No Budget Film School with Indie Producer Mark Stolaroff

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Can you imagine crafting remarkable stories through the lens of a low-budget camera and yet producing visually stunning effects that hold the audience spellbound? Our guest, Mark Stolaroff, a seasoned indie producer and founder of No Budget Film School, is a maestro at this. The magic of his DIY filmmaking journey, from Texas college days to his stint with Next Wave Films where he worked with a young Christopher Nolan, is something that will inspire both seasoned filmmakers and aspirants.

Mark's expertise at leveraging visual effects (VFX) on a budget to tell compelling narratives is awe-inspiring. He reveals how he employed cost-effective techniques to create marvelous VFX for his film 'DriverX', and the importance of actor-screen interaction. Mark is candid about the hurdles of working with big companies and shares his enlightening experience with the film 'Devil's Whisper'. Plus, he gives an insider’s view on how to save money on VFX shots.

Mark's journey doesn’t end here. He shares his enriching experience of creating effects-heavy film 'Family Ornaments' on a shoestring budget and working with big VFX companies. Get ready to soak up his wisdom on prioritizing shots, enhancing VFX shots with practical effects, and understanding the technical aspects of the VFX process. Mark's narrative is loaded with tips on how to maximize limited resources when learning about VFX and filmmaking. Join us for this captivating conversation and you'll walk away with insightful guidance to take your own filmmaking journey to new heights.

Mark's website: https://www.markstolaroff.com/

No Budget Film School: http://www.nobudgetfilmschool.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

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
No budget? No problem. You can still use VFX to tell your stories, If you’re smart about it.
Mark Stolaroff, Founder of No Budget Film school, Spills his secrets on this episode of VFX for IndiesHi, and welcome to this episode

(00:33):
of 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.
Joining with me today is MarkStolaroff, a prolific indie producer who is
more than comfortable withusing visual effects and with whom I have collaborated

(00:57):
a number of times. Mark isalso the founder of something called No Budget
Film School, which I will lethim tell you all about in a few moments. So
welcome to the podcast, Mark.

[Mark (01:08):
Hey, thank you for having me. Really happy to be here.
Thanks for being part of this.
And I know you have a ton of wisdom on thistopic to share with our audience.
So before we dive into visual effects and yourexperience with it, why don't
you just tell us who you are and what you'vedone and give us kind of like
the elevator pitch career highlights of Mark Stolaroff

(01:28):
Okay, well, I'm at a disadvantagebecause I'm old and my career is long and it
needs to be a bigger elevatorthan maybe some of your younger guests. So

[Paul DeN (01:37):
It's a tall building.

[Mar (01:38):
yeah, so we'll need to see if I can make this short. So I'm from Texas.
I went to college in the mid-80sand was interested in film, but that was so
long ago, there wasn't likea path for... for people who were interested
in film and who lived in Texas.
I mean, it was like, you know, do you wantto be Spielberg? And you're

(02:01):
like, well, how can I be Spielberg? There wasn'tan independent filmmaking
movement at the time, really, that startedin the early 90s, that kind
of thing. So I was a business major at theUniversity of Texas, but I
snuck, they did have a really good film, undergraduatefilm program that I snuck
into and was, you know, I guess kind of likea double major, made films
on film on 16 millimeter and edited with arazor blade on reversal 16

(02:26):
millimeter. And realized I really do love thisand I wanted to direct and
make movies. But again, there wasn't reallya pathway. So when I left
Texas, I was in investment banking for twoyears as investment banking
analyst in New York. And then I came back toHouston after that program
was over and just as random as you could be,I started a theater with an

(02:52):
old friend of mine that I grew up with, a livetheater and did that for five
years and produced live theater, what I wouldcall DIY, low budget theater.
I didn't know anything about theater really.
And we had our own space andit was really a great time. But all that time
I really wanted to do film.
And for some reason this idea of like DIY,do it yourself, filmmaking

(03:15):
was always my passion for whatever reason itwas in college. And it was
as we were doing this theater, and I grew upon like Saturday Night Live,
and there's just something about that kindof, let's go do a show and
let's don't raise money and do all that kindof stuff, was always in my
things, in my back, and just as part of mycomposition. So eventually

(03:36):
in 1994, I left Houston, I went to Los Angelesto become a director of no-budget
films, and I say no-budget now, because atthat point in 94, That movement
had started with Slackers and Clerks and ElMariachi. There was a model
now for making films with very little money.

(03:59):
And I remember I saw Clerksin the beginning of 94 at the Houston Film
Festival, World Fest. AndI went, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna
make Clerks. And I had $30,000saved up, something like that anyway, which
is what they spent. And Ithought I'm gonna go to LA and I'm gonna make
a movie. And so I came outto LA, I worked at Corman starting out, a friend
of mine was running the studioat Corman. He was in my fraternity back at Texas.

(04:24):
And so I started as a PA andI worked my way up to like eventually like,
you know, in the AD departmentas, you know, second AD, first AD, not really
first AD on a big Corman movie,but started doing that kind of work. And I
wasn't really making my ownfilms. I was kind of realizing how hard it was
to kind of do that. Andthen in 1997, as I was kind of trying to figure

(04:48):
out what I really wanted tobe doing, there was a company created called
Next Wave Films that a gentlemannamed Peter Broderick created. It was announced
at South by Southwest thatyear. And IFC Films was financing this company.
And I read about it and Ithought, oh my God, this is what I want to
do. I want to work for thisguy. Cause it was the whole mission of this

(05:12):
company was to look at allthe, no budget films that were being made at
the time and pick the bestones and then give them finishing funds and
provide other support to bringthese films out into the world. And I thought,
this is, you know, even thoughI wanted to make those films, you know, I have
a kind of a producer mindset,I guess. And I thought, I just want to be involved

(05:33):
with this. And so I sent Petermy resume and he hired me and it was off to
the races. So for six years,I worked at this company called Next Wave Films.
We got involved in some reallyterrific films by some filmmakers that maybe
you've heard of. There wasa guy named Chris, what was his last name?

(05:56):
Nolan, Chris Nolan that wegot involved with on his film Following. We
gave finishing funds to thatfilm and I worked with Chris for several years
on that movie. Joe Carnahanwas a filmmaker we got involved with, may have
heard of. Amir Bar-Lev, who'sa documentary filmmaker, who's very prolific.

