November 8, 2023 • 56 mins
Fasten your seatbelts, film enthusiasts! This episode is a rare treat as we sit down with the brilliant director Tom Putnam for a thrilling behind-the-scenes look at his latest feature film, 'The Dark Divide.' He reveals the highs and lows of shooting in remote wilderness locations, managing a star-studded cast, and the essential role that visual effects played in bringing the story to life. It's a fascinating peek into indie filmmaking and an exploration into the intriguing real-life story of nature writer Robert Pyle.
Buckle up for an enlightening discussion on managing a feature film production on a shoestring budget. Tom provides an in-depth look at how he creatively wove hundreds of visual effects shots into the film, whilst maintaining a tight budget. Get ready to learn about the critical importance of relationships in the film industry, and how they played a significant role in the creation of 'The Dark Divide.' The amusing Bigfoot scenes, the dramatic performances from comedic actors David Cross and Debra Messing, and the challenges of releasing a film during the COVID-19 pandemic: there's a lot to unpack!
Prepare to be amazed at the power of visual effects in indie filmmaking. Tom talks about how VFX can enhance the narrative, even when you're working with limited resources. You'll get a unique insight into how filmmakers can use VFX to combine takes, fix technical glitches, and create a more dynamic and realistic production. Hear how Tom used VFX to add depth and progress to the film, and how creative solutions were used to navigate the challenges that arose during the making of 'The Dark Divide.' By the time we wrap up, you'll have a newfound appreciation for the magic of indie filmmaking and the creative minds that make it happen.
Watch the film here
Hosted by Foxtrot X-Ray’s founder and “chief pixel pusher” Paul DeNigris, who brings to the conversation 30 years of experience in both independent filmmaking and visual effects, as well as 20 years of experience in teaching all aspects of digital filmmaking at the university level.
For episodes, transcripts, and more, visit http://vfxforindies.com
For more information about what Foxtrot X-Ray can do for your film, visit https://foxtrotxray.com
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Comedian David Cross plays real lifenature writer, Robert Pyle, as he embarks
on a perilous and sometimes comic journeyacross Washington's
Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
In Tom Putnam's feature, The Dark Divide.
This week on VFX for Indies.
(00:36):
Hello and welcome to this episodeof VFX for Indies, a podcast about the intersection
of visual effects and independentfilmmaking. I'm your host, Paul DeNegris,
visual effects, artist, filmmaker,and CEO of a boutique VFX shop called Foxtrot X-Ray.
Joining me today onthis episode is director Tom Putnam, who directed
a film called The Dark Divide,kind of an indie drama sort of comedy that
(01:00):
we worked on a couple of yearsago. We did about 60 or 65 VFX shots for and
had some fun challenges. Welcometo the podcast, Tom.
[ (01:07):
Thanks for having me and man, you're showing me up with your nice video background.
So you can see my laundry, but
[Paul DeNigris] (01:15):
Ha ha
Paul is definitely the creativeone.
[Pa (01:19):
Well, I am the host and it, and I am obviously portraying myself as a visual
artist and expert. And it would,uh, it would, you know, when I first was given
the idea by a couple of businessgurus that I follow to do a content based marketing
strategy with a podcast andeverything, they said, well, just get going
(01:40):
and then get good. And I waslike, guys, I’m in the movie business. I
can't just get going. I haveto actually like put in the work, set up a
nice backdrop.
[Tom Putnam] (01:48):
Looks good!
get a good mic, you know, I haveto do all of this stuff. It's gonna take me
a little longer to get rampedup, but once I do, we should be able to hit
the ground running. And it'sbeen, so far, it's been a really nice process.
It's been great catching upwith filmmakers like yourself, who very often
I haven't talked to since wewrapped your project. And you and I haven't
really had a chance to chatin a couple of years. It was, I think, 2020
(02:13):
that we worked on Dark Divide.
It might even have even started in 2019.
Yeah, and then it came out in 2021. So,you know, that's like that pandemic
period where who knows how long things took.
It's so nebulous.
[ (02:26):
Yeah, so it's been nice. I've had a number of great filmmakers on and sharing
their experiences. And I knowyou've got a lot of experience with VFX, particularly
on Dark Divide, some before,some after. And I think the audience is going
to really enjoy what you haveto share. So why don't you tell us a little
(02:48):
bit about yourself, who youare, kind of what you've done, maybe sort of
like career encapsulation.
leading up to Dark Divide. And then we'll talkmore about that film in particular.
Sure, thanks for having me on.
Hello, I am Tom Putnam. I am adirector and producer. I'm based in Los Angeles,
although everything I seem tofilm doesn't take place in Los Angeles. I'm
(03:11):
a little bit unusual because Ido about half fiction films, not even, probably
a third fiction films and twothirds documentary features and television.
I grew up in Portland, Oregon,which is near where The Dark Divide takes place.
I went to film school and journalismschool at USC, and I have an MBA because I
(03:33):
was very slow during the pandemicfrom St. Mary's University. So I started off
after film school as a post-productionexecutive at the company that was doing the
Power Rangers, Saban Entertainment.
So I kind of come to directing with... a knowledgethat maybe not every director
(03:54):
has about the importance of post-production.
And you sort of hear a joke onset all the time like, oh, save it for post.
We'll fix it in post. And thatnormally is a huge red flag, but that's the
thing I do say a lot. And DarkDivide was kind of a unique opportunity because
usually when I mean that, it'sin editing or sound design and Dark Divide
(04:16):
was really the first time I gota chance to use VFX to... a little bit add
to the film, but a lot of it fixedproblems that happened from a very tough like
20 day shoot out in the middleof nowhere in Oregon with David Cross and
Debra Messing and a whole bunch of funpeople.
(04:36):
both of whom are among my favoriteactors, been big fans of both of them for a
long time. And so when theproject landed on our desk, I went, yes, we're in
Like to do anything fora David Cross, Debra Messing project was an
absolute dream.
[Tom Putnam] (04:55):
Ah, thank you,
And they're both wonderful in the film.
It was a lot of fun to havethem up on our screens and to be looking at them
It was like, oh, thisis a real legit movie.
Well, that's great to hear. Andthis is kind of a great lead into the VFX conversation
because, you know, whatever youthink Dark Divide cost, I would say divide
(05:19):
that by about 10. And, you know,we made this movie that's 90% of it outdoors
shot in really rugged wildernesslocations, many of which people have never
filmed in before in Oregon andWashington. It's a period piece, takes place
in 1995, has huge storm sequences,tons of stunts. It's about a shy butterfly epert
(05:40):
so there was this wholebutterfly component. We went into production
not knowing how we would film.
And in fact, most of the VFX companies we talked to saidthat's going to be impossible
unless you have like $20 million to spend on it.
So it was a huge challengeto figure out how to get the movie that I wanted
(06:02):
because I'd spent 10 years tryingto get it made. I had a certain vision in mind.
But to be able to do that innew and creative ways, which is I think where
like a lot of the VFX came in.
Well, this is a good segue. Why don't you give usjust a quick synopsis, sort
of the back of the Blu-ray cover synopsis ofthe film, and then I'll run
a clip of the trailer.
(06:24):
So The Dark Divide is based ona true story. It's a non-fiction book written
by a guy named Robert MichaelPyle. He's America's foremost expert in butterflies
and moths. He wrote The AudubonField Guide to North American Butterflies.
It's the true story about whathappened in 1995. He got a Guggenheim grant
to spend six weeks... travelingthrough America's largest undeveloped wilderness,
(06:47):
which is in Southern Washington,to catalog new species of butterflies.
But at the same time, he had all ofthese encounters with a certain seven foot tall
kind of famous residentof that part of the world. So we decided somehow
to make like this crazy comedy,drama, horror, science fiction movie
(07:14):
starring David Cross as a shy butterflyexpert and poet who doesn't even he has no
dialogue for like 40 minutes ofthe movie And shooting it in all the real locations
where the movie took place.
(08:13):
So with the least commercial premiseever, we somehow, after dozens of failed pitches,
that's the movie that somehowfound investors. And like most movies, I had
a budget in mind and the budgetI went into production with was about, just
about a third of that. So we didn'thave a whole lot of infrastructure. I mean,
(08:35):
this wasn't a movie with a bunchof trailers and long shoot days. We shot in
20 days and in some cases we wouldhave like eight, 10 locations that we would
film. Huge stunt days. And whenI budgeted the film, I had budgeted it thinking,
planning to somehow digitallycreate the butterflies. There was one day where
(09:00):
we had practical butterflies.
We had an expert with us where he actuallyhas to handle the butterfly, but
for everything else, I just acted as the VFXsupervisor, which I don't recommend,
because I don't know what I'm doing, but Ilucked out. And basically we're
just shooting a ton of plates with the crewasking like, do you know what
you're doing? Like, I see you put a tennisball there, so maybe you know
(09:23):
something. And just kind of winged it, figuringwe would figure that out in post.
So budgeted for about 30 VFX shots for thesebutterfly shots. Ended up with
about 400 VFX shots because we had a lot ofproblems in production. And I
just kind of started saying, Okay, I hope I'mgoing to be able to fix this digitally,
(09:48):
um, and got into post and then that's, I kindof did it the opposite of how
you should normally do it. Uh, in post, I startedhaving these conversations with,
with people like yourself aboutHey, here's my problem. What are some creative
ways to fix it? So visual effects in the movie,when you see the butterflies,
(10:10):
except for three shots, they're all real butterflies.
but rather than shoot them practically,I would shoot plates and then we went and
shot them all on a green screen,which was a bit of a challenge
because they were going to escape. And youcan only have butterflies...you
can only release them by law in their naturalhabitat. So we had to go back
(10:31):
up to Oregon where we filmed and shootgreen screens with these butterflies
so when they inevitably escaped, I wasn't likeintroducing an invasive species
in Southern California, which sounds crazy,but it worked. And then just started
like kind of trying to figure out how muchI could push the envelope with
VFX. For example, there's a scene in the filmwhere they're in a... Robert Pyle's
(10:58):
wife died of cancer in real life and that'sin the film Debra Messing plays
his wife. So they're in a treatment centerand we just didn't have...we had
to shoot it in just a few minutes, didn't havetime to like do any production
design really. It's actually shot in one ofthe bedrooms that the crew was
staying in, in like a basketball camp in themiddle of nowhere in Oregon. So
(11:20):
like added posters to the wall for that.
Or there's a scene where David Cross'scharacter is in his long johns and they didn't
look dirty enough. So we dirtiedthose up and basically changed his wardrobe.
You'll see all of these signsthroughout the film because he's hiking to
the Columbia Gorge, which is betweenOregon and Washington. Almost every one of
(11:43):
those signs was added digitally.
So like in my driveway, I would film like ablank piece of wood from whatever
angle it's supposed to be in. And then youguys would add that sign. at Columbia
Gorge and the mile markers. So there was alot of basically what I would
call like wardrobe and production design sweetening.
(12:08):
There were a lot of things, youknow, when you're making a low budget movie,
especially in the wilderness,there's not, we didn't have a Greensman.
There's not much you can do. So it waslike removing houses, removing power lines,
removing cars.
But also in a lot of casesjust adding little bits of things
that you might not normally notice.
(12:30):
There's a scene where he almost drowns,and it was a very scary shoot.
David actually couldn't talk for a couple hoursafterwards because it was so cold.
Basically, I had one take to do it. It wasall shot up in the mountains in snow runoff.
So for that, we added some splashingand... turbulent water in the foreground.
(12:55):
So many little things that I wasactually pleasantly surprised by because we
were able to add all, I mean,add 370 shots and still stay within our very
small budget, which I mean, ourVFX budget was like
not on the high side of five figures.
