Digital Video - July 2008 - (Page 30) How many days did you shoot? It was probably about 30 days. the Webisodes. We wanted the Webisodes to be no more than five minutes long and no less than two. Then we ripped the movie apart and structured it like a little serial. For a trip around the world, did you set a budget cap? On what format was the feature master? We didn’t set a budget. In the grand scheme of things, it wasWe mastered to a DigiBeta and then released theatrically on a n’t expensive. We shot it for probably under $70,000. A feature 35mm print. We did [the transfer] with EFilm and Deluxe. film shot for under $70,000 in 25 countries — that’s a bargain! Getting that money back is difficult. There are no stars in it. With the diverse locations was there lots of color tweakMarc and I were the only two people who went completely ing in post? around the world. The other people came when they were No, that was captured right on location. Very little color correcneeded. The main characters were all planted. The two Irish tion. The only time we ever did anything like that was for shots guys were real Irish guys I met while traveling. I met them in in darkness. There wasn’t much we could do, we were shootThailand, and they told me their story. So when we went to ing on the fly and had a little, tiny Litepanel unit. Chile, they met us there for two days. The guy in Tokyo is a friend of mine we flew out for two days. The guy you see in the Can you explain the unique Vietnamese jail is Eric Wing. He Carter and Mandt (right) get some approach you’ve taken with did the music supervising on the scenic shots in Greece. distribution? movie and was one of the ediOur first serious distribution offer tors. came from Mark Cuban’s company, Magnolia Pictures. They How much tape did you end offered us what I felt was an up with, and how did you unreasonable split and no cash. protect it? This was before we had played at The tapes never left our possesany festival. We passed. We startsion. We kept them in sealed ed sending it to all these festivals plastic bags — professional camand winning awards. My brother era plastic bags that Marc got. [producer Michael Mandt] and I We only shot about 40 tapes, sat down and decided to just release it. We sent it to a few theand not 40 complete tapes. If we shot a portion of a tape in a ater chains that gave us the screens. Once we did Los Angeles, country and went to another country, we just stopped using that we’d platform it to the rest of the country, and we are in that tape. process now — sending it out to art houses around the country. Because it’s such a little movie, we don’t have to get it out What was the editing process like? everywhere on the same date. Once that’s done, I’ll go to the We digitized into an Avid. We have a Unity system here with video companies and television and sell it ourselves. five Avids and three full-time editors and two additional editors. I treated it the way I treat a reality show. I gave them all similar You even self-promote by buying your own commercial scenes to work on and I said go. They literally worked their way air time? through the movie. We had a structure, but I knew that any guy I remember seeing spots on TV for local restaurants, and I could have a better idea. They were even involved in writing the thought that’s got to be affordable. I was surprised at how voiceovers. There is a lot of voiceover in the movie. That was cheap it was. And you can really localize it, like to just West planned in the beginning because there were a lot of locations Hollywood, or the whole West Side. You didn’t have to buy all where I knew I would never get clean sound. I knew the only of L.A. I just contacted Time Warner directly and asked for way to tell the story would be with fast cutting voiceover. On someone in the sales office. location, we were recording sound right to the camera. If there Because of that, there certainly was awareness of the film. is dialogue, it is almost exclusively production sound. There is I heard from so many people who had seen the commercials, very little ADR. So I would have everyone edit right through the but it wasn’t driving people to the theater. We made really good scene. There wasn’t a structured screenplay to begin with, but commercials, very polished and professional with a real there is now. voiceover guy, and I think people see so many commercials that they tuned it out. I got the idea to do a different commercial. I You also released Webisodes from the movie in tandem made, I don’t want to say low-rent, but a really specific small with the feature. What was the process behind that? commercial where I say, “I made a movie, come see it,” and One editor, Nick Scown, went back in the edit and made a showed some clips. People came up to me who had seen that duplicate of it. We went through the storyline to see what commercial and it had gotten them out of their seat and into scene could stand on its own and what needed to be cut down the theater. That definitely had an impact. DV or extended. I put in footage that didn’t make the movie into 30 dv july 2008 www.dv.com http://www.dv.com
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