Color Correction

Jason is gearing up for color correction on some other projects as well as learning the software inside and out for Hell Hole, The Series. Above the his setup in his office, with the monitor on the left as the key piece of equipment.  It is a monitor specifically designed for color correction.  Its colors do not change as you change positions and it has a higher resolution than the flat panel monitor in the middle.  Open on the computer is Apple's Color and some RED footage shot up in Morgan and Ogden, UT.  

New Behind the Scenes posted!

New behind the scenes videos are being posted on Hell Hole's Facebook page! Keep your eyes peeled!

In the mean time...

In 1866 the term "hell hole" became official in the dictionary as "a place of extreme misery or squalor".  

Other related yet unrelated Hell Hole items:

This manhole is short one cover making it an unmarked death trap, or a hell hole. I suppose that means there are many more than we originally anticipated. If I dropped a beer can down this hole, will it reach Lucifer?

Foley begins for Hell Hole.

The Hell Hole, The Series pilot has finally reached the rough draft stage of editing and as we are plugging away at fine tuning the edit, many other things may also be occurring.  For instance, we already know that we are replacing the audio from the exterior of the Perfect House due to its proximity to I80. If this is news to you, please read our earlier posts for details on how this occurred.  We recorded Ryan's lines for this scene wild at a more quiet location during principal photography... thank goodness for preproduction.  Anyway, those lines work as an equivalent to ADR... and in my opinion a much better equivalent.  While sync may not be perfect, Ryan was already in his character Jason and so the performance is believed to be stronger than it might possibly be in ADR. However, every actor is different.  Some love and some despise ADR.  As a sound designer, I dislike ADR due to the fact that the physical space and mic placement are often way too different to make the ADR sound believable.  Of course there are many tricks to combat this common problem in low-budget films... but few actually take the time or have the tools to exercise these tricks.

So we have our dialog problem somewhat solved.  But what about the rest of the universe Jason and Lucifer exist in?  Well, tons of foley has to be done to make the scene play out as natural.  I have been looking at the first draft to begin taking notes on what kinds of foley will have to be done, what materials may be necessary, and what can I record that will not be too much of a pain to edit later as the cut changes. I suppose it becomes more like recording sound effects than actual foley at this point in the stage, but it will save me some time later.  

So while in Utah, I built a ghetto sound booth in Jason's (DP) basement.  There we are going to record beer can, baseball and mitt sounds which will then be used later in sound design as effects made specifically for Hell Hole.  Check out the pictures below.  To record the foley, we will primarily be using an ME66 and a Shure SM57 dynamic microphone.  In my opinion it is more about the items and actions performed during foley than the microphones themselves.  After all, if it does not sound believable, it is most likely a problem with materials and the foley artist.

Please remember that this sound booth is a no-budget representation of what can be done... it is not the prettiest thing in the world.  

Behind the Scenes

Most times I watch the behind the scenes of films I really enjoy to see the crew's trials and errors.  Well, we all have our trial and errors with our pilot of Hell Hole, The Series being the first of these trials and errors.  The episode calls for some kids to run by on fire, and working with children is always a trick.  To prepare ourselves, we set up the camera and marks before the kids arrived on location, and in doing so, we caught some funny footage of our producer, Stephen.  Now you must understand that we rag on Stephen for a number of silly things so it was natural to create this video as our first installment of the behind the scenes of making a no budget pilot for a web series.  Enjoy!

Red, Oh Red, Oh Red...

We are in the process of creating our workflow from the RED to a manageable data size for editing a pilot. My computer whirs with the first round of exports, for a test on Jason's editing system.  We have gone from the 4k files to a 1280 x 720 frame size, trying to match the data rate of the P2 cards as Jason's system handles files off the P2 cards just fine.  After all, the intention is not theatrical, but for the DVD players and televisions of perspective investors.  