(13:18):
So it was a really,eye-opening experience for me and something
that I've taken into my subsequent...
I've made a couple documentaries since then,but it's really taught me what
a great tool VFX is in order to go far beyondwhat I think we all think of,
which is like the spaceships or The Avengers movieand things as simple as
(13:41):
if I have a two-shot and one performer's greatin this take and another performer's
great in another take. using you guys to putthem together, which we did a
lot of.
So it's like, it's a million littleshots in addition to the like few sort of big
like storm cloud shots that maybeare more clearly effects.
[Pa (14:03):
Yeah, and this is a this is actually pretty typical of the types of VFX
that we like to do at Foxtrot X-Ray.
we you know, we... I love invisible effects.
It's it seems weird,right? You would think that that, you know,
us VFX guys would love theopportunity to do The Avengers or Star Wars
or whatever. And of course,love that stuff. That's those are the kinds
(14:26):
of movies that inspired meto get into VFX.
But there's a there's a perverse thrill of beingable to go into a shot, do a bunch of stuff,
leave and leave no trace, right?
And have the audience go, where were the VFX?
Right, because then I've reallydone my job...and that to me is a lot of fun.
It's like a magician beingable to pull off a trick and you don't see
(14:50):
the sleight of hand, you don'tsee the strings, you don't, you know, you can't
see through the smoke and mirrorsand that's really fun
and we got to do a lot of work like that on your film.
Um, we didn't do any of the butterfly stuff.
Um, we didn't do any of the butterfly stuff.
Obviously you had multiplevendors on this show, so we didn't do any of
the butterfly stuff.
I don't think we did any of that water stuff,but we did a lot of those signs...
(15:10):
and we did, a lot of the, what youWhat you would call, you know, greens sweetening, if you will.
There were a couple of placeswhere, uh, and you obliquely
referred to Big Foot as a some, something thathe, that Pyle, you know, sort
of encounters kind of brushes up against.
and there's a lot of funny shotswhere, you know, Bigfoot's in one part of the frame
(15:34):
and Pyle’s in another part of the frame and he doesn't see it,which is really cool.
And there's also times when he finds thesegiant footprints and we did
some like subtle cleanup of those, made themmore visible, just little things
that you would never even know that we hadbeen in the shot at all,
which is great.
I find it funny,I'm gonna segue into the next thing here.
(15:57):
I find it funny that you cast David Cross,who is a great comedian
and known for his verbal wit.
And then you took dialogue away from him for like a third of the movie.
And then you cast Debra Messing, who's knownfor her beautiful red locks
and you took those away and made her bald for most of her shots.
[To (16:18):
Yeah, I'm not the smartest.
No, that was actually intentionalbecause part of the way we got actors who were,
I mean, much bigger than whatour budget should have warranted was because
we, I intentionally, and reallyI gotta give credit to Jory Weitz who's the
casting director, was really thefirst producer to come on board the project
(16:41):
and was really the engine behindgetting it made. You know, he kept saying,
don't go to people who get offeredthese things normally, go to people who never
get offered thisand so Debra said yes, and when I asked her like, stupidly,
I guess, asked her, why wouldyou do this movie? She said two reasons.
Number one, her mom died of cancer. Andnumber two, she only gets asked to play
(17:04):
Grace Adler characters. So here to be asked to be played like this older graying, woman dying of cancershe jumped at the chance.
Same thing with David.
He gets basically asked to play certaincharacters, so to be able to be asked to play
a college professor, but alsoreally get to leverage all of the tools in
his like pretty substantial bagof tricks in terms of physical comedy and just
(17:29):
how expressive his face is, youknow, I can't imagine. I don't think the movie
actually would have gotten madeor finished with anybody but him because he
also coming from like Mr. Showand the other things he's done.
He was really,he fought really hard to do almost
all of his own stunts too. So, you know, it'swhen you see him dangling off
(17:50):
the edge of a cliff or in a like rushing icystream, that's, that's David.
So, um, that was great for me because it allowedme to get very close and be handheld
and have it very clearly feel like super realin some of those scary moments.
And he is a brilliant physicalcomedian as well as a witty verbal comedian.
(18:13):
And a really good dramatic actor.
I don't think anybody had really asked him to do that much.
So that was awesome tobe able to see that. And especially,
I mean, he's in almost every frame of the movie.
So he got to really chew the scenery.
I don't think he's ever going in the woods againbut it was hopefully a
rewarding experience.
(18:33):
Going back to what youwere saying, like with Bigfoot.
Like all the Bigfoot shots in the film arepractical. There's so much that
people think are the VFX shots that aren't,and I kept thinking when we were
shooting about that great Orson Welles movie,F for Fake, and you talked about
magic. That's what got me thinking about it,which is a lot of those shots,
you're looking at Bigfoot over here, but allthe VFX stuff is happening over
(18:55):
there. And it was, that was really rewardingto see how that paid off.
[P (19:04):
Yeah. To just tag off of the idea of, you know, David Cross being a brilliant
dramatic actor as well as abrilliant comedian. Then this is not... this
is just a complete VFX. It'san aside from VFX, obviously. So I have found
in my own filmmaking beforeI hung up my director's cap, to just focus on
(19:26):
VFX, that comedians actuallyare really adept at switching gears
and giving these wonderful dramatic performances.
So really briefly, my best buddy, Steve Briscoe,stand-up comic came up through
Star Search and Carolyn's Comedy Hour and allof that sort of stuff. And
(19:47):
when we first were collaborating, I wrote thisfilm noir thriller called The
Falls and I gave him this dramatic role withthis, you know, a five page
monologue in the middle of the movieand he looked at it and he said, you
really want me to do this? And I was like,yeah, you can totally do it.
He's like, I've never done anything this dramaticbefore. Are you sure? I said,
(20:10):
Briscoe, you got this. Anyway, so he nailedit. The reason I bring up Briscoe
is because I always on this show talk abouthow this is a business of relationships
and so it's actually really funny.
Tom and I were destined to cross pathsat some point. Okay.
So my buddy Briscoe is good friends with a filmmaker and musician named Peter Foldyand one time, its got to be 10 years ago,
(20:33):
maybe more.
I'm in LA with Briscoe for a weekend and we,we hang out with Peter Foldy
and Peter proceeds to tell me the story about his brilliant friend, Tom, who made a brilliant movie calledTom Hits His Head. Okay.
Stored it in the back of my head.
(20:54):
Years later, The Dark Divide is in post.
My friend, Mark Stolaroff, who's been on this show,he refers Tom Putnam to me.
Tom and I begin our, our professional relationship.
I look up Tom on IMDB. I seeTom directed, wrote and directed
Tom Hits His Head. I went, what the hell?
Six degrees of separation.
That's how this business works.
(21:17):
Everyone, you know, knows everyone else, you know, whetheryou introduce them or not.
And you better be nice to them becausethey will tell other people if
you're difficult.
I feel like that's a problem neither one of us have, butyeah, I've known Peter for, holy
cow, probably almost 30 years now.
(21:37):
And Mark I've known for probably 20 years.
[Paul DeNigris] (21:39):
Yeah....
[ (21:41):
Yeah, that's, I think such an important thing that people don't realize is
everybody you meet, especiallyin this era with social media and LinkedIn
and... and things. It's so muchof the work I get is from referrals or the
people I hire from referrals.
And it's, you know, every time I'm home, likeworking on a script or something,
(22:08):
I'm always thinking like, would I be betteroff if I just took somebody to
coffee? And usually, yeah. Yeah.
So thanks, Peter. And thanks, Mark, for introducingus.
[Paul DeNigris] (22:19):
Absolutely.
[Tom Putn (22:21):
Yeah, small business.
[ (22:22):
Yeah, it is a small business.
It is a small business. You know, the old sayingwas, it's not what you know,
it's who you know, and it's really who knowsyou. That is the important
part of that equation, right? It's who knowsthat you're a good writer director.
Who knows that I'm a good visual effects artistthat can connect the two of us?
And so it's, yeah, it's a...
It is an often overlooked, I think it's, it'ssort of understood like this
(22:46):
is how the business works, but it's not somethingthat people really address
or teach in film school, right? They teachyou all the, this is how and
why to put the camera here. And this is howand why to edit and all of
that sort of stuff. But it's, it all comesdown to networking.
I actually, having gone to USC,which is sort of regarded as, I think still,
(23:10):
one of the better film schools,I tell people all the time to skip film school.
I mean, I got a great education,made some great friends that I'm still friends
with, but got six figures in debt,graduated, ended up having to get a job as
a... career for the Power Rangerswhen all of my friends who skipped that process
(23:31):
were like, PA on movies and workingon cheap movies and making the connections.
And I saw their careers movedso much faster than mine did. Cause the thing
I didn't realize is for the kindsof movies I tend to make, which are like lower
budget movies, it's just aboutlike crewing on film after film, after film,
(23:52):
until you sort of build up thatnetwork of people that bring you work and who
can help you make your own films.
I'm doing a movie right now that I'm directingand producing called Into the
Unknown. It's about paramedics around the country.
And I got that job because thepublicist for a documentary I did a couple
(24:12):
years ago is the publicist fora film festival that one of the producers of
Into the Unknown runs and theywere looking for a director and he said, oh,
I think Tom works with firefightersand connected us. So it's really... It's always
so weird how these things happen.
I kind of think of it as like, you gotta puta lot of lines in the water,
[Paul DeNigris] (24:31):
Mm-hmm.
you know? Because it's so hardto like, spin enough plates to actually get
something...
going.
[ (24:42):
All right. Why don't we steer back to Dark Divide's VFX. So again, on the subject
of Debra Messing, she isshe's losing her hair in a big chunk of the
movie.
[Tom Putnam] (24:52):
Yeah.
[Pa (24:52):
And we I think probably the most shots that my team touched had to do with
that bald cap.
Oh my god, the bald.... So we hadan amazing hair and makeup person on the film.
And that's a bald cap. And we,there's varying degrees of her
(25:13):
hair loss in the film. And we actually, oneof the big line items in the budget
was hiring like one of the best wig makersin the country because nothing
to me wrecks a movie faster than a bad baldcap. And I wanted to be very close
with her. There's scenes like it with her inthe bathroom with her husband,
a lot of scenes of them in bed together andin the kitchen and things. I wanted
to be really close on her. And we had a greatperson, but we only had one person
(25:36):
for the whole movie. And inevitably, you'veseen Debra Messing. She has
a lot of hair to shove under a bald cap. Andwe would get the dailies back.
And I mean, every shot there's a wrinkle somewhereor a seam somewhere. And that's
a great example of where you guys did an amazingjob. And not just with the bald
(25:59):
cap, but like making her face look a littlemore sallow and doing the things
that we just didn't have the infrastructureto do on set. And I mean, I would
say, I think every single shot she's in, there'sVFX work on her seams and things.
(26:19):
Yeah. And I talk about this a lot because we do a lot of digital makeup
repair, if you will, in ourbusiness. And the one thing I want to stress
is anytime we're talking aboutthis, it's never it's never a slight to the
practical makeup people, right?
They do amazing work. It's us coming in tohelp them is we're partnered
(26:42):
with them. And there's been plenty of timeswhere I've been on set side
by side with a makeup person, a practicalmakeup person for more creature
effects and stuff like that. Where we're,it’s understood, we're in this together.
Like my work is gonna live and die on how goodtheir work is and vice versa.
And so it is, even though I never met yourmakeup and hair people, it
(27:04):
definitely was a partnership. It was not,you know, we're not taking anything
away from the work that they did. It's the limitations of time and money that work against you.
[Tom Put (27:17):
Oh, a hundred percent.
