In-World War

Meet the In-World War cast and crew

If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes a medium-sized regional metro area with outlying suburbs to make a feature film.

We're still early in the post-production process on In-World War and already our team is huge -- literally hundreds of cast, crew and other contributors have come together -- and will continue to grow as we add FX artists and animators, audio engineering and more during post-production.

Too often, films large and small are seen as the work of a single auteur. In fact it takes a team of artists, technicians, performers, professionals and others to make it happen. IWW has gotten this far because of their hard work, generosity and belief in what we're doing. They deserve the credit.

If you're wondering what kind of rebels, thrill-junkies and ne'er-do-wells it takes to get an ultra-low budget indie sci-fi feature film like In-World War (shot in three countries, in NYC and in numerous locations around the San Francisco Bay Area over a year and a half period), meet the people who made it happen:

• In-World War cast
• In-World War crew

If you know someone on the list, thank them for putting their blood, sweat and tears into this project and supporting indie filmmaking. We couldn't have done it without them.

And if you're interested in joining this honor roll of superheroes, there's two ways you can still do this:

• Donate a tax-deductible contribution to the film (you get your name in the credits too).  It's a quick, easy and joyful online process.
• Get in touch if you are an experienced visual FX professional (artist, modeler, animator, etc.). Email team@studiolomismo.com

And a big thanks to Bianca Beyrouti for helping compile our cast and crew lists.

Editing the pick-up scenes

Just a quick update to let you know what's been going on since our sneak peek at WonderCon.

I've been doing assembly edits of the scenes we shot during the pick-ups and 2nd units. We shot a ton of additional footage during this period -- not so much because the film is bad (a common reason for multiple pick-ups) but because it's such an ambitious project and we just didn't have time to get everything we wanted during principal photography.

Anyway, I'm working my way through the new scenes and then going to go through the entire revised assembly tightening it up and adding the remaining inserts we picked up. It will be a long process, but very much a fine-tooth-comb approach. Soon after that, I'll toss it back to the editor and she'll refine the edit, add the music and we'll have a rough cut (at last).

Here are a quick sampling of the pick-up scenes recently assembly edited:

- Bathtub reshoot
- NYC Walk and Talk between Tix and Mary (a new scene)
- NYC Mosque reshoot
- NYC Restaurant reshoot
- NYC Taxi
- Griefers ball doorwoman
- NYC vendors

What happens in each scene? What does this all mean?

You gotta wait to see the film itself....So back to editing it now....

Thanks to everyone who saw us at WonderCon

Many thanks to everyone who came out to see the first rough trailer at WonderCon. We gave a first sneak peek at the work-in-progress trailer, including many scenes through-out the film.

The trailer was shown as part of the "What's Next in Indie Sci-Fi" panel organized and moderated by IWW writer/director DJ Bad Vegan.  We had a bigger crowd than last year and were proud to be premiering footage with the other great indie sci-fi filmmakers who participated including Henry Barrial (Pig), Vincent Cortez (Roamer), Kip Rassumsen (95ers:ECHOES) and SF in SF coordinator Rina Weisman.

But most of all, thanks to all the fans and friends that showed up!

 

Major pick-ups completed and some behind-the-scenes photos

Happy -- no make that ecstatic -- that all our long days of major pick-ups for In-World War are done at last!

Thank you to the hundreds of people who helped make this milestone possible, starting with production 18+ months ago, through all the 2nd unit world across the world along the way and ending with some kick-ass footage in Oakland at the end of January.

What's next? Editing. We need to get a rough cut done, fit in some music, do some minor pick-ups (inserts mostly -- no real scenework is needed at this point thankfully). More about the editing later. Suffice to say, it's another major milestone ahead.

But once in a while it's important to just enjoy the view from the top of the latest hill.

We couldn't have gotten here without the support and love from so many friends, family, cast and crew. You're all part of the In-World War family. Thank you, deeply and sincerely.

Here are some behind-the-scenes photos from our shoot in New York City and our last day of major pick-ups in Oakland. Thanks to the amazing people at the Oakland Int'l Airport and the Oakland Film Office, we were able to shoot inside an actual 727 cargo plane -- check out the pic below.

