Fluorescent Beast: A Deep Dive into Indie Film and Visual Effects with Filmmaker Paul Osborne

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Get ready for an intriguing conversation with the celebrated writer and director, Paul Osborne. As we traverse his professional journey, we find ourselves in the heart of indie filmmaking, where passion meets creativity on a budget. Learn how Paul transitioned from the production department and carved his own path in the world of independent crime thrillers. Listen as we explore the making of his films like the dark comedy Fluorescent Beast and the recent Cruel Hearts. You'll also get an insider's view on the critical role of visual effects and digital technology in amplifying the storytelling of indie films.

We further delve into the practicalities of realizing stunning special effects within financial constraints and how the magic of visual effects enriches rather than replaces the work of special effects artists. The conversation gets even more riveting as we dissect Paul's latest film, Fluorescent Beast, delving into its unique plot and the intricacies involved in creating special effects with burning elements on set. Discover how every effect is painstakingly planned and executed to maintain the visual consistency and authenticity of every scene.

Finally, Paul spills the beans on the intricate task of crafting a realistic, yet not-quite-human character for Florescent Beast. He opens up about the complexities of digitally replacing an original painting, emphasizing the importance of meticulous pre-planning with the visual effects artist. We also touch upon the challenges of disseminating independent films in the era of streaming services. So, buckle up for a fascinating exploration into the world of indie filmmaking and the art of visual effects, where every frame is a canvas and every effect, a brushstroke. Whether you're an aspiring filmmaker or a cinema enthusiast, this conversation with Paul Osborne promises to be an enlightening and engaging experience. Don't miss out!

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

Episode Transcript

[Paul DeNigr (00:00):
A depressed office drone finds the monotony of his life
suddenly disrupted when he'sgiven a super secret assignment that
neither he noranyone else seems to understand.
In Paul Osborne'sdark comedy Fluorescent Beast, this week
on the VFX for Indies podcastHello and welcome to this episode

(00:36):
of VFX for Indies, the podcast about the intersectionof visual effects and independent
filmmaking. I'm your host, Paul DeNigris,VFX artist, filmmaker and CEO
of Foxtrot X-Ray, a boutique visual effects company.
With me today is Paul Osborne.
He is the award-winning writer, director ofa number of indie crime thrillers,

(00:56):
including Ten ‘Til Noon, which you see on theposter behind him, Cruel Hearts,
and the upcoming Fluorescent Beast. Welcometo the podcast, Paul.

[P (01:08):
Oh, thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me.

[Pau (01:11):
Right on. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. Paul
lives on the other side ofthe world in England. He used to be an Angeleno,
but he moved to England a coupleof years ago. And we connect when we can, when
we can time the time zonescorrectly. But we recently wrapped up a last

(01:36):
little bit of work on FluorescentBeast. a film that you shot what three years ago now?
Paul? Pre-pandemic?

[Paul Osborne] (01:41):
Uh, we wrapped,

[ (01:44):
Yeah, we wrapped it up in May of 2019.
Oh, okay, so almost four yearsago now.

[Paul Os (01:50):
Ah, don't bring it up.

[Paul DeNigris] (01:50):
Give us a...
Ha ha ha. The joys of independentfilmmaking, right?

[Paul Osborne] (01:56):
Hmm.

[Paul DeNigris] (01:56):
Everything takes longer than

[Paul DeNigri (01:58):
it's supposed to.

[Paul Osborne] (01:59):
Hmm hmm.

[Paul DeNigris] (01:59):
Well, before we dive into the

[ (02:04):
Hearts and Fluorescent Beast, just give our viewers a quick overview of kind
of who you are, what you do,your position in the industry, kind of where
your career is at.
My position on the bottom. Well,I'm an independent filmmaker, as you said.
I'm a writer, a director, aneditor. And yeah, I've directed four independent

(02:29):
features. One was a documentary,three narrative features. And I wrote and
produced another one, Ten ‘TilNoon, that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, I don't
know. I moved two years agofrom Los Angeles to London with my wife and
son. And I just, been aroundthe block, you know, I've done I started in
production, worked in the productiondepartment did props, did camera, did sound,

(02:54):
went to post production, did,you know, ton of editing, some feature editing
and then sort of flopped overwhere I wanted to go, which is the writing
side. And after a lot of time,you know, dodging around agencies and development
companies not getting anythingmade, I decided to go the independent route.
And that brings us to wherewe are today.

(03:15):
So neither of the films that you'vebrought to me to work
on with you are what we wouldreally call visual effects films, right? They're
much more of the kind of thetypical project that I work on with my team
and also the kind of projectthat we love where it's, our work can be invisible,

(03:36):
right? We're really there justto serve the story and not be flashy and not
be in your face. So...

[Paul Osborne] (03:42):
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, give us a, like,just give us a quick overview of Cruel Hearts
and what it was about and kindof, you know, how we used visual effects
in that film.

[P (03:54):
Well, as you say, like these are not the typical visual effects movies.
Cruel Hearts is a characterdriven dramatic thriller. It's it's it's, you
know, when you're making anindependent film, it's always good to remember
that actors, good actors arenot expensive to find. There's a lot of them.
And dialogue is cheap to shoot.

(04:50):
So write good dialogue, get good actors andthen you have something. So,
yeah, it's a it's a it's a character basedpiece. It's a it's more of a
chamber piece. And you don't often think ofvisual effects in those regards,
but you are... there's two different kindsof visual effects that happen
in those situations. And one of them is, youknow, there's there are there
are bursts of violence, you know, there's theusual gunshot, the you know,

(05:13):
the occasional spray of blood, those sorts ofthings. And on a limited budget,
a lot of that's easier to do in post production,and less expensive to do in
post production. Some things. A lot of things,we don't get them right on set.
Even when you're intending to, whenthings are going according
to plan. Yeah, a lot of it's still there. Andalso there's the second aspect

(05:35):
of it is sort of things you can clean up inproduction, things that go wrong
in production, the occasional boom shadow and cleanup. Things that normally would
have been a gaping error in the pre-digitalage can now be corrected and
fixed. And, you know, things that would pullthe audience out of it if you
weren't able to fix it. So sort of the, yeah,the intentional effects. and

(05:59):
the unintentional fixes that come to post-production.
Yeah, that's pretty much the two big categories that we work in, you know...

[Paul Osborne] (06:09):
Pretty much.
what we call clean up and thenand then you have more hero effects. So what
problems? And I know this isa while back where we're going back into deep
into history.
No, not that far, not that long ago.

[Paul (06:23):
Not that far, but I mean, everything before the pandemic feels like it
was a million years ago.

[Paul Osborne] (06:28):
That’s true.
Back in the BC era.

[Paul DeNigris] (06:31):
Yeah.

[Paul Osborne] (06:31):
Yeah.

[Paul DeNigris] (06:31):
In the before times.
So you wanna know what sortof went wrong?

[Pa (06:37):
Yeah, so there were, I know there were obviously, there were some things
that are in your face, right?
The gunshots and things like that and

[Paul Osborne] (06:47):
Right.

[Paul DeNigris] (06:47):
some of the blood enhancement. But

[P (06:49):
very subtle and sometimes it was a matter of, like you said, it was the
cleanup and the fixes. Andsometimes it was, hey, we can't soak this carpet
with blood,

[Paul Osborne] (07:00):
Right.