I mean, we had one person doinghair and makeup. She's like in the middle of
the woods with no support. Andyou know, you'd have days where it's like,
okay, the first part of the day,David's been out in the wilderness for a month
and he's completely tanned andscratched up and this and that. But then in
like 30 minutes after we wrap,I need you to turn them around for a completely
(27:37):
different part of the journey.
And having that ability is... huge.
There’s a sequence where we shot in reallava tunnels, which I don't recommend because
huge rocks were falling out ofthe ceiling. But deep underground, David escapes
from the lava tunnel and he comesout. And she had like, I was worried it looked
(28:00):
cartoony. She had put scratchesand bruises all over him because he goes through
quite an experience under there.
And then when I saw the dailies, I was like,oh, it's not enough. Totally my
fault. So, you know. the ability with VFX tojust like darken those and add
some bruising and things was huge. One of thethings that is so exciting for
me was the fact that we're finally in an eraalso where those things can happen
(28:24):
on handheld shots and the camera doesn't haveto be completely locked off. I
mean, it was phenomenal to me as a mid-careerfilmmaker who started off cutting,
you know, film on a movieola to see how farVFX have come.
I think you guys doyour job so well that you see these articles
(28:46):
like with the last Guardians ofthe Galaxy where the actors are like, or where
Kurt Russell's like, oh yeah,it was all the hair and makeup on set that
de-aged me. And it's like, dude,come on. The actors get fooled, I think, sometimes.
[Pau (29:00):
Yeah. That's again, that's part of that magician's trick, right?
If you don't know, I was there.
Um, yeah. And you did, you shot all of, allof those bald cap shots were
handheld and Debra is emoting and yeah, she'sin the, she's in the bathroom.
She's nauseous from chemo and all that stuff.
And she's, she's worked upand, uh, and so her head's moving and the camera's
(29:23):
moving and yeah, it's,
[Tom Putnam] (29:25):
all over.
[Paul DeN (29:25):
yeah, yeah. All over.
[Tom Putnam] (29:25):
Camera blur. Yeah.
One of the things I think peopleforget about is when you think of VFX, you
think of certain kinds of movies.
But for me, the power of VFX really shines when you're doing something dramatic.
So Debra comes from a very, she has a very deepbackground in terms of Broadway,
(29:50):
she was in the original Angels in America.
She’s a very highly trained actor. Soone of the things I wanted to do was take my
documentary background and shootreally long takes with her and David.
And they learned really quickly, I willtry to just do one take of things. And if there's
(30:11):
like a major camera problem, I'lldo a second take, but otherwise we'll move
on and shoot coverage. And theyloved that because they knew it was gonna feel
real for them every time theydid it. I shoot minimal coverage, didn't have
time. And I also work as an editor,so I had a really good idea about how I wanted
to cover things. But you do afive minute long take where it's, she's in
(30:32):
the bathroom and she's going throughchemo and she's throwing up and she's arguing
with her husband. You can't, it'snot right to do a lot of takes for that with
the actor, but then, you know,I'm behind the camera and then you can see
that the back of the bald capis bunching up on the back of her neck.
I mean strategically and creatively,the worst thing in the world you can do is
(30:57):
be like, oh, you did amazing,you've totally brought your A game, but we're
gonna do it again because of thebald cap. Like the actors will lose confidence
in you, they'll start saving theirperformances, assuming there's gonna be a problem.
So having you guys in my backpocket and knowing that you'd be able to clean
that up was huge for me. And Ithink where the VFX came into play the most
(31:19):
oddly is in all of those dramaticscenes. because it allowed me to still do one
or two takes and know I couldfix the technical stuff.
Tha’s what this show is all about. Right.
It's the, that's why it's VFX for Indies becausewe're not creating digital
creatures. But I'm, sometimes we do. We'renot, we're not creating, you
know, spaceships. Sometimes we do, but themost, the majority of the work
that we do is this. It's, let's help afilmmaker. wring the most production
(31:43):
value and the most out of every frame thatthey decided to use. And it's
this performance is great. This performanceis great in a different take.
Let's combine them. This performance is great,but this technical thing failed.
There's a cable in the shot. The boom polecame into shot. The makeup
didn't work for that angle. Right. All of thosesorts of things. And that's
(32:08):
what I love. That's what I love about workingwith Indies, because it's like
we're making a real difference in terms ofyour ability to tell your story
without the we're kind of mitigating the limitationsof, of indie filmmaking, right?
The limitations of coverage, the limitationsof how long you can shoot,
how many retakes you can do, um, you know,on a, on a studio picture,
(32:32):
something like that might've happened. Andafter your first cut, they
might've gone, we need to reshoot these scenes.
Right. Andyou do a reshoot. There's no reshoots
in the indie film world.
No, and when you have days whereyou have a 10 page day, I mean, you're sprinting
(32:53):
to just get one take of everythingand get just the most minimal coverage possible.
Yeah, I think as indie filmmakers,a lot of times we look at those sorts of VFX
shots as damage control, whenin reality, having gone through like
The Dark Divide. On the next one, I'm reallyexcited because I now in my mind have a better
(33:17):
sense of in the moment, oh, that'sgoing to be fine because I have the confidence
that we can fix certain thingsand fix them pretty inexpensively in post.
I think that's the other thingthat was a surprise to me is VFX right now
is in a weird place where there'severyone from guys on Fiverr who claim that
(33:40):
they can do it for $10 to like...
the same shot, you can go to somebody doinga Marvel movie and they'll quote
you with a thousand dollars.
And it's, I think we pretty much exclusively workedwith like shops the same size as yours because
you guys were affordable and youdid work that is on par with anything else
(34:04):
I've seen. So it's, that's thething I have to educate people about a lot
in the producing side of thingsthat I do which is that. There are shops out
there that can give you what youwant and do a great job. I think people have
just seen so many bad VFX in thissort of like Sharknado aisle of the video store
(34:25):
that they assume that when theynotice a VFX, those are the only VFX.
Like you're doing, we were talkingabout holiday movies earlier before the podcast.
I mean, I see, I have friendsthat do those and like they shoot them in the
summer. And then the VFX crews add all thesnow and nobody notices and it's, that's the part to me that I think is so fun because that's kind of the movie magic
(34:52):
part of all this, right?
[Pau (34:53):
Yeah, yeah, we do a lot of that, that sort of stuff. You know, the Canadian
Christmas movies where theyshoot, they shoot in the spring in Vancouver
and we have to make it looklike winter in Boston or something.
And if we've done our jobsright, the audience doesn't know we were there,
right? They totally buy itas winter in Boston and they go on that journey.
(35:16):
Had I only known, because we drugDavid up into an actual snowstorm on
Mount Hood above the treeline, it wouldhave been so much easier
to just have done it that way.
Yeah. You know, mountains, the, the view of the mountain was something
we, we touched a couple oftimes too. There were, there were spots where
we were, and I'm terrible withgeography and knowing what mountains are called
(35:39):
and all of that stuff. I just,you know, you just showed me a picture. It
said, this is the mountain,stick it back there. So I can't even tell you
what mountain it was or whywe were putting it there. You want to talk
about that a little bit?
Sure. So he's hiking through anarea called the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
And I mean, I watched a lot oflike forest movies and I noticed they all just
felt like this guy's just in treesagain. So we established Mount Adams at the
(36:05):
beginning and as he's hiking we'reconstantly seeing it grow larger.
He goes over it and then it kind of recedesbehind him, which was a way for us to get a
visual sense of his progress.
But we filmed all over the place because since1995, a lot of things had changed.
So,most shots where you're seeing
Mount Adams, it's being added digitally. So,we would shoot the locations and
(36:30):
then I went back with just a DSLR and likematched angles and like spent
three days just driving around Mount Adams,shooting the plates for that.
And that became a huge part of the movie whereOnce I realized how good you guys
made it look, I started adding it all overthe place, much to the other producer's
dismay. So there's shots where, I mean, I'vehad calls from people that hike
(36:54):
that area regularly, like, I don't know wherethat trail is, but it looks great.
I'm like, oh, that trail's like 50 miles away,but they think it's right there
because, you know, it wasn't just about addingthe mountain, right? You guys
would add some texture with clouds or mistor... All those other layers that
I think gave the film that like yummy sortof depth that it had. And that's
(37:21):
a shot, nobody's mentioned those shots. Sountil probably this podcast, now
they'll all realize it. But yeah, that's agreat example because with maybe
two exceptions, every time we seesee Mount Adams, it's been added digitally.
Yeah. And we added it to a number of different shots to a couple of drone
(37:44):
shots, a bunch of handheldstuff. The one that kept me up at night was
the there was like a like a360 degree or like 270 degree pan from the
mountain across the valleypicking up David Cross in
the trail behind thecamera and pan and yeah, you
and I went back and forth on that one a bunchof times
(38:05):
because just trying to getit to blend right and then there was...
you kept telling me I'm
There's tree branches, pine trees, which are the worst, like in front of it.
[ (38:13):
Yep. And you kept telling me, I just watched it on the biggest screen possible.
And it's, it's slipping overhere. It's it's locked down here, but it's
slipping over there. And so,you know, we, we had to like fight lens distortion,
you know, the, without, withoutgoing super technical on this, but lenses distort
the image at the edges of theframe, depending on, you know, the glass manufacturer,
(38:34):
how wide the lens is, whetherit's anamorphic or spherical, you know, all
of that sort of stuff. Andso as the camera pans, particularly on pans
and tilts, the edges of theframe will get, will warp. And so something
that's tracking perfectly deadcenter will start to spread apart. And you
know, the, the added pixelswill now not follow the distortion of the,
(38:56):
and so you have to match allof that. And it's, um, uh, you know, it's the
kind of thing that a VFX supervisoron set would say. Okay, I need to make a note
of what that lens is. We needto shoot what's called lens grid later so we
can extract the distortionand then put the distortion back on. Coming
at it after the fact, thatinformation is lost. We don't, you know, very
(39:18):
often a filmmaker doesn't writedown what lens they used. There's no time.
There's nobody on set to takethose notes. And so it's a lot of guesswork
in post.
And I am a terrible VFX supervisor.
Yeah, I mean that was part ofthe, that was one of the challenges, right?
Which was, because there wereso many shots where I didn't even think we
(39:40):
would do VFX. Yeah, I rememberthat one. That was definitely one of the tougher
ones. And the great news is nobodynotices, you know? They just wanna know where
that trail is.
Yeah, so I do a lot of documentaries,and normally in a documentary, what you get
is what you get. I don't thinkI had done any VFX shots in a doc prior to
(40:04):
Dark Divide. And after that, Ireally have started to leverage what I've learned
in a way that allows me to...
get the most out of those moments.
Sometimes it's light stands and the boompole and the classic stuff that you think of,
(40:26):
but other times it's, I'll giveyou an example. I did a movie with Insane Clown
Posse, and those guys, if youknow the band, they're inseparable. So they're
always interviewed at the sametime, but, so we would have two shots, but
sometimes one of them will like,get distracted or be drinking a Red Bull or
something while the other guy'stalking, you have this great moment and no
(40:49):
other coverage. So we would justlike do a matte down the middle and replace the
side that wasn't important withhim listening versus drinking a Red Bull, which
I don't think compromises theintegrity. That's not who we're listening to.
Or for example, right now I'mdoing this movie about paramedics around the
country and HIPAA laws are everywhereand there's all sorts of things you can and
(41:12):
can't film and you can't plan anything because you don't know what callsthey're going to get. So I'll
have moments now where rather than just blurringsomebody's face, I'll place an
object in the foreground so that we don't seetheir face or that, or use VFX
to maybe build in some camera blur or somethingso it feels more organic rather
than like watching an episode of cops.