P.S. If you're an indie filmmaker you may be interested in the six-part series on indie film distribution and marketing that I wrote up after Sundance this year. It's on my DIY Filmmaking Sucks blog. The first article appears this week and a new one is published every Monday for five more weeks. Check it out.

More Bay Area pick-ups and next steps

The last month has been hectic. Very hectic.

The weekend before Thanksgiving we shot at the Hilton Garden Inn in Emeryville, in the lobby of a city building in downtown Oakland and in Oakland's Chinatown. It was a small 2nd unit crew (a nice change from the chaotic swarm of principal photography) and a big shout-out to everyone who helped out, including 2nd unit DP Jamie Metzger, sound mixer Fred Runner, AC Marianna Ellina and our PAs Crystal and Myles, plus all the cast. The footage looks great.

This weekend we're going back to Livermore to shoot inserts at the house we're using as Mary's parents place. Simeon, who plays Mary, is flying up for the shoot (thanks to a Southwest cheap seat). Plus we're also shooting a scene for the party sequence that we weren't able to get during principal (one of the featured actors was under 21 and the club wouldn't let her in). Between those two locations and a number of city street exterior pick-up shots, we've got a pretty long day.

After that, we have one more day of random pick-ups including one intense scene on an airplane (which we unfortunately had to cut from principal photog due to time constraints at the last minute). Beyond that, there are a number of inserts we'll have to grab (mostly establishing shots). For the locations outside of the Bay Area, we'll have to find local DPs to shoot for us (anyone in Hong Kong or Shanghai with a good HD camera?).

Once we're done with this weekend and the next pick-up day (the one with the airplane scene), we'll be able to finally get to work on a rough cut.

Making a feature film isn't a mad dash, it's a marathon of marathons. And that's true even before we account for the next major phase after editing: VFX.

Incidentally, if you want to help out as a PA this weekend, please get in touch: brant @ studiolomismo dot com.

Filming in crazy NYC

Whew.

On Sunday, we completed an insane three days of shooting in NYC (with one day of prep after a red eye flight). Amazingly, we got all the scenes we needed, including scenes on Canal St. (chaos, honking cars, a flood of tourists, vendors and more), at a fantastic mosque, in a Turkish restaurant and at a warehouse in Williamsburg -- just a block away from where a Jonah Hill film was being shot. We stole a shot against an exterior wall that was lit by their powerful lights (it was a night shoot). Thank you Hollywood!

A big thanks goes to Ben Rubin, our local producer for this 2nd unit shoot. He's just started Columbia's MFA program for film producers and he proved he's got what it takes. Ben: you kick ass.

Also, special mention should go to Dane Brehm, our 2nd unit DP for NYC. He helped get us the camera and lenses for the shoot and brought together the core crew. He's also our post-producer for the whole film and is really helping us keep moving forward.

Couldn't have done it without either of these guys, plus the local crew that came together for the project, most of them with no previous experience on our film.

Thanks also go to Simeon and Premstar, two of our actors that came all the way from LA to NYC for the shoot. They reprised roles that we shot over a year ago and turned in fantastic performances.

Lastly, a big thanks to everyone else who contributed from the local actors to the people at the various locations who opened their spaces for us to shoot.

According to Dane, we shot about 270 minutes of footage -- that's an average of 90 minutes of footage a day, which is simply insane. Great work all around.

Next stop: the last of the major pick-ups here in the San Francisco Bay Area (probably shooting in December) and then a rough cut. Then a fine cut.

After that, it's all about the FX.

Then audio and coloring...and then we're ready to start submitting to festivals.

But there's a lot of track between here and there.

Onward.

NYC here we come

Hard to believe we're roughly a month away from shooting our pick-ups in NYC and already the pace is moving fast.

That's (hopefully) good news for the shoot. The more prep we do, the smoother it should all run and the better the footage will be. After all, pre-production is the secret to successful production. And at this point, the NYC pre-pro is pretty much taking up all the oxygen in the IWW universe. Everything else is on stand-still as we get ready for this and tee it all up.