Most times when I meet a filmmaker I have not worked with before, the phrase "the right tool for the right job" slips out of my mouth.  Usually that is in reference to some piece of audio gear.  However, it is true in every degree of filmmaking.  We shot on the RED by a chance, not by intention.  And despite the more complicated work flow and the lack of need for 4K, it proves to be a great experience for the future of Hell Hole, The Series.  

Behind The Scenes

After a long three days of filming, here are some behind the scene photos of our weekend.

Happy, happy! Joy, joy!

Day two of the shoot...and it has been one hell of a shoot! We have battled sprinklers, nosy neighbors, construction workers and let’s not forget the freeway!!! But with the help of our valiant crew we are getting gold baby, gold!

Tomorrow we shoot!

Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we shoot!

Kitchen Curtains!

Just spent the early part of my afternoon sewing curtains for the kitchen window... slowly our set is coming together with the details of the perfect house.  Tomorrow we dress the living room with photographs and life magazines from the early 1960s, representing Stephanie's higher tastes of art and culture... she is, after all, trying to make her home her own with or without Jason's help.  I brought the only sewing machine I have... my grandma's old machine from the 50's or so.  Gambling on its working condition, Jorge and I went ahead and purchased the material to make the curtains this morning before even cracking it open.  The material chosen works well in the kitchen, but our characters had originally agreed upon something else... Oh! the tools of directing of which I am only beginning to observe.  

That is certainly one very unique thing about the low budget realm of filmmaking.  You inevitably will wear many hats, which is a concept I typically despise.  I would rather specialize and be a master of my craft than be acquainted (but not well experienced) in many.  However, in this instance I am able to observe the roles of others more carefully... after all, we (AOI) are all writers, producers, marketers and distributors for Hell Hole.  I also believe that you have to dive in with all your heart otherwise you won't reach anything to be proud of or stand apart from anyone else... and we are all diving in.

4 pbr down 8 more to go!!!

Okay. So last night we drank two more...Stephen handled it well but I had a hard time. Today Stephen has to work. Sound Engineer Michaela, DP R. Jason Ball and I went to pickup gear for the shoot so I couldn't drink anything. Tonight we are going to drink two beers a piece...I hope I can handle it.

Video of burning baseball!!!

Behold!!! Video of us burning the baseballs!!!

12 beers of Hell Hole!!!!

Producer Stephen and Director Jorge have to drink 12 pabst blue ribbon beers before the shoot! Can they make it. Here are photos of them drinking beer one and two. Ten more beers to go. We might enlist the dogs for help!!!!

Great balls of fire!

Today Jorge and I (Stephen) burned a couple of base balls for our upcoming shoot. What happens when you play catch with a fiery hole to hell? Your balls get burned.

Hell Hole Pilot Countdown!

In 5 days we begin shooting our pilot episode!

The Master List of Many Things (that we cannot forget to nail down):
     -fire
     -Lucifer
     -the perfect house
     -burning baseball and mit
     -sunglasses
     -sunscreen
     -script/storyboards/shotlist/diagrams
     -director's seat/couch
     -awesome camera + 35mm lens adaptor
     -p2 cards
     -microdolly 
     -bounce boards (reminder: Lucifer is providing additional light)
     -flame retardant lav mics
     -sound blankets
     -recorder/mixer
     -MKH 416 aka awesome boom mic
     -Lucifer's trailer ???
     -iced water
     -burn cream
     -PAs
     -Assistant to Lucifer

We're almost completely through collecting/renting/purchasing these random items... any ideas as to where I can find a mic that won't melt in Hell?

The Sound of the Perfect House...

Ran into a snag in our shooting plans today: the perfect house is not so perfect anymore. The I80 (commonly called the 215 by those who live in Salt Lake) resides just behind the perfect house....


AHHHHHHH! This is why I encourage productions to take their sound mixer or sound supervisor to the locations they scout! They can often hear problems with locations that others are not even considering. It would be the equivalent of not bringing your DP to the locations until the shoot day. Not a good idea.


