The Pre-Production

My ultimate goal before a shooting is to be as good prepared as possible, especially if you´re shooting on a very tight budget. We´ve been pretty good prepared, it got stressy anyway, but that´s part of the job.

A month before the scheduled shooting one important funding was canceled, but thanks to the already granted fundings from MA7 we managed to pull off the almost impossible and shot a great movie with an incredible cast & crew who all agreed to work for free.

Without the great efforts of the whole team this wouldn´t have been possible, and i want to thank all of them: Cast&Crew.

The Shooting

Dealing with such a heavy topic as human trafficking it is very important to precisely know how you want to show the cruelties your protagonist has to endure. It´s one thing to write a screenplay about that, a whole other thing is to actually direct this kind of scenes.

I´ve been very lucky with the extraordinary cast, way before the rehearsals we sat together and discussed how we wanted to tackle those scenes – and we´ve come to very good solutions.

Shooting with “stars” like Rainer Spechtl and Christoph Grissemann was anything but difficult. It makes your life as director so much easier when everyone brings their own creative impulses and works together as a team instead of just trying to push your own thing. In the end working together counts, not just one great performance – and it just was a pleasure to work with all of the actors involved.

I think you know it was a great team and a great shooting if you´re sad that it´s over, and that definitely was true.

Post-Production

We shot the movie on the RED ONE and it was just great. I found this excellent Final Cut Pro / RED workflow document that made our life much more easy.

Basically our post-production workflow looks like this:

• Backup the RED footage on set on two different hard disks
• Import the RED footage into Final Cut Pro (with Apple Pro Res HQ codec)
• Edit the material (offline)
• Transfer the offline edit onto the 4K RED footage
• Color correction
• After the editing is done: sound design & music
• Put it all together with inserts & credits

Currently we´re doing the offline edit, this should be finished within the next few weeks.

I´ll keep you updated on the progress, you could also join the Facebook page of the movie for the most recent news and photos.

I’ve been involved in a Canon 7D shooting right before, but i wanted to give it a try for myself – and i’m pretty impressed by that little thing.

You can watch the video here (the music is once again from Andreas Grass & Nikola Paryla):

I limited the ISO to 3200 and used the following lenses:
Canon EF 24-105mm 1:4
Sigma 10-22mm 1:4-5,6

Although the lenses could have had a better aperture i’m pretty happy with the results, even in low light situations the noise is not too bad (i have not done any noise reduction).

The camera is really easy to use and with good lenses the result is a really impressive, full HD video.

Besides the ISO and shutter i only adjusted the white balance for the look i wanted – everything else are pretty default settings.

The only issue is that you need to have either a tripod or really really steady hands to avoid a jittery video. There are already some rigs, but i didn’t have a chance to try one out. So for documentary where you move a lot you might run into trouble (also because there is no auto-focus for video).

All in all it’s a nice little thing, and quite affordable too.

Due to some scheduling conflicts we had to postpone the shooting until January, we’ll be shooting from Jan. 12th. – Jan. 15th 2010 now.

But there are very good news as well: we managed to cast the first roles!

Christoph Grissemann will play JOHANN and Rainer Spechtl will be OSCAR.

We are really happy to have these terrific actors for our movie and we’re looking forward to cast the other characters in December.

All things come together pretty nicely, i can´t wait to shoot the movie…

This posting is cross-posted on the website of A Place Of Peace here.

I got enough time until the shooting to prepare everything, meet with the heads of department to discuss all the tiny bits and i even manage to arrange the pre-production between my other projects. But i know two things for certain:
- just one little detail could change everything
- no matter how much time you have to prepare yourself, a lot will change and it will get stressful.

But no matter what, spending as much time as possible to prepare yourself is more important than everything. Prepare for everything that can go wrong (which in fact could be everything) – so you can deal with it in time.

So far so good, this is the status on A Place Of Peace:

Soundtrack

Attending the Film Music Symposium really changed my mind about certain aspects of film music.

The earlier the musician / composer is able to get his hands on the screenplay and think about the theme of the movie, the more the production will benefit from it. Music definitely is a powerful tool to evoke and emphasize emotions, so if the music is available before the shooting you could easily use it for rehearsals or the shooting itself. But most important – you don´t have to use temporary music for editing. It´s really hard for a composer if you´ve watched your raw cut a hundred times with the music of Hans Zimmer.

So my plan is to meet my composer soon and talk about the ideas i have about the soundtrack.