So here's a big shout-out to Ben Rubin, our 2nd unit producer there in NYC, who is leading the charge, working his ass off, plus the others who are giving of their time and energy to make it happen, including our talented and long-suffering actors who are flying out from coast-to-coast (thanks to free tickets via reward miles).

Nothing says "New York City" like New York City -- so hopefully it should look great on the screen. It's pretty exciting to see this all happen.

We're trying to shoot all the exteriors that are set in NYC (to replace the faux NYC footage we shot in downtown Oakland), plus there's one new small scene we're adding to help bridge the relationship between Mary and Tix.

Lots of logistics are in motion: casting, location scouting, audition space, rehearsals, writing, meals, craft services, camera crew, sound recordist, lighting, gear, a truck, insurance and connecting with community groups, among many many others.

If you're in NYC and able to help in some way, please feel free to get in touch. Or if you just want to donate (tax-deductible!) to support the cause and get your name in the credits, we can assure you that there will never be better time. So please, donate now.

Help us leave it all on the screen.

NYC pick-ups, introducing our VFX Producer and more

Never a dull moment.

Just a quick update on IWW. There's a lot going on and as usual we're juggling multiple balls in the air. It may seem at times that nothing much is going on because we don't have time to update the blog, but that's far from the truth. We try to keep you posted, but with so much going on, it's not always easy.

Every week we're moving forward on multiple fronts. This film is a huge undertaking, with many moving parts and a tsunami of tasks, so it gets spread out over time (a year has passed since production already?!?). Rest assured, things are happening.

Here's a glimpse into what's going on right now.

Pick-ups - We're reviewing the revised assembly cut and building the list of pick-ups needed and scenes to be reshot. Luckily, the number of scenes needing reshooting is very minimal (maybe two full scenes), so most of our additional shooting will be b-roll, insert shots and establishing shots -- all to flesh out the storytelling.

NYC 2nd unit - This is the focus of much of our time right now. We're cashing in some frequent flyer miles to get tickets to NYC to shoot on location there. There are a number of key NYC scenes, in addition to needed b-roll and getting this right is crucial. Luckily, we have a talented local producer, Ben Rubin (besides being a former student of mine, he's entering Columbia's MFA program for film producers), plus some old friends who are helping out in one way or another. If you're in NYC and want to help somehow, let us know.

VFX Producer - The amazing and talented Gordon Wittmann has joined the team as our VFX Producer. Besides being a great friend, he's one of the most experienced visual effects producers in the Bay Area, having worked at ILM, The Orphanage and is currently at Spy Post. His IMDB listing includes some of the most high-profile FX films in the industry: Iron Man, Star Wars II, Terminator 3, Grindhouse/Planet Terror, Van Helsing and many more. He'll systemize our VFX process as we grow the team and start to knock out concepts, ultimately moving us through production on the effects. With about a hundred FX shots in IWW, this is a crucial role and it's been my dream since day one to work with Gordon. 

Additional pick-up weekends - At this point, our additional shooting is a weekend thing and looking at our preliminary list of pick-ups, it could be between 4 and 6 weekends (including the long weekend in NYC). More on this as we move forward.

Plus, footage is being processed from the recent b-roll shoots and as always, we're trying to reach out to people to grow our team. It's a never-ending process, making a film like this, but we have no choice. It's in the blood and failure is not an option. Onward.

Lost in musicland

It's become clear that figuring out the music for the soundtrack is a hugely important and increasingly time-consuming effort.

Music is the way into viewers' hearts, and crucial to underscore (so to speak) the emotional footpath of the moment-to-moment storytelling.

I've been listening to a ton of tracks from local artists (mostly) and trying to narrow down to the ones that resonate most. That alone is a huge effort fraught with anxiety, especially since there's no guarantee a given track will work anywhere in the film nor any certainty that the artist will give us clear rights to use the track (without which, we cannot show the film).

On top of that, there's the question of scoring for scenes where individual existing tracks from music artists won't work, or a more specific and nuanced musical mood is needed to follow the thread of a scene. Thus, I need to figure out the "sound" of the score (orchestral, minimalist, jazz, electronic, noisy, etc.) and then find someone who can do that -- and as a volunteer or for deferment.