(06:18):
We ended up getting involvedin like 13 films. We produced three films from
the beginning, took sevenfilms to Sundance, five films to Toronto. All
those films, most of those films,almost all of them got theatrical release.
And I did that from 1997 to2002. It was a great experience, it was a great

(06:39):
job. I couldn't ask for somethingbetter in the world of independent film because
I was getting a paycheck andalso working with really exciting filmmakers
who were kind of willing theirmovies into existence, like David Gordon Green
and people like that at thetime. I mean, I knew all those people, whether
we got involved with theirfilms or not. And then Next Wave closed, and

(07:00):
when it closed, I became anindependent producer. And the only kind of
producing I knew how to doreally was no-budget filmmaking. And so I set
off to kind of make my ownno-budget films as a producer. I did five movies
with a gentleman named HenryBarrial. We started shooting our first one in

(07:22):
2004, which is a film calledTrue Love. And the last film we did together
was called DriverX, whichI'll definitely talk about. And in that timeframe,
starting in 2005, I createdNo Budget Film School, which was just an opportunity
for me to teach what I hadlearned about no budget filmmaking, both from
the work that I was doingas a producer at that time, but also probably

(07:45):
mainly the experience I hadat Next Wave Films where, you know, I saw such,
I mean, I saw probably 4,000movies that were submitted to us. And then
when you look at 4,000 moviesand you pick very few of them, you know, it
trains your mind and like,what's important here, you know? It's often
the things that you don'tthink about. It's not production value. It's

(08:05):
not shooting on 35 millimeter.
It's not the things that some people thinkit is. And there's a lot of
lessons you get from, you know, speaking toall those filmmakers over
the years, working closely with some reallytalented ones. And so I turned
that into a two day class, weekend workshopthat I taught for many years
in person. I started kind of getting... it got harderto do as my filmmaking stuff

(08:26):
got more, got busier. So, and then COVID hit.
When COVID hit, then therewasn't anything to do. So I started teaching
online classes and doing severaldifferent webinar series. Had this thing called
No Budget Confidential whereI interviewed, much like you're doing with
me, I interviewed filmmakersand we talked about, usually just one movie

(08:50):
and broke that movie down.
I did several of those. I have this thing calledthe Guest Expert Series. I
have something called No Budget Film Club.
But anyway, I was doing alot of that with COVID and then when COVID
kind of let up and I haven'treally done that in a bit, in about a year,
I haven't done one of thosebecause I've been busy with kind of the movies

(09:11):
I'm working on right now.
And I should also mention I'm in North Carolinaright now. I live in Los Angeles,
but I've been spending a lot of the last yearhere in North Carolina helping
take care of my 93 year old mother. So, thevalue of the benefit of having
a flexible job like being a film producer.
So I go back to LA when Ineed to, and I work remotely here in North

(09:34):
Carolina now a lot. So that'smy story. That was most of the time we have.

[Pau (09:42):
Like I said, it was a tall building, long elevator ride, but you're a
good man, Mark, taking careof your mom. You know, you're a good son. So
that's very sweet.

[Mark Stolaroff] (09:51):
Thank you.

[ (09:53):
A friend of mine, I think was turned down by Next Wave Films.
Let's see, his name was Paul... DeNigris.

[Ma (10:03):
Oh no, really? That guy, he was terrible!
Which film did you submit to us?
Did we talk about this?

[P (10:10):
I don't even, I kid, I don't even remember if I submitted, but the name
certainly seems familiar andI probably did because I was a no budget filmmaker
at that time. I made a featurefilm called The Falls. Original
title was American Falls, got renamed The Falls.
It's weird how certain titles,I mean, I have no memory anymore, but

(10:32):
no budget, I mean, titlesthat were people that submitted films to us,
I remember a lot of them.
I mean, maybe I won't remember the film, butI'll remember the title or
something, maybe one aspect of the film. Imean, there were a lot of
people that we could have done David GordonGreen's George Washington.
We were really close to doing that, but wedidn't. We didn't do Justin
Lin's Good Luck Tomorrow, which was kind ofa mistake.

(10:55):
Pi would have been our first filmwhich we did decide to do,
Darren Aronofsky's film. And then just througha series of things that the
deal fell through. Blair Witch Project, samething. We were negotiating
to do that film and then that kind of fellthrough. So, you know, we
had some close calls in there, but again, youknow, got involved with a
lot of really great films and, you know, really,it was a really fun experience

(11:20):
doing all that. I should also mention...
It was a wild time. It was a wildtime in independent film.
Yeah exactly, a really exciting time. I should also mention the last film that I produced, which was, which,you know, the films I do with
Henry were in the like $120,000 to $150,000range. We'll talk about that
with DriverX. But even though I teach, youknow, making a film for $5,000

(11:45):
or $10,000, whatever money you have, in mylast feature that I produced,
I'm working on several movies that I'm notnecessarily the producer on.
I do a lot of work that's kind of producerwork that I don't necessarily
get the credit for because I was hired as somethingelse and then you know, like
oh I can I can help you with this. But the lastfilm that I was a full producer

(12:07):
on was a film called The Last Days of Capitalismwhich we finished right before
COVID. We actually premiered literally theweek that COVID shut everything
down at Cinequest and they shut the film festivaldown after one screening But
that film was more of a true no budget, itwas a $50,000 movie I did
with a filmmaker named Adam Mirvis, who's a,I would call him a Hollywood

(12:28):
screenwriter. He wrote 21 Bridges and he wroteNational Champions and he's
written some other scripts that haven't beenmade into movies yet that
are gonna be big movies. And he and I are workingright now on a new film that
we hope to do for anywhere between 150 and300,000, depending on what
of interest we can get from investors. If wedon't get interest from investors,

(12:52):
we'll just do it ourselves like we did thelast one. But he's a WGA writer,
so we're basically sitting on our hands. Andthen the SAG Strike has kind
of obviously put a kibosh on that too.
So tell me about your relationshipto visual effects and kind of how you have

(13:14):
become a producer that's reallycomfortable with visual effects. And as you
say, there's a lot of timeswhere you come to me and you say, I'm working
on this film, I'm not workingas producer, but they need VFX and you bring
us on. And I think it's becauseof your comfort level with VFX as a whole,
as a process that you're ableto guide a lot of filmmakers that you work with.

(13:35):
Well it’s because you guys are great also, andreally great to work with, affordable and do
great work and just easy towork with. And I know what I'm getting and
all that kind of stuff. So,and I have worked with other vendors for different
reasons, and that's not alwaysthe case with other vendors. But yeah, I think

(13:57):
that I came to it in a waythat I think a lot of maybe... filmmakers,
I mean, there's, if you havea lot of money, then maybe doing VFX isn't necessarily
all that hard, probably, becausesomeone will give you a bid, it'll be expensive
and you say, okay, and youwrite the check and they do the work. And I
never, I've never made movieslike that, that where he had all that money.
And so I just thought VFXwere, you know, they weren't for me because

(14:20):
they were expensive. And,and I wasn't really doing those kinds of movies,
you know, and now what I'velearned is that, you know, several things.
One is that you use VFX forall movies, dramas, you know, little movies,
whatever. They don't haveto be, you know, action films or horror films
or supernatural films to haveVFX these days. The cost of VFX has

(14:42):
come down. A lot of what youcan do yourself, you know, has been made easier.
And so really VFX are foreveryone, no matter the budget. And the more
you kind of know what youcan do, the better, like, you know, oh, set
extensions. I didn't knowI could do this, or I can erase signs, or just
simple things that the moreyou kind of know what's available, the more

(15:05):
you'll use them. And the moreyou know how to use them, which is something
I'm still learning how todo, the less expensive they'll be, the better
the result will be becauseyou're not making mistakes when you're shooting.
So I'll just start that, kindof really answering that question with my first
experience. doing no budget,doing VFX, my first real experience. I mean,

(15:27):
I guess we had, I did a filmcalled Pig several years ago that we had a
couple of shots, but they,I mean, I don't really call them VFX shots.
They were just these weirdshots we hired someone to do for us. But when
I made this film called DriverX, which was about an Uber driver, it was technically,
he was working for a companycalled DriverX and not Uber, but he was essentially

(15:48):
an Uber driver.

