry was on howthey were going to look.
And I think that helped me to be more confidentwhen I'm doing an end sequence
(22:26):
like I was doing in Nebraska for the figureskating competition because
I already kind of been through the fire beforeI knew what I needed if
that makes sense.
[Pau (22:36):
Yeah, yeah, that does make sense. And that's something that I try to cover
with a lot of my guests isthat learning curve. It's the point of this
podcast is really for filmmakerslike you were in 2011 who are new to this,
right? They're new to usingVFX as a tool because most of us, we come through
(23:03):
film school. And we learnedhow to use sound as a tool and lighting as
a tool. And the camera as atool to tell our stories. And VFX is something
that's that wasn't really attainable.
You know, when, when we were coming up, itwasn't something that, that
independent filmmakers or student filmmakerscould even touch. So there
was no way to learn about it. And it's onlybeen in the last, you know,
20 years, 20 plus years that desktop VFX software,like After Effects, uh, made
(23:29):
it possible for us to even consider visualeffects as a tool for independent
filmmaking. And your comparison to television,you talk about Z Nation and
wanting to direct TV. In my mind, TV and independentfilm are very similar in terms
of short schedules, not as much money as abig budget feature. You have
(23:52):
to do more with less. And you're... A lot oftimes you're compromising the
vision in order to get it on air in seven days.
It's very, very similar. Howhas that experience with Big Bad Bugs or The
Vortex, how has that experience,if you could put a fine point on it, how now
(24:21):
you use VFX to help you tellyour stories? Knowing that you've got that
arrow in your quiver.
How are you using it when you'refacing that blank page writing a new story?
[Peter P (24:32):
So there's two ways, I think. If we're talking about facing the blank
page, understanding whereVFX is at and what you can do on a budget and
what you can accomplishdoes inform me when I'm writing. Because originally
it would be the edict wasjust write it and then you figure it out later.
And so there's a studioversion of your space thriller and then there's
(24:54):
a low-budget version ofthe space thriller. Doesn't change a word,
but the VFX and the timeyou're on set does change quite a lot. I was,
as you were chatting justnow, Paul, I had a thought, you know, I've
been doing it for a whileand I was joking as we started it, you know,
started in the early 2000s.
But when I started, my first film was a featureon film. And coming out
(25:16):
of the film school, it was what you capturedin the frame is what you
got. That's the way your mindset was. So youwould be, as a director,
you would be scanning the background. I don'twant that license plate
in the shot. It's not of the state we're supposedto be in or whatever. The
(25:36):
image that you captured was what you lived withforever, and that was the
thing. And so that really informed how you'dmade your choices. I noticed
as we got into the 2010s that there was a shiftalso with my crew. So for
example, when we were doing Big Bad Bugs,we shot at the Griffith
Caves, which are the famous Batman Caves inLos Angeles. And one day
(26:00):
a hiker was stuck at the top of the, like wayup in the mountains. And
so the LAPD sent a helicopter to get the hikeroff the ledge, which is
very, very noisy if you're trying to shoot anindependent film. But again,
we only had that for two days because it wasa low budget movie and
I had to keep shooting. So I said to the soundguy, get me the best scratch
(26:22):
track you could. Everybody kind of understoodthat. They understood what
was gonna happen. We can do ADR later. We'llpick that up and we move
forward. However, you know, when I was doinga film in the mid 2010s,
2015 or so, there was a time when the mic kindof dipped into the frame,
right? Here's my mic dipping into the frame.
(26:45):
And one of my sound orone of the crew people yelled boom and killed
the take that I loved.
So I turned and I said, look, guys, I haveeyes. I know that the boom
was in the shot. Let's not. If I like the take,we can cut that out, we
can paint that out.
There was some understanding,and obviously a younger generation is quicker
(27:09):
on the computer, but itwasn't as commonplace as now. I think if I
had that same conversationon a feature, they would easily get it, if
that makes sense. So becauseof that too, you're always making choices.
That's your job as a director.
And you go, all right, I've got a beautifultwo shot. I really want
(27:30):
to punch in on Paul's face for this next sequence.
I got to see the emotion.
And there are times when I will, as a director,go back and say, wait a
minute, we were shooting this 4K, 5K, whateverK we're at these days.
And I've got a great performance here. I can,in post, I can take that
two shot and make it a single, jump back. Andit feels like to the audience
(27:52):
that I did a new setup. I swapped a lens.
[Paul DeNigris] (27:57):
Mm-hmm.
I swung the lights a differentplace. And I haven't done it. I've taken that
to post. Now that's nottraditional VFX in a way, but it is. You're
altering the frame in someway that's different than it was presented.
So that is one of the toolsthat I always keep in the back of my mind about
how much can we play withthis frame? What do I need to get? Because
(28:22):
it's always a matter, especiallyon the low budget world, which is where I live,
a matter of math. I'vegot this many pages. And sometimes, you even
do the math where you say,I need to get this information out. It wasn't
the best performance. Itwouldn't give me my top 10 of the day, but
it gets the information,it gets me from A to B. This is a transitional
(28:44):
scene, et cetera, et cetera.
I can live with that. So I say all that tosay that it gives you a
confidence. It gives you a feeling like youcan get things done. It
changes the way you approach and then the morethat you see what a VFX
team can deliver for you and the closer theyget to an image that you've
lived with in your head and when you were writingit when you're on set and
(29:09):
you're shooting it again it informs you. Oneof the things I used to
always say about the post process is man youwrite it you shoot it and
then you know where you learn how to do it?
When you're editing becausewhen you're editing you're going who shot this
crap? Oh wait, that wasme. Who wrote this darn scene that's too long
and needs too many extras?
That was me. And it informs your process whenyou start over, right?
(29:32):
Nothing stands by itself. It's all part ofthis process. And it is
incredible how VFX has changed so much. Whenwe did Big Bad Bugs, we
actually went to a company in LA that had doneRobert Zemeckis' latest
film. I forget what it was at the time. Andwhatever choices we made,
(29:54):
they would say, guys, we are so fast. Giveus two and a half hours
and we'll render this and you get to see whatit looks like. We're like,
whoa, in two and a half hours, we can see whatthis is gonna look like?
That's so great.
And we would wait, youknow, and then they would turn it and you're
like, no, I need to changethis. All right, well, in two and a half hours,
we'll show you the change,you know? And how much, again, this is 2011,
(30:18):
12, how much, you know.
that has changed where now you can see it almostin real time and the options
presented to you on a level that's equal orbetter to what we were
doing in the early 2010s.
[ (30:31):
Yeah. Yeah, you and I haven’t had a chance to collaborate on a on a film
where we use Unreal Engine,which is real time. It's when we do get this
opportunity, you're going tolove it. We did a Western recently where we
had to create a cave interiorfor the filmmaker and we were able to just
over Zoom. Basically, a conversationlike this, just share screen of Unreal Engine.
(30:54):
And he was able to say, let'smove the camera here. Let's put it. Let's put
a little more light there asif he was on set working with his cinematographer.
So yeah, it's a completelynew world,
[Peter Paul Bas (31:04):
That's amazing.
[Pau (31:06):
So you were talking about, you know, the punch in to create a separate
close up. Another thing thatwe've been doing a lot of recently is the split
screen comp, where you havetwo actors whose rhythm is slightly different.
And your take one, you know,actor A is giving you gold in take one, take
two, take three, and then theystart to their energy starts to wane. And actor
(31:27):
B doesn't warm up until takeyou know, five, six, seven, and now you've
got, so you've got two differentperformances. And then the filmmakers would
just go, give me actor A fromtake one on the left side of the frame and
give me actor B from take sevenon the right side of the frame, stitch em together,
preserving the camera movementand all of that sort of stuff. And it adds
(31:48):
that extra dimension to yourediting. It's not just, you know, individual
shots that you're able to useto craft a performance. It's within the frame.
You can... craft the performancesand create a better ensemble.
[Peter P (32:04):
Yeah, I did that in my very first film, the one we shot on film. We
had recorded the, we hadthe audio of the first guy's part of being
on the phone, and we wereable to play that on set so the second guy
(32:25):
knew the timing. But itwas because of the, when we did it, and because
we're shooting on film,there was no choice. It was either this lines
up, This one doesn't lineup. We can't use it. You know, if you choose
A, then it forces you onyour choice of B. And it is funny for me as
a filmmaker because thereis a moment toward the end where they fall
out and the guy, our leadsays something and then his sidekick is supposed
(32:49):
to respond and there'slike a three second pause which feels like
an eternity. Where he finallygoes, oh, okay. Luckily it's something where
he's getting his nervesso it almost creatively works.
Yeah, but back in the dayyou were locked in. And again, the more you
can provide a directorthe opportunity to make choices, the closer
(33:11):
you can get to their visionbecause without choices, then you're just forced
into, you're forced intostuff that just, you know, it works. As I said,
sometimes you go, well,this isn't the perfect sequence, but you know,
I need this informationfor exposition. I'll leave it, cut it down,
or figure it out in post,that type of thing. But yeah, what VFX now
(33:36):
has done, because it isavailable and affordable to the indie filmmaker,
it has allowed you more opportunitiesto make creative choices, which can only mean
a better end product forthe viewer. And that's what you're all chasing.
[Pa (33:54):
You know, I wanted to speak to another point that you made where you said
when you were shooting on film,you were really inspecting the frame and going,
oh, that license plate is outof place. We need to we need to get that out
of frame. I really wish thatwould come back.