Storyboard

I´m not a great illustrator. Really not. But then again a storyboard doesn´t have to look like a perfect pencil sketch – it has to convey the shots i imagine for the movie and give everyone involved a sense of what i´m trying to achieve. So with the help of Stan Lee (How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way) i´m learning how to bring my thoughts to paper.

I personally very much like the way the movies of Susanne Bier are shot, very close close-ups.
What i´m trying to achieve in A Place Of Peace is to have one moving master that´s almost a one-shot in each scene and cut it with close-ups of the actors emotions. While this looks pretty nice in the storyboard we´ll see if the locations support my vision, but i´m pretty confident that i´ll be able to adapt my ideas to the specific set.

We won´t have the time for a lot of shots within each scene, so i´m working on few shots that provide some eye-candy and convey everything they should.

What Else?

Carola, the stylist, is collecting some moods for the clothings and Joana is searching for locations. Angela is casting and i am drawing, so far everything looks quite good – we´ll see how everything develops.

This posting is cross-posted on the website of A Place Of Peace here.

I got involved into this matter since my last short movie Greener Pastures in 2006, during ongoing screenings for school classes or discussions and the book Joana researched for with the authors.

I had some discussions with Joana about real stories of human trafficking – the different personalities of victims and how they deal with what happens to them, their environment, the madames, the whole system behind Human Trafficking, hard facts, numbers and statistics, etc.

So while writing the screenplay i already gathered quite a solid background on Human Trafficking – but knowing the hard facts and real stories, or convey the emotions without boring exposition, insterts or dull dialogue with a movie is a whole different thing.

As screenplay author and director of this movie i had to do another kind of research – how would others deal with this matter? I had to watch movies about Human Trafficking.

Since I’m a movie nerd anyway it was not a big deal for me “having” to watch movies, films with stronger stuff are nothing new for me either – still these movies i watched have been really heavy – strengthening my urge to do this short movie on that topic.

Besides the three movies I write about here, you can find a list of movies about Human Trafficking here or here.

Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking is a mini series of two 90-minute episodes and was produced for TV. In my opinion it takes some time to get into the first episode, although the first scenes are quite emotional, the movie is somehow torn apart between the different storylines.
After you got into the story and got familiar with the different characters it’s quite emotional to watch what happens to all of them.

Nevertheless i think if the makers would have taken a little more time to introduce us to the characters and their environment this movie(s) would have a stronger impact. In my opinion this should not just be a mini series of two episodes, but a full series of 12 or even 24 episodes.   IMDb Link

Trade

Trade was directed by the german director Marco Kreuzpaintner, and while it is a good movie it is a little bit too “straight”.
The little girl gets abducted and her 17 years old brother and a Texan cop are searching for her.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a good movie and I was emotionally involved, but in my opinion it is for that matter a little bit too “Hollywoodish”.   IMDb Link

Lilja 4-Ever

Lilja 4-Ever was directed by the swedish director Lukas Moodysson and is in my opinion the most realistic movie of the three.
Although Trade and Human Trafficking are really good movies and emotionally intense – watching Lilja 4-Ever was one of the most intense movies I have ever seen.

It´s not because it is extremely brutal – the movie doesn´t feature heavy nudity or brutality, but it simply feels so real. You believe everything you see, the desperate lives of the russian teenagers in their surroundings, the dreams and desires of these young people, and their struggle for a normal life.

Probably the hardest part of this movie is that we are solely following the protagonist – Lilja. Unlike the other two movies it`s not about the people searching for her and trying to rescue her, it`s just Lilja against her miserable life.

After watching this movie I felt like I´ve got a huge weight on my chest, this is most certainly amongst the best and most realistic movies I have seen.   IMDb Link

I would highly recommend watching those three movies, those things happen right next to you in your neighborhood without you even noticing.

This posting is cross-posted on the website of A Place Of Peace here.

We are just about to start the casting and search for locations, i´m really happy with the screenplay and can´t wait to shoot the thing in 5 months.

The casting won´t solely be done through the website, our casting director will start looking for actors during the summer. Since we are searching for black actors around Vienna, every help is very welcome!

As soon as we have our cast and location i will update the background image, but for now this one comes pretty close (thanks to Natalie Egbowon for the layout).

We will keep you posted about the progress with the blog on the website, my lifestream will also contain all published posts.

We solved major story issues, fleshed out the different characters and killed stereotypes, reconstructured the plot and – finally – found a name for our short movie: A Place Of Peace.

Due to some scheduling conflicts we moved the shooting date a month back into December this year, so we´ve got some more time for the pre-production.