(16:32):
We knew goinginto that movie, we were gonna have some VFX
because we had an app thatwas like this fake Uber company app that we
were gonna see on the phone.
I mean, that was the main thing we thoughtwe were gonna be doing VFX
for. And we had to figure out like, well, whatis this gonna be? We had to
create the app, first of all, the overlay,the user interface, this fake

(16:53):
Uber user interface. And then we had to compositeit on the phone. And it was
in a lot of shots. And we knew that going in.
And I'll just say that theend cost of DriverX when it was all said and
done was $136,000. But whenI started shooting it, I literally had no money.

(17:14):
I just put it on credit cards.
I didn't know what the cost of the movie wasgonna be. I budgeted for something
like $100,000. And when I budgeted it, I hadzero money budgeted for VFX,
even though we knew we were gonna do it. Itwas just like, well, we're
gonna... shoot this movie and then we're gonnafigure that out later and
I'll find someone who'll do it for free forme and you know, whatever,
that's always kind of the mentality with alot of these movies. And so

(17:35):
we started shooting it. We didn't talk to any,I didn't know you yet. I don't
think, I'm trying to remember when I first,I met you, I think at the
Phoenix Film Festival, but I don't rememberif it was with DriverX. It
might've been when I, when, cause I think youwere, you introduced the movie,
right? And you knew some people that I know.

(17:59):
Is that the first time wemet? It might've been.
Yes, I believe you're right.
I believe I did. I did introducethe screening of DriverX at Phoenix Film Festival.
And that was after our mutualfriend, Paul Osborne, had introduced us. And
then I yeah, we didn't knoweach other when you were in post on Driver

(18:20):
X. But then we worked togetheron another project. And then when DriverX
was about to go to distribution,you came to me with a couple of things, a couple of minor...
I had a shot or two, right, that theQC picked up, right
yeah, so if I had known youwhen I was in 2015 when we were shooting DriverX,
I would have called you upand I would have said, hey, we're about to
shoot this film and I don'tknow how we're gonna, we don't have this interface

(18:43):
yet. How do we, what's thebest way to do this phone thing? We didn't,
we didn't talk, I didn't,I talked to a couple of people and I didn't
get like the real advice,oh, you know, put markers on the phone or whatever
that advice would have been.
So we made that job really hard. And an easything would have been to build
the interface first and actually have it playingon the phone, not have to

(19:05):
do the compositing. But we just rushed intomaking the movie for a variety
of reasons. And it was all like fix it in postkind of a thing. And sometimes
that's just the way it works. And so it turnsout on DriverX, I had 45 shots.
Most of them were these phone shots, but thenthere were other things. We
had some texts on the screen, kind of fun texton the screen stuff. We had

(19:28):
some, we had a little bit of removal. We hada dolly shot that needed to
be stabilized. And so I didn't know how I wasgonna do all of that. So it
took about a year, it took a couple of yearsto shoot DriverX, just the
nature of the beast, not having the money.

(19:48):
And my lead actor was a PatrickFabian was on Better Call Saul, and we had
to work around his schedule.
And so we shot it over periods. And in themiddle of shooting Driver
X, I got another gig as a producer. I was moreof a hired gun, which I usually
am not. I'm usually putting the movie togetherand financing it myself and
all that kind of stuff. But I did this filmcalled Devil's Whisper, which

(20:10):
was about a half a million dollar horror filmthat had like CGI, you know,
character and all kinds of visual effects.
In fact, I think that filmhad like about 150 shots.

(21:02):
And, you know, sothis was really my introduction
while we were in post on, on DriverX, I was,you know, given money and,
and people that knew what they were doing aroundme to make a bigger movie.
And we had a VFX supervisor on the set becausewe had to deal with a CGI
character that hadn't, you know, been inventedyet. And we had all kinds

(21:22):
of practical effects and visual effects onthat movie and the editor
of that movie was very experienced and well-versedin this. He was assistant
editor on big Hollywood movies. And so, youknow, when it came time to
do the visual effects, he had, he put together,he was the kind of visual
effects producer, I guess you would say, andhe put together this big spreadsheet
with, you know, all the different things youwould have on the spreadsheet.

(21:44):
And he had a visual effects guy back in Germany.
He was from Germany. He hadthis young kid who did all of our work for
barely, you know, anything,who was pretty great. I mean, you know, again,
create this kind of CGI characters.
And so when I started really digging into thework on DriverX, I just went
and looked at his spreadsheet and like, oh,this is how you do it. And

(22:05):
I kind of did that myself. I created a spreadsheet,I put together a reel like
we had done. This was all new to me, you know,like, oh, the reel is gonna
be, you know, I'm gonna put all those shotswithout, you know, without
the visual effects, I'm gonna give them a numberand the number is gonna be
on the spreadsheet. And here's the, you know,here's the, you know, frame to frame,
each shot on this reel and I can showit to people and get, you

(22:28):
know, they can, you know, they can, they knowwhat we're doing now. I mean,
there's all these like things that I didn'tknow how to do. And so the
funny story that's about how we did the visualeffects on DriverX is that
I had called a few people, I'd gotten a bid.
I think one bid was like $40,000.
Someone else gave me a bid that was like $10,000.

(22:54):
And I had literallyzero money, I couldn't do $10,000. And so we
were trying to figure it out.
Somebody who'd taken my class said, I can dothis for you. And I'm like,
for free. And I'm like, oh really? And youjust go, okay. And so he started
creating the app for me for free. And we workedreally closely together on

(23:17):
this app and how it would do it and what itwould look like. And then
once we started building each of these pagessome very, the metadata for
the phone, like what time of the day it wasand how much battery charging,
all this kind of stuff where we're like, becauseit was these closeup shots
and it was like very particular and what partof town were we in and all
this stuff. And so we still didn't really knowhow we were gonna composite

(23:39):
it. I think I got a bid maybe to do compositingfor like five or $6,000 from
somebody who was presented to me as like, thisis the guy who's really good
at doing very inexpensive shots or whatever.
And then, At that same moment,my lead actor, Patrick Fabian, was at like

(23:59):
a diner and someone came upto him and said, hey, you're in Better Call
Saul. And he's like, oh yeah.
And he goes, oh, my wife loves that show. Andit would be cool if we could
get a picture together or whatever. And sohe took the picture and he
goes, so what do you do? And he goes, oh, Ido visual effects. So he's
like, oh really? And he gets his card and Iconnect up with him. And we

(24:22):
said, listen, we're finishing this movie. We haveall these shots. We don't
know how we're going to do them. And he's like,listen, my wife's such a big
fan. I think Patrick's great. I'll do themfor free if we can take him
to dinner or something like that. And we'relike, sign us up. So he did
all these composite shots. Some of them werereally hard because we just

(24:46):
gave him shit. I mean, really bad, like, difficultstuff and it took a long time
because he also worked at a big company. Infact, he did a bid. He had
to present us with a bid from that companyso we would pass on the bid
and that bid was like incredibly expensive.
And then he did these shotsfor us and I ended up paying them both a little

(25:08):
bit of money just becauseI had, you know, just as a thank you. But they
both did it for free and,you know, we ended up with all these shots
on DriverX. And the funny thing is I thinkI shot and finished Devil's
Whisper before we finished DriverX, even thoughwe started shooting Driver
X before. That's just, again, the nature ofmaking money, making a movie
when you don't have all the money. And so atthat point with Devil's Whisper

(25:34):
and DriverX, I had kind of been thrown intothe water, into the deep end
a little bit, and learned a little bit. Andthen I did this show, Millennial
Mafia, which you mentioned, which was a muchbigger budget, like a million
and a half dollar budget. It was a, it wasa, it was a, we were doing

(25:57):
it for E One. It was a, it was a TV series thatwe shot as like a feature
because it was 10, 10 minute episodes. Andso we just shot it as one,
you know, kind of hour and a half, whatevermovie. And I wasn't, I think
when I was, initially involved, I was justas a production accountant.