(41:34):
That’s been amazing for me and also justa lot of cleanup. It's amazing now the technology
is at the point where the cameraloses focus a little bit. There's a little
bit too much jitter and PremierePro or Avid can't handle it. You can go to
VFX and they can clean it up oreven a shot we're doing right now on that film
(41:56):
where we're delivering in 4K butI have to punch in like 400%. So using VFX,
using a VFX person to go in andlike... realistically up convert it and build
in a camera move so that we canuse that shot.
That's been exciting and alsoin a way that VFX now can also
(42:17):
sort of blur, you can blur the line betweenVFX and graphic design. So you
can include graphic design elements, maybeon the side of the ambulance or
something that, you know, you can have a graphicartist create the text and then
work with a VFX person in order to like, putit into the image in a way that's
just a little bit more fun.
[Pau (42:38):
Yeah, that's great. I love seeing that. I love hearing about how the experience
on one film then informs thenext, right? It is a process, right? We're
always trying to get better.
Every movie should teach us something.
It’s one of the reasons that I dothis show. This business is really about lifelong learning.
(43:01):
You have to continuouslyget better. Even if technology wasn't advancing,
which it is, at a breakneck speed.
We're constantly being introducedto new technologies, new software,
new techniques, new everything.
Even if technologystood still from this point
forward, we still have to learn every day becauseit's this iceberg. We know
(43:23):
our little part of the tip of the iceberg andthere's all this other stuff
down below.
Well, and I think doing a movieat the size I do them at, whether it's a documentary
or a fiction film, a huge partof my job is, I mean, honestly damage control.
You know, every day somethinghuge happens. We were shooting Dark Divide.
(43:44):
There was a day where Portland,Oregon got its first ever tornado.
It touched down, went one block, and droppeda tree on one car. Only thing ever damaged
in Portland from a tornado. Thatcar was our production van. So it's like, and
that was a day where that wasonly like the third worst thing that happened
that day. So you just sort ofevery day is like, okay, how do I get what
(44:07):
I need given all of these likeunexpected things that are happening and the
ability to use VFX all of a suddengives you so many more options, right?
Rather than just where to point the cameraor just how to direct people.
So. That's, I think, you're always, I'm alwayslearning. Every movie I'm like, well there's
(44:30):
50 mistakes I won't make again.
[Paul (44:34):
So once you wrapped post on Dark Divide, what was the release trajectory?
Did you guys play festivals?
Did you go directly to distribution?
Great question. We had all thesefestivals lined up and then COVID hit and the
festivals all shut down. So wewere faced with a situation where we didn't
(44:54):
have the normal route that youwould go through to release a film.
and that, in some ways worked out to ouradvantage because I'm also with theatrical
distributor. And one of the reasonswe cast who we cast in the movie was I wanted
the best actors I could get. AndI feel like I got them. But a bonus was that
They're both people that havestrong followings. David's a standup comic.
(45:16):
There's a number of other standupcomics in the movie, like David Koechner and
Cameron Esposito. Patterson Hoodfrom Drive-By Truckers is in the movie.
and then The Avett brothers and ChrisNovselic from Nirvana did the music for it.
So we had all these people withstrong followings and that was intentional
because I, just going througha traditional route, I felt like, well,
(45:36):
if we don't get any offers on thefilm, we'll release it ourselves.
By the time the movie was finishedwe brought in REI Co-op Studios as a brand partner.
They put some money into the movie and then the National Wildlife Federation,which is America's largest environmental
nonprofit, a portion of our proceeds went to themSo when the pandemic hit,
most other people I knew were like, well,I can't play film festivals. This
(46:00):
is gonna like go in a drawer for what endedup being two years. Whereas because
we had a marketing plan in place, we were ableto go ahead and release the movie
and do a really robust national campaign for it.
The movie ended up playingover 100 theaters in the US.
(46:21):
Almost every theater held it over from one week tobetween four and five weeks.
And did it make a fortune? Well, no, nothing did,but it definitely did, I think better than
any other film that wasn't releasedby like a major distributor. So we were really
happy with it. And you think makingthe movie is the hard part and then people
(46:49):
discover like they have to distributeit. I mean, even as hard as that was, we had
booked all these theaters. Wewere gonna start it in Oregon and Washington.
And about four days before thatrelease was supposed to start, Oregon had its
largest forest fires in historyto displace something like a third of the population.
All the movie theaters shut down.
So we like... could not play movie theatersin our core district. So we like
(47:09):
played everywhere else and sort of circledback as much as we could to do
special events screenings. So it's just, it'sa real like, I mean, as you guys
know, making movies is a real grad graduateschool PhD and just learning how
to be flexible and coming up with creativesolutions.
[P (47:30):
Yeah, for sure. It's all the hard part, right? It's
[Tom Putnam] (47:33):
Yeah.
[Pau (47:34):
the writing. It's the hard part. Casting. It's the hard part. Shooting.
It's the hard part, right?
It's it. It never gets easy.
[ (47:40):
Yeah, but and so I got my MBA at the top of the pandemic and the thing I
realized was like everything'shard. Starting a bakery is hard, you know.
It's every, you're basically,every time you make a movie, you're starting
a small business and most of thetime you're making a product and you don't
know who the buyers are. Nobodyelse does that. General Motors doesn't make
(48:02):
a car without some idea that people,what kind of person's going to want it, you
know, but we live in this weirdspace where we're making hope on the good days
we're making art, but we're makingit with a lot of somebody's money, even if
you're making a movie that's,I mean, I've made features as low as five grand,
but that's $5,000. That's a chunkof a car. And so it's such a weird sort of
(48:31):
art form in business. And forsomebody like me, who doesn't have a trust
fund, I have to work to pay mybills every month. And it's... it's always
a challenge to figure out like,how can I keep making movies? And so to keep
making movies, they need to makemoney for people and you have to make them
like fairly regularly and that'sthe hard part with documentaries are, like
(48:55):
the last three movies I finishedtook 12 years, seven years and 10 years to
get made and that's not a goodbusiness model. That's a long time between
projects.
[Pau (49:09):
Yeah, sure is. So thinking back to the filmmaker you were before
Dark Divide, what advice would yougive that filmmaker, or if a filmmaker came
to you today and said, I'vegot this movie and I think I'm going to need
visual effects, how do I preparefor it? What's one piece of advice you would
share with that filmmaker?
Due diligence, talk to people,talk to real VFX people that are in your budget
(49:34):
range. Have them look at the script,really go into it with an understanding,
Maybe not necessarily even of your specificshots, but of what you can do and what you
can't do. And have some sort ofdollar sign associated with that. Because we
had a couple of huge sequenceswe shot for the movie that we just ran out
(49:57):
of money and they're not in themovie. So it's, and that's because I didn't
do my due diligence. And I thinksomething I wish I had been able to do more
that I will definitely do thenext time is like, not just for us to talk
in advance, but to have an opendialogue when I'm in production to be able
(50:19):
to say like, here's the challengeI have, here's how I'm gonna shoot it, does
that. is that gonna work for you?
Because really my job is to give you what youneed to give me back what I need.
So without having the you part of it, you'rekind of flying blind. So I think
as filmmakers, a lot of times we're afraidto say we don't know or afraid
to ask for help or afraid to say, oh, I didthat wrong, let's do it again.
(50:42):
And I think turning off that part of your brainwill really like open up a lot
of opportunities.
[ (50:50):
Yeah, that's great. You know, a lot of times when I was directing movies,
I always had that feeling ofthat onus of I'm the director. I have to know.
I have to have the answers.
And I realized as I did more of it that beinga director is as much about
having the answers as it is about asking theright questions of your team.
Yeah, for me, because I'm sucha people pleaser, it's like, I have to remind
(51:15):
myself to not be afraid to askfor what I want, but also to not be afraid
to say, I'm not sure how to getwhat I want. Because everybody's there to make
you happy. I mean, you know, DavidCross and Debra Messing, they're well-known
actors, and I think I can rememberthe first day thinking like, oh my God, when
I give them direction, are theygoing to yell at me? Or like, what are they
(51:35):
going to, they know so much morethan I do. And it's like, no, everybody's there
to make. Everybody wants you tobe happy. So that's like the part you have
to constantly remind yourselfabout. But also at the same time, too. You
know, on a low budget movie, peopleare like. What they're making a buck fifty
a day or something, you know,they're just they're just they all have probably
(51:56):
better options. And it's alsoabout sort of being strategic about those asks,
too, so you don't burn peopleout. I think we've all been on shoots where
by day two. the directors haveworn everybody out too. So yeah, it's like
kind of like a fine line to ride.
Yeah, it happens in post too.
It's, you know, yes. Okay. We agreed to doX number of VFX shots with
(52:17):
X number of iterations within your budget andyour timetable. And, uh, and then we have
this thing called scope creepwhere it becomes, Hey, can we just do one more thing?
Can we just do one morething? How about one more thing? One more.
And it's, and before, you know,at that shot that had one VFX ask is now this
monstrous shot that has, haseaten up a ton of time. Uh, and it is, it's
(52:42):
always a balance. It's alwaystrying to figure out like, how can we best
serve the director's vision,best serve the movie and not, not get
burned out and also not focusall of our effort, all of our energy on that
one hero shot that the directoris in love with, and then all of the other
shots in the movie suffer.
I feel like that's the VFX equivalentof what we all do when we're doing our first
(53:05):
couple of movies, which is youspend half the day on the master shot that
you're going to see for threeseconds and then you're running through all
the coverage because you didn'tbudget your time and resources wisely.
Yeah, I have that conversationa lot of times with directors who are new to
the VFX process where theywant to keep noodling with a shot. And it's
like, let's put a pin in thisone because we have the 50 other shots for
(53:27):
your movie that need to getaddressed. Let's work through those and we'll
come back around to this one.
And I promise when you look at it with fresheyes, and when I look at it
with fresh eyes, we're going to see this alot more clearly. And nine
times out of 10, they're like, when they comeback, they're like, yeah, okay,
that shot's fine.
It's something that I've, I, apiece of advice I got early on that seems obvious,
(53:51):
but a lot of people don't do itis when you see the VFX shot, cut it into the
scene and view it in context becausewhen you just look at the shot, you're going
to pick it apart. But in contextyou look at it a whole different way. I kind
of look at it like you can goto Best Buy to buy a TV and you can fixate
on how all the TVs look different.
But then when you take your TV home and putit in your living room, it always
(54:12):
looks great. And, um, It's so easy to noodlethose things out of context. And
that's something I try to always take the timeto do now is not even comment on
the VFX shot until I've downloaded it and putit in the cut, even if it's like
a rough comp.
[Pau (54:30):
Yeah, that's great advice.
And that's something I'm going to share withclients going forward.
[Tom Putnam] (54:33):
Yay.
Don't make the knee-jerk commentwhen you see the shot. Download the shot, drop
it in your timeline, look atit a few times, forget about it for eight hours,
come back to it, then tellme what you see.
Yeah,
[Paul DeNig (54:49):
That's great advice
because if you want to watch it in con- there's so many times, I think we dealt with this whereI would be like, I don't know.
And then you watch it in context to the filmand the film, the movie's over
and you're like, oh, that was great. It didn't,it didn't bump for me or anything.
[P (55:01):
Yeah, yeah. Solid advice. So you've talked a little bit about what's next
for you as far as documentariesand stuff. If people wanted to follow you on
social media or see other projectsthat you've worked on, what's the best way
that they can find you?
Go to my website, TomPutnam.net,and you can see clips from my past work and
(55:23):
links to fun stuff and I'm onall the usual suspects for social media.
Yeah, I love feedback. So, you know,if you see something, you like it or you hate it
just let me know.
I'm always curious.