[Paul DeNigris] (07:00):
practically, because it will
the turnaround and all of thatsort of stuff, right? So you know, what are some
of the things that we helpedyou, that VFX helped you solve?

[ (07:11):
Well, on that film, you know, we had, it's a noir thriller, we've got the
gunshots, we've got the doublecrosses and the bang bang bangs, that happen.
And as far as the muzzle flashes,that stuff we'd planned to do as a post-production
effect, it's less expensiveand certainly safer to just bring in some airsoft
BB guns without BBs in them,fire those off and add in the muzzle flashes

(07:33):
later. That was always our plan,rather than bringing in an armorer and bringing
in a cop and... dealing withblanks and certainly all the dangers that are
in those, especially when theguns are close to other actors. Blanks or
no, you fire any kind of round,it's dangerous. So that was always planned.
But what we did plan to do onset was all the blood effects, practically.

(07:56):
And as what happens, this alsohappened on the movie, Favor, which I know
you didn't work on, our feature,Favor, from a few years before that, but we,
in both cases, our on set visualeffects people handling the blood effects,
handling the squibs, handlingthe spurts, were not really up to snuff. Part

(08:18):
of that's budgetary in termsof finding people who are experienced, who’ll
work on your budget. And partof it's also a budget of time. You don't have,
you need to budget in, you know,two to three times as long to shoot a scene
if you're gonna have blood effects.
Often they take time to get right. They don'twork. You have to reset. You

(08:40):
have to change the clothes and soon you sometimesyou just run out of time. So
it's a combination of those two things. OnCruel Hearts, we just you know,
there were certain...
blood hits that weren't working,squibs that weren't working. And, you know,
in the end, we got what we goton set, but it meant coming to our post visual

(09:01):
effects people you to hopefullyto fix them. Hat in hand going: Please. Please fix them. So, you
know, certain things in thosehero effects were planned, certain things were
not. But the big one in thatfilm was the blood effects. There was some
blood splat against a wallthat had to be added. There was a chest hit that
had to be added. There's onecharacter who is lying on the ground and riddled

(09:26):
with bullets. And we neededto make him soaked in blood. And he only had
a couple of trickles going on.
And that was something. But there's somethingelse that happens in
these films. This is with anything becausevisual effects aren't just patchwork
at the end fixing a problem or completing aneffect that you couldn't complete

(09:46):
on set, whether you plan to do it that wayor not. You know, it is a creative
process. And, you know, the word is alwaysthe last rewrite of a film is
always the edit. The last read of the filmis always your post production.
It's not just the edit, it's the color corrections,the mix, and it certainly is
the visual effects. And so there were, I knowthere were things that were

(10:06):
added in visual effects in that film. I thinkyou suggested that we ended
up doing that ended up. Oh, yeah, let's trythat. You know, we have the
opportunity, if you wouldn't mind, we havethe opportunity now to add this
new element that was never planned and improvethe shot. And one of those you
mentioned is actually the blood soaking thecarpet, because I think we wanted

(10:28):
to add a little bit of blood in the carpet.
You're like, he's been riddled,wouldn't he just we could do a whole, and you
made this beautiful, balletic,just like blood spread out from him that we
never thought about, but itcompletely makes the scene. And so that's a

(10:49):
situation where, you know, it'snot just about fixing or adding something that
was planned, but coming up withsomething new. And using that opportunity while
you're in there to create awhole new element. In Favor, this also
happened, in the movie, Favor,with a guy being stabbed and the visual effects
artist decided to have the bloodsplat at the screen, splat towards camera.

(11:13):
I thought great. That wasn'tsomething we thought about. All you were doing
was adding a little bit of bloodon his shirt. He did this whole splat and he
decided to add a splat on thelens. He created a splat on the lens. And I
think he sent it to me as a joke,but it was kind of amazing.
I'm like, that's a terrific like,almost wink at the audience. And so we kept

(11:34):
it in.
Sometimes us VFX guys, we haveto do stuff just to amuse ourselves in post.
I know there's one there's onemoment that also in Cruel Hearts
I don't know if you rememberthis but the blood spread... the character is
addressing camera is addressingthe characters standing over him which is the
camera subjective and he's dyingand the blood is spreading and as he's as the

(11:55):
life's leaving him the bloodspread slows and as he dies stops and he's
dying very he's just gettinghe's not like doing a big dramatic but he just
slowly The life is leaving hiseyes. It's a very quiet moment. But the blood
just slows and stops. And yousent that to me and I was like, Paul, that's

(12:18):
amazing. You've got the bloodlike matching the mood of his death. And you
were like, wait, what, it stops?
Shit, no, you like it? You're buying it? Good,okay, that was not intentional.

[Pa (12:36):
That's right, I do remember that. It was a happy accident. And then you
further art directed it andyou said, let's have it stop before it passes
his eyes, right? I think if Iremember correctly.

[Paul Osborne] (12:48):
I gave notes! [Paul DeNigris]
just as it reaches the level of his eyes, right...?
That's... fuck, that sounds like me, Paul. That so it was a happy accident
and then
It was a...

[Pa (13:01):
a bit of art direction. And yeah, try doing that with a
practical blood spread, you know.
It was a creative urge from you, an accident from wherever, and then a
note from me, great. Ha ha ha.

[Pau (13:15):
Yeah, yeah. And that's the joy of independent filmmaking at
every stage, right?

[Paul Osborne] (13:18):
At every stage. Well, I mean, in filmmaking,

[P (13:22):
in, we'll get to Fluorescent Beast in a moment, but there were things in
Fluorescent Beast where youwere suggesting we should do this, we should
do this, we should try this.
And that's honestly, like, from my point ofview, as a filmmaker, that's
what I want. I want to work with other filmmakers,I want to work with other people who want
to make the film better, and come upwith ideas. And again, visual
effects are often thought about as a last stage.

(13:42):
And they really ought not to be.

[ (13:44):
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
So it sounds like your experience on Favorprobably informed some of your
choices in terms of knowing what you couldand couldn't do in VFX and
how you could deploy VFX to fix some of theseissues, the defective squibs
and whatnot. Is that the case where Favor reallykind of influenced the process

(14:05):
on Cruel Hearts?
Well I think every film you makeinfluences the films that come after it. You're
always learning. But I mean,I think I learned more on Cruel Hearts from you
because the problems on CruelHearts were more pronounced. And solving those
problems, making those bloodymoments in that film look real, read as real,

(14:34):
the way it was done, which wasreally taking practical elements and repurposing
them in creative ways, you know,not adding new elements. And a lot of it, not
all of it, but a lot of it.
And that really taught me a lot more about,on my end, how to bring things
into visual effects. So, but yeah, you learnin every film. Favor certainly

(14:55):
taught me some things, but Cruel Hearts wasa much more extensive job.

[Pa (15:00):
I remember a shot, a couple of shots in Cruel Hearts where Patrick has
to punch, he has to punch atile wall in a bathroom. And then, and so you
had us add the cracks in thetile, but then also split his knuckles.
So where did that, was that somethingthat you thought of in production or was it
only after you saw it in thecut that you realized...

[Pau (15:22):
Ah, it was after we saw it [Paul DeNigris]
I didn't read it was too subtle.
And so I'm like, you gotta help me.
Help me sell this!Sell this thing. So I mean,
that, that looks, those knuckles look terrific.
I mean, we had like blood onthem, but it was nothing. So again,
learning curve.