(26:20):
And then I became the post-production supervisor,which I do a lot of now. I
do that combo all the time now. I do productionaccounting, DIT, and then
I'm post-production supervisor. That's my weird skillsetI guess, outside of producing.
So I worked with my really good friend, LiamFinn on that film, who was

(26:42):
my line producer on Devil's Whisper. And I'veknown him for a million years,
but we'd never worked together until Devil'sWhisper. And then he hired
me to be the production accountant and theneventually the post-production
supervisor. But on that film, we'd alreadymade the deal on who was going
to do all our post, which was this one companywe were doing, we were editing
there and they were doing all the VFXshots. And there were probably,

(27:04):
uh, 130 or a hundred or so shots in that show.
that we knew from the beginningand a lot of them were just dumb. I mean, you
know a lot of like textingand iPad screens and you're like, we can't
we just do the texting live,you know, like we do what we were to say I

(27:25):
mean just shoot the text, justshoot it, you know I don't... stuff like that
is expensive and hard to getto look right and
no reason to do it. So I don't...
my advice for anything on a computer screenor iPad or you know I found
is just do it live if you can do it. I meanit just saves... It's easy and
just takes a little bit of extra time, youknow, maybe, you know, prepping
to have it figured out. But we have a lot of....

[Pau (27:51):
to that point, we do quite a bit of work on phone and computer screen shots
where the actors are actuallyinteracting with something on the screen. And
then we replace it because,you know, glare or focus, or they decided to
change the word or maybe, youknow, something was uh, there's a typo in the
graphic or the producer, thedirector decides they don't like the color

(28:13):
scheme, whatever, but it helpsso much to have them actually, you know, hitting
their thumbs on the rightpart of the screen.
You’d be surprised how many actors,how many actors they have iPhones
in their pocket and they forget how to usean iPhone when you hand them
one that's blank.

[M (28:28):
Right, exactly. Or we didn't have an iPhone. Everybody on the set has an
iPhone. Somebody can put theiriPhone up. But I mean, that's a good point.
So if I were to ask you, soeven if I knew I was gonna replace some of
it or whatever, having themdo as much of it practically as possible helps
you. Is that the,

[Paul DeNigris] (28:45):
Oh yeah.

[Mark Stolaroff] (28:45):
So yeah, so we had all these different kinds of shots.
We had like, blood. Therewas a scene where there was a big fight. There
was a blood splatter and ablood pool. There was a scene where they cut
up a body. In a comic way,it was funny, this show was funny, and there
was like stuff there. We hadall these different kinds of shots, but the
thing that we didn't counton going in was we had shot in two locations

(29:08):
with graffiti. One of themwas a location that we had rented this location,
signed the deal, the guy thatowned it had done the graffiti himself. He
hired artists or whateverto do the graffiti because that's the kind
of look, rented it as a locationthat had graffiti, it was like supposed to

(29:29):
be like a kind of a dangerousplace or something. And we didn't think we
were gonna have to worry aboutthat graffiti. And then the other location,
it was just in the background,just people who were tagging in the background,
it wasn't like an artist orwhatever. And then there was this lawsuit in
New York or something thathappened like right after we shot where someone

(29:51):
got some kind of a suit becausetheir graffiti was in a movie or something,
I don't know. And the circumstanceswere probably a lot different than our circumstances,
but it basically scared theshit out of the legal department at E One. And
they were like, well, youguys have to remove that graffiti, because
they couldn't get a, on thebuilding that they hired the artist, they couldn't,

(30:12):
that artist disappeared orsomething, they couldn't get any kind of a
release for the graffiti.
And we were like, okay, you're gonna have toremove all the graffiti. I
mean, this is like everything you see is graffiti.
And we're like, how the fuckare we gonna do that? And so I went back to
Yoshi, the guy who'd donethe stuff for me on DriverX, and he did this,

(30:34):
he completely turned intolike 3D, you know, just like removed everything
and then built it all backup and then hired somebody to do the graffiti,
whatever. It was insane whathe ended up doing. And then that was, I think
the first time I'd actuallyworked with you, there
were maybe some other shots,but we hired you to do the graffiti removal
on the other scene. Whichwere several shots.

[Paul DeNigris] (30:57):
Mm-hmm.

[Mark (30:58):
And when I started seeing like your work and how much it costs, I was
like, God, I wish I couldhave used you for this whole movie. Because
it was just, the company thatwe ended up doing most of these shots with was just
so expensive and not as easyto work with. But again, we'd already made
that deal before we went intothe production. So then after that, I think

(31:19):
is when, it's like, okay,well, you're my go-to guy, when I'm doing,
you know, visual effects andyou did, let's see, what did I do after that?
Well, I contacted you forLast Days of Capitalism because I thought we
might do some visual effects,but we ended up, we were able to do the things

(31:41):
practically. So I don't thinkwe had any visual effects on that movie.

[P (31:46):
I'm still bitter about that.

[M (31:47):
Yeah, well, you know, we had that, we had a safe, we had to create a...
a floor safe and this hotelwe were shooting in had marble floors. And
I'm in Las Vegas and I'm drivingto Home Depot's and getting marble matching,
trying to match the marble.
And I am not crafty at all. And I built thiscontraption with this marble
and a piece of some wood, some hinges to makeit look like we were opening

(32:10):
up a floor safe. And we thought we would haveto clean that up or whatever.
And it like just the way we shot it or whatever,it looked pretty real, it
worked out. Sowe just faked it. But
then, you know, doing this film that I justfinished, it's about to come
out, and I know you've spoken to the director,so you probably talked a lot
with him about the visual effects on this movie,but I did this film called

(32:32):
Kill Her...
Dark Sky Films is releasingit. And this was a low budget, more money than
I had to make DriverX, butnot very much money at all. I don't think we're
talking about the budget,but it was not a lot of money. And we had money
budgeted for VFX, but it wasbased on, it was just the way I usually do

(32:55):
a budget where you go, howabout this number? You know, it wasn't based
on, oh, we did an estimateand we figured out how many shots we're going
to have and it should costthis. We're just like, we have about this much
money. Can we get this done?
So on that one, the director,he's done visual effects. He does a lot of
music videos, and it's justsomething he likes to do. And so there were