Anyway, Stephen and Jason found this perfect house after already being prepared to shoot at another house where we took our press photos. They sent Jorge and I a photo of this new house and we instantly fell in love. It has blue wood siding and the prefect white trim. The door is framed by two symmetrical bay windows... it is what we all had in mind when first reading the original script.


Two options arise out of this problem. 


1. Take wild tracks of dialog outside our other location as we are not shooting the interiors at the same house.  This works in our favor since Satan will not be recorded on location, Stephanie has no lines and Jason has only four lines.  The only concern is dialog on CU shots will not be in complete sync and may require mad dialog editing skills.  Perhaps the edit can help us use the wild tracks.


2. Soundsoap the freeway out of the ambiance.  Although this may be an option and typically I like Bias's Soundsoap, I have little faith in the algorithms taking out the I80 without affecting dialog.


We will probably try both and see which one supports the story best.  After all, a pilot is more about telling a good story than the technical details. 


Here is a sample of the busy freeway behind our previously perfect location:
Perfect House AMB  by  m5coff


What do you think?

Gearing up for the pilot!

I am counting down the days until we begin shooting our pilot episode for Hell Hole, The Series.  We decided not to shoot our first episode but shoot one in the middle, where the characters are at home in their new house.  Episode 5, here we come!


Storyboards are in the make and we have schedule out the three day adventure to shoot a 6 minute episode.  Jorge and Jason created a diagram of camera setups this weekend.  Stephen is putting some final touches on episode 5.  I have been working out the sound of Satan and collecting props and gear.  Casting for Satan has not yet come to a close, as we are excited by several auditions.   This week we all will converge upon Salt Lake City to wrap up preproduction and begin shooting.


11 days before we begin shooting!

Jason rallies the troops old school style!

As we get closer to our shooting days and things get hectic, Jason is always good with an email to lift the sprit and lighten the mood. This one came with a photo and it spurred a few fun emails listed below.

Good day to you all kindly woman and gentlemen of AOI. As I reflect back at our time together I am proud to know such great artists as yourselfs. To go into the battle of bad media together feels me up with such a sense of pride. Nothing on this great and goodly Earth can stop us in our conquest to fight this bad media evil and prevail as only AOI can! Are first assault in our quest is the World Wide Web. He is a dangerous foe full of junk and crapy videos of kittens and whinny people. A very sad sight indeed. BUT WE WILL PREVAIL! Hell Hole, The Series is our secret weapon to defeat this enemy. It is crafted with a quality story, backed up with superior production value and lastly... blessed with great entertainment value! Hell Hole is our weapon of chose, good entertainment our armer, creativity our helmet and quality our sword! We AOI will stand tall and fight for freedom from bad media!!! So AOI, we must prepare, we must share ideas, we must reason with one another. On the marrow I suggest we gather. When the Sun is about to set over the Great Salt Lake, Eight Post Meridiem, Seven Post Meridiem in the desert. I look forward to our meeting of the minds. Till then I bless that we will stay alive in these danger filled days to fight again for Architects of Imagination!

General R.J. Ball of the Territory of Utah, East side District.

Dearest General Ball,

I trust this letter finds you well. It is a balmy August night as I write these words. I pray for all our sakes and that of our children, that this war is over soon and Bad Media will no longer plague or once great nation. Rations have been low and moral has continued to steadily decline. However your stirring words have lit a fire in the hearts of the troops I pray may never be extinguished. We will fight on Sir and shale never surrender! I Sir will proudly stand by you not only on the morrow but on the day that follows as well.

Lt. Wisely 5th regiment

August twenty fourth in the year of our lord 2009

P.S. Love the Photo it reminds me of simpler times.

My fellow country men,

Tonight we shall rendezvous at 1900 that which be called false time and 2000 that which we consider reality in "People of the Mountains". I'm informing you of my mission status in L.A. as I write to you now. Moral is on the up and up here but fear looms within the minds of our men as we prepare for another campaign in which we will be heading north east to meet up with existing regiments of Lt. Wisely and General Ball. Major Pentacoff will be following suit, we move at dawn.