[Paul DeNigris] (15:42):
Yeah.

[Paul Osborne] (15:42):
You know, you go, well, this
up on a 60 foot screen and yougo, no, it's not at all.
You need a lot more there.

[P (15:49):
Yeah, yeah, that was a total cheat just having a little bit of a little
bit of white show through asif he had split it down to the bone and it
and it's like you look at itand you go, EHHHH, you cringe
like it looks painful,[Paul Osborne]: it's great. Well, because

[Paul Osborne] (16:03):
the thing was, [Paul DeNigris]
I mean, that was just a lowbudget situation where we had a location and
we couldn't afford to have themactually build a fake wall and have him punch
it and have him crack it. That'swhat it was. So we had to punch it kind of,
so he's punching a pillow. That'swhat he's doing. And the whole idea is when

(16:23):
you cut back to, he realizedwhat he's done, you're looking at his face
while he's doing the punchingand you cut back and you see what he's done
to himself. And that had toread and thankfully, thanks to you, it does.
But yeah, but it wasn't readingenough. You have to really punch it a lot more.
And so that was something else welearned going forward is any day you have anything

(16:44):
like that, you have a very saltyand experienced visual effects artist or a
makeup person does makeup effects.
You have them on set.
Yeah, and a lot of the work that we do whenit comes to blood or anything like that, it's
a combination of the effortsof us in post and the efforts of folks on set.

(17:09):
Whenever I'm talking aboutthis stuff where we're fixing blood or we're
fixing makeup, it's never...
It's never meant as a, we're not trying todownplay the expertise of special
effects people, because what they do is amazingand the limits of their ability
based on time and money, right?

(17:30):
That's ultimately it.
I can push pixelsaround all day, right? I can
push blood pixels all around all day and youcan go, I want it to spray
different. So I can swap it out to a differentelement, change the parameters
on a particle sim. You know, I can do that.
On set? You're burning money,you're burning daylight, you're in locations
that you don't own, you havelimited changes of clothes, right? So the practical

(17:54):
makeup people are always operatingwith one hand tied behind their back, no matter
what, right? So I want peopleto understand as they watch this, what I do,
what visual effects artistsdo is never a replacement for good, practical,
special effects makeup. We are an enhancement.

[ (18:16):
Exactly. And honestly, that's the way it should be. In the low budget world,
it's always, you know, the firstthing is to find someone who can work with
your budget who's either experienced,whether it's professionally or on their own,
but can really deliver whatyou need. But even then, there are limitations.
There are time limitations andmoney limitations. And I say this, if you can

(18:40):
schedule twice as much timeto three times as much time. shooting anything
with any kind of makeup effects.
If you got, you know, someone's getting machete-edor shot or karate chopped or
whatever it is, add in the time, not just forthe applications, but for things
to go wrong and to not get it right and haveas many replacement clothes
as you can because you are gonna go throughthem. But also if you do think
you're gonna need, you're gonna go, if youplan ahead and go, you know,

(19:06):
we're gonna need visual effects to help uswith this post-production visual
effects to help us with this. It's always importantto talk to your visual effects
person, your post visual effects person, asyou say, and say, what do you
need me to give you to create this? You know,like we're doing it, we're gonna
do a guy getting shot in the head. This issomething that we just did in

(19:27):
the last film, a guy getting shot in the head.
And so we're gonna have, youknow, make-up effects put a bullet hole in
his head. And what we're gonnahave, we want it to appear when he gets shot
in the shot. You know, it'sa single shot on him and the bullet bang hits
him in the face. So it's a questionof getting a clean plate with a clean forehead.
It's a question of getting,you know, and shooting a shot with the thing,

(19:49):
with the wound there the entiretime. And then you put the clean forehead image
over the hole until the appropriatemoment and getting a clean shot of the flash
on him so that when there'sa, you know, a practical light flash on his
face that replicates the gun,muzzle flash of the gun and all these elements
that are created on set, whichwhen they come to you, you can go, put it together.

(20:12):
rather than having to try tocapture it. And honestly, that's often, it
sounds like it's more work onset. It's often easier to get, to shoot individual
elements, to have them, realelements, realistic looking elements, practical
elements, to have them compositedby a post visual effects person than it is

(20:32):
to capture an on camera, perfectvisual effect.
from my experience.
Yeah. No, I think that's, that'sabsolutely dead on. That's what we in the industry
call in the VFX side of theindustry, we call a heal and reveal, right?
the actor has the wound already.
We heal it and then reveal it when the gunshotgoes off Yeah.

(20:55):
Love it, Heal and reveal. Yeah,

[Paul DeNigris (20:57):
Heal and reveal.

[Pa (20:57):
but let me know, there were other things, like we had a fire effect on the
last film and it was a questionof what elements do we give you for that and
those sorts of things. So again,[Paul DeNigris]: Yeah. Well,
we're going to get to FluorescentBeast in a second. I want to kind of wrap up
our conversation about Cruel Hearts[Paul Osborne]: Sure sorry, I’m bopping all over.
that's, that's totally fine.
So it sounds to me, and I think we've kindof covered this. It sounds
to me like the process on in the same way thatFavor taught you a bunch of

(21:22):
stuff that you applied to Cruel Hearts. Itsounds like you had some, some
takeaways from the process on Cruel Heartsthat, that cascaded into the
next movie. You know, what's something What'sone example that maybe we haven't
covered yet of something that we did a certainway on Cruel Hearts that you
decided, okay, we need to we need to be betterprepared going into Fluorescent

(21:42):
Beast.
Well, I honestly it was the it was all the blood stuff. It was really it
was really making sure we kindof cover this I know sorry, but it is it's
absolutely my biggest takeawaymy the one I always think about is capturing
practical elements on camerathat you can then repurpose later in visual

(22:05):
and post visual effects. Thatreally is everything I think it was one effect
I forget what it was. We wereI think we were trying to get I think it was
a head shot in Cruel Hearts wewere trying to get right. And I said to you,
You said, what do you think? Isaid, well, it looks like a like a digital
visual effect. And you said,this is a digital visual effect. And I said,

(22:27):
I know it's a digital visualeffect and you know it's a digital visual
effect, but we don't want anybodyelse to know it's a digital visual effect.
And so it was, it was at thatpoint, I think we didn't have anything made.
I think you ended up stealingsomething from another scene that was bloody
and clothy and whatever andapplying it. I could be misremembering that,

(22:50):
but you can correct me. Butthat's really my biggest takeaway. And we had
a lot of conversations aboutthe things on the next one Fluorescent Beast.
like, this is what I wanna do.
This is how I wanna shoot it. What do I gottashoot for you? That's what it
is. And it's a really different way of thinkingabout how you do things. You
don't wanna... just shoot a thing and expecta magic wand to create whatever.