(33:18):
shots that, and the good newsabout that, there were shots that he knew exactly
how to do that he'd performhimself. And then there were shots where he
was like, I don't think Ican probably pull this off, but he knew how
to shoot those things sothat they could be done relatively easy or
whatever. I mean, you're alwaysgonna have something that you, you know, that's
not kind of optimal in termsof, you know, you're handing it over to the

(33:40):
VFX company, like, sorry,we just couldn't give you something better
than this, and then, you know,you guys do your magic. But on that film, we
had like 80 to 100 shots.
Robyndid maybe 20 shots, and you
did like 70 shots or something, or 80 shots,I don't remember.
But you know.
Um, similar thing where, um,I'm putting together the spreadsheet for this,

(34:06):
um, putting together a reel,um, uh, maybe the big difference is I had money
to do the VFX pulls that mypost house, a post house called Different
by Design, who I always workwith on everything, did the VFX pulls,
but on these other movies,like on DriverX, certainly we did our own
VFX pulls. I mean, whetherwe did it right or not, I guess we did. Um,

(34:27):
but that's, you know, It'snot impossible to do that, but it's something
that we just had to do ourselves.
But in the last couple of movies I've done,we've had the money for, well,
we thought we had the money and then the VFXpulls end up being way more
expensive than you, than, you know, cause youhave more VFX shots usually
than you kind of budget initially, but, buton this one, they did it.
So they, they uploaded those, those platesto you guys. You guys, you

(34:50):
know, went at it, we, we worked out a, a dealwhere like, you know, like,
uh, you know, this is what we have, can youdo it? We think we can do
it. We organized the shots by priority becausewe knew
we probably couldn't get themall done by you and some of them I felt like
if we didn't do the shot atall, it wouldn't be the end of the world. The

(35:11):
director thought, well, it'llbe nice because I can kind of see this and
like, no one's gonna see thator maybe he would give it a shot. But there
were high priority shots thathe knew he couldn't do, that, that those were
the first ones you guys tackled.
And it turned out that you guys pretty muchdid pretty much every shot
on that list. There were a couple that we justdecided that no one's gonna
notice this. There was some removal that wouldhave been hard. And I never

(35:33):
noticed it. We screened the film in festivalsand no one ever sees this
thing that we were gonna maybe remove. Andthen I think Robyn maybe did
a shot or two that he thought he could do.
But you did pretty much allthe other shots. And there were a variety of
shots. There was blood splatter.
there was removal, there was that great shotwhere the guy gets shot in

(35:56):
his down jacket and it was a little bit of blood splatter,but the feathers came off
the down jacket, which I really liked. We didn'teven tell you
to do that, and I really likedthat one. But there was a variety of things,
and if you're making a horrorfilm like this one, you're probably gonna be
doing visual effects. You'llhave practical effects. We had practical blood

(36:19):
work, and... Some of thatyou just enhanced, you know,

[Paul DeNigris] (36:22):
Mm-hmm.

[ (36:23):
and some of it we didn't have any blood, you know, practical blood work at
all. We just added, we triedto be subtle, you know, somewhat subtle with
some of it. It wasn't a realheavy duty blood, you know, movie or whatever,
But a good example of just,you know, and once you're, once you've got
your set, you commit to like,well, we're gonna have visual effects. Then

(36:45):
you start looking around andlike, oh, it'd be nice if we could fix this
and fix that. There was a...
there was a stabilization shot we gave youguys that it was a dolly
shot that just had a little bit of a bump init that would have been nice
to not have the bump. And you're like, oh,we can do that for this little
bit of money. And so you fix things like that ifnow. I think on any budget

(37:07):
level is start out at the beginning, thinkingabout, look at your script
and what you're gonna have to spend money onand start thinking about like,
can I do this with visual effects that willbe cheaper than doing it practically?
Whether that's, again, like killing, and stabbingor punching or bruises or

(37:29):
whatever, or if it's a location,modifying the background of
the location or something like that. Always,the film that I'm hoping to
shoot soon, it's set in... it's a drama,it's set in Silver Lake, and
we have a house that we wanna use that's notin Silver Lake, but if you

(37:52):
look out the window, it kinda looks like SilverLake, but we wanna have a
shot where we see the lake, you know?
And I'll be calling you aboutthat when we start to figure out exactly what
the shots are, because we'llprobably do a green screen, and we'll have
to figure out if we can makethis work, but we'll put something behind the
window, and whatever the bestway to do that, and light that, and have this

(38:14):
like... shot of Silver Lakeoutside the window that we want to look real.
We'll be contacting you andtalking to you about the best way to do that.
And then there's some other,there's some shots with some seagulls that
we will probably, some ofit will use stock footage and some of it will
probably have to just, itmight be just completely CGI, kind of seagull

(38:34):
work or whatever, subtle stuff.
But so you'll get that call. But again, thisis one of those things where,
you know, as we're planning it, we sit downand we'll really start to
think about what are these, these are the VFXshots, let's do a budget on
those before we start, you know, before westart making this movie and
do it right. I'll just say the last film thatI, that I've just, just delivered,

(38:55):
I mean I delivered Kill Her probably threeweeks ago, just finished delivering
that film to the distributor, but this one,I just, we just delivered
like a couple of weeks ago, which was a filmcalled Family Ornaments, which
my partner, Liam Finn, actually wrote. Andhe produced, he's usually

(39:17):
a line producer, but on this one, he wroteit and produced it for Tubi.
It's a made for Tubi Christmas movie. Andwe knew an executive at Tubi
that was actually an executive on that MillennialMafia movie. I mean, he's
since kind of moved on, but he knew him andwe pitched him this movie.
where it was like a high concept movie where,you know, it's family, it's

(39:43):
Christmas and the family buys this Christmasornament that you make a wish
to. And they, without getting into the kindof details of the story, these
Christmas ornaments come to life and they attackthe family. In kind of
a fun, like Jumanji, Gremlin's kind of a way.
And so the director of themovie is a visual effects supervisor for a

(40:07):
big company called or it'skind of called Mammal, they do visual effects
for big studio films. You know, when yousee like a big Marvel movie and you see all
the, at the end, there's likesix or seven different companies that do different
aspects of it. Mammal, sometimesyou'll see their name and that's the kind of
visual effects that they normallydo. And Greg, the owner of Mammal, is like a

(40:32):
lot of people, they come outto California and you want to be a director
and then you get caught upin something else that you're good at. And
this may be your story, Paul.
You know, it's like, I really came out hereto direct, but I'm good at
this and now I make a living doing this andI never ended up going back
to directing. And so Liam knew Greg and gavehim that opportunity, like,
hey, do you want to direct a movie and do allthe visual effects for this

(40:54):
movie? And, you know, do them for a good price.
We won't have a lot of moneyto give you for the visual effects. So that
movie has... can't remembernow, 400 or 500 shots? It had a lot more shots than we thought. Because that's what happens. And when you're working with a
visual effects person, you just havea lot more shots. And...

