Josh Gallegos

A few of you know I’ve been lingering on this forum for quite a few years, and I’ve absorbed some vital information. I don’t consider myself a gearhead and I’m not mesmerized by the newest cameras that claim to shoot 12k, 8K resolution, it’s overkill and they’re useful for someone like Peter Jackson or James Cameron who create massive epics with heavy CGI, so I don’t really see how it helps stories outside of those parameters.
 

But to the point, I’ve been struggling to get my foot in the door, and the film industry in Houston is really comprised of a few indie filmmakers who self-produce features for 50k dollars or less, so their productions are very small, and they mainly use friends to get their films made. And most of them don’t even shoot in Houston, as it’s not a very interesting city (photographically-speaking). There were some nice shots of Houston in “Paris, Texas” but aside from that, it’s actually a very quiet and sparse city.
 

Even when I attended a small film school I was unable to connect with people as I’ve been introverted and quiet for most of my life, which has been the biggest hindrance in my life. It’s a frustrating situation, and I get that filmmaking isn’t exactly a “full-time” profession outside of Los Angeles or Atlanta, because productions sprawl up every now and then and the jobs are taken by experienced crew. The only networking places for the Houston film industry is on Facebook, and no ones really making anything. Should I pack up and move to a place like Los Angeles? Or should I expect more of the same? I know there’s pervasive poverty for the working class in California, which I am, but I wouldn’t mind living in a van temporarily if it means getting my foot in the industry as anything. I know it’s all dead right now because of COVID-19.

But would I find better opportunities in Los Angeles? Or would that worsen my situation? 

I have one more thing to add, I just read some articles about the making of this film. It took the director Diane Paragas 15 years to get this feature film going, a lot of people said no one wanted to see a movie with an all Asian cast, especially a movie about country music but despite the overwhelming odds she got her film made, and even though it’s not a box-office smash hit, I thought it was a better film than all those other big budget movies which spend millions of dollars on their budget.

The new talent is refreshing, it reminded of the way Elia Kazan managed to direct unknowns into bigger than life performances. It was like watching Hailee Steinfeld’s debut performance in True Grit, it was very strong. Just watching this made me hopeful again, that great stories can be told and shown in theaters, if theaters could just dial down on superhero movies and actually show some real art, then it would be worthwhile to keep supporting them.

9 minutes ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Sounds interesting! Austin is a great location for filming.

It’s great to see a fantastic film with real world issues in a time like this. There’s something special about small indie films that find their way into the mainstream and I love how the director captured the heart of Texas and the country music. The director Diane Paragas is actually a former film student from the university at Austin, so that’s why it’s so authentic.There’s hard working immigrants in the USA with big dreams who are being separated from their families and are treated without dignity by ICE, the movie really touches on the heartbreak of that reality. And the power of the human spirit to preserve in times of hurt. 

Just saw a pretty impressive feature film debut, it was filmed in beautiful Austin, TX, and it’s about a young Filipina who faces the threat of being deported, because of her illegal status. I like that it wasn’t filled with unnecessary plot devices that you would normally see in bigger budget films.

I really loved the country music, and throughout the movie, Rose is inspired by her hardship to create music. I also noticed that I actually worked with Dale Watson’s daughter, Raquel, who was in my first short film. Small world. 
 

The cinematography was really great, it was imperfect in the sense that the focus pulling wasn’t precise, it felt messy and I love that imperfection in movies. And the actress Eva Noblezada is one to watch! I thought her performance was very strong and she’s incredibly talented. I recommend this film to anyone looking to watch a great movie. It’s playing in theaters, caught a late screening today. The city of Austin looks great, more films should be made there!

I have a new idea for a short called Suicide Pact, and it's about 4 people who commit suicide during lockdown and they share their most intimate secrets before they die. I was listening to Henry Purcell's Abdelazer and the thought came to me, it would be great if I could find stock footage of suicides, I've seen quite a lot of them on the best gore website but they use their logo on all their videos, maybe I could write to them and ask for footage I can use. I would simply get local actors to film their segment on their phones and then I would edit it together and use Purcell's Abdelazer Z. 570, which is public domain, that way I don't spend any money at all, and it's a good editing exercise. Plus there's something poetic about taking your last breath, to see so many people die in a fast edit like Taken 3 would be poetry to my eyes. 