Since I'm process-oriented, I've been floundering a bit on trying to figure out how to organize the process of cracking this musical nut. First I listened to a lot of music (thanks to Heidi for all the suggestions for great local talent). Then I looked at places in the assembly edit where I knew the music was essential (montage scenes and non-dialogue scenes, for instance). Then, as I kept watching the assembly edit, it became apparent that there are a huge number of scenes -- probably 80% of the film, if not more -- that will need some sort of music to convey the fullness of the moment. That's a lot of music.

Then I -- well -- honestly I got lost.

So as a diversion, over the past few weeks, I've focused instead on prepping for the upcoming Comic-Con (including the launch of a new related project that will be announced at Comic-Con). Meanwhile, I kept churning around this issue in my head, trying to figure out how to structure the approach to dealing with selecting the music.

It was clear that there were too many variables, driving me toward feeling overwhelmed and unsure of where to start:

• What music artists to choose?
• What tracks to choose?
• What scenes and shots need music?
• What track would go best with a given scene?
• Where in a track should we start the song in that scene?
• Should it be an existing track or scored specifically for that scene?
• How much of the film should be scored vs. existing tracks from artists?

Around and around I went.

Finally, after much cogitation (and a few frightening dreams at night that I'd never finish the damn film), I decided on a process.

Here's what I'm doing: I've created a spreadsheet and listing every place music is needed in the assembly edit (using timecode and description of the place in the scene), with notes as to the emotional tenor of the moment. Plus, if I feel a scene would be better served by a score (due to a twisting nuance of emotion that an existing track would be unlikely to fit), then I make a note of that as well.

Basically, I'm compiling a list of music cues for the film: in and out sync points for each place music should go.

The next step will be to approach these one-by-one and figure out the best track to use for each music cue (from those tracks I've already selected as potential favs). Some will come easy, others may take some work.

Inevitably this is a long, exhaustive process, since any single cue may result in weeks of scouring through artists and tracks for the perfect fit.

In the first act alone (currently at about 30 minutes in the assembly edit), there's about 18 or 19 music cues, including places for both existing tracks and yet-to-be composed scoring. That's 72-76 total for the entire film, if that rate holds for the rest of the edit. That's a lot of music.

But music is vital to the viewing experience. Audio is far more important than the visuals, in my view, due to the visceral connection between hearing and emotion in us humans. We won't settle for musical mediocrity, so into musical weeds I go.

And the pressure is on: when the director calls himself "DJ Bad Vegan," the expectation for music is high....

Progress on many fronts for the film

Just a quick update on some of the things that are going on. The project is such a huge undertaking, we have large sub-projects moving forward along parallel tracks at the same time.

Editing
Sharon is revising her assembly edit based on my feedback. Wes (our great asst. editor) is working on the Iraq scene. I'm looking at shots to pull out as selects for a number of montages.

Music
This is one of the biggest pieces on my plate right now. I'm gathering together some of the music I already have preliminary clearance to include in the film. Also, I reached out to a very music-savvy pal, Heidi (who also DJs on the best local college radio station), and she's helping gather music from local acts and bands who might be open to contributing a track (despite our lack of money).

Our goal is to get Sharon music by the end of the month, so for the edit after this one, we can start hearing some music. That will be huge.

For more about how to get music in your indie film, check out the recent blog post on my indie filmmaking blog, DIY Filmmaking Sucks, Royalty-free music for indie films.

Special effects
Now that we've recovered from the shock of realizing that In-World War has about 100 FX shots, we're starting the design and concept process. Graeme, our amazing FX guru in London, has just sent over the very first FX comp. It includes a number of different visual approaches to the NPC blur -- perhaps the defining effect in the film. Very exciting to see this start to take shape.

Outreach to the audience
A former student of mine, the extremely talented Ben (recently accepted into the graduate program at the Columbia Film School) has been working on a top secret sci-fi web project. If you dig hard enough, you can probably figure it out. It should be something that both sci-fi fans and sci-fi filmmakers will be into. We're pretty excited about it. Stay tuned.

(Yes, we're being coy.)

The future
On top of all that, I've started work on my next screenplay. Never a dull moment.