The most important next steps will be the website of the movie, casting and location scouting.

I really hope we find a good cast since the characters are very challenging and the plot involves some violence and sex (how else could it be in a movie about human trafficking and sex slavery?). I will provide more infos on the casting as soon as possible.

While our last movie (Greener Pastures) tried to provide some hard facts about human trafficking this one will not.
A Place Of Peace will be an honest and emotional take on the subject and how it affects the victims.

It won´t be based on a real story this time, but we took several real events and stories of victims and created the story within these frame. The character of the madame (so to say the pimp) for example is heavily based on a real person a victim told Joana about.

We also tried to portrait the characters not only as good and evil, so far i think we´ve done a good job and the last few drafts really made a huge difference.

I will keep you all posted on the ongoing development, soon there will be a dedicated blog for the movie.

In my opinion the current situation more and more evolves into a loose-loose-loose situation between the audience, the filmmakers and the studios & film distributors, let me explain why.

The Problem for the Audience

The situation of the audience is pretty apparent: they want to watch a movie / tv show / web series and are not allowed to or have to wait for a translation.

The Problem for the Filmmakers

Filmmakers make movies / tv shows or web series with the intent that their creations will be watched. Of course filmmakers have to earn money, but apart from that they create to share.

Here is a very interesting quote from John August about his movie “The Nines”:

And that’s okay. Not “okay” in the sense of “legal” or “right.” But okay in the sense of c’est la vie. People are going to watch the pirated version, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Sony, Interpol and the MPAA will do their best, but as the guy who made the movie, I honestly want people to see the movie. If the only way you’re going to watch The Nines is illegally, so be it.

Since this quote might be interpreted out of context here is the full post: The Nines on Bittorrent.

The Problem for the Studios / Distributors

While studios and film distributors might think it´s a good thing to restrict access to certain markets (be it advertising wise or for other reasons) – it´s not.

When someone restricts access they have to be aware that there is no way to restrict to 100%, and those who want to watch will do so. Even those who would be willing to pay will find other ways to watch.

So what happens is that they loose money, money from people who would like to pay for their content but are not allowed to.

Oh, and while i´m at it: those super creative anti-piracy ads, you know who has to watch them? People who buy the DVD or Blu-Ray. Not the ones who pirate the movie.

That´s like if you buy a new car and every time before you start the engine you have to listen to an ad that tells you not to steal cars.

All right, so much for the loose-loose-loose situation.

Movies

While waiting for a translation pretty much makes sense (i can image that it costs quite some money to translate a movie to different languages and wait for an international start), it´s hard to explain why someone who wants to watch the movie in it´s original language has to wait.

It´s pretty obvious that a film distributor has to buy a movie to show it in cinemas in different countries, but what would be the problem to buy the original version when it starts in the US and when the translation is done buy the localized version for the particular country?

Would it be so unfair letting only those wait for the movie who want to watch the translated version?

I know that i´m not an expert in movie distribution, i´m just suggesting that the big players start to re-think the current business model. One simply can´t close his eyes to innovation and change, and at some point it will be too late and a re-thinking will be very expensive or almost impossible.

Just take a look how long it took (and still takes) for the music industry to handle legal downloadable music (which in my opinion still is too expensive). They just ignored the changing environment as long as they could and then freaked out because the consumer found other ways (don´t get me wrong – pirating is not the way to go, but probably the business could learn from it).

TV Shows

Believe me, it can be really frustrating to wait 1-3 years until a tv show gets picked up by a local tv station. With Hulu it is possible to watch the shows on demand, of course only within the US.

What about those who want to watch shows in their original language? Besides buying them on DVD there is not really a legal way to do so. And even if you wait for the translation – it very often sucks in comparison the the original.

Of course there are VPN services that give you US IPs so you can use Hulu, but why make it so complicated for the audience? Should you rather pay for IP masking than the content itself?

Web Series

And now ladies and gentleman – the most stupid geo-restriction ever: web series.

Just have a look at Sony´s video platform Crackle. They feature really nice web series like Angel of Death, Star-Ving and many others. Great service, BUT, as you might guess, only within the US.

So how difficult could it be to show location based advertising on such video platforms?
How easy would it be to spread content throughout the world?
It´s the internet, not a local tv station, the INTERnet. They still could translate the stuff and sell it, but please don´t restrict your content that way – it doesn´t make any sense.

If anybody could explain why geo-locking is a good thing or what the benefits are – please feel free to comment, it would be really interesting!