Just so you know I will only be able to meet for the first 45 minutes of our meeting due to some reconnaissance with my sergeants. An agenda is below to list of items to discuss, please review.

Items to add to Agenda:

-SFX update - body fire and hole update - we will need to shoot the plates for composites.
-Discuss meeting with Colonel Allen from the Confederate Army, Major Pentacoff present.
-Callbacks up date with Xander, Kenneth, Jeremiah and Corey.
-Schedule of shoot. Major Pentacoff and I have started discussion on this, I am also generating a list of how many setups per scene etc. We need to discuss how PSA fits and croquet game fits. My fear is that we are locking ourselves into a corner for Saturday which is a prime day.
-Talent update with PFC Katzer and PFC Nielsen. Rehearsals Sept. 8th - 10th confirmed from 8pm - 10pm.

I hope this letter finds you well. May our desire push through the fires of the wilcox mountains. May our beef jerky give us the nourishment and our cavalry. I sit and gaze at the banner spelled H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D. We shall and will take down each letter one by one. Our regime will prevail. I look forward standing next to you on the field of battle.

Lieutenant Colonel Urbina (I was going to go with Commander Skywalker)

The Sound of Satan, pt 2

Satan, who we are currently casting, is just a voice.  As a result, it is up to us to take the nicely recorded OS  dialog and put it in the hole.  Step one: make the space of a hole.

Previously I mentioned that Satan is 7.5 miles under the ground which is based on a myth.  However, the physical properties of sound that far away from where our characters finally hear Satan are ridiculous enough to ditch realism... the realism of a 7.5 mile deep hole.  So I have been looking at other possibilities, like building a model to mimic the desired reverb of the hole.  Another example is taking a long tube-like item and creating an impulse response (IR) from it which would be used to make the reverb of the space inside that item.  That may also mimic a hole.  Not having a Hell Hole model already built, I tried the latter.

I first found a bunch of free IRs already created by Fokke van Saane.  I ended up playing with the vaccum tube IR, processing it further to create a longer tail with more resonant properties on the lower end of the frequency spectrum.  It sounds much more complicated than it really is. After it was processed several times, I loaded it into Logic's Space Designer.    

The result was encouraging, although still not quite the hole I want to experience in the end. From what I have learned here, I would like to take a longer tube, put weight in or on it and then take create another IR.  This will lengthen the depth of the hole and how it vibrates (as though it were in the ground, and not a free-vibrating plastic tube).  

There is also a question of how much primary source versus reverberant sound should we hear.  That will come in time as we expand our exploration of how to create the correct depth of the hole.  If you would like to make an IR of your own, there are many tutorials on the web with more in depth information.  Please experiment!

Interpretation - Hell Hole Pilot

One of the themes of the piece I have interpreted and shared with the others is the concept of manipulation amongst the characters. Manipulation comes in all different shapes and sizes within human behavior and it is definitely seen in this episode. Our goal is to show how every character tends to manipulate each other, this sounds more serious but luckily we will be seeing this subtextually within the pilot. Stephanie manipulates Jason, Jason manipulates Stephanie and Lucifer manipulating both of them. The triangle of the relationships is endless as we progress within the series! The energy, rhythm and performances will shine through and the result will be comedy! Keep on the look out...the days are counting!

Script Feedback - Round 1

We just got our first round of script feedback from Tim, a dear friend who has just hopped onto the project.  With detailed notes from Tim, we sat down together over the internet to discuss the feedback.  Jorge was in LA, Jason and Stephen were in Salt Lake City and I was (and still am) in the good ol' AZ. 

We discussed characters, hooks and the purpose of a script... and we came across the idea that the script you initially write and the one you shoot from can be vastly different.  The script you use to sell you concept to a possible investor can also be unique in its own right.  

AOI - On Scripts for Invest  by  m5coff

Enjoy!