I really do. I mean, as muchas I appreciate being paid to paint out boom
(34:14):
poles and paint out licenseplates and paint out crew reflections. I really
would much rather see filmmakersspend their VFX budget on fun stuff, fun, creative
stuff that actually helps themtell their story. We get a lot of work where
it's, you know, if the filmmakershad just moved the camera three inches to the
left and panned, it would eliminatethe reflection of the crew. The shot would
(34:39):
be more or less the same. Itwould serve the same purpose in the story,
but they're not burning hundredsor sometimes thousands of dollars for us to...
paint them and their cameraout of the reflection of the bus window or
whatever. In some ways, theubiquity and the ease of visual effects has
(35:01):
created some laziness in thatregard, right? The, ah, we'll just, yeah, we'll
just paint it out. We're movingtoo fast, we have so many pages to shoot today.
Don't worry about it, we'lldeal with it in post. And then they're trying
to scramble to pull coins outof the couch cushions to pay us to do it instead
(35:23):
of paying us to do somethingfun that really helps them tell their story.
[P (35:28):
Yeah, I mean, to your point, I mean, I think, and I've been there, I was
a first AD for a good longperiod in, and I felt I was getting older and
the directors kept stayingin their early 20s and it was, and you were
seeing that a lot. Thatwas the, you know, sort of everything's rolling
and then they have onemore comment, they step in frame and they're
(35:48):
like talking to their actor,you know, the kind of stuff that we were taught
when that camera's rolling,think of it as dollar bills rolling through
the camera. So, you know.
Once you, that's the sacred, that is the sacredtime. And once you hit
record, it's gotta be what you want. So somewherein between is probably
what's the ideal for that because again, forme, when I need to make
(36:12):
my 10 and a half pages, it's a blessing thatI can do that. I can fix
it in post. But yeah, to your point, it alsomakes for sloppier filmmaking
in that, well, we'll figure it, we'll fix it,we'll fix it, we'll fix
it, until your list of fix-its are more thanthe list of stuff that
(36:34):
you got right. So I feel you on that. I tryto keep a happy medium,
I hope, but again, the world I live in is alot of times it's move,
make it happen. And I think that's the... thegive and take that every
(36:55):
filmmaker has to think about when they're on set.
[ (37:01):
Yeah, absolutely. We just did a Christmas movie. We do a lot of Christmas
movies. And we just did a Christmasmovie where the filmmakers had to decide between
a bunch of stock footage ofthe city that they wanted to add Christmas
decorations to help set thetone for the film. They had to decide between spending
(37:22):
money on that or spending moneyon the crew reflections and boom reflections
and things like that. And theyended up having to, because the network is
not going to air the moviewith crew reflected prominently in the, in,
you know, windows and stuff.
They had to prioritize the QC fixes, right?
The things that, that QC isgoing to flag instead of spending the money
(37:45):
on the story stuff that theyreally wanted to. And it's, it's a shame because
again, things, money's finite,right? Money is always finite on, on every
production. It doesn't matterhow big it is. And it's, there's almost no
excuse for it. Right. With,with how good our monitoring technology is,
right. There's no reason to,to not have a big monitor at video village.
(38:08):
There's no reason for a directorto not have a, a handheld display in his hand,
his or her hand all the time,you know, where you can just, all right, let's,
let's just pause for five seconds.
Just move the camera. Okay. Now we can roll.
I just eliminated a VFX shot.
[Peter Paul Basler] (38:26):
Yeah.
[P (38:28):
And I'm, I'm all for it. I'm all for it. Please eliminate all those VFX
shots. Let's do fun stuff.
[Peter P (38:35):
Good. I totally agree.
I was thinking too, I did a film that I AD'dwhere it was a famous DP
and she had, she'd been working for a longtime, obviously started
in film. And we were doing an insert shot,and she lit that insert
shot like, you know, this is going for Oscargold. And you're like,
man, it's just an insert, you know, there'salways that fine line.
(38:58):
And again, I felt like for me, I was the youngguy in that situation and
I was doing the math in my head saying, um,we can, we can stabilize
this in post. It's literally a static insertshot. We can give it a
look, you know what I mean? Get a clean shot,move on. Let's not make
it perfect on set because the amount of workthat we can do in post
(39:19):
is not a lot, it's just, you know, tweakingthe color, correct. It'll
match it. And you, you know, um, and wherewe were spending all the
time on, you know, blah blah blah. So it's, it'salways about kind of knowing
where you're at in the process. And I feellike, again, for me, having
been doing it for a long time, the technologyis changing rapidly and
it changes quicker every time. Which is oneof the things I like about
(39:43):
the fact I do a lot of short films. Peoplealways ask me, why do you
do short films? Because it allows me to flexa muscle in a creative
way that's different than what I've done before.
You know, if I get inspiredby a zombie thing or a sports film or whatever.
And then I'm... kind ofstaying up to date. I'm in the game and like
(40:04):
any other muscle that you,you know, it can atrophy. And so keeping yourself
engaged and keeping thinkingabout stuff and that way you're forced into
new decisions and the technology,like I said, is changing. And so you're always
sort of trying to stayup to the moment, right? I mean, if you dropped
out and you came back intothe industry in five years, five years from
(40:25):
now, think how much changeis happening at this moment with AI and all
these things. you wouldbe a little bit lost, right? So it's something
that keeps me fresh andallows me to, like I said, flex the creative
muscle, but also stay kindof as current as I can be with technology.
[Pa (40:45):
So yeah, we've collaborated on a couple of shorts recently, The Pragmatist,
which I guess you've got biggerplans for, maybe turning into a TV series,
at least according to IMDB.
[Peter P (40:57):
We shot that as a sort of a backdoor pilot. And we wanted it to feel
very much like somethingyou'd see on network TV, like an NCIS or a
procedural. And the writeron that has a whole bible and episodes that
he's written for the firstseason. And we've been playing the festival circuit
(41:19):
with that and getting somenoise and excited about that one.
[Pa (41:22):
You want to talk about some of the challenges or problems that we helped
solve with VFX on Drop of Blood?
[P (41:31):
Yeah, so that was definitely a case of the budget informing how fast we
moved. I'll be real frankwith you guys and your viewers. We shot very
quickly and there was footageeven that was out of focus and you're all you're
(41:51):
all you're faced with allthese issues in post and I was kind of defeated
on the project for a littlebit. And then we realized because it's a horror
film and one of the thingsI wanted to do was scratch it up, scuff it
up and mess with it andstuff, I could sort of lean into the flaws.
And we had shot everythingwe had put a GoPro mounted, our lead actor
(42:12):
is coming up to a sink,so the frame is sort of like this, and you're
seeing his face as he'sgoing through these emotions and he's going
through this transformation,the drop of blood causes things to happen in
a horrific, chaotic way.
And the practical kitchen had a window thatsort of looked through
the kitchen into the dining room. And again,so back in the day, if
(42:33):
we were gonna, we would live with that andthen we would dress through
that, right? And there would be a PA with awalkie sitting right there
that like, you can't walk through here or youwill die and all sorts
of, it would be very serious on set. And thensomeone would inevitably
walk in and ruin a take or something would happen and throughstory. And we'd be sort
of worrying about that all on set. I actuallyset up this little GoPro
(42:58):
as almost an afterthought thinking it mightbe cool. Because we had
footage issues and so on, we really went tothat shot a lot and leaned
on it. And there were several shots where youhad a crew and other actors
sticking their head into the window lookingat what's going on, just
having a great time enjoying craft services,whatever. There was a whole
other movie happening in that little window.
(43:20):
Plus equipment, equipment on thetable in the back. Yeah.
[Pete (43:23):
Yeah, it was all gear and goop and the wardrobe was hanging. It was a
mess. And again, I said,you know, one of the things you guys do a lot
of is a ton of work tomake it feel like you haven't done a thing.
And that was definitelya case in point because that window then all
it became was just a solidwall. I believe there were maybe one or two
handheld shots in thereas well that you had to,
[Paul DeNigris] (43:45):
Mm-hmm.
[Peter P (43:46):
you know, a little bit more difficult. And, and yeah, and me kind
of in the back of my headdoing that math as a director saying yeah,
we'll throw this shot upthere I know that it's gonna be wide fish-eyed,
but I can punch maybe it'sgonna be something like that maybe I can use
it, you know, and likeI said because of the problems we had on set
(44:08):
with the footage from thatwe went to that a lot more than I intended
It was kind of a save mybutt if you will but it worked and you guys
cleaned up all the windowstuff and no one was the wiser.
Right. I love stuff like that. I mean,you know, I do get filmmakers who are like,
I'm sorry. We're making youput on all this work and no one's going to
(44:28):
even know you were there. AndI'm like, I kind of like that. I kind of like,
you know, if somebody sawDrop of Blood and saw Visual Effects by Foxtrot
X-Ray, if they went to you,Peter, where were the VFX? I didn't see any.
[Peter Paul Basler] (44:39):
Right.
[Pa (44:39):
That's when yes, we did our job. Love that. OK, so if you met a young filmmaker
or not so young filmmaker who'snew to using VFX and they said, uh, you
know, I'm, I'm about to makea feature or a short, and I know I'm going
to need VFX and I'm reallynervous about it, Peter, you know, give me
(44:59):
one piece of advice that, thatwill help smooth this process for me, give
me the guide me so that I don'thave to learn from all the mistakes that you've
learned from him in the past.
[Pe (45:11):
Sure. I guess I would coach them in saying, look, don't think of VFX as
this big hurdle to overcome.
Don't be worried about it being so costly thatthe only people that can
do it are studios.