[Pa (55:41):
Great. All right, well that wraps up this episode of the VFX for Indies podcast.
I want to thank my guest,Tom Putnam, for sharing his wisdom, both on
The Dark Divide and on otherprojects.
And if you are watching this on YouTubeand you liked what you saw,
please like and comment and subscribe.
Definitely please comment if there's stuffyou wanna hear about, things you want me to
(56:03):
cover in future episodes, ormaybe you have a question for Tom.
Please share it in the comments. If you'relistening on iTunes or Spotify or one of the
multitude of podcast aggregatorsout there, a follow, a star rating, and a review
goes a long way towards helpingus reach new audience members.
And for the independent filmmaker in yourlife who needs to hear this,
(56:25):
please share thisepisode with them before they
go shoot their film.
They don't have to talk tome, but it's great if they talk to a VFX professional before they film.
For the VFX for Indies show and for everyone at Foxtrot X-Ray.
I'm Paul DeNigris. Thanks somuch for watching.
Comedian David Cross plays real lifenature writer, Robert Pyle, as he embarks
on a perilous and sometimes comic journeyacross Washington's
Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
In Tom Putnam's feature, The Dark Divide.
This week on VFX for Indies.
(00:36):
Hello and welcome to this episodeof VFX for Indies, a podcast about the intersection
of visual effects and independentfilmmaking. I'm your host, Paul DeNegris,
visual effects, artist, filmmaker,and CEO of a boutique VFX shop called Foxtrot X-Ray.
Joining me today onthis episode is director Tom Putnam, who directed
a film called The Dark Divide,kind of an indie drama sort of comedy that
(01:00):
we worked on a couple of yearsago. We did about 60 or 65 VFX shots for and
had some fun challenges. Welcometo the podcast, Tom.
[ (01:07):
Thanks for having me and man, you're showing me up with your nice video background.
So you can see my laundry, but
[Paul DeNigris] (01:15):
Ha ha
Paul is definitely the creativeone.
[Pa (01:19):
Well, I am the host and it, and I am obviously portraying myself as a visual
artist and expert. And it would,uh, it would, you know, when I first was given
the idea by a couple of businessgurus that I follow to do a content based marketing
strategy with a podcast andeverything, they said, well, just get going
(01:40):
and then get good. And I waslike, guys, I’m in the movie business. I
can't just get going. I haveto actually like put in the work, set up a
nice backdrop.
[Tom Putnam] (01:48):
Looks good!
get a good mic, you know, I haveto do all of this stuff. It's gonna take me
a little longer to get rampedup, but once I do, we should be able to hit
the ground running. And it'sbeen, so far, it's been a really nice process.
It's been great catching upwith filmmakers like yourself, who very often
I haven't talked to since wewrapped your project. And you and I haven't
really had a chance to chatin a couple of years. It was, I think, 2020
(02:13):
that we worked on Dark Divide.
It might even have even started in 2019.
Yeah, and then it came out in 2021. So,you know, that's like that pandemic
period where who knows how long things took.
It's so nebulous.
[ (02:26):
Yeah, so it's been nice. I've had a number of great filmmakers on and sharing
their experiences. And I knowyou've got a lot of experience with VFX, particularly
on Dark Divide, some before,some after. And I think the audience is going
to really enjoy what you haveto share. So why don't you tell us a little
(02:48):
bit about yourself, who youare, kind of what you've done, maybe sort of
like career encapsulation.
leading up to Dark Divide. And then we'll talkmore about that film in particular.
Sure, thanks for having me on.
Hello, I am Tom Putnam. I am adirector and producer. I'm based in Los Angeles,
although everything I seem tofilm doesn't take place in Los Angeles. I'm
(03:11):
a little bit unusual because Ido about half fiction films, not even, probably
a third fiction films and twothirds documentary features and television.
I grew up in Portland, Oregon,which is near where The Dark Divide takes place.
I went to film school and journalismschool at USC, and I have an MBA because I
(03:33):
was very slow during the pandemicfrom St. Mary's University. So I started off
after film school as a post-productionexecutive at the company that was doing the
Power Rangers, Saban Entertainment.
So I kind of come to directing with... a knowledgethat maybe not every director
(03:54):
has about the importance of post-production.
And you sort of hear a joke onset all the time like, oh, save it for post.
We'll fix it in post. And thatnormally is a huge red flag, but that's the
thing I do say a lot. And DarkDivide was kind of a unique opportunity because
usually when I mean that, it'sin editing or sound design and Dark Divide
(04:16):
was really the first time I gota chance to use VFX to... a little bit add
to the film, but a lot of it fixedproblems that happened from a very tough like
20 day shoot out in the middleof nowhere in Oregon with David Cross and
Debra Messing and a whole bunch of funpeople.
(04:36):
both of whom are among my favoriteactors, been big fans of both of them for a
long time. And so when theproject landed on our desk, I went, yes, we're in
Like to do anything fora David Cross, Debra Messing project was an
absolute dream.
[Tom Putnam] (04:55):
Ah, thank you,
And they're both wonderful in the film.
It was a lot of fun to havethem up on our screens and to be looking at them
It was like, oh, thisis a real legit movie.
Well, that's great to hear. Andthis is kind of a great lead into the VFX conversation
because, you know, whatever youthink Dark Divide cost, I would say divide
(05:19):
that by about 10. And, you know,we made this movie that's 90% of it outdoors
shot in really rugged wildernesslocations, many of which people have never
filmed in before in Oregon andWashington. It's a period piece, takes place
in 1995, has huge storm sequences,tons of stunts. It's about a shy butterfly epert
(05:40):
so there was this wholebutterfly component. We went into production
not knowing how we would film.
And in fact, most of the VFX companies we talked to saidthat's going to be impossible
unless you have like $20 million to spend on it.
So it was a huge challengeto figure out how to get the movie that I wanted
(06:02):
because I'd spent 10 years tryingto get it made. I had a certain vision in mind.
But to be able to do that innew and creative ways, which is I think where
like a lot of the VFX came in.
Well, this is a good segue. Why don't you give usjust a quick synopsis, sort
of the back of the Blu-ray cover synopsis ofthe film, and then I'll run
a clip of the trailer.
(06:24):
So The Dark Divide is based ona true story. It's a non-fiction book written
by a guy named Robert MichaelPyle. He's America's foremost expert in butterflies
and moths. He wrote The AudubonField Guide to North American Butterflies.
It's the true story about whathappened in 1995. He got a Guggenheim grant
to spend six weeks... travelingthrough America's largest undeveloped wilderness,
(06:47):
which is in Southern Washington,to catalog new species of butterflies.
But at the same time, he had all ofthese encounters with a certain seven foot tall
kind of famous residentof that part of the world. So we decided somehow
to make like this crazy comedy,drama, horror, science fiction movie
(07:14):
starring David Cross as a shy butterflyexpert and poet who doesn't even he has no
dialogue for like 40 minutes ofthe movie And shooting it in all the real locations
where the movie took place.
(08:13):
So with the least commercial premiseever, we somehow, after dozens of failed pitches,
that's the movie that somehowfound investors. And like most movies, I had
a budget in mind and the budgetI went into production with was about, just
about a third of that. So we didn'thave a whole lot of infrastructure. I mean,
(08:35):
this wasn't a movie with a bunchof trailers and long shoot days. We shot in
20 days and in some cases we wouldhave like eight, 10 locations that we would
film. Huge stunt days. And whenI budgeted the film, I had budgeted it thinking,
planning to somehow digitallycreate the butterflies. There was one day where
(09:00):
we had practical butterflies.
We had an expert with us where he actuallyhas to handle the butterfly, but
for everything else, I just acted as the VFXsupervisor, which I don't recommend,
because I don't know what I'm doing, but Ilucked out. And basically we're
just shooting a ton of plates with the crewasking like, do you know what
you're doing? Like, I see you put a tennisball there, so maybe you know
(09:23):
something. And just kind of winged it, figuringwe would figure that out in post.
So budgeted for about 30 VFX shots for thesebutterfly shots. Ended up with
about 400 VFX shots because we had a lot ofproblems in production. And I
just kind of started saying, Okay, I hope I'mgoing to be able to fix this digitally,
(09:48):
um, and got into post and then that's, I kindof did it the opposite of how
you should normally do it. Uh, in post, I startedhaving these conversations with,
with people like yourself aboutHey, here's my problem. What are some creative
ways to fix it? So visual effects in the movie,when you see the butterflies,
(10:10):
except for three shots, they're all real butterflies.
but rather than shoot them practically,I would shoot plates and then we went and
shot them all on a green screen,which was a bit of a challenge
because they were going to escape. And youcan only have butterflies...you
can only release them by law in their naturalhabitat. So we had to go back
(10:31):
up to Oregon where we filmed and shootgreen screens with these butterflies
so when they inevitably escaped, I wasn't likeintroducing an invasive species
in Southern California, which sounds crazy,but it worked. And then just started
like kind of trying to figure out how muchI could push the envelope with
VFX. For example, there's a scene in the filmwhere they're in a... Robert Pyle's
(10:58):
wife died of cancer in real life and that'sin the film Debra Messing plays
his wife. So they're in a treatment centerand we just didn't have...we had
to shoot it in just a few minutes, didn't havetime to like do any production
design really. It's actually shot in one ofthe bedrooms that the crew was
staying in, in like a basketball camp in themiddle of nowhere in Oregon. So
(11:20):
like added posters to the wall for that.
Or there's a scene where David Cross'scharacter is in his long johns and they didn't
look dirty enough. So we dirtiedthose up and basically changed his wardrobe.
You'll see all of these signsthroughout the film because he's hiking to
the Columbia Gorge, which is betweenOregon and Washington. Almost every one of
(11:43):
those signs was added digitally.
So like in my driveway, I would film like ablank piece of wood from whatever
angle it's supposed to be in. And then youguys would add that sign. at Columbia
Gorge and the mile markers. So there was alot of basically what I would
call like wardrobe and production design sweetening.
(12:08):
There were a lot of things, youknow, when you're making a low budget movie,
especially in the wilderness,there's not, we didn't have a Greensman.
There's not much you can do. So it waslike removing houses, removing power lines,
removing cars.
But also in a lot of casesjust adding little bits of things
that you might not normally notice.
(12:30):
There's a scene where he almost drowns,and it was a very scary shoot.
David actually couldn't talk for a couple hoursafterwards because it was so cold.
Basically, I had one take to do it. It wasall shot up in the mountains in snow runoff.
So for that, we added some splashingand... turbulent water in the foreground.
(12:55):
So many little things that I wasactually pleasantly surprised by because we
were able to add all, I mean,add 370 shots and still stay within our very
small budget, which I mean, ourVFX budget was like
not on the high side of five figures.
(13:18):
So it was a really,eye-opening experience for me and something
that I've taken into my subsequent...
I've made a couple documentaries since then,but it's really taught me what
a great tool VFX is in order to go far beyondwhat I think we all think of,
which is like the spaceships or The Avengers movieand things as simple as
(13:41):
if I have a two-shot and one performer's greatin this take and another performer's
great in another take. using you guys to putthem together, which we did a
lot of.
So it's like, it's a million littleshots in addition to the like few sort of big
like storm cloud shots that maybeare more clearly effects.
[Pa (14:03):
Yeah, and this is a this is actually pretty typical of the types of VFX
that we like to do at Foxtrot X-Ray.
we you know, we... I love invisible effects.
It's it seems weird,right? You would think that that, you know,
us VFX guys would love theopportunity to do The Avengers or Star Wars
or whatever. And of course,love that stuff. That's those are the kinds
(14:26):
of movies that inspired meto get into VFX.