[Paul D (41:19):
Yep. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like
a nail. Right. So when you'rea VFX person in the director's chair, you're
like, yeah, that's a VFX shot.
Yeah, we'll do this later. We'll do this,you know, so, and we had an editor on that
one, Frank, who he was a visualeffects producer on Ted Lasso. And so he really,
I mean, it was a really good,for no money, for really having very little

(41:41):
money, because that movie,it was more money than again, like Kill Her,
but not the kind of moneyyou would have to do the, we have all these
CGI characters. I mean, thisis, I don't know, it would be like millions
of dollars and it was notmillions of dollars.
if we had paid full price.
But on that one, I'll just say this as a kindof lesson learned from, I

(42:02):
would say a real movie, like a real VFX movie.
From the beginning, like thisis gonna be VFX, this will be a huge part of
this movie. The things thatcaught us off guard were, and these are people,
experienced people, is thenumber of shots.
So when we're budgeting theVFX pulls, we came in way under because there

(42:27):
were just so many more shotsthat I had to do pulls for. And then the amount
of time it took, it took alot more time. So I would always just, if you're
budgeting for this and youhave a lot of shots and you know you're gonna
have like a post house doyour pulls, you know, you need to budget more
than you think, probably forthat. Then the amount of time it took, I mean,

(42:49):
Greg has his way of doingit and vendors and this and that, outside vendors
and whatever, doing a lotof the work himself, but it took a lot more time to
get these shots done. Andagain, these aren't simple composite shots.
These are creating characters,and you're editing while you're creating those
characters. And so it's kindof going back and forth. You can't really lock

(43:09):
your picture until you'vegotten a certain amount of the way there with
the character work that you'recreating so that you can go, okay, this is
what that character is doing.
Okay, now we can lock this shot. We know, andeven then, we had to pull the lock once or
twice, which makes it hard to get everythingelse done. I mean, you can't

(43:31):
do your sound, you can't really start doingcolor correction, things like
this, when your picture’s unlocked. So timewas another issue. And then
it's just more in the conform. Shots are comingin. They're not coming all
at one time. And when you can do your conformall in one sitting, you know,

(43:55):
or over, you know, several days, but in onesitting, the conform, if you're
having, you know, a post house do your conform,that'll be less expensive.
But when you're doing, you know, stuff hereand there over a period of
time, it just costs more to do the conform.
You're just gonna add, youknow, add a lot of hours to that. And you,
and you know, we had a deadlineand we started getting the situation where

(44:19):
it's this countdown. We stillhave 10 shots that we're waiting on, and we're
coloring around those shotsand then we're getting a few shots in, conforming
those and then maybe we'redoing a little bit of color on that just so
that as they come in, we'recoloring as we go. That stuff, again, you can
do it that way but it's alittle bit more expensive. But I'm really proud

(44:42):
of the movie. I mean, it'llbe coming out on Tubi November 23rd. For those
of you who like, you know,it's not a Hallmark Christmas movie. It's definitely
not that kind of a movie,but, and I'm not saying it's, you know, for
a lot of your viewers or followers,but you know, if you want to get in that Christmas
spirit, but in a more derangedkind of a way, you might enjoy the movie. So

(45:07):
there's some really, there's some reallygreat effects. I mean, we talked to you about
doing some things on thatas well that we ended up not needing to do,
but, but Greg, you know, Gregdid a good job on these, creating these characters
and stuff, so.
as I would expect, Mammal would,for sure. They do great work.

[Mark Stolar (45:27):
But you guys, I've never asked you to do CGI.
You guys do, you've done that kind of work, right, on stuff?

[P (45:33):
Yeah, we've done that. We're doing more of it. Okay, but your experience
on this movie, remind me ofthe name again?
The Family Ornament or no Family Ornaments.
Family Ornaments, okay. So bigger budget than you're used to working with, but still some of thesame themes, right? Everything's
more costly, everything takes longer, right?

(45:56):
There's always things thatsurprise you, things that you didn't budget
for. There's a few technicalterms that you've used a couple of times in
this episode. And I wanna makesure that for our less technically minded audience
members that we address whatthose are. So you've used the term...

[Mark (46:11):
I got them right, because I'm not that great at this stuff.

[Paul DeNigris] (46:13):
No, you definitely have. You've
mentioned VFX pulls and you've mentioned theconform. So why don't we just
really, really quickly, you know, for,for filmmakers who maybe
are completely new to this, or maybe arejust, they’re DIY people who have
never had to think about how do we pass informationback and forth between different vendors,

(46:33):
different departments, if we can just address those terms.
Yeah, and I'll just say this. Let's start from a way of doing it when you just have no money. Soit's pretty simple to think.
Normally when you shoot, and this isn't alwaysthe case, and I recommend
if you're really working with no money to notdo it this way, but normally,
you're shooting on a, let's say you're shootinga 4K, I mean, I'm often shooting

(46:58):
just ProRes, which I prefer to shoot. And infact, the last several things
I've done. Got one more movie in the hopperthat we will be, I've already
contacted you a little early on that one. There's,we've changed the movie so
much, I don't know. A lot of those shots aregone now, but there's another
movie that I'm finishing. All the last threemovies we essentially shot
like ProRes 422HQ, like camera original. Butoften, people like, I'm shooting

(47:24):
8K raw, and whatever, and you're shooting thesehuge files, and then you're
editing with a proxy. So you're converting,you're shooting this 4K or
8K, you know, raw and you can't, you know,you don't want to edit that.
So you're creating an HD, you know, let's sayProRes proxy media that you're
editing with. And if you're editing on an Avid,which is what I've been doing

(47:48):
the last two or three shows, which doesn'talways, it's a little sometimes
tricky with the conform part of it, at leastwhen you're conforming in
Resolve can be tricky. You know, you're doingall this proxy work and you're
coming up with your edit and you know thatyou've got an edit decision
list and this proxy but you have to go backto the original camera original

(48:10):
footage and apply that edit decision list backto that camera original
so you're going to give basicallythese instructions, you know.
You could do that yourself I guessbut you know I'm working with
this company called Different by Design andI'm handing them the you know
the turn... I'm turning over these instructions, theAAF and the decision list,

(48:33):
and I'm giving them all the original media,and they're going through
however they do it, and they're a little blackbox of Resolve and whatever,
and they're basically taking all those, they'retaking all that footage and
editing it. When you do VFX...

[P (48:49):
Right, so they're rebuilding the timeline
in 8K or whatever your originalmedia was
Right. In Resolve, at least at thatcompany in Resolve. So, but you have these
visual effects shots. So thevisual effects shots you're gonna often do
in your camera original. Andso before you can even get to putting those

(49:10):
shots in, you have to go backto that camera original and pull those shots
and give them to the VFX companywho's then gonna do them, likely they're gonna
be doing them, keeping themin 8K, maybe not, but you know. And then they're
gonna have to send them back.
So you guys are in Arizona, we're in Los Angeles,that's an upload to a, you
know, in both these last movies, well certainlywith Kill Her, you know, this

(49:35):
was fortunately not a huge files, these were4K, again, I think 422, I
think we convinced them, yeah, it wasn't even,it wasn't that, these files
aren't huge, but they're, you know, they'refairly big files, they get
uploaded to a, to the cloud, you guys pullthem down, you do the work,
you upload them back up to the cloud, theypull them down and they cut

(49:55):
them back, they cut em in the movie. What
Which is what we call the conform, right? Whenthey’re cutting stuff back into the movie is what we call the conform.
So I just want, and I don't wanna gotoo much deeper down the technical rabbit hole,
but I do want the audienceto take note. Mark is an exception among producers,

(50:16):
okay? Many, many producersthat I interact with don't have necessarily
have the mastery of all thesetechnical terms like Mark does, okay? A lot
of producers, they are moreon the creative or the money side, and they
rely on other people for technical,which is fine. That's why technical people

(50:38):
like me are in the business,because we provide that service. But Mark's
an exception because he iscoming from the no-budget DIY world. He's had
to learn a lot of this stuff.
And that's kind of what makes Mark an idealclient because the more technical
stuff that he understands and the more technicalstuff he takes care of on his

(50:59):
end means we can just get right to creativework. Okay, I'm not having
to do a lot of that technical stuff. The filesare coming to me ready to be
worked on, right? Some clients they need a littlemore assistance and that you
know sort of eats into the creative time andbudget A lot of times

(51:20):
when we have clients who need more of thattechnical assistance, it just,
it increases the amount of time that we haveto spend, it increases the
cost for them. So it's a good lesson to indieproducers, indie directors.
Learn the technical side of things becauseit really, really will benefit
you in the long run in your ability to communicatewith your technical crew.