(23:14):
There'll be plenty of those. When we get toFlurescent Beast, we can talk
about a couple of magic wand moments that youhad to pull out of your butt.
things we didn't plan, somebig ones. There's always something, but whenever
possible, and it could be assimple as we need to, for lighting, we have

(23:39):
to have this window next tothis actor, the blinds are we have to have
the window closed and blockedoff. Because it's casting a glare right in
the lens. But we want what we'rewhat we see out that window downtown LA, we
want that visible behind him.
Okay, so then you got to shoot plates, youknow, that's something you do

(23:59):
you shoot the actor, you draw the blinds, youshoot the actor, the actor steps
out, you open the blinds, you shoot the exactsame angle with the blind open
with nothing in it, you know, for 30 secondsor however long. And you know,
you get those, you have to get those kindsof clean plates. And sometimes
there's multiple elements so that they canbe composited later. But it
really is understanding and breaking down howyou wanna do things. A lot of

(24:22):
this goes back to as much preparation as possible.
Unfortunately, as of yet, youwill attest, I have never done enough prep
when it comes to things thatneed to be visually realized in post in terms
of visual effects. But I'm learningand I'm hoping to get better, so.

[ (24:39):
No one ever does enough prep, right? It doesn't matter how much prep you
do, it's never enough.
There's so many on the day factors,you know, and a larger budget film, that's
time to reshoot or time to shootlonger and catch these. And then when you're
shooting a feature in threeweeks, you don't have that much time. You're
constantly moving. You lose alocation, that location's gone.

(25:01):
Right, as they say in the military,no plan meets, no plan survives initial contact
with the enemy. And when itcomes to independent filmmaking, time and money
are always the enemy. And so,planning is invaluable, plans themselves generally
are useless.

(25:21):
All right, so where can, well,let's just wrap up Cruel Hearts, what was its
festival life going to intodistribution and then where can people watch
it, right now?
Well, it did about 10 festivals,won a few awards. Came out on Valentine's Day,

(25:43):
Cruel Hearts, which I thoughtwas an odd choice. It was on the romance page
of iTunes, which I thought wasweird. Like, who's gonna go to the romance
section and wanna watch a filmwith guns in it? You watch a trailer, you just
look at the poster. I thinkit should have been in the thriller section
on Valentine's Day. But GravitasVentures put it out. It was our second film out

(26:04):
with them. And right now youcan get it on, well, I mean, you can buy it
on all the pay VOD flavors,iTunes and so forth. But I believe it's streaming
on Amazon, if you’re a member,for free. It's on Tubi for free for anyone
with commercials. So if youwanna watch it for free, check it out on Tubi.
And it might be on FreeVee,I'm not sure. And there's also a Blu-ray edition

(26:27):
running around some.

[Paul De (26:29):
It's a great movie and [Paul Osborne]
yeah, I really enjoyed it.
I wish we had been able to do even more onit because it was a blast working
on it. And the cast you put together was fantastic,

[Paul Osborne] (26:41):
Oh, thanks, man.

[P (26:42):
including Melora Hardin from The Office, who's an absolute sweetheart. I
don't know if I ever told you,I reached out to Melora when my nephew, my
nephew Joseph turned 18.

[Paul Osborne] (26:55):
No.

[Pa (26:56):
He's the biggest fan of The Office I could possibly find. And so I reached
out to Melora. I said, hey Melora,remember me? I did VFX on Paul Osborne's movie,
Cruel Hearts. And my nephewis a massive fan of The Office. Could you record
him a little video for hisbirthday? And she sent just the sweetest video

[Paul Osborn (27:17):
Oh, that's awesome
yeah, she was just an absoluteangel, like sang a song and...

[Paul Osborne] (27:23):
Oh my god.

[Pa (27:23):
and get and made up her own her own custom “That's what she said” joke
just for him. Yeah. The kid'sface lit up when I played it. I was like,
yeah.

[Paul Osborne] (27:35):
I mean, I've never do nothing
paid her. So,

[Paul DeNigris] (27:42):
Hahaha!
no, she's great. Actually, shehas a new film coming out called Golden Vanity
and it's, I think it's worldpremiering at the Burbank International Film
Festival actually in a few months.
And so she'll be touring around that soon.
So
Nice.

[Paul (27:57):
it's an all-Melora movie.

[Paul DeNigris] (27:57):
Very cool,

[P (28:00):
very cool. Well, I mean, you know, the fact that you were able to attract
her among other just wonderfulactors just speaks to

[Paul Osbo (28:07):
Ah, well, thank you.
your writing. And then the factthat she didn't say, you know, she didn't tell
me to beat it when I askedher for a favor

[Paul Osborne] (28:17):
That guy....

[Paul DeNigris] (28:17):
means that you guys must have treated her well on set.
I hope so. I've she still shestill returns my calls
That's good.

[Paul Osborne] (28:26):
and texts. So I hope so.
All right, so cool. Let's moveon to Fluorescent Beast, which is the film
that you recently finished.
The new one

[P (28:39):
the new one, give us a quick synopsis of this one. It's, to me, it feels
very different than previousones.

[ (28:45):
It is. Well, it's not a crime thriller for starters. It's black comedy. It's
a surreal black comedy. Andso I'll tell you the plot and I'll tell you
what it's about. There's differentthings. The plot is basically about this kind
of middle management workerguy. He's working for a big corporation, kind
of this generic job. It's sortof ill-defined, pushing numbers around. And

(29:09):
he gets summoned by a bizarreand shadowy executive who sends him on a secret
business trip. And the businesstrip is so secret, he's not even told what
it's about. He's sort of sentthere, and he's given cryptic memos periodically
that tell him the next stepof the thing he needs to do. And these things
don't really add up, make alot of sense. And he's sort of got to kind

(29:31):
of put together what these memosare leading him to do and solve the mystery
of what is the actual natureof his assignment. And as... the picture begins
to emerge, he begins to realizethat it may not be... turn out so well for him.

(30:25):
That's the plot. What it's aboutis I like to say that it's, um, you know, all
the, it's, if all the pressuresof being an adult, all the responsibilities
that weigh you down, if allof those, were not a happenstance, but an
actual active conscious conspiracyaimed at you personally to crush your soul

(30:52):
and ruin your dreams. That'swhat, that's the premise of the film.
I described it to somebody onset and they went, oh, but that's not fiction.
That's true.

[P (31:06):
Right. The Fluorescent Beast feels a bit to me like, what if the Coen brothers
directed Office Space?
Oh, wow. Okay, please. Please.
I'm gonna that's gonna go on the on the boxart and the poster. What if
the Coen brothers directed Office Space? That'sa huge compliment. And a huge insult to the Coen brothers and Office Space.

(31:26):
No, no, no. And I mean, obviouslyI'm a big fan of Paul Osborne and
I think it's just a great pieceof filmmaking. My involvement, you know, completely
regardless, right? It is agreat watch and it is,

[Paul Osborne] (31:43):
Well, thank you.

[Pa (31:44):
I've watched it a couple of times and it asks some really interesting questions.
And again, the acting is stellar.
I hope my actors are listeningto this right now because they did a great
job. I didn't mess them up toomuch. So I'm glad you like it. I hope some
film festivals agree with you.
We're out to several right now, so we'll seewhat happens.

[P (32:09):
Great, great. So how did the process of getting visual effects incorporated
into your workflow? How isthe process on Fluorescent Beast different than
Cruel Hearts? Again, takingthe lessons from Cruel Hearts forward,
what did we do differentlyin Fluorescent Beast?

[Pa (32:27):
a couple of key scenes that we knew we were gonna need, you know, post
visual effects for. And therewas some gunshots, some blood, but one big
thing was a fire sequence. Wehave a scene where someone's burning something,
like something large, and they'resitting right next to it while it's burning.