The card I bought has a speed up to 170mb/s it’s a Sandisk Extreme Pro. I did buy a second SD 128gb card but it’s only 130mb/s and it doesn’t have a (4K UHD) logo. I might just get a 1TB hard drive for about $60, but when I get the equipment next Thursday I’ll shoot random stuff and upload it to Adobe Premiere pro to see if my laptop can handle 4K footage. I only have a 1080p laptop monitor with 12GB of Ram, I do have Vegas graphics card with Radeon 7. The pc has about 400gb of free storage so getting the hard drive would probably be a good idea.

Never mind 4K is a bad idea, it would require 32gb of RAM on a pc and Adobe Premiere Pro lowers the resolution. 

I’ve decided to shoot 4K, since I already rented the camera. I have one 128GB memory card for 4K recording and an extra LP-E17 battery to keep the shoot going. It’s only 7 pages and I think last time I shot 8 pages in 8 hours.

Does anyone know if there is a calculator to estimate how much storage I will need?  And does 4K affect audio? I’m using a mounted rode shotgun mic I think I used it at 24 decibels last time on Room 221 (aka Not a Porno), and the audio turned out okay. 
 

Also I was thinking of rating the camera at 400 ISO since I looked at the hotel room and it has a lot of practical lighting, and I’m using a fast lens, Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS USM (EOS R). 
 

I think it’s a good exercise to refresh my mind, but I’ll have the camera and lens for 4 nights, so I’ll be able to try and get the ghosting effects right. 

I didn’t realize he was making a comedy, I should have probably read the entire thread. 

The key about 1930s cinema was the incredible talent that existed, to recreate that era successfully you need to fill the frame with such talent... maybe if you have the budget to clone them or reverse aging effects, I think Olivia de Havilland is still alive, but as someone who avidly watched TCM for ten years, it was the great actors that brought amazing stories to life with their acting that made all the difference, it was truly movie magic. I would recommend the Blonde Venus by Josef von Sternberg, I’ve never seen anyone light a scene the way he was able to and Marlene Dietrich was also an expert in lighting, in fact Leni Riefenstahl learned a lot from von Sternberg.

Just look at the bagel scene if you don’t believe me. YouTube it!

I used to be something of a film snob but lately I’m beginning to like movies that are completely trashed by critics, I thought the fast-paced energy in Taken 3 is quite genius, I just don’t think the makers of these films aren’t given enough credit, it may derivative but the level of attention and professionalism is strong. I just don’t think critics know how difficult it is to make anything that will at the very least grab the viewer’s attention, and Taken 3 is an attention grabber from beginning to end. It’s remarkably edited, it wasn’t a Bourne Supremacy knock off, the movie had its own style. How do critics not notice the technical effort?  Not many filmmakers can do action films with that kind of energy.

It's a Canon RP Mirrorless, it's supposedly more powerful than the Sony a7ii, so it's good for low-light shooting, but yes I suppose it's not as complicated as I'm making it out to be. It's really just about getting the rhythm right, my biggest concern this time was in perfecting movement, have enough for the editing. Thanks for the help, I'll just post it on youtube when it's done and move on to the next thing. 

I haven't touched a camera in 5 years, so I don't remember what I can and can't do on a Canon camera in terms of dialing down the overall color. I remember I shot in a neutral setting with custom settings so that there would be more room for color-correcting, but when I look at my past two short films I realized that "color grading" was the worst thing I did, and I did a lot of bad stuff, I overdid it and it looks completely splotchy and unnatural, so this time I didn't want to mess too much with the image and just leave it as is. Maybe manipulate it slightly to make the image look grainy. I was going to do it in Academy Ratio, but I'm concerned about how to frame it properly, I was looking at David Lynch's earlier short films in that aspect ratio and it just feels better, maybe I'll just add some tape to the screen to shoot it in academy frame 1.37, but I realize if I frame it that way I won't be able to reverse it if it looks bad, so maybe I'll play it safe and do it in 1.85. 