[Mark Stola (51:47):
I'll just say this.
It doesn't mean you need to knowevery bell and whistle, every button on the
camera. It doesn't mean youneed to know every step of the VFX process,
but the more you understand,the more well-versed you are, the more you
can facilitate that for thevendors that you're hiring, the more streamlined
and the more economical itcan be throughout the process.

[ (52:08):
I'll just say this, I'm not a super technical person. This is not impossible
stuff to learn. It's mucheasier to learn when you have no money and
you just have to do it, whichis how, you know, and I don't know that much.
I mean, I've worked with people,I'm lucky enough to work with editors most
of the time who are reallygood at this stuff. So like Frank on Family

(52:28):
Ornaments, this job, I mean,I wasn't the VFX producer on this one because
Frank, you know, knew howto do it and it was... really the nomenclature
and the amount of like stuffthat he was doing, it was over my head. I mean,
if I had to learn it becauseif I needed to, I would have been able to do

(52:52):
it. And I could kind of figureit out because I've done it a little bit on
these other movies, but thatwas a really difficult job. And Frank handled
that. On Kill Her, also workingwith an editor who does assistant editing on
bigger movies who really knewhow to do all this stuff and could help organize
it. And what I was able todo, because Chris, the editor of that movie,

(53:14):
I can't let him, I try todo as much as I can, take as much off of his
plate. So he's just editingand he's not getting paid very much. So the
more I understand these shotsand what we're trying to do with these shots,
the more I can be as, eventhough I'm not a producer on Kill Her, technically
I was providing that kindof perspective as a producer of, I don't think

(53:35):
we need to do this, causeI knew every shot. And in fact, on that one,
even though he was doing,you know, like the spreadsheets and stuff,
I think I took that over atsome point. But anyway, I did the reel. I went
in and put that reel together.
So I knew those shots really well. And I mean,I know Final Cut Pro a little
bit, you know? And so I could, you know, createa reel and I can look at every
single shot and go, do we really need to dothis? Cause they were telling

(53:58):
me like, we need to do this, we need to dothis, we need to do this.
And some of them were like, I don't think weneed to do. So I think I took
that. That's what it was. I created that reeland I created that spreadsheet
and I was the one making those priorities likeI don't think this is a three.
If we don't have the money, we can't get tothis, let's don't do this.
And so I think that's really helpful when youdon't have money to be able

(54:19):
to know that process and not just have otherpeople tell you we have to
do this or you have to have some understandingso that you're, so as a, if
you're a producer who's having, who's in chargeof money, you're making good
decisions. But I'll say this one other littlething Something we did on
DriverX as much as we could, but we couldn'tcompletely do it. But the
other thing you can do to save money with thisstuff is if you can edit in,

(54:41):
with your camera original, and you can really,if you're shooting 4K, ProRes,
422, HQ, you could edit that in Premiere, oryou can edit a proxy and then
go back to your, go back and do the kind ofconform pretty easily. I'm
not a Premiere editor, so I may be wrong onthis, but. you should be able
to go back and create a QuickTime with the4K ProRes. And if you can

(55:06):
cut those shots, if you can do those pullsyourself, which it's not impossible
to, you know, the editing system helps youdo that, you can do those
pulls and you can get those shots and you cancut them in yourself. If you
can do that and then you're cutting those shotsin and then you're sending
your post house a single QuickTime with allthe repositions, all the things

(55:30):
that editors do that aren't visual effects,which is now just like every
editor's doing repositions andspeed changes and split edits
and all kinds of stuff. Every editor's likedoing all this stuff now.
Some of those end up, sometimes those thingsbecome visual effects shots
because they're, the Avid or whatever is it,can't be reproduced. But if
you can do all of that in your Premiere timelineor Final Cut Pro, and then

(55:54):
just send that to your post house, then theconform is done. That's the
conform. Essentially, you can do that conformyourself and then you're not
spending all that money. And then what they'lldo is they'll do what's called
a notch conform, where they take that singleQuickTime that has all that
stuff baked into it, not the color, the colorisn't baked in, but all the

(56:18):
repositions and those effect shots have allbeen cut in and baked in.
and they'll just, they'll put it in Resolve,Resolve will cut it up into
the shots, and then you can do your color correctionin Resolve, and no conform,
and we did a lot of that with DriverX becausewe didn't have the money,
but then we still had to wait on shots, soit was a little bit of like,

(56:38):
some of that was baked in, all the repositionsand all that stuff were baked
in, it was really the VFX shots that came,some of them that came later,
that we had to cut in and do, you know, andthen pay money to do the conform,
but if you really don't have any money, youcan do this stuff yourself.
If you're not shooting raw and all this kindof stuff. I mean, I just,
I never see the need for it. I mean, people,I'm sure there's gonna be

(57:02):
somebody who'll tell me differently, but I'vemade a lot of movies. I've
watched them on huge screens, in the biggesttheaters, with audiences,
and in 2K, in HD, essentially,

[Paul DeNigris] (57:16):
Mm-hmm.

[Mar (57:17):
even though we shot in 4K.
And they look pretty good to me. No one's complaining.
So I'm not a big believerin, unless there's a real reason for a particular
project or something, shootingwith RAW or whatever. So.

[Pa (57:35):
Right, well, a lot of times independent filmmakers become very enamored
of the gear and the numberof pixels, and they spend their money on that,
rather than spending it elsewhere,you know, creatively that can that can help
them. It ultimately comes downto story, right? All of these things are tools

(57:55):
to help us tell the story.
And, you know, just hearing you talk abouthow much of the technical side
of things you've incorporated into your workflow.
It reminds me of a quote fromRobert Rodriguez, who again is contemporary
with the filmmakers that youmentioned earlier, like Kevin Smith and Darren
Aronofsky. He said, “If you'rejust creative, you will always rely on technical

(58:20):
people to help you executeyour vision. But if you're creative and technical,
you're unstoppable.” And I thinkevery independent filmmaker needs to have that
balance of creative and technical.
Again, you don't have to master everything.
You don't have to know everysingle thing there is to know about every technical
aspect. But a little knowledgegoes a long way in terms of your ability to

(58:40):
communicate with your team.
Because ultimately, that's what you're doingas an independent filmmaker,
director, right? A director's job is to communicate,communicate your intent with
your team, communicate your vision to the audience.
It's to communicate your goalsin terms of the narrative with your actors,
with your writer... It's all aboutcommunication. And so you're literally working

(59:02):
with one hand behind your back.
If you don't have an understanding of at leasta modicum of the tech stuff.