(32:47):
And I didn't want to lightan actual fire. One, because I wanted to be
able to shoot multiple takes.
and multiple angles with one camera. I didn’t wannakeep burning stuff. And two,
I have an actor standing three feet from thefire who I don't want her to
die of smoke inhalation. And she's a new momand was breastfeeding and I didn’t

(33:09):
wanna poison her child with carbon dioxide.
So that was a big conversationwe had is how to make that look. We weren't
gonna, I think originally wewere talking about burning, actually burning
something, like burning somethingsomewhere else of a similar dimension and shooting
that as a plate. And we endedup going a different way with that. I think

(33:29):
you had plates that alreadyexisted, which was great, not having to burn
stuff. But that was one bigconversation we had. There was another conversation
we had about a prop. In thefilm, there's a puzzle box. That's like a rectangular
black box. And there's no crackon it, no seam, no way to open it. And eventually

(33:51):
it gets opened in the film.
The guy finds a couple of invisible pressureplates and it pops open. And
the prop guy was making the thing and he'slike, there's no way to make
this the way you want it to open and hide theseam. Like you will see a seam
no matter where. It can't be a seamless thing.
So we ended up making two, onewith and one without a seam. And the decision

(34:14):
was, in post, we're gonna havethe seam appear like a, like a crack in a piece
of wood that's being stressed.
So there were things like that we had discussedin advance. You and I had
long conversations about how to shoot themand what was needed. And so
that was the big thing was putting a lot moreplanning and a lot more of our
conversations dictating the angles we chose,how we covered things, and then

(34:37):
certainly what we shot to cover those effects.

[ (34:43):
Yeah, I would say I would say Cruel Hearts, the balance between creative
shots and fix it shots, cleanupshots was probably about 50 50.

[Paul Osborne] (34:52):
Yeah.

[Pau (34:53):
And I think on Fluorescent Beast, it was more like 25% cleanup 75% creative.
If I and that's just my gut
are we going to talk about thepainting stuff? Cause those are, that was,
that's clean up. I think thatthrows your balance back to more to 50 50.

[Paul DeNigris] (35:11):
Yeah, probably.

[Paul Osborne] (35:11):
Yeah. But that was.
It felt like we put more energy,certainly lots more energy up front, into creative shots.
Because you were already thinkingalong those lines, you already kind of knew,
okay, here's what we're capable of.
Or you’d ask the question, Paul, how the hell do we do this?

[ (35:31):
Correct, yeah, and there were several small visual effect moments. I mean,
the film, again, it's a surrealblack comedy. There are odd things that happen.
And there's a garbage can that,there's a memo in the film that he's being
passed around as this importantpiece of, this important memo, you know? It's

(35:53):
a red letter, it's so important.
And they keep passing it around. And then eventuallyit reaches this destination
and the person goes, great, thank you. Andjust throws it in the trash,
discards it as if it's nothing and it's nevereven opened. It's a whole joke
about this useless paperwork and whatever,blah, blah. It's a running gag
that ends into someone throwing away this supposedlyvery important piece of paper.
When the character looks in the garbage canat the discarded letter, we

(36:15):
wanted it to sort of sizzle and then almostexplode in there. And that was
something that, again, that was a... conversationthat you and I had how we were
going to do it. And ended up being an odd,an odd mixture of things. Basically,
we had the garbage can sitting there as a shotof the garbage can just sitting,

(36:40):
you know, on the floor. Dark, nothing, youcan nothing visible in it. The
letter’s allegedly at the bottom, you don'treally see it, it's out of the
shot. And then we took another same angle,and I put a we put a small handheld
light in there. So trash can was full of light.
I did a simple dissolve, hadto go at it suddenly flare up and then you

(37:03):
took that and added a wholelike Vietnam napalm thing, which is hilarious.

[Paul D (37:09):
A little curl of smoke.

[Pa (37:10):
Right. But again, we knew a little curl of smoke. But again, we knew exactly
where those things are goingto happen. And every single one we had planned
pragmatic effects, pragmatic,practical stuff shot on set to supply you with
Hopefully enough of what youneeded. Hopefully you weren't left wanting.
There were a few other situations,whether you follow this as this falls into

(37:32):
accidental or this falls intocreative, but things that we changed when you
saw the movie. For example,the scene where he goes to a mall and
you suggested, why don't weremove all the names of all the stores? Not
because they weren't clear.
We have multiple names and this multiple things.
It was no big deal. But it was,why don't we just remove them to make it weird,

(37:57):
to make it just really faceless?
And that was a creative choice that you had,like, that's a great idea. So
you kindly did that. And then there was onestore where the store, the name
was too, it was too obvious that it was missing.
So we had to replace it withsomething. We made up a whole new store name
that doesn't exist and replacedit with that. So it was all, seemed otherworldly.

(38:18):
Does that fall into accidentor does that fall into creative, I think it
falls into creative. But again,it's not that we planned. But yeah, that was
when we really tried to anticipatewhat we needed on set, and give you everything.
And again, this is the occasionalboom shadow with the occasional wire that you
remove. But I think most ofit was that stuff until the painting.

[Paul DeNigris] (38:38):
Yeah.

[Paul Osborne] (38:38):
Yeah.
Another thing, before we getto the painting, another thing that you do,
and we did it a tiny bit onCruel Hearts, and I think we did it a few times
on Florescent Beast, was usingVFX as an editorial tool. Right? So there's
a scene in Cruel Hearts wherethe two characters are at the bar, and you
wanted to cut some dialogue out.

(38:58):
Yes,

[Pa (38:59):
Am I remembering correctly?
And we

[Paul Osborne] (39:00):
you are

[ (39:01):
composited somebody crossing.

[Paul Osborne] (39:02):
Yes.

[Paul DeNigris] (39:02):
so that we could hide a cut,
not mistaken, didn't we adjustthe timing between actors at one point or adjust
that we had actors from different takes

[Paul Osborne] (39:18):
yes.

[Paul DeNigri (39:19):
in the same shot?

[ (39:20):
we pulled something up. Yeah, no, it was two actors sitting in the same shot.
We, there were a number of simple,like, picture-in-picture effects that were
done on the film that you weren'teven involved with.
Because we had two characters,we had two characters played by the same actor,

(39:40):
for example, in a couple ofscenes. And we just, you know, would put the
camera down, you know. and shootone on one side and then one on the other side.
And just, you know, as longas the camera doesn't move, it's easy to do
a composite. Just split it,you can do that in the editing tool. There
was one situation, and therewere a few things like that we would change

(40:01):
the timing in a two shot. Butthis was one, you're talking about one on the
couch, right?

[Paul DeNigris] (40:03):
Hmm.
It's the same way, lead characterand his wife are on the couch. And yeah, I
ended up, I think we were, Idon't know if we were compositing takes. I
think it was an awkward pause.
I think that's what it was. But we tried doingit simply, but there was a whole
pillow shift or something. There was some shiftin it. You had to kind of come
in and like carve around. It wasn't a cleancut. It wasn't a clean splice.

(40:27):
So it had to be done that way, yeah.

[Pa (40:33):
Yeah. And then we also had, you decided you wanted one of the characters
to never blink.

[Paul (40:40):
Oh, I forgot about that.
I remember that was a fun challenge.
That was a fun challenge. Thatwas one we knew we were gonna do. That was
in the script stage, that shenever blinks. And you never see her eyes closed.
That was the idea. And so, it'sfunny, I made the mistake of telling her that,
which made her try to not blink.
I'm like, don't, just, we'll fix it. We'llfix it in post.