I would also have thatfilmmaker find a VFX company that has something
(45:37):
on their reel that theyrespond to and do a meeting and set that up
from the beginning. I thinkit's much easier if it's a collaboration on
a shot than, Paul, we'veshot this, we messed this all up, can you fix
it? Or this is what thevision is and you're like, I understand what
(45:58):
your vision is, let's bevery clear, I can see this huge monster, you
don't have a plate, wheream I putting that, you know, on this footage
it doesn't match your vision,right? So I would do that. I would say also
for them to look at projectsthat are out there as well. So if it's a sci-fi
(46:20):
thing, if it's a horrorthing, look at stuff that's been done recent
that your contemporarieshave done in a similar budget range, and you
can kind of get a senseof what can be done. You can use that as a
rule of thumb. And. It'spretty it's pretty incredible again how much
(46:41):
VFX have changedand become accessible.
So if it's a sci-fi movie, you'replaying with tone and you're playing with stuff
that we've created in ourmind, but it's not real. I mean, space shuttles
are real. Astronaut suits arereal, but the rest of it, an alien is pretend
far away planets are pretend.
We have references from other big features,plus Blade Runner, Star
(47:05):
Wars, those type of things. So there is a sortof milieu that we're used
to, but it's not, you can get fantastic, youcan get it to look pretend
because we want to believe we're in that mindset.
If you're doing somethingthat's a fight sequence and then people strip
down and muscles and soon, fake blood might not work, it might take
(47:28):
you out of the moment.
It could be something like Quentin Tarantino,like when the necks get
sliced and it's like a spray of blood, butit's hyper-realistic. and
you've gone into that hyper-realism. So youneed to make choices and
understand what the VFX are telling your audience.
You can get away with alot. You can get it to look very realistic
(47:50):
with what you're doingwith your timeframe and your budget. If you
want it to be very realisticand it's not something that can be done with
VFX, then you might haveto think about how do I do this practical?
How do I remove wires?
How do I... remove the things that will makeit feel real. And liquid
has gotten to a point where it can feel, andas we were talking about,
(48:13):
you know, with the goo coming out of the headexplosion, I've done some
blood stuff that looks very real, where you'veadded blood into a sequence.
And again, on that type of a project, if itlooked pretend, if it looked
stylized, I couldn't use it because what Ineeded was it to feel visceral,
to feel like the lead actor got the crap beatout of him and that there
(48:38):
was danger and I needed you to believe it.
And luckily we've gottento a point where the VFX is so good and you
can get something that'sgonna be believable.
[Pa (48:52):
Right. So understanding the limitations and also understanding what the
audience will accept and, uh,kind of understanding that the audience is
our partner. Right. In a lotof ways you can pull off a lot with sound,
right? You can pull off a lotwith shadows that the audience can fill in
(49:13):
the blanks with, um, uh, youknow, sort of the barest sketch of an idea
on the, in the frame. and focusingyour attention on what that sketch is and how
it conveys that feeling inthe audience. That's good advice. I mean, so
many times it is, people thinkthat VFX is this catch-all, right? It's gonna
(49:37):
solve all my problems and I'mjust gonna shoot on green screen and we're
gonna build the set in postor whatever. And in reality, it's like less
is more. If you think backto the movies of our youth, right? Alien, like
you don't see the alien hardlyat all.
[Peter Paul Basler] (49:54):
Mm-hmm.
[ (49:55):
Jaws, you don't see the shark hardly at all, right? But they're no less threatening.
In fact, they're more threateningthan the last Sharknado movie where it's just
shark after shark after sharkafter shark. Right? And some of that is because
again, visual effects is ubiquitousand quote unquote easy. And they're focused
(50:19):
more on the spectacle thanon evoking the response in the audience. Yeah.
So it's good advice. It's goodadvice for sure. You know, I always say people
when they criticize moviesthat are heavy on VFX are like, oh, there's
too much CGI. And my responseis you wouldn't say they shot this movie with
(50:41):
too many lights.
Right? It's not a matter of.
too much CGI. It's a matter of CGI that's notwell executed
[Peter Paul Basler] (50:51):
Right.
[Pau (50:51):
and isn't helping tell the story and it's taking you out of the story.
Right? You wouldn't say theyuse too many cameras on this shot. Well, maybe
you, maybe you would if it'sover edited, right? You know, CGI is a tool.
VFX is a tool. Nobody's goingto go, there were too many grips on that movie.
That's why I didn't like it. Right. So what's next foryou, Peter? What do you have in the hopper?
(51:16):
I know you always have somecool stuff on the horizon.
I have a time travel thriller that is verycool. It's like a five
to six million dollar budget.
Stephen Baldwin, the youngestof the brothers, is one
of the producers on thatproject. And he's very well known in the Christian
(51:39):
market. And one of my actorfriends who's been in a lot of movies, 12 different
projects that I've workedon, Michael Monks knows Stephen quite well.
So that project is hopefullypost-strike, one of the ones that we get to
play with pretty soon.
According to Stephen's team, it's a matter ofwhen, not if that was our
(52:05):
latest that we've heard from them. So we'resuper excited, super excited.
I won't give the name of the title away, butand that is a time travel
sequence and there's a time travel thriller.
So there's gonna be somegun work. There's gonna be, there's a sequence
at the end where our herois on a... an active test ground for a machine
(52:29):
that can diffuse bombsand so on. So he's in sort of a battle sequence.
How do we do that? It shouldlook realistic, but be safe for our actor.
There's also a zappingsequence. So when the person travels through
time, they're going throughsort of a wormhole. And we've seen a lot of
that with Star Trek andstuff. So there's that type of a thing. So
(52:49):
that one's coming up. Again,you know, the strike being what it is, right?
There's some things thathave slowed us down. I do have another project
that I'm super excitedabout. A friend of mine is a multi-arm amputee
and an actor. And he isa bit of an older cat than me, and very funny,
(53:12):
kind of lovable grouchin some ways in real life. And so it's gonna
be like a Seinfeld, CurbYour Enthusiasm, sort of he's playing like
a heightened version ofhimself. And as somebody who now he was disabled
in his late 20s, he's inhis 60s, so he's lived more of his life with
a disability than he didwith arms. He's heard everything and had every
(53:33):
kind of weird encounter,you know, just walking by and people are like,
thank you for your service,he's never been in the military. People who
are super religious wannapray with him, randomly, you know, all
this kind of stuff. Andhe's just trying to go to Home Depot and you
know what I mean, liketrying to go to the grocery store and get a
gallon of milk and allthis stuff happens. Or the checkout girl who's
giving him change and isso flustered because he's got hooks. She doesn't
(53:55):
know what to do and sheshoves it all into his pocket and his pockets
now. Like, you know, likeit's just, it kind of writes itself from what
his life has been. Andso we're doing that as 30 minute episodes.
And we want to, we possiblywill raise the money ourselves and do six episodes,
put it up on YouTube orkind of find an avenue for it. And using kind
of what The Pragmatistmodel we did. So have the end product look
(54:17):
almost like it could beon network today. So those are the things I'm
working on, I do have anotherhorror/thriller that we're rewriting
and it's a young African-Americankid growing up in suburban New England and
adopted. He's in this allwhite world. He's the only kid of color with
(54:41):
these fancy houses wherethe perfect lawns but then behind everything
is the facade and everything'sall messed up and he's living this terrible
life and it's very bleak.
But it's ending on a moment of hope. It's verymuch a festival piece.
We might get down and dirty and do that one,super low budget. Even
during the strike, we might be able to getthe interim agreement to
(55:02):
start shooting. So, yeah, so, you know, alwayslooking at that next thing,
always juggling. If you're an indie, that'swhat you gotta do to keep
the, like I said, keep the muscle from atrophyingand getting something out there.
[ (55:17):
Yeah, for sure. Well, looking forward to our next opportunity to collaborate
and also looking forward tojust watching whatever you make next. It's
because it's always, it's alwaysdifferent. You, every, you, you haven't made
the same movie twice in, uh,in our, our time that we've worked together
every, every time. I thinkI've kind of got the sense of what a Peter
Basler movie is, you surpriseme with the, with the next one. So, uh,
[Peter P (55:39):
Thanks, man, I try not to be pigeonholed. That's one of the things, and
to my detriment, I don'tknow, maybe I should be the rom-com guy, but
I just love it all, soI like to play.
Yeah, keep flexing those muscles.
That's all you can do, right? So if peoplewanna follow you on social
media, where can they find you?
[Peter (56:02):
So I do have a website, I know that's old fashioned, but it's
peterpaulbasler my last nameis B as in boy, A, S as in Sam, L, E, R, PeterPaulBasler.com.
And yeah, I'm sort of onthe Insta, but I don't really do it, I don't
TwitterX.
But I'm with Bohemia GroupManagement and Global Talent as my agency.
(56:27):
Hit me up on IMDB and IMDBPro and you can see all my credits. And yeah,
if you're down to, if youneed some advice, if you're in that, if you're
in, if you're one of thosefilmmakers who's thinking about doing a project
and you have creative questionsabout VFX and how it can help and enhance and
how do you do it, I'd loveto talk as you can tell. My wife likes to say
(56:49):
this. There's one thingI like to talk about is filmmaking. So thank
you, Paul, for bringingme on. I appreciate it.
[Pa (56:53):
Yeah, thank you so much for being part of the show and listeners, take
Peter up on that, right? That'sa really gracious offer of his time and expertise.
So please take him up on that.