But there's a there's a perverse thrill of beingable to go into a shot, do a bunch of stuff,
leave and leave no trace, right?
And have the audience go, where were the VFX?
Right, because then I've reallydone my job...and that to me is a lot of fun.
It's like a magician beingable to pull off a trick and you don't see
(14:50):
the sleight of hand, you don'tsee the strings, you don't, you know, you can't
see through the smoke and mirrorsand that's really fun
and we got to do a lot of work like that on your film.
Um, we didn't do any of the butterfly stuff.
Um, we didn't do any of the butterfly stuff.
Obviously you had multiplevendors on this show, so we didn't do any of
the butterfly stuff.
I don't think we did any of that water stuff,but we did a lot of those signs...
(15:10):
and we did, a lot of the, what youWhat you would call, you know, greens sweetening, if you will.
There were a couple of placeswhere, uh, and you obliquely
referred to Big Foot as a some, something thathe, that Pyle, you know, sort
of encounters kind of brushes up against.
and there's a lot of funny shotswhere, you know, Bigfoot's in one part of the frame
(15:34):
and Pyle’s in another part of the frame and he doesn't see it,which is really cool.
And there's also times when he finds thesegiant footprints and we did
some like subtle cleanup of those, made themmore visible, just little things
that you would never even know that we hadbeen in the shot at all,
which is great.
I find it funny,I'm gonna segue into the next thing here.
(15:57):
I find it funny that you cast David Cross,who is a great comedian
and known for his verbal wit.
And then you took dialogue away from him for like a third of the movie.
And then you cast Debra Messing, who's knownfor her beautiful red locks
and you took those away and made her bald for most of her shots.
[To (16:18):
Yeah, I'm not the smartest.
No, that was actually intentionalbecause part of the way we got actors who were,
I mean, much bigger than whatour budget should have warranted was because
we, I intentionally, and reallyI gotta give credit to Jory Weitz who's the
casting director, was really thefirst producer to come on board the project
(16:41):
and was really the engine behindgetting it made. You know, he kept saying,
don't go to people who get offeredthese things normally, go to people who never
get offered thisand so Debra said yes, and when I asked her like, stupidly,
I guess, asked her, why wouldyou do this movie? She said two reasons.
Number one, her mom died of cancer. Andnumber two, she only gets asked to play
(17:04):
Grace Adler characters. So here to be asked to be played like this older graying, woman dying of cancershe jumped at the chance.
Same thing with David.
He gets basically asked to play certaincharacters, so to be able to be asked to play
a college professor, but alsoreally get to leverage all of the tools in
his like pretty substantial bagof tricks in terms of physical comedy and just
(17:29):
how expressive his face is, youknow, I can't imagine. I don't think the movie
actually would have gotten madeor finished with anybody but him because he
also coming from like Mr. Showand the other things he's done.
He was really,he fought really hard to do almost
all of his own stunts too. So, you know, it'swhen you see him dangling off
(17:50):
the edge of a cliff or in a like rushing icystream, that's, that's David.
So, um, that was great for me because it allowedme to get very close and be handheld
and have it very clearly feel like super realin some of those scary moments.
And he is a brilliant physicalcomedian as well as a witty verbal comedian.
(18:13):
And a really good dramatic actor.
I don't think anybody had really asked him to do that much.
So that was awesome tobe able to see that. And especially,
I mean, he's in almost every frame of the movie.
So he got to really chew the scenery.
I don't think he's ever going in the woods againbut it was hopefully a
rewarding experience.
(18:33):
Going back to what youwere saying, like with Bigfoot.
Like all the Bigfoot shots in the film arepractical. There's so much that
people think are the VFX shots that aren't,and I kept thinking when we were
shooting about that great Orson Welles movie,F for Fake, and you talked about
magic. That's what got me thinking about it,which is a lot of those shots,
you're looking at Bigfoot over here, but allthe VFX stuff is happening over
(18:55):
there. And it was, that was really rewardingto see how that paid off.
[P (19:04):
Yeah. To just tag off of the idea of, you know, David Cross being a brilliant
dramatic actor as well as abrilliant comedian. Then this is not... this
is just a complete VFX. It'san aside from VFX, obviously. So I have found
in my own filmmaking beforeI hung up my director's cap, to just focus on
(19:26):
VFX, that comedians actuallyare really adept at switching gears
and giving these wonderful dramatic performances.
So really briefly, my best buddy, Steve Briscoe,stand-up comic came up through
Star Search and Carolyn's Comedy Hour and allof that sort of stuff. And
(19:47):
when we first were collaborating, I wrote thisfilm noir thriller called The
Falls and I gave him this dramatic role withthis, you know, a five page
monologue in the middle of the movieand he looked at it and he said, you
really want me to do this? And I was like,yeah, you can totally do it.
He's like, I've never done anything this dramaticbefore. Are you sure? I said,
(20:10):
Briscoe, you got this. Anyway, so he nailedit. The reason I bring up Briscoe
is because I always on this show talk abouthow this is a business of relationships
and so it's actually really funny.
Tom and I were destined to cross pathsat some point. Okay.
So my buddy Briscoe is good friends with a filmmaker and musician named Peter Foldyand one time, its got to be 10 years ago,
(20:33):
maybe more.
I'm in LA with Briscoe for a weekend and we,we hang out with Peter Foldy
and Peter proceeds to tell me the story about his brilliant friend, Tom, who made a brilliant movie calledTom Hits His Head. Okay.
Stored it in the back of my head.
(20:54):
Years later, The Dark Divide is in post.
My friend, Mark Stolaroff, who's been on this show,he refers Tom Putnam to me.
Tom and I begin our, our professional relationship.
I look up Tom on IMDB. I seeTom directed, wrote and directed
Tom Hits His Head. I went, what the hell?
Six degrees of separation.
That's how this business works.
(21:17):
Everyone, you know, knows everyone else, you know, whetheryou introduce them or not.
And you better be nice to them becausethey will tell other people if
you're difficult.
I feel like that's a problem neither one of us have, butyeah, I've known Peter for, holy
cow, probably almost 30 years now.
(21:37):
And Mark I've known for probably 20 years.
[Paul DeNigris] (21:39):
Yeah....
[ (21:41):
Yeah, that's, I think such an important thing that people don't realize is
everybody you meet, especiallyin this era with social media and LinkedIn
and... and things. It's so muchof the work I get is from referrals or the
people I hire from referrals.
And it's, you know, every time I'm home, likeworking on a script or something,
(22:08):
I'm always thinking like, would I be betteroff if I just took somebody to
coffee? And usually, yeah. Yeah.
So thanks, Peter. And thanks, Mark, for introducingus.
[Paul DeNigris] (22:19):
Absolutely.
[Tom Putn (22:21):
Yeah, small business.
[ (22:22):
Yeah, it is a small business.
It is a small business. You know, the old sayingwas, it's not what you know,
it's who you know, and it's really who knowsyou. That is the important
part of that equation, right? It's who knowsthat you're a good writer director.
Who knows that I'm a good visual effects artistthat can connect the two of us?
And so it's, yeah, it's a...
It is an often overlooked, I think it's, it'ssort of understood like this
(22:46):
is how the business works, but it's not somethingthat people really address
or teach in film school, right? They teachyou all the, this is how and
why to put the camera here. And this is howand why to edit and all of
that sort of stuff. But it's, it all comesdown to networking.
I actually, having gone to USC,which is sort of regarded as, I think still,
(23:10):
one of the better film schools,I tell people all the time to skip film school.
I mean, I got a great education,made some great friends that I'm still friends
with, but got six figures in debt,graduated, ended up having to get a job as
a... career for the Power Rangerswhen all of my friends who skipped that process
(23:31):
were like, PA on movies and workingon cheap movies and making the connections.
And I saw their careers movedso much faster than mine did. Cause the thing
I didn't realize is for the kindsof movies I tend to make, which are like lower
budget movies, it's just aboutlike crewing on film after film, after film,
(23:52):
until you sort of build up thatnetwork of people that bring you work and who
can help you make your own films.
I'm doing a movie right now that I'm directingand producing called Into the
Unknown. It's about paramedics around the country.
And I got that job because thepublicist for a documentary I did a couple
(24:12):
years ago is the publicist fora film festival that one of the producers of
Into the Unknown runs and theywere looking for a director and he said, oh,
I think Tom works with firefightersand connected us. So it's really... It's always
so weird how these things happen.
I kind of think of it as like, you gotta puta lot of lines in the water,
[Paul DeNigris] (24:31):
Mm-hmm.
you know? Because it's so hardto like, spin enough plates to actually get
something...
going.
[ (24:42):
All right. Why don't we steer back to Dark Divide's VFX. So again, on the subject
of Debra Messing, she isshe's losing her hair in a big chunk of the
movie.
[Tom Putnam] (24:52):
Yeah.
[Pa (24:52):
And we I think probably the most shots that my team touched had to do with
that bald cap.
Oh my god, the bald.... So we hadan amazing hair and makeup person on the film.
And that's a bald cap. And we,there's varying degrees of her
(25:13):
hair loss in the film. And we actually, oneof the big line items in the budget
was hiring like one of the best wig makersin the country because nothing
to me wrecks a movie faster than a bad baldcap. And I wanted to be very close
with her. There's scenes like it with her inthe bathroom with her husband,
a lot of scenes of them in bed together andin the kitchen and things. I wanted
to be really close on her. And we had a greatperson, but we only had one person
(25:36):
for the whole movie. And inevitably, you'veseen Debra Messing. She has
a lot of hair to shove under a bald cap. Andwe would get the dailies back.
And I mean, every shot there's a wrinkle somewhereor a seam somewhere. And that's
a great example of where you guys did an amazingjob. And not just with the bald
(25:59):
cap, but like making her face look a littlemore sallow and doing the things
that we just didn't have the infrastructureto do on set. And I mean, I would
say, I think every single shot she's in, there'sVFX work on her seams and things.
(26:19):
Yeah. And I talk about this a lot because we do a lot of digital makeup
repair, if you will, in ourbusiness. And the one thing I want to stress
is anytime we're talking aboutthis, it's never it's never a slight to the
practical makeup people, right?
They do amazing work. It's us coming in tohelp them is we're partnered
(26:42):
with them. And there's been plenty of timeswhere I've been on set side
by side with a makeup person, a practicalmakeup person for more creature
effects and stuff like that. Where we're,it’s understood, we're in this together.
Like my work is gonna live and die on how goodtheir work is and vice versa.
And so it is, even though I never met yourmakeup and hair people, it
(27:04):
definitely was a partnership. It was not,you know, we're not taking anything
away from the work that they did. It's the limitations of time and money that work against you.
[Tom Put (27:17):
Oh, a hundred percent.
I mean, we had one person doinghair and makeup. She's like in the middle of
the woods with no support. Andyou know, you'd have days where it's like,
okay, the first part of the day,David's been out in the wilderness for a month
and he's completely tanned andscratched up and this and that. But then in
like 30 minutes after we wrap,I need you to turn them around for a completely
(27:37):
different part of the journey.
And having that ability is... huge.
There’s a sequence where we shot in reallava tunnels, which I don't recommend because
huge rocks were falling out ofthe ceiling. But deep underground, David escapes
from the lava tunnel and he comesout. And she had like, I was worried it looked
(28:00):
cartoony. She had put scratchesand bruises all over him because he goes through
quite an experience under there.
And then when I saw the dailies, I was like,oh, it's not enough. Totally my
fault. So, you know. the ability with VFX tojust like darken those and add
some bruising and things was huge. One of thethings that is so exciting for
me was the fact that we're finally in an eraalso where those things can happen
(28:24):
on handheld shots and the camera doesn't haveto be completely locked off. I
mean, it was phenomenal to me as a mid-careerfilmmaker who started off cutting,
you know, film on a movieola to see how farVFX have come.