(41:04):
I mentioned it to you, and you'relike, okay. And I don't think. I don't how
much it didn't seem like itwas that much. It was no trouble on my end.
I gave you the shots. You gave themback totally blink-less. I know that there
was the one shot where she turnsher head on a blink. That one caused you problems
is there was no clean frameof her eye open to duplicate the eyes on there

(41:28):
was no moment where the eyeswere open at that exact angle, because her
head was turning.
Right, because we naturally, whenwe blink or when we turn, we naturally blink
to sort of skip the in-betweento skip the camera move

[Paul Osborne] (41:45):
We add a cut...

[P (41:47):
And, um, and, and every take where she did it, she went from looking at
looking at her husband to lookingat her plate and she would blink on the move.
Yeah, so on that particularone, we ended up using a face tracking tool
and rebuilt her face as a CGI mesha CG mesh and projected her

(42:08):
face, basically took the footage that yourcamera saw, projected it onto
that mesh, unwrapped it as a texture, thenerased the blinks by painting
over and then projected that back on top ofthe... Yeah, so that was a
multi-stage. Uh, uh, effect. There were a coupleof them like that, that in

(42:31):
particular one was, was the hardest.
The rest of them were, yeah, the restof them were pretty straightforward because
she was, you know, you canpick up the eyes from either side of the blink
and do a, do like a morphbetween them. Yeah.

[Pau (42:45):
exactly. A morph, a slight shift. And there were times that I would do
I use a I'm cutting in the Avid,I would use fluid morph. And I would just cut
out the blink and do it thatway. She was fairly still. Her character
was as written fairly robotic,hence the

[Paul DeNigris] (43:00):
Mm-hmm.

[Paul Osborne] (43:00):
no blinking and just there was

[Pa (43:04):
kind of was very direct and she wouldn't move a lot. And so it was really
fairly easy to place a few myselfbut that one is funny when she turned her head
that weird model of her faceyou made the first thing you sent me. It was
like, it was like, you've donelike 18 versions, it still wasn't working. I'm
like, you're like, damn it.
And so you sent me the model of the face turning,but with nothing else no shot.
It was just in a sea of blackness, this bizarrefaces black floating through

(43:31):
the darkness. I said that to her, by the way,that any explanation. I just
wrote “you”and I sent it to the actress and...
might have given her some nightmares.

[ (43:44):
Yeah, it is sort of nightmare fuel. It's sort of like somebody has peeled the face
has it floating in 3D space. It'spretty uncanny. Yeah, that was a fun one to
unpack how to do that. Andalso how to just make it look right because

[Paul Osborne] (44:02):
Yeah.

[P (44:03):
our eyes are, human eyes are so animated and audiences are conditioned,
we are conditioned to lookat each other's eyes when we're seeing people.
people's faces, right? So it's almost impossible. You can't, when you're doing something to anactor's eyes, there's nothing
to distract the audience. There's no, you can'tgo, oh, look over here while I pull some

[Paul Osborne] (44:22):
Right, shenanigans over here and hide this thing
from you.
Right.

[ (44:29):
Look at this lens flare. Like it doesn't work. Like
and to the nature of the scenethat this takes place in, it's a wide shot
and there's no way to, I mean,this is a deep baseball into this movie without
anybody having seen it, butit's really, yeah. But the way, the nature
of that sequence, there's noway to cut to something else. She has to be

(44:50):
on camera for that moment theentire time in this wide shot, you know? And
yeah, fortunately, you wereable to find a solve.

[Pa (44:59):
Yeah. Otherwise, we'd still be working on it.

[P (45:04):
Otherwise, the whole let her blink, just let her blink. No, it's great. She
just it's funny. People watchthe movie and they don't they don't know why
it unsettles them. Like, issomething really off? And it's like, hopefully
it's no one only. Well, they'llhear this and now they'll put together. But
hopefully those that don't willgo, oh, you know, there's something really
up because we are used to wedo look into this eyes and we are conditioned

(45:26):
to. I mean, we're so innatelyfamiliar with what's human as human beings.
And when we see something that'snot quite. human, we read it quickly, you know.
Someone doesn't blink when theyturn their head, someone doesn't blink ever.
That's, we recognize that asnot, not right, not human. And

(45:48):
that was the whole intent ofthat character. So.
like, so she would be changingthe her expression on her face. So

[Paul Osborne (45:59):
during the blink.

[Paul DeNigris] (45:59):
her mouth, her mouth and her eyebrows
that transition. So we're havingto remove the, the blink, but keep the transition
and, and have her eyes getslightly wider.

[Paul Osborne] (46:14):
Right, [Paul DeNigris]
as her face... right[Paul DeNigris]: more narrow right
yeah, so that, and to not trip us into the uncanny valley where you go, oh, what is that? That's weird,right? It should just be a cumulative effect of, you know, after you've watched the movie.
I swear to god, that characternever blinked. I have to watch it again.
Yeah, exactly.

(46:36):
Watch it 17 more times.

[Pau (46:39):
Yeah. Let's talk about the painting.

[ (46:40):
Right, the painting, this was where I think we went from 25 to 50%. So in
the film, there's a paintingpainted by one of the characters. And she's
not a professional painter inthe movie, but she is supposed to be talented.
Like this is like somethingshe can do well. And we wanted an original

(47:00):
painting for this. So it wasnot key to the story, exactly, well not key,
central. But we did have thisneeding to be done. And the way that it
was done was I shared productiondesigner duties and everything else I was doing
with one of the producers. Andhe's a painter, and also a photographer. And

(47:21):
he's like, you know, I'll takecare of the painting, no problem. I'll take
care of it. So but I just... schedule...
things running amok. He was falling behindon it. And so he was actually
creating the painting downstairs while we werelighting the scene. That's and
it came on to set wet, like it was that like,we need that's it right. we
got to shoot this thing. So we shot with thispainting and it's in several
scenes featured and also in the background.

(47:47):
So it's just there, it's a presencein the scene. When we shot it, it was something
that I think, and I'm not, myproducer Jay, who is the one who painted it,
he'll be the, I'm not throwinghim under the bus, he'll be the first to admit,
didn't really quite measureup to what we needed. Wasn't quite good enough.

(48:08):
for this where this where thischaracter is supposed to be. Doesn't sink the
movie, but it was somethingthat was problematic. And as I thought, well,
this is something we can livewith. But as we went along with new cuts and
revisions and working on thefilm, all of us felt it was really kind of
dragging it down like this issomething it should be a better piece of art.
So that it became all right,we need to find more money to have the great

(48:31):
Paul DeNigris replaced thispainting at about 40 shots. So that was the
painting. And again, that'snot something that's a fix it, exactly what
it is. Sowe commissioned a piece of art
that we were happy with, and, but it only existedas a digital piece of art. So

(48:51):
you had to not only place it, you had to adda canvas texture to it. So it
would look authentically in the space. Youhad to, you know, move it in
3D space to match it. whatever angle it was.
And then you had to burn it.

(49:13):
Burning was planned, but youhad to burn your digital painting
texture layer.
Absolutely. Yeah. And for the most part, it was relatively simple, right?
It's a square canvas, planartrack. Where it became a problem was you had
your lead characters having a

[Pa (49:35):
conversation right in front of the damn thing.