And thank you to all my viewers and listenersfor tuning into this episode
of VFX for Indies. If you're watching on YouTube,please like, subscribe, leave
us a comment, let us know what you liked andwhat you'd like to hear more
(57:17):
of. And if you have questions for me or Peteror any of my guests, please
leave a comment. If you're listening on anyof the multitude of podcast
aggregator services out there, like iTunes,Spotify, a follow, a star rating,
and a review goes a long way to help, helpus reach more filmmakers. And,
and if you know any filmmakers, the filmmakerin your life who needs to hear
(57:40):
this stuff, please send them the episode. Thanksso much. And for everyone at
Foxtrot X-Ray, thanks for tuning in. See younext time.
When it comes to working with visual effects, director and lifelong boy scout, Peter Paul Baslerhas learned the hard way to always be prepared...
on this episode of VFX for IndiesWelcome to this episode of
(00:32):
VFX for Indies, the podcast about the intersectionof visual effects and independent
filmmaking. I'm your host, Paul DeNigris,visual effects artist, filmmaker,
and CEO of boutique VFX shop, Foxtrot X-Ray.
With me today is a director,filmmaker, title designer, all around Renaissance
man, who has collaborated withme and my team over the years, a number of
(00:55):
times, and in fact, directedthe very first official Foxtrot X-Ray project.
So, He holds a special placein our heart here. I would like to welcome
to the podcast, Peter PaulBasler.
[Peter (01:06):
Hello, thanks for having me, Paul. It's great to be here.
[Pau (01:09):
Thanks for being here. Why don't you fill the audience in a little bit
about yourself, who you are,what you've done, what your career has kind
of looked like.
[Peter (01:17):
Sure, I like to consider myself an independent filmmaker. If I put a
title to it, I'm a writer,director and producer. I think I've held every
job in the industry, asidefrom lead actress, I guess. But I've even,
because I've been an assistantdirector, I've even been pressed into putting
(01:37):
on a suit and hopping intoa scene. So I've done it for a while, and I
was thinking about comingon this podcast with you today, Paul. And the
first project I ever did,VFX was the furthest thing from my mind. It
wasn't even something thatwas sort of within my reach. It wasn't a tangible
thing that I thought thatI could do. That was 20 years ago. And has
(02:04):
certainly working withfolks like you and then working in different
movies with different typesof VFX and understanding what they can achieve
has changed my perspectiveon how I operate on set as a director, and
then when I wear my producercap, and as a producer as well, making a movie
happen quickly, but lookingthe best it can be.
[P (02:28):
Right. And I could tell, you know, from our very first collaboration that
you had a good sense of theVFX process and kind of what you needed to
provide to VFX artists to beable to accomplish what you were asking. Right.
So the first project that Peterand I collaborated on was a sports movie and
it required a lot of crowdreplication. Right. They were in an enclosed
(02:50):
arena and there weren't a number,there just wasn't enough people, enough extras
on set to fill the stands.
And so. What I was provided with was the principalphotography of the actors doing
their thing. And then the, it was mostly emptystands. You usually, almost
every shot, the stands were completely empty.
(03:10):
But then Peter and his teamshot, uh, you know, plates, right? So they,
they fill a section of thestadium and shoot a plate and then move everybody
to another section. So we,you know, we sort of had a straight on section.
We had a corner curve section.
We had another angle section. And so we hadthese different pieces and
they'd move people around. Uh, and so we hadall of these, uh, these plates
(03:31):
to, to put it together. And it was, um, itwas really refreshing because
I've been in situations where people come tome and say, I need to put crowd
here and I say, well, what did you, what haveyou shot? And they say, nothing.
Can't you just make people in the computer?
And I say, sure. It's...
That's way outside your budget. Right. But.
Peter and his team, they gaveus what we needed. And so we were able to pull
(03:54):
those shots off in a reasonableamount of time with a very modest budget. So
Peter, talk about like goinginto that project, obviously you were prepared.
So what got you to that pointwhere you and I hadn't even had a conversation
(04:15):
yet. We didn't even know eachother when you filmed this, right? So it wasn't
a case of you, you talked tome. Maybe you talked to another VFX supervisor?
I don't know kind of what wentinto the preparation that got us to that.
[Peter (04:26):
Well, I think I'll back up a little bit and say that project was all
shot on location in Colorado.
We did some pick up work in interior shotsin some arenas here in
Southern California, but that gives you a verydifferent look than Colorado,
obviously, in the winter. And one of the thingsthat we couldn't get on
our schedule was how we're going to shoot thisfinale. And if you've done
your work on the setup to your third act, youreally want it to look as good
(04:52):
as possible. And I had luckily done a few projectsand had, and they were
VFX heavy. So I had a bit of an understandingabout what we would need
as a filmmaker to provide to you and your teamto make it look good. One
of the things that was the most challengingand I believe you talked
(05:12):
to me, Paul, and sort of baby stepped me through,which sometimes director
needs that, is we were shooting actors on theice. with a camera operator
on the ice who was moving left to right, butalso forwards and back.
And sometimes left, right, forwards, back,all in the same sequence.
So the parallax, the way that you see the crowdand the audience was changing,
(05:38):
which made it very difficult. And to your question,yes, we did go to a few
other houses and they were either flummoxedon how they would actually
do it or... or there's just no way for a lowbudget movie. And to your
credit, your team took it on and said, we knowhow to do this. And I think
(05:59):
the end results on that is something that youdon't think about it. It's
not a VFX that is showy, like an explosionor a monster where your
brain goes, we know that this is pretend. Thatdidn't happen. They didn't
blow up Tom Cruise or whoever's in your movie.
(06:22):
And you, as an audience,engage it in a certain way. This is, and it's
really funny, because alot of the work, and I'm sure you can attest
to this and other filmmakershave talked about it, is doing stuff that if
you do your job right,no one knows you even did anything. And
it's hours and hours andhours of work. And this is definitely one of
those. The crowd is respondingto the nationals of a figure skating competition,
(06:48):
and they needed to lookas natural and real as possible and not be
showy and not call attentionto themselves and fill what was a 10,000 seat
arena. And we had like300 actual background. And I used as many tricks
as I could to reuse those300 extras again and again and again and move
(07:10):
them around and pick shotswhere I wasn't showcasing the crowd. But one
of the things that I didalso in my homework is I watched some of the
movies that have been donebefore with either ice hockey or figure skating.
And one of the ones thatis the most popular is a movie called The Cutting
Edge. Early 90s,it is the breakthrough
figure skating movie at the time. And whatthey ended up doing was
(07:32):
the sequence, which was the finale of watchingthese two skaters compete,
was it was a single spotlight in a... darkenedarena that followed them
around and you go wow, that's dramatic. That'sover-the-top. Why are they
doing that? From a practical sense, this isearly 90s, they're either
(07:55):
gonna fill up the arena with extras and they'regonna pay to feed them
and clothe them and all this stuffor they chose that so you
don't see them. And I didn't want to go thatroute I wanted it to feel
like there was a crowd and so I think anytimeas an independent filmmaker,
you start to do a project, there's a littlebit of a leap of faith.
(08:17):
And I said, I'm gonna do my best to get goodclean images. I'm gonna
do these plates and give them material andthen hope I find the right
VFX team. And luckily we did.
Well, thanks. It was a definitelearning curve for us. It was one of those
classic scenarios where somebodysays, can you do this? And you say yes. And
(08:38):
then you scramble with yourteam to figure out how to do it. You know,
and some of the shots weresuper straightforward. And some of them where
the camera is moving in, youknow, six degrees of freedom, panning, tilting,
you know, moving on X, Y andZ all at the same time, because you had a great
skater as your camera op. Yeah,some of those were a challenge. And it required,
(08:59):
you know, breaking those platesup into multiple little layers, you know, one,
one row of seats at a timeand putting them on 3d cards and all of that
sort of stuff. Let me tellyou though, great training for the post-COVID
era. Wedo that a lot now we do a
lot of crowd replication nowbecause of because of COVID because you know,
(09:19):
because there aren't big crowdsanymore. Even you know, we did a Christmas
movie last year, where it waslike you know, a 400 seat little community
theater and they brought in20 extras and we replicated them 20 times,
right? Because of COVID, becausethey don't wanna deal with the health implications
or the cost of screening everybodyand all of that. And so they, you know, they
(09:41):
had a bunch of people thatwere friends and family of the crew and cast
that were in the bubble andthey brought them in and we just replicated
them all around and changedred sweaters to green and you know, things
like that.
And it's all... Like we'rereally good at that now because we kind of
went to film school on that,on your movie to figure out how to do that.
[Peter P (10:05):
I'm happy to help, I'm happy to help, Paul.
[ (10:07):
I haven't thanked you before, thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank
you for the faith that we couldpull it off. So like I said, Peter and I have
then collaborated on a numberof projects and Peter's a close collaborator
with my VFX producer, Jai Sathyan,who I met on this film and who has continued
to work with me since then.
So again, that movie, you know, just kind oflike set the tone for my company
(10:30):
and the team. And so it's a situation where,you know, now when Peter has
VFX, he's bringing Jai and I on when we haveprojects like there was a title
sequence on a horror movie that we did a coupleof years ago, where we needed
somebody with a vision to direct the openingtitle sequence and really shoot
(10:53):
some interesting creepy stuff, you know, Peter,we brought Peter in. So it's
kind of like a nice little family unit thatwe've got here that we continue
to work together. So one of the things thatwe did was a zombie horror
movie called DJZ that Peter directed and wasa fun combo of practical on-set
gore and some stuff that we did in post. Peter,why don't you talk about DJZ
(11:18):
and kind of how that project came about.
