Must Needs Be Done

It's funny, completing a feature film is a monumental effort -- thousands of man hours of work and the willingness to see the movie through the end of its process no matter how you're feeling about the movie on a given day. 
But the actual delivery requirements can be... daunting. You think you're all done with color-correcting, with eliminating matte lines and cleaning up dialog tracks and then --
-- And then you have to deal with a LOT of paperwork.
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. In fact there's a Federal injunction against me complaining about anything because, after all, I'm allowed to direct feature films for (a poor) living.
But I thought it would be amusing to post the sorts of delivery items one must produce in order to get North American distribution.
Note that all deals are unique and different. And this one particular distributor is more picky. Ironically the requirements for North America have become more legally detailed for low-budget indy pictures in the last few years due to the heady deep-pockets liability inherent in the big VOD services -- they're sticklers for every "i" being crossed and "t" being dotted.

Documentation

1. ☑ Screenplay
2. ☐ Composers Agreement
3. ☐Sync & Master Use License agreement
4. ☐Paid Ads statement  ( On your letter head, detailing which actors/above the line crew get what credit, in what order, etc )
5. ☐Dubbing Restriction ( On your letterhead, detailing if there are any dubbing restrictions.)
6. ☐Director & Producer agreements  ( - similar to the writer's agreement)
7. ☐Title Search report .  ( You can use someone like  http://www.suzyvaughan.com/  who is half price of Thomson Compumark )
8. ☐Copyright report (it's possible this may not be required)
9. ☐Stock Footage statement ( On you letter head, detailing if there is any stock footage in the movie and if so, where it comes from and legal rights to use it. )
10. Chain of title document
11. Trailer Usage.  ( A statement on your letter head that says there are no restrictions with actor usage in the trailer )
12. Copyright FORM PA  Script and Movie

Notes Encore

Today the fabulous Steven J. Niles came to the studio and we recorded our commentary track. This was the first time I'd met Steven. We had a delightful time.
(You need to visit his pages for Sex Lies & Fish as well as It Came From Uranus.)
I've done about 20 pages of notes on Prometheus Trap in the last two weeks. You know, if we could actually finish a picture with three weeks before the deadline, we could do all kinds of cleaning up and "make betters" before we deliver it. That would keep us from having to deliver the movie, er, four times.

Now I have hundreds of pages of work to do getting the deliverables ready for Prometheus Trap, Android Insurrection, and Earthkiller (which has been renamed in North America to Total Retribution -- man, I thought "Earthkiller" was going to stick).

Tests

Still doing some tests between the drone's onboard camera and the GoPro 2. If you're looking at this in your email you'll have to click through in order to see the exciting tests.
Let's start with looking at a picture from the Parrot AR.Drone 2. This is taken directly from the drone's onboard camera. Now let's look at the GoPro in the same lighting conditions. (Of course, the video is shakier because I'm just handholding it.) Now let's look at the GoPro in an exterior. YouTube does seem to clean up some of the noise issues in these videos. Note when I say "noise" I'm talking about video noise.
Still, the GoPro is very noisy in these videos. Plus, they seem to all feature Tom Rowen.
Now is the time I'll share with you some spam:
Are you noble and serious man? Are you looking a loving girlfriend?
I'm very gorgeous lady.
I 'm waiting for you to on-line chat.

Every Day in Every Way

I put a program called Finch on our editing computer in order to try to figure out how long it takes to edit a feature. That... didn't really work.
+++++
According to the DVD commentary on the 2nd season of Community it takes a week to a week and-a-half to get an "assembly" edit of the show. So if that's 7 working days then you're looking at about 35 working days for a feature, right?
Hmm...
++++
We don't do assembly edits. Nobody in my shop works that way. The final edit is very close to the first thing anybody's ever cut. Sure, I go through the movie and maybe add a moment here or tighten something up there. But I really don't radically alter anything. (No matter how much my editors may complain that I do).

This blog has been getting way too safe for work lately. This is my partial effort to correct that.

Drone for Production

I'm experimenting with the Parrot AR.Drone in order to use it for the "dragon's eye view" in our next movie.
Here you can watch me bash it repeatedly into walls outside my office. Here's my conclusions regarding the onboard camera:
Using the onboard USB stick doesn't really buy you a lot of image quality over what gets recorded via Wi-FI.

• The image has too much noise to be usable for a dramatic feature.
• The image distortion on the on-board camera is too much for a dramatic feature. We'll have to mount a GoPro to it.
• The drone is surprisingly stable in "hover" mode. At least in no-wind interiors.

What to do

Canon's new C100 will list for eight thousand bucks. That's a lot of camera for $8G's.
I'm on my... er... 5th? feature with the Panasonic GH1 and I'm getting tired of the rolling shutter "jello-cam" and I'm getting tired of the artifacts which show up in low-light/low-contrast footage.

Via Jeremy Crowson. Our goal is to pick three. 

What's wrong with this sentence in a screenplay?

She leaps up and starts running at full speed down the corridor.