[Paul DeNigris] (49:36):
long conversation, including lots

[ (49:42):
hands do this fun thing where they motion blur and they almost disappear.

[Paul Osborne] (49:47):
Oh yeah.

[P (49:48):
in the texture of whatever's behind them as they're moving.
And it wasn’t lit to be replaced. So it wasn't likewe lit it with like a highlight
or whatever to separate it. There's no, it'sjust, there's no separation.
We weren't thinking we were gonna need to replacethis painting at any point.

[Paul DeNigris] (50:02):
Yeah.

[ (50:02):
So yeah, there's a few tricky shots with that with, or it's over the shoulder
shots. One character has herhair up and there's wisps of hair dangling
in front of that canvas. I'msure that must've been a fun treat.
Yeah, so we had we had a fair bit of edge repair that we had to do on things
and actually like rebuildingthe fingers and all of that to get it to work.

(50:27):
Yeah. But but again, it's thekind of thing that Yes, you say it didn't sink
the movie, but the movie worksso much better with that painting being

[Paul Osborne] (50:35):
Agreed. yeah [Paul DeNigris]
Right. The idea is it's supposedto be that she is... She's passionate enough and
good enough at that, that'swhat she should be doing, but she's not. And that's
part of the tragedy of themovie, yeah, is that she's not pursuing being
an artist.
Yes, exactly.

[Paul DeNigris] (50:55):
And if it's a bunch of stick That’s right. There
are a lot of there are a lotof would be artists in the film and some of
them we intentionally createdbad art, like they well they're just not very
good. But then some we wantedto be like, No, but this person actually is
really good when I create kindof a spectrum, you know, which is all artists
that there's a spectrum of seeingamong non professional artists. So we had fun

(51:16):
creating some bad art. And butthat was one where it really needed to be like,
she's like a little bit of ayou know, she could do this. You know, and
it would mean something if shecould do this professionally, so.
Yeah,and that's the kind of stuff I love, regardlessof how hard it is to fix edges
and wispy hair and moving hands and all thatstuff, it's my team and I being
part of your team made your film visibly, viscerally better.

(51:46):
right?

[Paul Osborne] (51:46):
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's, when I say, and Iwould say, Yes, it's a cleanup, but really,
it wasn't, it wasn't a, thoseweren't cleanup shots like, hey, there, you
know, there's a C-Stand visiblein the, in the, in the window and the reflection
or, you know, that,
Right.

[P (52:06):
that stuff, take it or leave it, you know, that any technician, any good
visual effects technician shouldbe able to do that stuff. It's where we get
to help you better art directyour movie or better sell a story point.

[Paul O (52:21):
to better tell the tale
Exactly. That’s where I thrive.

[Paul Osborne] (52:23):
You know, we are all filmmakers.
That's where I always wantto be. I want to spend your VFX budget doing
stuff that matters.

[ (52:38):
I only want to spend money on VFX doing stuff that matters. So we're
on the same team there.

[Paul DeNigri (52:43):
Yeah, absolutely.

[Paul Osborne] (52:43):
But it's true, and this is true
in your film is a collaborator.
And everybody on your film, hopefully, is contributing,just telling the tale. Everybody
is working as a filmmaker, and especially peoplewho are in, especially your
creative key positions. I think everybody Ithink down to your PA down to

(53:05):
your craft service. Honestly, you know, I,I try to, you know, have everybody
on set, feeling that they cancontribute. And thus far, I've
been lucky enough that they feel like theycan and you know, they come
up with good stuff. I don't care who comesup with the best idea. Let's
all make this thing together. But certainly,you know, it's important to
stress that once shooting wraps, your visualeffects people, your sound people

(53:29):
your designer, your mixer, your color people,these are all, they're all,
they're there to help you do the final rewriteof the film. They're there to
make the film, not just prettier, better, creatively,story-wise. That painting, replacing
that painting changes and improves the story,period.

(53:56):
Stripping out those weird ass,making the mall look bizarre and soulless
and dead,that's contributing to the story.
That says something it didn't say before, youknow? That it wouldn't have
said if you'd not brought that to the table,you know? So, exactly. And that's,
you know, and thank you for coming on boardto doing that because that makes

(54:18):
the film better.
Yeah, and it's always a pleasureto play on your movies because
you are that open collaborator.
I can say, hey, what if we try this? And there’splenty of times when I throw something
out and you're like, nah, I'mnot concerned about that or
no, that's not gonna work, right? And that'sa director's job, right?

(54:40):
Yeah, you basically, yeah, it's to take, it's to field all the ideas and which ones work on

[P (54:45):
this story. You have to kind of know what hangs on the spine. Like I said I
get to take credit for it afterwards.
So, I get to stand there at the Q&A and say, yes, that was my idea. No, I don'tat all. But, yeah, it's absolutely
true. It's like, you know, what does hang onthe vine? There are things often

(55:07):
that, that I come up with that don't peoplego, that's not gonna work. You
can't, you're telling this like, okay.

[Pa (55:16):
Yeah. Right on. So we don't know when Fluorescent Beast will be hitting
festivals.
We do not. It was, yeah, we'rein the whole submission land right now. You
wanna make some phone calls?
Wanna call some festival directors and sendsome threatening emails or bribes.
I hear bribes are good. Yeah, no, it's justa wait and see at this point,

(55:40):
see what happens. I mean, that's somethingthat unfortunately is just part
of the process. Um, even when you know thefestival people, you send it
into them and they, there's a festival, uh,programmers have this cone of
silence that they kind of go into when they'reprogramming because

[Paul DeNigris] (56:00):
Mm-hmm.
they never know what can happen.
And so even if they love your movie and, andthey want to play it right away,
they still don't talk to you until it's timeto announce. So at least they
don't talk to me. I don't know if it maybe,maybe you found a different
story.

[Pau (56:13):
Hey, you made a movie, and you can do a quick plug on this, you made a
movie about the festival circuit,didn't you?

[P (56:19):
I did make a movie about the film festival circuit called Official Rejection,
which came out in 2009, becauseI am 100,000 years old now. That's also available
on Prime, I believe, free, ifyou’re a member. And there's a nice DVD with all
kinds of special features floatingaround about that one. But yeah, that one was

(56:40):
talking about the festival circuitat the time. I still think it's a fairly good
primer on the festival circuit.
But I... It's funny, I think the circuit'sgotten a lot tougher. Lately,
I think, you know, it's part of that is streamershave realized this is a good
place to launch films and an easy way for them forfilms that they're putting out

(57:02):
to get theatrical play. That they wouldn'tnormally get they can say to
this film because we're not going to do a theatricalrelease, but we'll play is at
a festival. And so they're, of course, they'regoing for top tier festivals
for the most part, but they're already thesesort of awards type studio movies
taking those places and a lot of vanity projectsfrom celebrities taking places

(57:23):
in those. And now a streamer is putting allof their wares in those
festivals and also all of their pilots forshows into those festivals.
It's sort of really pushing down and creatingfewer and fewer spots. So I've
noticed a number of filmmakers that have been,you know, made multiple films
on the festival circuit, not being able toget any movies on the circuit

(57:46):
now. We're getting very few festival dates.
It's become very difficult.
So fingers crossed we get in. But not to bea Debbie Downer there, but it
has become a much tougher circuit and the politicshave changed a little bit as
well. So when I watch Official Rejection, yeah,some of this is still true.
And some of this, I might've come at a differentway or there might be new politics

(58:11):
to... place in there, some addendums to thingslike premiere status that might
be more useful. So I think at this point, it'sthe film festival circuit was
like 14 years ago.
It's hard to believe it's beenthat long. Paul and I know
each other since Ten ‘Til Noon, that film that'sbehind him played at Phoenix

(58:34):
Film Festival in 2006.