[Pete (11:21):
Yeah, so right as we were finishing up the sports film about 2016, 17,
a good friend of mine whohad shot a creature feature, a mega creature
feature that I had done,which was very VFX heavy, he had gone on to
be the DP of note on aTV show called Z Nation, which was a SyFy
(11:42):
Channel, sort of low budgetversion of The Walking Dead. I was able to in
2017 fly out to Spokane,Washington and I shadowed on two episodes of
the show, not episodesthat my friend was directing, which was weird,
but he and I had such agood rapport that he pitched me to some other
(12:03):
directors on the show becauseI was friends with him. They said, yeah, sure,
come on and check me out.
I don't know you, but Alex vouches for you.
You're a good guy. So Icame off of that shadowing and I had I had
dipped my toe into themythology of Z Nation it was in its fourth
season so there were alot of episodes and what I wanted to do was
(12:24):
my own version of Z Nationmy interpretation of Z Nation, and show
off my directing skillsbecause I wanted to be in the mix on the next
season, if I could, to direct.
Directing television is something that I'veaspired to do for a long
time and with my indie background I felt. Sowe shot that movie up in
(12:46):
the Mojave Desert. We used my garage as thebunker for the mysterious
DJ who is broadcasting during the zombie apocalypse.
And we really wanted togo practical, frankly. I, we created a mold
of one of my lead actor'sheads. We matched his hair perfectly. The switch
(13:08):
from the real actor tothe dummy, you cannot tell. And we filled the
rubber head with all sortsof goo and grossness and bits of brain as you
do. I'm sure just a typicalTuesday for any filmmaker. And on the day,
(13:28):
of course, because we'reworking with practical effects and liquid and
so on, we tried it andit looked very unimpressive. Instead of a large
squirt and something thatwould make you react, emotionally, viscerally,
gutturaly and go gross,you just went, that's it. And I was a little
(13:49):
bit defeated. We had alreadystarted a collaboration on the sports film
and I brought that to youthrough Jai and got really what I was looking
for. One of the thingsI had to overcome as a filmmaker was having
done some VFX stuff inthe early 2010s. In my mind, VFX hadn't got
(14:14):
to the point where liquidslook like liquids. I'm also a big James Bond
fan. Die Another Day hasa terrible, terrible CG sequence. It's one
of the worst in Bond history.
Because they did that sequence, they rebootedwith Casino Royale, which
is a great, great film. So I'm thankful that it exists,terrible. And so I had
(14:37):
this negativeness about it. And Jai said, letme bring it to Paul, let's
see what we can do on this. And one of thethings that you did Paul
and your team, which I really loved is we hadthis little shot after,
so you made the blood and we were now, nowwe're getting into as a
director where I have the ability, you know,you showed me it, I went,
(14:59):
no, I need bigger spurt. And then, you know,you're giving me the options,
you're giving me those tools so that I canreact creatively, which
is always the dream of a director. Give meoptions. Let me make choices.
That's your job as a director. Um, right after,so this head gets squashed,
the brains and guts fly out of this zombiehead. We cut back to it.
Um, and you had the, the actual head brainmatter, like sliding, which
(15:25):
was just that little like cherry on top oflike, if you watch it,
and I've seen it with a crowd where peoplego like this, they turn
away, then they look back and we get them again.
So we go right to that.
And they get that little bit of. So I alwaysloved that. And it changed
my confidence in what could be done with VFXas an indie filmmaker.
[Pa (15:49):
Great, yeah, that was a lot of fun because, you know, blood is a tricky
thing. I always say that, youknow, among the hardest things that
we ever do is, are shots thathave blood. Because everybody has an opinion
on what looks right. We allthink we know what blood looks like, right?
And how it behaves and howit sprays and how it moves. Most of which is
(16:11):
informed by horror movies.
Some of it informed by reality. And the truthis, no two instances of blood
ever look alike in the real world, in movies,you know, no matter what, right?
Depends on a whole bunch of things like whereit comes from, if it's oxygenated,
you know, is it under pressure? Is theperson dead already? Not dead,
you know, there's all sorts of things theyhave to take into effect and
(16:34):
into account. And everybody is like, it's notred enough. It's too red. It's
not, it's not shiny enough. It's too shiny.
It's too transparent. It'stoo this, it's too that. And so we end up going.
Lots and lots of revisionson most blood shots, specifically because of
that. But what was fun herewas you had that practical reference. You did
have practical blood, somethat came out. So we had viscosity, we had
(16:58):
color, we had gloss. So allwe were doing was matching. In other words,
we weren't creating it fromour imaginations or from what we thought it
should look like. And you weren'tresponding to it from what you thought it should
look like. It was always...
does it match what we got on camera? Does itlook like it's in the frame
with the other practical blood that didn'twork as well but is still there
(17:19):
and is setting the tone? So that was greatbecause that's kind of the
ideal scenario. Anytime a filmmaker comes tome with a shot where it's,
we didn't do anything and I need you to addblood, that's when we're like,
okay, we're off in fantasy land and it's gonnabe 10 revisions before we get
this shot dialed in. But a filmmaker comesin and says, I have some practical
(17:43):
blood in here. I want more of that. That's,you know, we're not, we're
knocking that out and you know, three or fourrevisions and everybody's happy.
And it, and that was great. And then, yeah,then to add those little, those
little extra textural elements like the, thehead, you know, the, the practical
head sort of collapsed a little bit kind ofas it sort of, you know, ran
(18:05):
out of stuff inside it after the stomp. Andso adding that extra little,
you know, squish of brain matter inside it.
And then, and then to me, myfavorite shot of the sequence is the guy who's
stomped looks at the bottomof his shoe and we put a piece of bloody scalp
on there and had it slide off.
[Peter (18:25):
Yeah, it drops it drops off right before you cut away, which is awesome
[P (18:29):
Yeah, yeah. So that was that was a lot of fun. And again, it's you know,
your practical effects peoplewere setting the tone and then we were we were
just playing in the sandboxthat they had they had set up for us, right.
As opposed to coming up withsomething from whole cloth, which is always
a challenge. So you referencethis earlier movie that you worked on that
was very VFX heavy. And you'vementioned it to me before that you learned
(18:53):
a lot of lessons on that. Andthat's Big Bad Bugs, correct?
[Peter (18:56):
Yeah, it was released as The Vortex. This is before streaming was as
popular as it is, but itstill was a V word at the end of any list that
you had alphabetized. Andwe had done this movie before Big Ass Spider,
before Sharknado, and beforethe sort of tongue-in-cheek low-budge action
(19:22):
thing was celebrated asmuch as it was. So it was originally called
Big Bad Bugs, and likeany great, good, low budget, we leaned into
the comedy because I had,I was like every five pages I can do something
(19:42):
VFX-wise, but I just don'thave the budget for every two pages, right?
That kind of math was goinginto it. And the distributor at the time said,
no, The Vortex, that'swhat it's gotta be. We said, hey, you're the
expert. And we had a five-yeardeal. So after five years, we got it back,
and we've released it asBig Bad Bugs. It was a mega creature film.
(20:08):
So these crystals are comingthrough a wormhole. When they hit these little
creatures, they becomemega creatures. So we have a mega scorpion.
We have a mega hornet,mega snakes at the end, as you do, as you see
in these type of films.
I was shooting the endof the movie on a location that was a rental
(20:30):
I was shooting the endof the movie on a location that was a rental
in Santa Clarita. The BlueCloud movie ranch has a full Iraqi village
set that they built forthe opening of the original Iron Man. So that
whole Iraq sequence isstill standing and it's been redressed to all
sorts of Middle Eastern. It'snot inexpensive for what
it is because it's a massive facility. Andas you do on low budget
(20:55):
films, and I'd like to talk about this a littlebit more too, is you do
sort of a backend page count. You say, well,this is the money I've
got. Every day that I add, I gotta feed allthese folks and pay these
folks and pay for blah blah blah. So the easy mathwas we're gonna shoot 10
to 12 pages a day, which is very ambitious,
[Paul DeNigris] (21:19):
Mm-hmm.
[Peter (21:19):
which means you're doing very few takes. You're doing limited coverage.
And you just got to rockand roll because you just got to get it done.
And so we had this locationfor a day and a half. That's as much as we
could. And I really feltas a filmmaker that I was just, I hope there's
a VFX team that can, becauseat the end it was going to be snakes fighting.
(21:39):
There were these crystalsthat were flying out. We had our lead actors
ducking crystals that weren'tthere. There was so much in my head of what
this end visual was goingto be. And it's pretty good. You know, again,
it's dated, it's 2011.
Luckily, again, my tone was comedic. So wecould lean into some of
(22:00):
the flaws as if we meant to do that if that makes sense. And it was a crash course, it was it was my learning curveon what how much you could
get away with VFX and how costly theywere going to be and what
the expectation from the industry was on howthey were going to look.
And I think that helped me to be more confidentwhen I'm doing an end sequence
(22:26):
like I was doing in Nebraska for the figureskating competition because
I already kind of been through the fire beforeI knew what I needed if
that makes sense.
[Pau (22:36):
Yeah, yeah, that does make sense. And that's something that I try to cover
with a lot of my guests isthat learning curve. It's the point of this
podcast is really for filmmakerslike you were in 2011 who are new to this,
right? They're new to usingVFX as a tool because most of us, we come through
(23:03):
film school. And we learnedhow to use sound as a tool and lighting as
a tool. And the camera as atool to tell our stories. And VFX is something
that's that wasn't really attainable.