I think you guys doyour job so well that you see these articles
(28:46):
like with the last Guardians ofthe Galaxy where the actors are like, or where
Kurt Russell's like, oh yeah,it was all the hair and makeup on set that
de-aged me. And it's like, dude,come on. The actors get fooled, I think, sometimes.
[Pau (29:00):
Yeah. That's again, that's part of that magician's trick, right?
If you don't know, I was there.
Um, yeah. And you did, you shot all of, allof those bald cap shots were
handheld and Debra is emoting and yeah, she'sin the, she's in the bathroom.
She's nauseous from chemo and all that stuff.
And she's, she's worked upand, uh, and so her head's moving and the camera's
(29:23):
moving and yeah, it's,
[Tom Putnam] (29:25):
all over.
[Paul DeN (29:25):
yeah, yeah. All over.
[Tom Putnam] (29:25):
Camera blur. Yeah.
One of the things I think peopleforget about is when you think of VFX, you
think of certain kinds of movies.
But for me, the power of VFX really shines when you're doing something dramatic.
So Debra comes from a very, she has a very deepbackground in terms of Broadway,
(29:50):
she was in the original Angels in America.
She’s a very highly trained actor. Soone of the things I wanted to do was take my
documentary background and shootreally long takes with her and David.
And they learned really quickly, I willtry to just do one take of things. And if there's
(30:11):
like a major camera problem, I'lldo a second take, but otherwise we'll move
on and shoot coverage. And theyloved that because they knew it was gonna feel
real for them every time theydid it. I shoot minimal coverage, didn't have
time. And I also work as an editor,so I had a really good idea about how I wanted
to cover things. But you do afive minute long take where it's, she's in
(30:32):
the bathroom and she's going throughchemo and she's throwing up and she's arguing
with her husband. You can't, it'snot right to do a lot of takes for that with
the actor, but then, you know,I'm behind the camera and then you can see
that the back of the bald capis bunching up on the back of her neck.
I mean strategically and creatively,the worst thing in the world you can do is
(30:57):
be like, oh, you did amazing,you've totally brought your A game, but we're
gonna do it again because of thebald cap. Like the actors will lose confidence
in you, they'll start saving theirperformances, assuming there's gonna be a problem.
So having you guys in my backpocket and knowing that you'd be able to clean
that up was huge for me. And Ithink where the VFX came into play the most
(31:19):
oddly is in all of those dramaticscenes. because it allowed me to still do one
or two takes and know I couldfix the technical stuff.
Tha’s what this show is all about. Right.
It's the, that's why it's VFX for Indies becausewe're not creating digital
creatures. But I'm, sometimes we do. We'renot, we're not creating, you
know, spaceships. Sometimes we do, but themost, the majority of the work
that we do is this. It's, let's help afilmmaker. wring the most production
(31:43):
value and the most out of every frame thatthey decided to use. And it's
this performance is great. This performanceis great in a different take.
Let's combine them. This performance is great,but this technical thing failed.
There's a cable in the shot. The boom polecame into shot. The makeup
didn't work for that angle. Right. All of thosesorts of things. And that's
(32:08):
what I love. That's what I love about workingwith Indies, because it's like
we're making a real difference in terms ofyour ability to tell your story
without the we're kind of mitigating the limitationsof, of indie filmmaking, right?
The limitations of coverage, the limitationsof how long you can shoot,
how many retakes you can do, um, you know,on a, on a studio picture,
(32:32):
something like that might've happened. Andafter your first cut, they
might've gone, we need to reshoot these scenes.
Right. Andyou do a reshoot. There's no reshoots
in the indie film world.
No, and when you have days whereyou have a 10 page day, I mean, you're sprinting
(32:53):
to just get one take of everythingand get just the most minimal coverage possible.
Yeah, I think as indie filmmakers,a lot of times we look at those sorts of VFX
shots as damage control, whenin reality, having gone through like
The Dark Divide. On the next one, I'm reallyexcited because I now in my mind have a better
(33:17):
sense of in the moment, oh, that'sgoing to be fine because I have the confidence
that we can fix certain thingsand fix them pretty inexpensively in post.
I think that's the other thingthat was a surprise to me is VFX right now
is in a weird place where there'severyone from guys on Fiverr who claim that
(33:40):
they can do it for $10 to like...
the same shot, you can go to somebody doinga Marvel movie and they'll quote
you with a thousand dollars.
And it's, I think we pretty much exclusively workedwith like shops the same size as yours because
you guys were affordable and youdid work that is on par with anything else
(34:04):
I've seen. So it's, that's thething I have to educate people about a lot
in the producing side of thingsthat I do which is that. There are shops out
there that can give you what youwant and do a great job. I think people have
just seen so many bad VFX in thissort of like Sharknado aisle of the video store
(34:25):
that they assume that when theynotice a VFX, those are the only VFX.
Like you're doing, we were talkingabout holiday movies earlier before the podcast.
I mean, I see, I have friendsthat do those and like they shoot them in the
summer. And then the VFX crews add all thesnow and nobody notices and it's, that's the part to me that I think is so fun because that's kind of the movie magic
(34:52):
part of all this, right?
[Pau (34:53):
Yeah, yeah, we do a lot of that, that sort of stuff. You know, the Canadian
Christmas movies where theyshoot, they shoot in the spring in Vancouver
and we have to make it looklike winter in Boston or something.
And if we've done our jobsright, the audience doesn't know we were there,
right? They totally buy itas winter in Boston and they go on that journey.
(35:16):
Had I only known, because we drugDavid up into an actual snowstorm on
Mount Hood above the treeline, it wouldhave been so much easier
to just have done it that way.
Yeah. You know, mountains, the, the view of the mountain was something
we, we touched a couple oftimes too. There were, there were spots where
we were, and I'm terrible withgeography and knowing what mountains are called
(35:39):
and all of that stuff. I just,you know, you just showed me a picture. It
said, this is the mountain,stick it back there. So I can't even tell you
what mountain it was or whywe were putting it there. You want to talk
about that a little bit?
Sure. So he's hiking through anarea called the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.
And I mean, I watched a lot oflike forest movies and I noticed they all just
felt like this guy's just in treesagain. So we established Mount Adams at the
(36:05):
beginning and as he's hiking we'reconstantly seeing it grow larger.
He goes over it and then it kind of recedesbehind him, which was a way for us to get a
visual sense of his progress.
But we filmed all over the place because since1995, a lot of things had changed.
So,most shots where you're seeing
Mount Adams, it's being added digitally. So,we would shoot the locations and
(36:30):
then I went back with just a DSLR and likematched angles and like spent
three days just driving around Mount Adams,shooting the plates for that.
And that became a huge part of the movie whereOnce I realized how good you guys
made it look, I started adding it all overthe place, much to the other producer's
dismay. So there's shots where, I mean, I'vehad calls from people that hike
(36:54):
that area regularly, like, I don't know wherethat trail is, but it looks great.
I'm like, oh, that trail's like 50 miles away,but they think it's right there
because, you know, it wasn't just about addingthe mountain, right? You guys
would add some texture with clouds or mistor... All those other layers that
I think gave the film that like yummy sortof depth that it had. And that's
(37:21):
a shot, nobody's mentioned those shots. Sountil probably this podcast, now
they'll all realize it. But yeah, that's agreat example because with maybe
two exceptions, every time we seesee Mount Adams, it's been added digitally.
Yeah. And we added it to a number of different shots to a couple of drone
(37:44):
shots, a bunch of handheldstuff. The one that kept me up at night was
the there was like a like a360 degree or like 270 degree pan from the
mountain across the valleypicking up David Cross in
the trail behind thecamera and pan and yeah, you
and I went back and forth on that one a bunchof times
(38:05):
because just trying to getit to blend right and then there was...
you kept telling me I'm
There's tree branches, pine trees, which are the worst, like in front of it.
[ (38:13):
Yep. And you kept telling me, I just watched it on the biggest screen possible.
And it's, it's slipping overhere. It's it's locked down here, but it's
slipping over there. And so,you know, we, we had to like fight lens distortion,
you know, the, without, withoutgoing super technical on this, but lenses distort
the image at the edges of theframe, depending on, you know, the glass manufacturer,
(38:34):
how wide the lens is, whetherit's anamorphic or spherical, you know, all
of that sort of stuff. Andso as the camera pans, particularly on pans
and tilts, the edges of theframe will get, will warp. And so something
that's tracking perfectly deadcenter will start to spread apart. And you
know, the, the added pixelswill now not follow the distortion of the,
(38:56):
and so you have to match allof that. And it's, um, uh, you know, it's the
kind of thing that a VFX supervisoron set would say. Okay, I need to make a note
of what that lens is. We needto shoot what's called lens grid later so we
can extract the distortionand then put the distortion back on. Coming
at it after the fact, thatinformation is lost. We don't, you know, very
(39:18):
often a filmmaker doesn't writedown what lens they used. There's no time.
There's nobody on set to takethose notes. And so it's a lot of guesswork
in post.
And I am a terrible VFX supervisor.
Yeah, I mean that was part ofthe, that was one of the challenges, right?
Which was, because there wereso many shots where I didn't even think we
(39:40):
would do VFX. Yeah, I rememberthat one. That was definitely one of the tougher
ones. And the great news is nobodynotices, you know? They just wanna know where
that trail is.
Yeah, so I do a lot of documentaries,and normally in a documentary, what you get
is what you get. I don't thinkI had done any VFX shots in a doc prior to
(40:04):
Dark Divide. And after that, Ireally have started to leverage what I've learned
in a way that allows me to...
get the most out of those moments.
Sometimes it's light stands and the boompole and the classic stuff that you think of,
(40:26):
but other times it's, I'll giveyou an example. I did a movie with Insane Clown
Posse, and those guys, if youknow the band, they're inseparable. So they're
always interviewed at the sametime, but, so we would have two shots, but
sometimes one of them will like,get distracted or be drinking a Red Bull or
something while the other guy'stalking, you have this great moment and no
(40:49):
other coverage. So we would justlike do a matte down the middle and replace the
side that wasn't important withhim listening versus drinking a Red Bull, which
I don't think compromises theintegrity. That's not who we're listening to.
Or for example, right now I'mdoing this movie about paramedics around the
country and HIPAA laws are everywhereand there's all sorts of things you can and
(41:12):
can't film and you can't plan anything because you don't know what callsthey're going to get. So I'll
have moments now where rather than just blurringsomebody's face, I'll place an
object in the foreground so that we don't seetheir face or that, or use VFX
to maybe build in some camera blur or somethingso it feels more organic rather
than like watching an episode of cops.
(41:34):
That’s been amazing for me and also justa lot of cleanup. It's amazing now the technology
is at the point where the cameraloses focus a little bit. There's a little
bit too much jitter and PremierePro or Avid can't handle it. You can go to
VFX and they can clean it up oreven a shot we're doing right now on that film
(41:56):
where we're delivering in 4K butI have to punch in like 400%. So using VFX,
using a VFX person to go in andlike... realistically up convert it and build
in a camera move so that we canuse that shot.
That's been exciting and alsoin a way that VFX now can also
(42:17):
sort of blur, you can blur the line betweenVFX and graphic design. So you
can include graphic design elements, maybeon the side of the ambulance or
something that, you know, you can have a graphicartist create the text and then
work with a VFX person in order to like, putit into the image in a way that's
just a little bit more fun.
[Pau (42:38):
Yeah, that's great. I love seeing that. I love hearing about how the experience
on one film then informs thenext, right? It is a process, right? We're
always trying to get better.
Every movie should teach us something.