I already finished storyboarding, in total there's going to be 44 cuts, so I know how the images should be assembled together, I wanted to try some effects, for instance the "ghosting" effect from Lady Blue Shanghai and I wanted to purposely overexpose some shots. I think the general idea now is the guilt that this person (a pastor) carries with him of being a with a younger girl and the impending consequences of his actions haunting him for the rest of his life. And that's pretty much what it is, maybe there's something more happening subconsciously but I wouldn't know. Now the issue is when I'm filming it, I won't know if it's going to translate well in black and white, because the screen is in color. My thought was to just shoot in the b&w picture settings so I can see what's happening within the frame. 

I thought it was the people that became inverted and not time itself.... ?

12 minutes ago, Stuart Brereton said:

A movie that is challenging because it presents complex ideas and concepts is fine by me, but a movie that is incomprehensible because it doesn't adequately explain those concepts and ideas is a failure.

 

 

I thought they were adequately explained. The Protagonist is a CIA agent who passes a test, he’s on a next level assignment with the code word “Tenet”, it’s explained what “Tenet” is, the ability to create inverted weapons- they don’t necessarily explain how it’s done only that it comes from the future. The Protagonist does some CIA stuff and investigates how the bullets were inverted which leads him to a Russian weapons dealer, and the only way to get to him is through his wife. It’s the action that becomes hard to follow, one of the sequences I never fully grasped was the action scene in the highway. The Protagonist agrees to steal what he thought would be plutonium but it was a piece of intricate technology, after that sequence I became lost in the narrative... it seems the Russian was assembling this tech where the missing pieces were hidden and the scientists who created it committed suicide, it was a breakthrough like the Manhattan Project. 
 

Regardless of this I feel the powerful elite like Elon Musk have access to such technology or knowledge, the innovations in Space X, his interests in integrating humans with AI, his desire to colonize Mars and his overall fear of a super AI, seems that he has access to tech that is out of this world. So, in regards to TENET, I think it’s completely plausible that there is tech that the entire world would know nothing about which is where I became invested, I thought it was a worthwhile film  and liked it better than his other movies. 

14 minutes ago, Stuart Brereton said:

Or maybe the filmmakers were just trying so hard to be clever that they forgot to be comprehensible.

If you don't intend for your audience to understand the dialogue, why write it in the first place? Opinions will obviously vary, but personally, I don't want to have to watch a film seven times before I understand it.

Well, I saw it 7x because it was literally the only movie playing in a theater and I was on the verge of blowing my brains out, so I was glad someone’s movie was playing in a theater. And I don’t believe all films should be comprehensible, I think it’s harder to make a film where the audience can determine it’s meaning, why not be challenged from time to time, especially on a big budget movie. “We live in a twilight world.” after all. 

On 9/9/2020 at 3:57 AM, Stuart Brereton said:

If it had been intriguing as well as confusing, I might watch it again. Sadly, it wasn’t. I do admire Chris Nolan for his willingness to tackle big ideas and concepts, but Tenet is just riddled with plot holes and nonsense. If you strip away the time inversion gimmick it’s just a secret agent movie about stopping a dastardly villain from destroying the world, something that has been done 26 times by the Bond movies alone. If your whole claim to originality is based on a dramatic concept that apparently most of your audience don’t understand, I think you’ve failed.

I actually saw TENET around 7x, mainly because I was incredibly depressed and had nowhere to go in the lockdown. I think the film doesn’t intend for you to understand the exposition, sometimes actors mumble their words or the dialogue is dampened by the loud sound effects. I think there’s something between the lines, it’s life replaying itself, a new concept of time, I think as humans we have a limited understanding of how the universe works and Tenet is made to question our overall reality. For that reason I enjoyed the film, because I am one of those who can’t accept what they see, it wasn’t an easy subject to explain to the audience, but it’s the visualization of colors from red/blue/orange, the orange circles, images are information and I saw haphazard numbers in the movie, maybe this is like Eyes Wide Shut where Stanley placed heavy symbolism in his images, I sort of saw it the same way. There’s something there, we’re just not smart enough to see it yet... 