You know, when, when we were coming up, itwasn't something that, that
independent filmmakers or student filmmakerscould even touch. So there
was no way to learn about it. And it's onlybeen in the last, you know,
20 years, 20 plus years that desktop VFX software,like After Effects, uh, made
(23:29):
it possible for us to even consider visualeffects as a tool for independent
filmmaking. And your comparison to television,you talk about Z Nation and
wanting to direct TV. In my mind, TV and independentfilm are very similar in terms
of short schedules, not as much money as abig budget feature. You have
(23:52):
to do more with less. And you're... A lot oftimes you're compromising the
vision in order to get it on air in seven days.
It's very, very similar. Howhas that experience with Big Bad Bugs or The
Vortex, how has that experience,if you could put a fine point on it, how now
(24:21):
you use VFX to help you tellyour stories? Knowing that you've got that
arrow in your quiver.
How are you using it when you'refacing that blank page writing a new story?
[Peter P (24:32):
So there's two ways, I think. If we're talking about facing the blank
page, understanding whereVFX is at and what you can do on a budget and
what you can accomplishdoes inform me when I'm writing. Because originally
it would be the edict wasjust write it and then you figure it out later.
And so there's a studioversion of your space thriller and then there's
(24:54):
a low-budget version ofthe space thriller. Doesn't change a word,
but the VFX and the timeyou're on set does change quite a lot. I was,
as you were chatting justnow, Paul, I had a thought, you know, I've
been doing it for a whileand I was joking as we started it, you know,
started in the early 2000s.
But when I started, my first film was a featureon film. And coming out
(25:16):
of the film school, it was what you capturedin the frame is what you
got. That's the way your mindset was. So youwould be, as a director,
you would be scanning the background. I don'twant that license plate
in the shot. It's not of the state we're supposedto be in or whatever. The
(25:36):
image that you captured was what you lived withforever, and that was the
thing. And so that really informed how you'dmade your choices. I noticed
as we got into the 2010s that there was a shiftalso with my crew. So for
example, when we were doing Big Bad Bugs,we shot at the Griffith
Caves, which are the famous Batman Caves inLos Angeles. And one day
(26:00):
a hiker was stuck at the top of the, like wayup in the mountains. And
so the LAPD sent a helicopter to get the hikeroff the ledge, which is
very, very noisy if you're trying to shoot anindependent film. But again,
we only had that for two days because it wasa low budget movie and
I had to keep shooting. So I said to the soundguy, get me the best scratch
(26:22):
track you could. Everybody kind of understoodthat. They understood what
was gonna happen. We can do ADR later. We'llpick that up and we move
forward. However, you know, when I was doinga film in the mid 2010s,
2015 or so, there was a time when the mic kindof dipped into the frame,
right? Here's my mic dipping into the frame.
(26:45):
And one of my sound orone of the crew people yelled boom and killed
the take that I loved.
So I turned and I said, look, guys, I haveeyes. I know that the boom
was in the shot. Let's not. If I like the take,we can cut that out, we
can paint that out.
There was some understanding,and obviously a younger generation is quicker
(27:09):
on the computer, but itwasn't as commonplace as now. I think if I
had that same conversationon a feature, they would easily get it, if
that makes sense. So becauseof that too, you're always making choices.
That's your job as a director.
And you go, all right, I've got a beautifultwo shot. I really want
(27:30):
to punch in on Paul's face for this next sequence.
I got to see the emotion.
And there are times when I will, as a director,go back and say, wait a
minute, we were shooting this 4K, 5K, whateverK we're at these days.
And I've got a great performance here. I can,in post, I can take that
two shot and make it a single, jump back. Andit feels like to the audience
(27:52):
that I did a new setup. I swapped a lens.
[Paul DeNigris] (27:57):
Mm-hmm.
I swung the lights a differentplace. And I haven't done it. I've taken that
to post. Now that's nottraditional VFX in a way, but it is. You're
altering the frame in someway that's different than it was presented.
So that is one of the toolsthat I always keep in the back of my mind about
how much can we play withthis frame? What do I need to get? Because
(28:22):
it's always a matter, especiallyon the low budget world, which is where I live,
a matter of math. I'vegot this many pages. And sometimes, you even
do the math where you say,I need to get this information out. It wasn't
the best performance. Itwouldn't give me my top 10 of the day, but
it gets the information,it gets me from A to B. This is a transitional
(28:44):
scene, et cetera, et cetera.
I can live with that. So I say all that tosay that it gives you a
confidence. It gives you a feeling like youcan get things done. It
changes the way you approach and then the morethat you see what a VFX
team can deliver for you and the closer theyget to an image that you've
lived with in your head and when you were writingit when you're on set and
(29:09):
you're shooting it again it informs you. Oneof the things I used to
always say about the post process is man youwrite it you shoot it and
then you know where you learn how to do it?
When you're editing becausewhen you're editing you're going who shot this
crap? Oh wait, that wasme. Who wrote this darn scene that's too long
and needs too many extras?
That was me. And it informs your process whenyou start over, right?
(29:32):
Nothing stands by itself. It's all part ofthis process. And it is
incredible how VFX has changed so much. Whenwe did Big Bad Bugs, we
actually went to a company in LA that had doneRobert Zemeckis' latest
film. I forget what it was at the time. Andwhatever choices we made,
(29:54):
they would say, guys, we are so fast. Giveus two and a half hours
and we'll render this and you get to see whatit looks like. We're like,
whoa, in two and a half hours, we can see whatthis is gonna look like?
That's so great.
And we would wait, youknow, and then they would turn it and you're
like, no, I need to changethis. All right, well, in two and a half hours,
we'll show you the change,you know? And how much, again, this is 2011,
(30:18):
12, how much, you know.
that has changed where now you can see it almostin real time and the options
presented to you on a level that's equal orbetter to what we were
doing in the early 2010s.
[ (30:31):
Yeah. Yeah, you and I haven’t had a chance to collaborate on a on a film
where we use Unreal Engine,which is real time. It's when we do get this
opportunity, you're going tolove it. We did a Western recently where we
had to create a cave interiorfor the filmmaker and we were able to just
over Zoom. Basically, a conversationlike this, just share screen of Unreal Engine.
(30:54):
And he was able to say, let'smove the camera here. Let's put it. Let's put
a little more light there asif he was on set working with his cinematographer.
So yeah, it's a completelynew world,
[Peter Paul Bas (31:04):
That's amazing.
[Pau (31:06):
So you were talking about, you know, the punch in to create a separate
close up. Another thing thatwe've been doing a lot of recently is the split
screen comp, where you havetwo actors whose rhythm is slightly different.
And your take one, you know,actor A is giving you gold in take one, take
two, take three, and then theystart to their energy starts to wane. And actor
(31:27):
B doesn't warm up until takeyou know, five, six, seven, and now you've
got, so you've got two differentperformances. And then the filmmakers would
just go, give me actor A fromtake one on the left side of the frame and
give me actor B from take sevenon the right side of the frame, stitch em together,
preserving the camera movementand all of that sort of stuff. And it adds
(31:48):
that extra dimension to yourediting. It's not just, you know, individual
shots that you're able to useto craft a performance. It's within the frame.
You can... craft the performancesand create a better ensemble.
[Peter P (32:04):
Yeah, I did that in my very first film, the one we shot on film. We
had recorded the, we hadthe audio of the first guy's part of being
on the phone, and we wereable to play that on set so the second guy
(32:25):
knew the timing. But itwas because of the, when we did it, and because
we're shooting on film,there was no choice. It was either this lines
up, This one doesn't lineup. We can't use it. You know, if you choose
A, then it forces you onyour choice of B. And it is funny for me as
a filmmaker because thereis a moment toward the end where they fall
out and the guy, our leadsays something and then his sidekick is supposed
(32:49):
to respond and there'slike a three second pause which feels like
an eternity. Where he finallygoes, oh, okay. Luckily it's something where
he's getting his nervesso it almost creatively works.
Yeah, but back in the dayyou were locked in. And again, the more you
can provide a directorthe opportunity to make choices, the closer
(33:11):
you can get to their visionbecause without choices, then you're just forced
into, you're forced intostuff that just, you know, it works. As I said,
sometimes you go, well,this isn't the perfect sequence, but you know,
I need this informationfor exposition. I'll leave it, cut it down,
or figure it out in post,that type of thing. But yeah, what VFX now
(33:36):
has done, because it isavailable and affordable to the indie filmmaker,
it has allowed you more opportunitiesto make creative choices, which can only mean
a better end product forthe viewer. And that's what you're all chasing.
[Pa (33:54):
You know, I wanted to speak to another point that you made where you said
when you were shooting on film,you were really inspecting the frame and going,
oh, that license plate is outof place. We need to we need to get that out
of frame. I really wish thatwould come back.
I really do. I mean, as muchas I appreciate being paid to paint out boom
(34:14):
poles and paint out licenseplates and paint out crew reflections. I really
would much rather see filmmakersspend their VFX budget on fun stuff, fun, creative
stuff that actually helps themtell their story. We get a lot of work where
it's, you know, if the filmmakershad just moved the camera three inches to the
left and panned, it would eliminatethe reflection of the crew. The shot would
(34:39):
be more or less the same. Itwould serve the same purpose in the story,
but they're not burning hundredsor sometimes thousands of dollars for us to...
paint them and their cameraout of the reflection of the bus window or
whatever. In some ways, theubiquity and the ease of visual effects has
(35:01):
created some laziness in thatregard, right? The, ah, we'll just, yeah, we'll
just paint it out. We're movingtoo fast, we have so many pages to shoot today.