The Sound of Satan

This evening, Jorge and I met to discuss how sound will be used in the pilot episode for Hell Hole. I personally did some research to help determine how Satan would sound from so far underground and came across legendary well that led to Hell. The well to Hell is a direct reference to the Kola Superdeep Borehole which is not much wider than your fist and approximately 7.5 miles deep.

The legend goes that Russian researchers of this borehole had noted that when their drill started flailing about that they probably reached a pocket or a chamber within the earths depths. Curiosity got the better of the researchers and they lowered both a heat resistant thermometer and a microphone into the hole, along with other sensory equipment. Temperatures were claimed to be at 2000 degreed Fahrenheit and that sounds of tortured souls could be heard. In the end, most agree that the temperature only reached 356 degrees Fahrenheit and that there were unique geological findings but that there is a lack of evidence for the tortured souls.

So, it has been determined that Satan's hole is only 7.5 miles deep and opens up into a wide chamber below... too bad the research didn't yield more facts about Hell.

But many other aspects of Satan and his sounds were discussed this evening. His emotions and how they play through sound and image, what he does on a normal basis without Stephanie and Jason being around and the distinct sound of the baseball that Satan and Jason are playing catch with. All of these will take a bit of experimentation but I expect that they will very much bring the world alive (as well as the character).

While casting for Satan is currently happening in LA, I am still building the IR for the hole's reverb. Oh yes, I am building an impulse response with a model hole and chamber. From this, I can create the depth to hole which we never quite experience other than through sound. Fortunately, our model will not be 7.5 miles long... perhaps only a mere 4-6 feet in depth. As for hearing those tortured souls at the bottom of the Hell Hole, you will just have to wait for the series to hear them!

Holy Flamin' Baseball, Batman!

Jorge is in LA working the casting calls and playing with flaming baseballs. Fire courtesy of Justin Martinez.

Hell Hole Fire Test 1 from Jorge Luis Urbina on Vimeo.

Casting!!!!

Here I sit sorting through an avalanche of head shots, resumes and reels hoping that gem will appear. Fun, Fun, Fun!

Founding Fathers

"Hello founding fathers of AOI. As I reflect on the birth of this nation and the role our countries founding fathers played to make this small British outpost into the superpower that it is. It motivates me to write; why aren't we a superpower yet?" Jason writes in an email to the AOI crowd.

The question is answered over our weekly video gatherings over Skype. Jorge and I try to figure out how to record video of the chat while Jason makes faces and Stephen is bored with the lack of Ghostbusters Quotes. Oh yes, I dare say Ghostbusters Quotes... it is a favorite past time for those of AOI.

But when we're not goofing around, we are debating how to open the doors to funding which we have not openedor our webseries Hell Hole. We wonder how so many ultra low budget productions can exist with some funding and the lack of quality. We seem to be the opposite, with plenty of quality and no money. Perhaps I shall post our intro to Hell Hole, The Series some day soon and I hope you will agree! We are keeping our eyes peeled and ears open in both Utah and Arizona... we have met with the Utah Film Commission about permits and other stepping stones. We have a laywer, talented crew and a thick business plan. We will be shooting a test episode for Hell Hole, The Series in August... just one more tool to raise funding. So, why aren't we a superpower yet?

For your viewing pleasure: Jason and Stephen as founding fathers.

By the way, costumes often start our meetings. It will be Jorge's and my turn next...

AOI Together Once Again

This past week, AOI got together in person to finalize one of our business plans and work on Hell Hole, The Series.  Jorge and I drove thirteen hours up to Salt Lake City to meet with Stephen and Jason.  Oh Utah, beautiful Utah.  

Jason and Stephen say I brought the rain with me.  I swear that if I had that power, I would have kept the rain in Tucson (it was a sunny 99 degrees in  Tucson today).  I am pretty sure Jorge enjoyed the snow.

Jason opened up his living room to a mass of computers, notebooks and other random piles of papers.  Jorge, Stephen and I camped out there for most of the week working while Jason quietly edited in his office.  Every once in a while we heard an evil cackle out of him, as he laughed at our expense... but we kept him in line.