It’s one of the reasons that I dothis show. This business is really about lifelong learning.
(43:01):
You have to continuouslyget better. Even if technology wasn't advancing,
which it is, at a breakneck speed.
We're constantly being introducedto new technologies, new software,
new techniques, new everything.
Even if technologystood still from this point
forward, we still have to learn every day becauseit's this iceberg. We know
(43:23):
our little part of the tip of the iceberg andthere's all this other stuff
down below.
Well, and I think doing a movieat the size I do them at, whether it's a documentary
or a fiction film, a huge partof my job is, I mean, honestly damage control.
You know, every day somethinghuge happens. We were shooting Dark Divide.
(43:44):
There was a day where Portland,Oregon got its first ever tornado.
It touched down, went one block, and droppeda tree on one car. Only thing ever damaged
in Portland from a tornado. Thatcar was our production van. So it's like, and
that was a day where that wasonly like the third worst thing that happened
that day. So you just sort ofevery day is like, okay, how do I get what
(44:07):
I need given all of these likeunexpected things that are happening and the
ability to use VFX all of a suddengives you so many more options, right?
Rather than just where to point the cameraor just how to direct people.
So. That's, I think, you're always, I'm alwayslearning. Every movie I'm like, well there's
(44:30):
50 mistakes I won't make again.
[Paul (44:34):
So once you wrapped post on Dark Divide, what was the release trajectory?
Did you guys play festivals?
Did you go directly to distribution?
Great question. We had all thesefestivals lined up and then COVID hit and the
festivals all shut down. So wewere faced with a situation where we didn't
(44:54):
have the normal route that youwould go through to release a film.
and that, in some ways worked out to ouradvantage because I'm also with theatrical
distributor. And one of the reasonswe cast who we cast in the movie was I wanted
the best actors I could get. AndI feel like I got them. But a bonus was that
They're both people that havestrong followings. David's a standup comic.
(45:16):
There's a number of other standupcomics in the movie, like David Koechner and
Cameron Esposito. Patterson Hoodfrom Drive-By Truckers is in the movie.
and then The Avett brothers and ChrisNovselic from Nirvana did the music for it.
So we had all these people withstrong followings and that was intentional
because I, just going througha traditional route, I felt like, well,
(45:36):
if we don't get any offers on thefilm, we'll release it ourselves.
By the time the movie was finishedwe brought in REI Co-op Studios as a brand partner.
They put some money into the movie and then the National Wildlife Federation,which is America's largest environmental
nonprofit, a portion of our proceeds went to themSo when the pandemic hit,
most other people I knew were like, well,I can't play film festivals. This
(46:00):
is gonna like go in a drawer for what endedup being two years. Whereas because
we had a marketing plan in place, we were ableto go ahead and release the movie
and do a really robust national campaign for it.
The movie ended up playingover 100 theaters in the US.
(46:21):
Almost every theater held it over from one week tobetween four and five weeks.
And did it make a fortune? Well, no, nothing did,but it definitely did, I think better than
any other film that wasn't releasedby like a major distributor. So we were really
happy with it. And you think makingthe movie is the hard part and then people
(46:49):
discover like they have to distributeit. I mean, even as hard as that was, we had
booked all these theaters. Wewere gonna start it in Oregon and Washington.
And about four days before thatrelease was supposed to start, Oregon had its
largest forest fires in historyto displace something like a third of the population.
All the movie theaters shut down.
So we like... could not play movie theatersin our core district. So we like
(47:09):
played everywhere else and sort of circledback as much as we could to do
special events screenings. So it's just, it'sa real like, I mean, as you guys
know, making movies is a real grad graduateschool PhD and just learning how
to be flexible and coming up with creativesolutions.
[P (47:30):
Yeah, for sure. It's all the hard part, right? It's
[Tom Putnam] (47:33):
Yeah.
[Pau (47:34):
the writing. It's the hard part. Casting. It's the hard part. Shooting.
It's the hard part, right?
It's it. It never gets easy.
[ (47:40):
Yeah, but and so I got my MBA at the top of the pandemic and the thing I
realized was like everything'shard. Starting a bakery is hard, you know.
It's every, you're basically,every time you make a movie, you're starting
a small business and most of thetime you're making a product and you don't
know who the buyers are. Nobodyelse does that. General Motors doesn't make
(48:02):
a car without some idea that people,what kind of person's going to want it, you
know, but we live in this weirdspace where we're making hope on the good days
we're making art, but we're makingit with a lot of somebody's money, even if
you're making a movie that's,I mean, I've made features as low as five grand,
but that's $5,000. That's a chunkof a car. And so it's such a weird sort of
(48:31):
art form in business. And forsomebody like me, who doesn't have a trust
fund, I have to work to pay mybills every month. And it's... it's always
a challenge to figure out like,how can I keep making movies? And so to keep
making movies, they need to makemoney for people and you have to make them
like fairly regularly and that'sthe hard part with documentaries are, like
(48:55):
the last three movies I finishedtook 12 years, seven years and 10 years to
get made and that's not a goodbusiness model. That's a long time between
projects.
[Pau (49:09):
Yeah, sure is. So thinking back to the filmmaker you were before
Dark Divide, what advice would yougive that filmmaker, or if a filmmaker came
to you today and said, I'vegot this movie and I think I'm going to need
visual effects, how do I preparefor it? What's one piece of advice you would
share with that filmmaker?
Due diligence, talk to people,talk to real VFX people that are in your budget
(49:34):
range. Have them look at the script,really go into it with an understanding,
Maybe not necessarily even of your specificshots, but of what you can do and what you
can't do. And have some sort ofdollar sign associated with that. Because we
had a couple of huge sequenceswe shot for the movie that we just ran out
(49:57):
of money and they're not in themovie. So it's, and that's because I didn't
do my due diligence. And I thinksomething I wish I had been able to do more
that I will definitely do thenext time is like, not just for us to talk
in advance, but to have an opendialogue when I'm in production to be able
(50:19):
to say like, here's the challengeI have, here's how I'm gonna shoot it, does
that. is that gonna work for you?
Because really my job is to give you what youneed to give me back what I need.
So without having the you part of it, you'rekind of flying blind. So I think
as filmmakers, a lot of times we're afraidto say we don't know or afraid
to ask for help or afraid to say, oh, I didthat wrong, let's do it again.
(50:42):
And I think turning off that part of your brainwill really like open up a lot
of opportunities.
[ (50:50):
Yeah, that's great. You know, a lot of times when I was directing movies,
I always had that feeling ofthat onus of I'm the director. I have to know.
I have to have the answers.
And I realized as I did more of it that beinga director is as much about
having the answers as it is about asking theright questions of your team.
Yeah, for me, because I'm sucha people pleaser, it's like, I have to remind
(51:15):
myself to not be afraid to askfor what I want, but also to not be afraid
to say, I'm not sure how to getwhat I want. Because everybody's there to make
you happy. I mean, you know, DavidCross and Debra Messing, they're well-known
actors, and I think I can rememberthe first day thinking like, oh my God, when
I give them direction, are theygoing to yell at me? Or like, what are they
(51:35):
going to, they know so much morethan I do. And it's like, no, everybody's there
to make. Everybody wants you tobe happy. So that's like the part you have
to constantly remind yourselfabout. But also at the same time, too. You
know, on a low budget movie, peopleare like. What they're making a buck fifty
a day or something, you know,they're just they're just they all have probably
(51:56):
better options. And it's alsoabout sort of being strategic about those asks,
too, so you don't burn peopleout. I think we've all been on shoots where
by day two. the directors haveworn everybody out too. So yeah, it's like
kind of like a fine line to ride.
Yeah, it happens in post too.
It's, you know, yes. Okay. We agreed to doX number of VFX shots with
(52:17):
X number of iterations within your budget andyour timetable. And, uh, and then we have
this thing called scope creepwhere it becomes, Hey, can we just do one more thing?
Can we just do one morething? How about one more thing? One more.
And it's, and before, you know,at that shot that had one VFX ask is now this
monstrous shot that has, haseaten up a ton of time. Uh, and it is, it's
(52:42):
always a balance. It's alwaystrying to figure out like, how can we best
serve the director's vision,best serve the movie and not, not get
burned out and also not focusall of our effort, all of our energy on that
one hero shot that the directoris in love with, and then all of the other
shots in the movie suffer.
I feel like that's the VFX equivalentof what we all do when we're doing our first
(53:05):
couple of movies, which is youspend half the day on the master shot that
you're going to see for threeseconds and then you're running through all
the coverage because you didn'tbudget your time and resources wisely.
Yeah, I have that conversationa lot of times with directors who are new to
the VFX process where theywant to keep noodling with a shot. And it's
like, let's put a pin in thisone because we have the 50 other shots for
(53:27):
your movie that need to getaddressed. Let's work through those and we'll
come back around to this one.
And I promise when you look at it with fresheyes, and when I look at it
with fresh eyes, we're going to see this alot more clearly. And nine
times out of 10, they're like, when they comeback, they're like, yeah, okay,
that shot's fine.
It's something that I've, I, apiece of advice I got early on that seems obvious,
(53:51):
but a lot of people don't do itis when you see the VFX shot, cut it into the
scene and view it in context becausewhen you just look at the shot, you're going
to pick it apart. But in contextyou look at it a whole different way. I kind
of look at it like you can goto Best Buy to buy a TV and you can fixate
on how all the TVs look different.
But then when you take your TV home and putit in your living room, it always
(54:12):
looks great. And, um, It's so easy to noodlethose things out of context. And
that's something I try to always take the timeto do now is not even comment on
the VFX shot until I've downloaded it and putit in the cut, even if it's like
a rough comp.
[Pau (54:30):
Yeah, that's great advice.
And that's something I'm going to share withclients going forward.
[Tom Putnam] (54:33):
Yay.
Don't make the knee-jerk commentwhen you see the shot. Download the shot, drop
it in your timeline, look atit a few times, forget about it for eight hours,
come back to it, then tellme what you see.
Yeah,
[Paul DeNig (54:49):
That's great advice
because if you want to watch it in con- there's so many times, I think we dealt with this whereI would be like, I don't know.
And then you watch it in context to the filmand the film, the movie's over
and you're like, oh, that was great. It didn't,it didn't bump for me or anything.
[P (55:01):
Yeah, yeah. Solid advice. So you've talked a little bit about what's next
for you as far as documentariesand stuff. If people wanted to follow you on
social media or see other projectsthat you've worked on, what's the best way
that they can find you?
Go to my website, TomPutnam.net,and you can see clips from my past work and
(55:23):
links to fun stuff and I'm onall the usual suspects for social media.
Yeah, I love feedback. So, you know,if you see something, you like it or you hate it
just let me know.
I'm always curious.
[Pa (55:41):
Great. All right, well that wraps up this episode of the VFX for Indies podcast.
I want to thank my guest,Tom Putnam, for sharing his wisdom, both on
The Dark Divide and on otherprojects.
And if you are watching this on YouTubeand you liked what you saw,
please like and comment and subscribe.
Definitely please comment if there's stuffyou wanna hear about, things you want me to
(56:03):
cover in future episodes, ormaybe you have a question for Tom.
Please share it in the comments. If you'relistening on iTunes or Spotify or one of the
multitude of podcast aggregatorsout there, a follow, a star rating, and a review
goes a long way towards helpingus reach new audience members.
And for the independent filmmaker in yourlife who needs to hear this,
(56:25):
please share thisepisode with them before they
go shoot their film.
They don't have to talk tome, but it's great if they talk to a VFX professional before they film.
For the VFX for Indies show and for everyone at Foxtrot X-Ray.
I'm Paul DeNigris. Thanks somuch for watching.
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