Don't worry about it, we'lldeal with it in post. And then they're trying
to scramble to pull coins outof the couch cushions to pay us to do it instead
(35:23):
of paying us to do somethingfun that really helps them tell their story.
[P (35:28):
Yeah, I mean, to your point, I mean, I think, and I've been there, I was
a first AD for a good longperiod in, and I felt I was getting older and
the directors kept stayingin their early 20s and it was, and you were
seeing that a lot. Thatwas the, you know, sort of everything's rolling
and then they have onemore comment, they step in frame and they're
(35:48):
like talking to their actor,you know, the kind of stuff that we were taught
when that camera's rolling,think of it as dollar bills rolling through
the camera. So, you know.
Once you, that's the sacred, that is the sacredtime. And once you hit
record, it's gotta be what you want. So somewherein between is probably
what's the ideal for that because again, forme, when I need to make
(36:12):
my 10 and a half pages, it's a blessing thatI can do that. I can fix
it in post. But yeah, to your point, it alsomakes for sloppier filmmaking
in that, well, we'll figure it, we'll fix it,we'll fix it, we'll fix
it, until your list of fix-its are more thanthe list of stuff that
(36:34):
you got right. So I feel you on that. I tryto keep a happy medium,
I hope, but again, the world I live in is alot of times it's move,
make it happen. And I think that's the... thegive and take that every
(36:55):
filmmaker has to think about when they're on set.
[ (37:01):
Yeah, absolutely. We just did a Christmas movie. We do a lot of Christmas
movies. And we just did a Christmasmovie where the filmmakers had to decide between
a bunch of stock footage ofthe city that they wanted to add Christmas
decorations to help set thetone for the film. They had to decide between spending
(37:22):
money on that or spending moneyon the crew reflections and boom reflections
and things like that. And theyended up having to, because the network is
not going to air the moviewith crew reflected prominently in the, in,
you know, windows and stuff.
They had to prioritize the QC fixes, right?
The things that, that QC isgoing to flag instead of spending the money
(37:45):
on the story stuff that theyreally wanted to. And it's, it's a shame because
again, things, money's finite,right? Money is always finite on, on every
production. It doesn't matterhow big it is. And it's, there's almost no
excuse for it. Right. With,with how good our monitoring technology is,
right. There's no reason to,to not have a big monitor at video village.
(38:08):
There's no reason for a directorto not have a, a handheld display in his hand,
his or her hand all the time,you know, where you can just, all right, let's,
let's just pause for five seconds.
Just move the camera. Okay. Now we can roll.
I just eliminated a VFX shot.
[Peter Paul Basler] (38:26):
Yeah.
[P (38:28):
And I'm, I'm all for it. I'm all for it. Please eliminate all those VFX
shots. Let's do fun stuff.
[Peter P (38:35):
Good. I totally agree.
I was thinking too, I did a film that I AD'dwhere it was a famous DP
and she had, she'd been working for a longtime, obviously started
in film. And we were doing an insert shot,and she lit that insert
shot like, you know, this is going for Oscargold. And you're like,
man, it's just an insert, you know, there'salways that fine line.
(38:58):
And again, I felt like for me, I was the youngguy in that situation and
I was doing the math in my head saying, um,we can, we can stabilize
this in post. It's literally a static insertshot. We can give it a
look, you know what I mean? Get a clean shot,move on. Let's not make
it perfect on set because the amount of workthat we can do in post
(39:19):
is not a lot, it's just, you know, tweakingthe color, correct. It'll
match it. And you, you know, um, and wherewe were spending all the
time on, you know, blah blah blah. So it's, it'salways about kind of knowing
where you're at in the process. And I feellike, again, for me, having
been doing it for a long time, the technologyis changing rapidly and
it changes quicker every time. Which is oneof the things I like about
(39:43):
the fact I do a lot of short films. Peoplealways ask me, why do you
do short films? Because it allows me to flexa muscle in a creative
way that's different than what I've done before.
You know, if I get inspiredby a zombie thing or a sports film or whatever.
And then I'm... kind ofstaying up to date. I'm in the game and like
(40:04):
any other muscle that you,you know, it can atrophy. And so keeping yourself
engaged and keeping thinkingabout stuff and that way you're forced into
new decisions and the technology,like I said, is changing. And so you're always
sort of trying to stayup to the moment, right? I mean, if you dropped
out and you came back intothe industry in five years, five years from
(40:25):
now, think how much changeis happening at this moment with AI and all
these things. you wouldbe a little bit lost, right? So it's something
that keeps me fresh andallows me to, like I said, flex the creative
muscle, but also stay kindof as current as I can be with technology.
[Pa (40:45):
So yeah, we've collaborated on a couple of shorts recently, The Pragmatist,
which I guess you've got biggerplans for, maybe turning into a TV series,
at least according to IMDB.
[Peter P (40:57):
We shot that as a sort of a backdoor pilot. And we wanted it to feel
very much like somethingyou'd see on network TV, like an NCIS or a
procedural. And the writeron that has a whole bible and episodes that
he's written for the firstseason. And we've been playing the festival circuit
(41:19):
with that and getting somenoise and excited about that one.
[Pa (41:22):
You want to talk about some of the challenges or problems that we helped
solve with VFX on Drop of Blood?
[P (41:31):
Yeah, so that was definitely a case of the budget informing how fast we
moved. I'll be real frankwith you guys and your viewers. We shot very
quickly and there was footageeven that was out of focus and you're all you're
(41:51):
all you're faced with allthese issues in post and I was kind of defeated
on the project for a littlebit. And then we realized because it's a horror
film and one of the thingsI wanted to do was scratch it up, scuff it
up and mess with it andstuff, I could sort of lean into the flaws.
And we had shot everythingwe had put a GoPro mounted, our lead actor
(42:12):
is coming up to a sink,so the frame is sort of like this, and you're
seeing his face as he'sgoing through these emotions and he's going
through this transformation,the drop of blood causes things to happen in
a horrific, chaotic way.
And the practical kitchen had a window thatsort of looked through
the kitchen into the dining room. And again,so back in the day, if
(42:33):
we were gonna, we would live with that andthen we would dress through
that, right? And there would be a PA with awalkie sitting right there
that like, you can't walk through here or youwill die and all sorts
of, it would be very serious on set. And thensomeone would inevitably
walk in and ruin a take or something would happen and throughstory. And we'd be sort
of worrying about that all on set. I actuallyset up this little GoPro
(42:58):
as almost an afterthought thinking it mightbe cool. Because we had
footage issues and so on, we really went tothat shot a lot and leaned
on it. And there were several shots where youhad a crew and other actors
sticking their head into the window lookingat what's going on, just
having a great time enjoying craft services,whatever. There was a whole
other movie happening in that little window.
(43:20):
Plus equipment, equipment on thetable in the back. Yeah.
[Pete (43:23):
Yeah, it was all gear and goop and the wardrobe was hanging. It was a
mess. And again, I said,you know, one of the things you guys do a lot
of is a ton of work tomake it feel like you haven't done a thing.
And that was definitelya case in point because that window then all
it became was just a solidwall. I believe there were maybe one or two
handheld shots in thereas well that you had to,
[Paul DeNigris] (43:45):
Mm-hmm.
[Peter P (43:46):
you know, a little bit more difficult. And, and yeah, and me kind
of in the back of my headdoing that math as a director saying yeah,
we'll throw this shot upthere I know that it's gonna be wide fish-eyed,
but I can punch maybe it'sgonna be something like that maybe I can use
it, you know, and likeI said because of the problems we had on set
(44:08):
with the footage from thatwe went to that a lot more than I intended
It was kind of a save mybutt if you will but it worked and you guys
cleaned up all the windowstuff and no one was the wiser.
Right. I love stuff like that. I mean,you know, I do get filmmakers who are like,
I'm sorry. We're making youput on all this work and no one's going to
(44:28):
even know you were there. AndI'm like, I kind of like that. I kind of like,
you know, if somebody sawDrop of Blood and saw Visual Effects by Foxtrot
X-Ray, if they went to you,Peter, where were the VFX? I didn't see any.
[Peter Paul Basler] (44:39):
Right.
[Pa (44:39):
That's when yes, we did our job. Love that. OK, so if you met a young filmmaker
or not so young filmmaker who'snew to using VFX and they said, uh, you
know, I'm, I'm about to makea feature or a short, and I know I'm going
to need VFX and I'm reallynervous about it, Peter, you know, give me
(44:59):
one piece of advice that, thatwill help smooth this process for me, give
me the guide me so that I don'thave to learn from all the mistakes that you've
learned from him in the past.
[Pe (45:11):
Sure. I guess I would coach them in saying, look, don't think of VFX as
this big hurdle to overcome.
Don't be worried about it being so costly thatthe only people that can
do it are studios.
I would also have thatfilmmaker find a VFX company that has something
(45:37):
on their reel that theyrespond to and do a meeting and set that up
from the beginning. I thinkit's much easier if it's a collaboration on
a shot than, Paul, we'veshot this, we messed this all up, can you fix
it? Or this is what thevision is and you're like, I understand what
(45:58):
your vision is, let's bevery clear, I can see this huge monster, you
don't have a plate, wheream I putting that, you know, on this footage
it doesn't match your vision,right? So I would do that. I would say also
for them to look at projectsthat are out there as well. So if it's a sci-fi
(46:20):
thing, if it's a horrorthing, look at stuff that's been done recent
that your contemporarieshave done in a similar budget range, and you
can kind of get a senseof what can be done. You can use that as a
rule of thumb. And. It'spretty it's pretty incredible again how much
(46:41):
VFX have changedand become accessible.