[Mark (59:08):
Yeah, and I speak for all the old people, because if you're young, you're
learning this stuff in highschool and you're a whiz at all this stuff,
but if you're an old personlike me, you can learn it. And again, you don't
have to know everything. Therejust shouldn't be big mysteries. There shouldn't
be these black boxes. Youavoid as many black boxes where you just go,
I don't know what that is.
And there's still a few black boxes for me,but I try to, and again, being

(59:32):
forced into having to learn it is probablythe best way to do it You
don't have any other alternative, but to doit yourself or learn it yourself,
that's usually a good way. And that's how I'velearned a lot. I mean, I didn't
know any editing system until DriverX. I didn'tknow how to, I mean, I knew
iMovie, but I had to learn Final Cut Pro becausewe were editing in Final Cut

(59:55):
Pro and there was stuff that had to be doneand we couldn't pay people
to do it and I learned Final Cut Pro. And nowI know Final Cut Pro and I'm
not a good editor, but it's helpful and I'veused it to do like delivery
stuff, like, you know, that's another areawhere, you know, if you can,
you know, you can save money by just, you know,doing certain delivery things
yourself, you know, if you can, if you knowhow to do some of that stuff,

(01:00:17):
I mean, I've learned how to do a few of thosethings. I'd prefer not to,
and I would prefer to pay somebody to do it,do it right. So, but yeah,
I just, it's not impossible. And there's alot of YouTube videos that'll
help you along the way or what, or ripple trainingor whatever it is that can
help you along the way learn that stuff.

(01:00:38):
YouTube can be the best film school in theworld, right? If you know how
to search and you know where to look and youwatch reputable people who
share their knowledge. You and I did not haveYouTube growing up and coming up in the film industry. We had to teach ourselves and learn on the
job and learn from our coworkersand our friends and all of that. And you know,

(01:01:00):
the next generation of independentfilmmakers, they have no excuse for not learning
a lot of this tech stuff andbeing able to really, tackle it in a DIY way,
but also knowing the limitationsof their ability and knowing when to call in
a colorist, knowing when tocall in a sound person, knowing when to call
in a cinematographer, knowingwhen to call in a visual effects person. You

(01:01:23):
almost don't even, you don'tknow what you don't know, right? So learning
a little bit about all of thesedifferent trades can really, really help you
as an independent filmmaker.
Yeah, I mean, you know, anotherthing I just always recommend when I'm teaching
my classes for filmmakersis to make shorts. Don't spend a lot of money
on shorts, but like thinkof shorts is just like your film school and,

(01:01:46):
you know, shoot with whatevercamera you have and whatever, whatever. But
if you know you're, you'rewanting to do a feature that has like visual
effects in it, go... go makesomething with whatever camera and
that applies some of those,some of those same kind of visual effects with
your friends or whatever,that maybe no one needs to even see, but you
know, you could put a littlebit more into it, but don't spend a lot of

(01:02:08):
money on it. But use it askind of a way to practice as a proof of concept,
proof of talent or whatever.
And there's nothing, it's so easy to do thatnow with whatever, with an
iPhone or whatever even, but I'm sure you'vegot some kind of a camera,
and you can kind of practice these kind oftechniques or whatever, you
know, if someone like Paul's told you, well,this is kind of what how we

(01:02:30):
would do that shot, you know, I mean, likeout there, these shots on
Kill Her that, you know, they're standard,like, this is how you do that
kind of a shot, you know, we're running oversomeone's head, you know,
there's a way to do that. Everybody kind ofknows how to do that. Everybody
that knows how to do it knows how to do that.
It's not like we inventedsome new type of visual effect shot. I don't

(01:02:51):
know how to do that. But Robyn and hiseditor and his DP, they've
done that stuff before because they've workedtogether on music videos.
So they knew how to set that shot up and doit right. And Robyn can kind
of do that visual effect himself. And I mean,that's something that if I
were a filmmaker, I would love to just playaround. Because I don't know
how to do some of those shots. I mean, I didn'tpay attention enough. I was

(01:03:12):
doing accounting or whatever on that movie. And I would love toand look at the shots and
stuff and see, oh, we did this, and here'swhere the visual effects shot
came in and just play with that myself. IfI was gonna do that for real
for myself as a director or whatever, I wouldlove to just goof around and
it'd be fun to do that. And if you know a littlebit about a little editing

(01:03:37):
software, you can do a lot of that stuff yourself.
So to some degree.

[Pau (01:03:44):
Well, that's a great place to put a pin in this conversation. Thanks so
much for your time and yourexpertise and your wisdom, Mark. I'm sure that
the audience will really appreciateeverything that you've shared today.

[Mark Stolarof (01:03:55):
Thank you, Paul.
It's been my pleasure to behere.
Great, if people want to followyou on social media or reach out to you with
a project maybe, how can theyfind you?

[Ma (01:04:07):
Um, I've become terrible on social media now. Like I barely ever on it.
Um, I mean, my handle on Twitteror whatever it's called now is Stolaroff, uh,
@Stolaroff. I think it'sat @Stolaroff, um, on, uh, Facebook as well.
Um, uh, nobudgetfilmschool.comis my, is the website, but that, that like,

(01:04:29):
I, that's kind of a dead websitenow. I mean, it's still up there. Um, but I
haven't. I can't even reallyedit it anymore. I've been wanting to redo
that website for a thousandyears and I just haven't been able to do it.
But, you know, if you do happento bump into, you know, go on No Budget Film
School and you subscribe,there is, you know, if I start doing these

(01:04:52):
webinars again, they're all,almost all of them are free. I was really proud
of the stuff I was doing duringCOVID. And I'm hoping to do some of those again
when I get back to LA on akind of full-time basis. And... And then my
website, MarkStolaroff.com,has my contact information and stuff that I've
done and some of the writingI've done over the years. I used to do a lot

(01:05:16):
of writing. So a littlebits on that website and some of it's on
No Budget Film School.

[P (01:05:21):
Great. I'll include those in the show notes. And I encourage people to follow
Mark and follow his career.
He's got lots of cool stuff coming up. AndI'm sure you'll hear more about
projects that we collaborate on this show inthe future. Thanks so much
for watching and or listening. If you are watchingthe show on YouTube, please
like, subscribe, leave us a comment, let usknow what you liked, ask questions,

(01:05:44):
give me feedback, tell me what you'd like tosee on a future episode. I
definitely want to hear from you. If you'relistening on iTunes or Spotify
or some other podcast aggregator, a follow,a star rating, and a review
will go a long way towards helping us reachour audience. And if there's
an independent filmmaker in your life who needsto hear this stuff, please

(01:06:06):
send them the show. I think they'll benefita lot from what my guest here,
Mark, has shared. On behalf of everyone atFoxtrot X-Ray, I'm Paul DeNigris, and I thank you for your time and for
watching the show. See younext time.