"Starts running..." No no no. Maybe she runs. Maybe she pushes herself into a full gallop. I don't care, but she doesn't starts running. 

You absolutely must write what we see and make it as active as possible. 

And under no circumstances will you ever write "They are locked in a life-or-death struggle" or I will put your name in the slug line of the scene with a note saying that you wrote that terrible "action".

Prometheus Trap Trailer on the Tubes

Here's the YouTube version of the Prometheus Trap trailer.

New Prometheus Trap Trailer

PROMETHEUS TRAP WEB FINALv0912 from Andrew Bellware on Vimeo.
Click through to embiggen.

Revolution

So, we have this dragon script where in a post-apocalypse world this girl runs around fighting dragons or whatever.
The idea that the world would suddenly not have high technology is actually from Elegy Beach. At least, that's where I stole it from.
Revolution has the same notion in it. Electricity doesn't, you know, work anymore. And yeah, you can ask "well wait, then how does physics work?" But it's kind of a waste of time. It's just a conceit. You know, like doors slamming in a romantic comedy. Don't fret none about it.
I don't know about the screenwriting in Revolution though. The dialog is a bit en pointe. Firearms work, it's just that they're illegal somehow and that seems to be enough to keep the local militias in charge.
And crossbows have a lot of stopping power.
Any why not many horses? I know why we don't have any horses -- it's 'cause they're expensive.
One thing they do get right are the gratuitous shots of overgrown world. The sunken church was particularly nice.

+++++
Hoo boy. As Kevin Kangas pointed out. I bought the wrong GoPro camera. So now I've ordered the right one. Luckily GoPro has a money-back guarantee.

Things

The GoPro is available "naked" (just how I like my cameras.) Welcome to the world of today, where I work on the 12 pages of QC notes we just got hit with.
I just ordered the GoPro. We're going to use it on this dragon movie once we get started shooting.
 
 But ordering it directly from the GoPro site is about twenty bucks cheaper even with shipping.
+++++
In the meantime, has anybody edited a feature with the new Lightworks?
Because, you know, it's only sixty bucks and if it could replace Final Cut Pro I would be there in a New York minute.
The King's Speech was edited with it. So too Hugo.
I'm scared. Hold me.
++++
The FedEx with the 9pm deadline is at 70 Spring Street.
+++
Did I mention that today is re-delivery day for Prometheus Trap? I'm hoping we're solving our fun QC rejections.

Ha! There's someone standing there. Am I allowed to blame the editor? I think I will. It's the editor's fault.

It's a Sartre reference for crying out loud.

Normally by this point in the movie we'd have been able to upload mixed acts to the Internet and let our inner circle see them. But we've been so crammed for time that just hasn't been able to happen.

You have no idea how much this shot has plagued me.

 Hunting down matte lines can be nigh on impossible because oftentimes they don't show in the Final Cut Pro prerender. But boy do they show up in the final render.

This was properly identified as an Andrew Kramer energy orb. I stand guilty.

Sometimes there's no time to make a new effect. Sometimes I just steal title treatments from videocopilot.net.
Because I'm a sleazy producer, that's why.

Too noisy in the background.

French Androids

Everyone knows that France has the best androids in the world. Which is why they need the best robot hunters in the world.

Groove to how awesome everyone looks. This was exactly what I was thinking. This may be my favorite poster.

Yes, "Un Film De Andrew Bellware". The most pretentious thing to put on a poster because it's even in French. I so win.

Sarah-Doe Osborne

She's awesome. Even the President of SAG thinks so! Here in the Pandora Machine we know so!

QC the QC

Today's excitement is making the "C" version of Prometheus Trap. That is, making all the QC changes that the distributor wants.

Again, this still is just a bit dark because of the gamma difference between your monitor and video.

The distributor hated the original version of this shot because I'd boosted the exposure four stops (in the live-action part of the shot on the bottom left.)
So instead I replaced the back wall altogether and let the live action part of the shot go into the inky blacks. You'll still see some movement there in the lower left (and we go immediately into a closeup). But the video noise from bringing up the exposure so much won't be there. Making the shot look better.
I really thought I couldn't do this with the shot. But the composite actually sits pretty well. I did a poopity job with the exposure when we shot this wide but I did a decent job with the composition.
It's funny -- we never get "you have to change the ending, you can't have everybody die." Indeed, we have almost complete creative license to do whatever we want. We do get hit on the fact that our movies only cost a couple million dollars and not several million dollars quality control issues in picture and sound.

Kevin Kangas Sees the Future*

As it turns out, there are undermounts specifically designed for the AR Drone to carry a Go Pro camera.
The thing I'd prefer not to have is the GoPro's absurdly fisheye lens. Pthu.

But maybe there's some other lightweight options out there with lenses which aren't so wide-angled? Something that'll do at least a 4/3rds sensor at 23.98? If we have to shoot 60 then we'll just pretend all the footage is "overcranked" and we slow it down in post maybe? I really don't want to get wider than the equivalent of about a 28mm in APS-C.

*See comment in post below.