So if it's a sci-fi movie, you'replaying with tone and you're playing with stuff
that we've created in ourmind, but it's not real. I mean, space shuttles
are real. Astronaut suits arereal, but the rest of it, an alien is pretend
far away planets are pretend.
We have references from other big features,plus Blade Runner, Star
(47:05):
Wars, those type of things. So there is a sortof milieu that we're used
to, but it's not, you can get fantastic, youcan get it to look pretend
because we want to believe we're in that mindset.
If you're doing somethingthat's a fight sequence and then people strip
down and muscles and soon, fake blood might not work, it might take
(47:28):
you out of the moment.
It could be something like Quentin Tarantino,like when the necks get
sliced and it's like a spray of blood, butit's hyper-realistic. and
you've gone into that hyper-realism. So youneed to make choices and
understand what the VFX are telling your audience.
You can get away with alot. You can get it to look very realistic
(47:50):
with what you're doingwith your timeframe and your budget. If you
want it to be very realisticand it's not something that can be done with
VFX, then you might haveto think about how do I do this practical?
How do I remove wires?
How do I... remove the things that will makeit feel real. And liquid
has gotten to a point where it can feel, andas we were talking about,
(48:13):
you know, with the goo coming out of the headexplosion, I've done some
blood stuff that looks very real, where you'veadded blood into a sequence.
And again, on that type of a project, if itlooked pretend, if it looked
stylized, I couldn't use it because what Ineeded was it to feel visceral,
to feel like the lead actor got the crap beatout of him and that there
(48:38):
was danger and I needed you to believe it.
And luckily we've gottento a point where the VFX is so good and you
can get something that'sgonna be believable.
[Pa (48:52):
Right. So understanding the limitations and also understanding what the
audience will accept and, uh,kind of understanding that the audience is
our partner. Right. In a lotof ways you can pull off a lot with sound,
right? You can pull off a lotwith shadows that the audience can fill in
(49:13):
the blanks with, um, uh, youknow, sort of the barest sketch of an idea
on the, in the frame. and focusingyour attention on what that sketch is and how
it conveys that feeling inthe audience. That's good advice. I mean, so
many times it is, people thinkthat VFX is this catch-all, right? It's gonna
(49:37):
solve all my problems and I'mjust gonna shoot on green screen and we're
gonna build the set in postor whatever. And in reality, it's like less
is more. If you think backto the movies of our youth, right? Alien, like
you don't see the alien hardlyat all.
[Peter Paul Basler] (49:54):
Mm-hmm.
[ (49:55):
Jaws, you don't see the shark hardly at all, right? But they're no less threatening.
In fact, they're more threateningthan the last Sharknado movie where it's just
shark after shark after sharkafter shark. Right? And some of that is because
again, visual effects is ubiquitousand quote unquote easy. And they're focused
(50:19):
more on the spectacle thanon evoking the response in the audience. Yeah.
So it's good advice. It's goodadvice for sure. You know, I always say people
when they criticize moviesthat are heavy on VFX are like, oh, there's
too much CGI. And my responseis you wouldn't say they shot this movie with
(50:41):
too many lights.
Right? It's not a matter of.
too much CGI. It's a matter of CGI that's notwell executed
[Peter Paul Basler] (50:51):
Right.
[Pau (50:51):
and isn't helping tell the story and it's taking you out of the story.
Right? You wouldn't say theyuse too many cameras on this shot. Well, maybe
you, maybe you would if it'sover edited, right? You know, CGI is a tool.
VFX is a tool. Nobody's goingto go, there were too many grips on that movie.
That's why I didn't like it. Right. So what's next foryou, Peter? What do you have in the hopper?
(51:16):
I know you always have somecool stuff on the horizon.
I have a time travel thriller that is verycool. It's like a five
to six million dollar budget.
Stephen Baldwin, the youngestof the brothers, is one
of the producers on thatproject. And he's very well known in the Christian
(51:39):
market. And one of my actorfriends who's been in a lot of movies, 12 different
projects that I've workedon, Michael Monks knows Stephen quite well.
So that project is hopefullypost-strike, one of the ones that we get to
play with pretty soon.
According to Stephen's team, it's a matter ofwhen, not if that was our
(52:05):
latest that we've heard from them. So we'resuper excited, super excited.
I won't give the name of the title away, butand that is a time travel
sequence and there's a time travel thriller.
So there's gonna be somegun work. There's gonna be, there's a sequence
at the end where our herois on a... an active test ground for a machine
(52:29):
that can diffuse bombsand so on. So he's in sort of a battle sequence.
How do we do that? It shouldlook realistic, but be safe for our actor.
There's also a zappingsequence. So when the person travels through
time, they're going throughsort of a wormhole. And we've seen a lot of
that with Star Trek andstuff. So there's that type of a thing. So
(52:49):
that one's coming up. Again,you know, the strike being what it is, right?
There's some things thathave slowed us down. I do have another project
that I'm super excitedabout. A friend of mine is a multi-arm amputee
and an actor. And he isa bit of an older cat than me, and very funny,
(53:12):
kind of lovable grouchin some ways in real life. And so it's gonna
be like a Seinfeld, CurbYour Enthusiasm, sort of he's playing like
a heightened version ofhimself. And as somebody who now he was disabled
in his late 20s, he's inhis 60s, so he's lived more of his life with
a disability than he didwith arms. He's heard everything and had every
(53:33):
kind of weird encounter,you know, just walking by and people are like,
thank you for your service,he's never been in the military. People who
are super religious wannapray with him, randomly, you know, all
this kind of stuff. Andhe's just trying to go to Home Depot and you
know what I mean, liketrying to go to the grocery store and get a
gallon of milk and allthis stuff happens. Or the checkout girl who's
giving him change and isso flustered because he's got hooks. She doesn't
(53:55):
know what to do and sheshoves it all into his pocket and his pockets
now. Like, you know, likeit's just, it kind of writes itself from what
his life has been. Andso we're doing that as 30 minute episodes.
And we want to, we possiblywill raise the money ourselves and do six episodes,
put it up on YouTube orkind of find an avenue for it. And using kind
of what The Pragmatistmodel we did. So have the end product look
(54:17):
almost like it could beon network today. So those are the things I'm
working on, I do have anotherhorror/thriller that we're rewriting
and it's a young African-Americankid growing up in suburban New England and
adopted. He's in this allwhite world. He's the only kid of color with
(54:41):
these fancy houses wherethe perfect lawns but then behind everything
is the facade and everything'sall messed up and he's living this terrible
life and it's very bleak.
But it's ending on a moment of hope. It's verymuch a festival piece.
We might get down and dirty and do that one,super low budget. Even
during the strike, we might be able to getthe interim agreement to
(55:02):
start shooting. So, yeah, so, you know, alwayslooking at that next thing,
always juggling. If you're an indie, that'swhat you gotta do to keep
the, like I said, keep the muscle from atrophyingand getting something out there.
[ (55:17):
Yeah, for sure. Well, looking forward to our next opportunity to collaborate
and also looking forward tojust watching whatever you make next. It's
because it's always, it's alwaysdifferent. You, every, you, you haven't made
the same movie twice in, uh,in our, our time that we've worked together
every, every time. I thinkI've kind of got the sense of what a Peter
Basler movie is, you surpriseme with the, with the next one. So, uh,
[Peter P (55:39):
Thanks, man, I try not to be pigeonholed. That's one of the things, and
to my detriment, I don'tknow, maybe I should be the rom-com guy, but
I just love it all, soI like to play.
Yeah, keep flexing those muscles.
That's all you can do, right? So if peoplewanna follow you on social
media, where can they find you?
[Peter (56:02):
So I do have a website, I know that's old fashioned, but it's
peterpaulbasler my last nameis B as in boy, A, S as in Sam, L, E, R, PeterPaulBasler.com.
And yeah, I'm sort of onthe Insta, but I don't really do it, I don't
TwitterX.
But I'm with Bohemia GroupManagement and Global Talent as my agency.
(56:27):
Hit me up on IMDB and IMDBPro and you can see all my credits. And yeah,
if you're down to, if youneed some advice, if you're in that, if you're
in, if you're one of thosefilmmakers who's thinking about doing a project
and you have creative questionsabout VFX and how it can help and enhance and
how do you do it, I'd loveto talk as you can tell. My wife likes to say
(56:49):
this. There's one thingI like to talk about is filmmaking. So thank
you, Paul, for bringingme on. I appreciate it.
[Pa (56:53):
Yeah, thank you so much for being part of the show and listeners, take
Peter up on that, right? That'sa really gracious offer of his time and expertise.
So please take him up on that.
And thank you to all my viewers and listenersfor tuning into this episode
of VFX for Indies. If you're watching on YouTube,please like, subscribe, leave
us a comment, let us know what you liked andwhat you'd like to hear more
(57:17):
of. And if you have questions for me or Peteror any of my guests, please
leave a comment. If you're listening on anyof the multitude of podcast
aggregator services out there, like iTunes,Spotify, a follow, a star rating,
and a review goes a long way to help, helpus reach more filmmakers. And,
and if you know any filmmakers, the filmmakerin your life who needs to hear
(57:40):
this stuff, please send them the episode. Thanksso much. And for everyone at
Foxtrot X-Ray, thanks for tuning in. See younext time.
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