[Paul Osborne] (58:39):
2006, my God, dude.

[Paul DeNigris] (58:40):
yeah,
it's crazy.

[Paul Osbor (58:43):
That's crazy. Yeah, but Official Rejection is so
old that they're sending in VHS screeners tofestivals in the mail. Like, I think it's
that old. It's shocking.
Yeah, not only do we not send things by the mail,but who's got a VHS anymore?

[Pa (59:00):
It was like, what do I need a doorstop?
Yeah. All right, so what's the plan,whether it hits festivals or not, what's the distribution plan for Fluorescent Beast?

[P (59:14):
Well, well, we'll see again, it's sort of an uneventful answer. We're seeing
wait and see what happens withthe festival circuit because the festival circuit
can change the way your filmis perceived. And that changes how we pursue
distribution. What I like todo is while we're playing the festival circuit,
while we're generating, youknow, Googleable things, reviews, articles,

(59:34):
press, play dates, which sortof leverage that attention for distribution
for distributors. And so ifthat doesn't happen, we have to come out distributors
a different way. But there areways to do it. And you know, now that I'm living
in the UK, there are a lot ofhere, specifically, there's a rash of neighborhood

(59:59):
independent theaters all overthe city, all in all the different boroughs
town and that are half theirscreens are dedicated to larger films or large
to current releases, half dedicatedto older releases in independent films. And
so it is possible potentiallyto mount some sort of release in London, you
know, and use that to leverage.
So there's all kinds of different, we'll haveto see, there's a couple, there's

(01:00:22):
some plans forming, but a friend of mine, LucasMcNally, he has a film called
Up Country. And he, which this'll blow yourmind. He shot it in 2010. He
just finished it. So that'll show you how longit goes. He finished it last

(01:00:44):
year. He submitted it to festivals. I don't thinkit got into really any that
he wanted to get into. So he pulled it. Andwhat he did was he just he's
in Maine. He's a local Maine guy. And there'sno independent film infrastructure
in Maine, at least that he's aware of. Becauseof that, when he four walls

(01:01:06):
his film in a local theater in Maine. he canget into the big newspapers
and not just in his hometown, he can get intothem in the Maine papers and
Bangor and all the other Maine cities.
And so he's done that and hesold out the screening and now because of that
other theaters are contactinghim and he's mounting a very strategized Maine

(01:01:30):
theatrical distribution forthis movie. And from the one screening is already
in the black on the film. Sohe's now mounting this and he's using that
to now drive DVD sales, Blu-raysales and create promotion for VOD. And this
is sort of, you know, how he'sdoing it. So there's there always more than
one way to skin the cat andalways a different way to come at it. But him

(01:01:53):
watching him leverage that tome is very inspiring to come at it a different
way. And to use the uniquenessof his situation to drive the film, because
ultimately, that's what separatesyou from the deluge of independent films is
how are you separate? What'syour what's your... What's your currency? Because
whatever makes you unique isyour currency. And that's how, there's a way

(01:02:17):
to find out what that is andthread the needle on getting your film out
there to the world.

[Pau (01:02:22):
That's a great way to look at it. And also really awesome advice for any
independent filmmakers who,uh, who may be watching this.
Yeah. And on that topic,[Paul Osborne]: And on that topic.
what is one piece of advicethat you would give to independent filmmakers
or any filmmaker at any budgetlevel who maybe isn't experienced with visual

(01:02:44):
effects, but thinks, you know,I really need VFX to tell this story. What's,
what's one piece of adviceyou would, you would share with them as they
embark on that.
Oh my God, plan, and don't planalone. Plan with your visual effects artist,
right? It's plan with them.
Don't dictate, don't, just plan. Here's whatI wanna do. That's it, and come
up with a game plan with as much time as youhave, as much advanced time

(01:03:08):
as you have, and as much, and as detailed,and as thoroughly as you can
plan. Plans will always come asunder. Thingswill always change. The more
you plan, the more completely you plan, thebetter you can change those
plans when things happen. And working withyour visual effects artists

(01:03:29):
ahead of time, working with them before youget into set. One, they're gonna
be better prepared to give you what you need,and you're gonna be better prepared
to give them what they need to give you whatyou need. But also, you're investing
them in the process. Things do go awry, theyfeel that they're a valued contributor

(01:03:51):
to this, they're gonna give you more. Peoplewho are motivated, people like...
visual effects artists are creative people.
If you engage them creatively,you're going to get more out of them. That's
simply what it is.

[P (01:04:12):
Great answer. So what's next for you, Paul? What projects do you have in
the pipeline?
Well, I am currently developinga new film that will be shot in the UK, with
a combination of UK and US actors.
And we're just sort of still figuring it out,but leaning towards sort of
quirky murder mystery. We'll see where thatgoes. But it's still honestly,

(01:04:35):
it's still in the germinal stages of figuringit out. It's sort of like elements
keep presenting themselves. I'm like, oh, howdo I incorporate that into the
stew? You know? trying to strike inspirationfrom the things around you and
going, okay, well, how does that work in? Ihave found something I've learned
as a writer is that when I find things thatinterest me at the moment or

(01:05:00):
interest me at the time, or things that areworrying their way into my life
that I have an authentic reaction to, in findingways to weave those into the
story, I get a much more authentic feelingtale out of it. That's what
it seems to me. Like, you know, FluorescentBeast is an odd series of
elements, but my frustrations are in there.

(01:05:23):
And that's sort of where I domy best work. So honestly, it's figuring out
the stew right now.
Well, I'm looking forward to whatever shape the stew takes and whatever
ingredients I can help contribute.

[Paul Osborne] (01:05:38):
Well, me too.
Where can people find out moreabout what Paul Osborne is up to?

[Pa (01:05:46):
Ah, well, you can follow me on all the socials, Twitter, Facebook, and
Instagram. I'm @PaulMakesMovies on all of those. That's it, find meon the socials, you'll find me.

[ (01:05:58):
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for taking the time, Paul. It's always a pleasure
to talk to you and you areincredibly knowledgeable about independent
film because you've been atthis for so long. And I hope that that's not
an old joke. I've also beenat this for so long.
But anyway, I hope that our audiencegot a lot out of this.

(01:06:20):
I think that all independentfilmmakers out there could learn a lot from
Paul Osborne. So thank you,thank you, thank you
Thank youy for having me, and thank you for[Paul DeNigris]: for being part of this
for all the love. And thankyou for looking exactly like me and having
my same name. I think that all your guests shouldlook like this and be named Paul.

[Pau (01:06:37):
Yes, it's a special filter that we apply in post.
Thanks so much for joining uson today's episode of the VFX for Indies
podcast.
You can find transcripts, imagesand other cool stuff at our website.
VFXforIndies.com.
If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe,follow
like rate review comment on eitherYouTube or your favorite podcast app.

(01:07:01):
On behalf of everyone at Foxtrot X-Ray,I'm chief pixel pusher
Paul DeNigris and we all thank you so muchfor your support of the show.
See you next time.