In-World War

Latest tricks in DIY indie film distribution

I just got back from a cheapo trip to Sundance with a ton of notes and ideas for indie distribution.

There's a lot brewing and if you have an indie film, you should be paying attention.

Check it out: I wrote up a lengthy, content-rich article about the tips and tricks that I picked up at Sundance this year on my filmmaking blog DIY Filmmaking Sucks.

Audio podcast interview with In-World War's director

Local filmmaker Niall McKay interviews In-World War director DJ Bad Vegan (aka Brant Smith) for the Film Ireland website. Film Ireland is the magazine of Filmbase, the Dublin-based filmmaker organization that provided the gear and a location for the In-World War 2nd unit shoot in Dublin.

If you're interested in indie filmmaking and distribution, it's a good listen.

Topics in the podcast:

• What's this In-World War film about?
• How to make a feature film with nearly no money.
• What we learned about theatrical self-distribution from our experience with Quality of Life.
• The best marketing technique for ensuring people see your film.
• Why science fiction is a good choice for an indie film.
• The future of indie/DIY/artisan filmmaking.

Buckle up your headgear, since it's a wild ride down the rapids of DIY independent filmmaking:

Film Ireland: Niall McKay talks to Brant Smith Director of 'In-World War'

VR prop for 2nd unit in-world shoot

Really excited about this.

Wanted to share an image of a prop by the amazing Karen for our virtual reality 2nd unit shoot that Laura and Steve are putting together next week.

This is the persistent holophone that Junior gives Mary. The VR version is based on the actual phone we had modeled and manufactured using resin.

This image of the phone is the skin that will be wrapped around the 3D model (that's why it literally looks like a skinned animal). The blue marks will be used by the FX people in post-production to track the movement of the phone on the screen for inserting the hologram/UI elements.

We have rehearsals for the VR scene (all done in-world) on Saturday and then the actual performance on Monday. On Wednesday we have any pick-ups plus capturing the camera angles.

It's a busy week before I leave for Sundance on Thursday (not going with a film, just to see movies and connect with people).

The digital filmmaking life: 400+ hrs of transcoding and VR pre-production

Things are moving forward steadily on a couple fronts.

We're just about done with the transferring of footage from the RED (and other formats) into ProResHQ for editing in Final Cut. It's taken over 400 hours to do this work, since one minute of footage takes nine minutes to convert. Thanks to Dane for riding herd on all that digital data.

We had another drive fail (one of the ones that was supposedly repaired), so we lost a week due to that, but we're back in the saddle (and backed-up thankfully).

We're also in pre-production on some additional 2nd unit work in our most exotic location: a true virtual reality world. Actors will -- literally -- go in-world to act out the scenes. We'll record their actions and then later replay the action to "shoot" it.

It's a crazy, but very cool and flexible way to work: we separate the performances from the camera work. Basically, because we are recording the every movement of the actors in-world, we can replay it perfectly and then at leisure place the camera for recording and editing. This allows us to place the camera EXACTLY where we want, including shots that we could never afford in real life (helicopter shots anyone?).

It also allows us to shoot from different angles with exactly the same performance, since the performance is literally recorded. Totally wild. No continuity errors are even possible (um, hopefully).

Big thanks to Laura and her team for helping us out on this in-world shoot and making it happen.

This is the largest segment of the film left to shoot, so it will be great to get it in the can. We're planning on having the performance occur in the next ten days with later "recording" of the camera angles sometime later this month.

Eat your heart out James Cameron.