Since i never really built up a corporate identity for my personal website, but just changed the layout whenever i couldn´t stand the old one anymore, those re-designs aren´t much of a problem – of course that would be different with miso film.

This new layout is based on two different themes from WooThemes, since i´m not a graphic designer i save myself a lot of work by building upon these great templates.

The main reason for changing the design was that my blogging habits shifted from blog to twitter a little, so this is reflected in the new lifestream where all my social profiles are linked.

So this website is a central point that gathers all my important other profiles around the web – i already feel at home here.

Oh, and feedback is very welcome…

If you are not familiar with Twitter i recommend searching google and you´ll find plenty of information what Twitter is and how you can use it – in short it´s a kind of micro-blog, you can post 140 character messages and the people that follow you can read them.

A lot of companies are constantly trying to figure out how to use Twitter for marketing and pr, some succeed, most of them fail – but why?

Using Twitter for Marketing

Some time ago the pr people from Skittles decided it would be a good idea to point their website to a Twitter search for the term “skittles” to create some buzz about the product.

Soon this idea spread and people started to post tweets that said “Skittles give you AIDS”, so what happened is that the official website of Skittles was flooded with messages that Skittles would give you AIDS – this is probably not the outcome the marketers had hoped for, but what they accomplished is the create a buzz about the brand Skittles.

So this may be an extremely good as well as an extremely bad example on how to use Twitter for marketing – it depends on how you define successful marketing.

Anyway, this is just one example – but will marketing as we know it really work with Twitter?

I don´t think so, you probably wouldn´t follow a company to receive tweets on how cool their product is and why it is better than others – or would you? It depends, i would follow a software developer to get notified of product updates, but that´s more like a newsletter.

Some companies try to pay people with more than some hundred thousands of followers to promote their product, but what would happen just is that people get annoyed and unfollow – so that´s not a good idea.

To come to a point of marketing with Twitter: there are ways to do it, many of them won´t succeed, some original ideas will. There are people with far more knowledge about that topic, i would highly recommend Ritchie Pettauer if you are interested.

The reason for this post is that i wanted to point out one special marketing technique using Twitter:

Twitter and the Movie Industry

More and more celebrities are twittering (i´ll come to that in a minute), and along with infos about their breakfast habits or what music they currently listen to, there are indeed some celebrities who actually give some insights in their current projects.

I grew up right before the internet became really popular (i got my first pc when i was 14 and internet access when i was 16), so back then i used to read magazines to get some infos on new movies – the problem just was that some editor selects which movie-infos are relevant for the masses.

With the internet becoming more and more popular it was getting easier and easier to get infos, and you could choose which movies you want to follow. That´s a great thing, but nevertheless there is some kind of filter between the creators of the movie and yourself – journalists. Of course the movies have official websites, but how many directors, producers or actors are really writing on these websites – probably not that many.

But with Twitter becoming more popular it became really easy to spread news, you wouldn´t have to sit down and think about an article, you just publish short messages on what´s going on on set – that´s incredible for fans, you´re always on top whats happening and sometimes you have access to exclusive content long before all the others.

Here are some really great examples:
» Sheryl Main posts inside infos from the set of Silvester Stallones new movie The Expendables
» Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man, posts news from the shooting of Iron Man 2
» Lions Gate Movies promote Crank 2 and provide exclusive content for their followers
» John August and Diablo Cody, both famous screenwriters, use Twitter alongside their blog
» Hugh Jackman writes about his promotion tour for Wolverine and his ongoing projects
» Grant Imahara gives some insights on The Mythbusters
and so on…

Twitter and Celebrities

/Film has compiled a really nice list of celebrities in the movie industry that use twitter. You can find the list here and here.

So use Twitter for Marketing or not?

As you see, there are numerous really interesting ways to promote you or your product (in theses cases the product is a movie or a show), it just shouldn´t be dump advertisment.

Provide some good information, exclusive content and insights – this will help your cause more than writing how good your product is.

Use the chance to provide information for your fans that is not filtered by journalists or other media, those who are interested will follow, appreciate it and spread the word, those who are not wouldn´t respond to your marketing anyway.

Some usesful Twitter Tools

There are so many Twitter tools, it can be hard to find out which one fits your needs best. Personally i am using the client software Nambu on my Mac and Tweetie on the iPhone.

Here are two websites with a list of twitter clients and different other tools, but if you search Google you´ll find thousands more:

» Twitter Toolbox
» Top 40 Twitter Tools

And finally, you can follow me on Twitter here