I actually enjoyed Anna Biller’s short films on Vimeo, it reminds me of the Grindhouse  films of the late 60s, early 70s. I know people who can’t stand watching something like a Grindhouse horror movie or they just don’t understand something like “Cannibal Holocaust” or Lucio Fulci’s “Zombie”, but directors like Tarantino and Eli Roth have breathed life into some of these forgotten films that have become cult classics.

When I saw Anna’s short films she was from the same bloodline, and maybe those type of films are not in “style”, but they’re still effective and interesting. I actually haven’t seen many movies lately, so I haven’t had the chance to see “The Love Witch”, but referring to a film as “garbage” is taking it a little too far, but I guess that’s the price you pay as an artist, some people will just hate the work, because it’s different or it doesn’t fall into their expectations.
I just keep remembering the movie “Ed Wood” by Tim Burton, being an artist doesn’t mean that you’re the greatest or the most popular, but it’s about the commitment and passion, I’d be lucky if I became the next Ed Wood, but I think it’s better to be hated and disliked than to be ignored and be nothing at all.

I know that I don’t base what I like on account of what critics have to say or look up some tomato meter, critics can be wrong, and being recognized by The Academy doesn’t guarantee that a film will be remembered forever. Kubrick was never recognized by the Academy and even Stephen King hated The Shining, but his films have overshadowed most of those “award-winning” films. Who knew the guy who made FEAR AND DESIRE would become one of the most celebrated directors of the century. I never write someone off, some filmmakers will surprise you with stuff you never thought they had in them.

I found one of Reed Morano’s short films, I think it’s a good general rule to have a master shot and then build within it, I think that’s how I approached my other short films, from wide and working my way in. Maybe I’m overthinking it, but it’s just about capturing the action in a way that tells the story. 
 

I like this short film, the timing is really quite perfect, and she creates energy when she she goes handheld or over the shoulder. 

Thanks David, I find it difficult to get back in to it, it’s been such a long time, it feels like I’m starting from ground zero again. 

Sorry if this isn't the right place to post this, but where do most of you begin when you think about the composition of a scene? Do you begin with movement? I know generally the "look" is captured through the way the scene is lit and nowadays professionals use LUTs to maintain a consistent look throughout a film. I know lenses are a major component, added to the aspect ratio. What I do know is that what ever is shot, it is done for the purpose of shaping the idea in the editing phase. I was reading an article today from the ASC instagram page about the making of Full Metal Jacket, and it jumped into the intricate process of how they rated the film stock at 800 ASA to give the movie a flat, documentary-style look, it's all very methodical, and they didn't even use a day filter to have an extra stop to work with, when I read it I was amazed at the level of knowledge that they have as image makers.

When I read that cinematographers are the "authors of an image", I realized that everything I did before was completely wrong, I think without the technical knowledge and knowing what it is exactly that you are striving for, the whole thing becomes an exercise in futility. Added to this, there is the requirement of creating balanced shots that are interesting and evocative, a skill that requires a photographer's eye. It's all so connected, it's all technique and story, and you cannot tell a story if you don't know the technique. That's where problems arise, because I don't have a photographer's eye, at the moment I realize that I have to decide on an idea and stick to it consistently, in order to see results. The thing about filmmaking is that you can't be wishy-washy, because the whole story depends on your authorship to at the very least keep the look consistent, if there isn't any consistency it will cause distractions or jarring effects that don't fit into the mosaic. It's like the film 'HUGO', it's something of a clockwork, which made me realize how truly difficult filmmaking really is. I suppose the first step is to work on how the action is covered, I was revisiting Martin Scorsese's storyboard for Taxi Driver, and he's already seeing the movie in his head through a rhythm, the composition of shots build, I know it's generic information, but somehow it's a good reminder to remember to keep it simple and tell the story. 

I downloaded an app on my iPhone called ProShot and it unlocks great features on the iPhone, it's basically a mini-DSLR camera in an app, of course, it only has 12-megapixel camera, but I've been familiarizing myself with the settings.  I'm renting a Canon RP Mirrorless camera, because cameras like the Canon 7d Mark ii etc have outdated specs and I'm not too familiar with Sony, I've always preferred Canon, because they make a wide variety of lenses that are readily available and cheap to rent. I wouldn't necessarily buy any lenses, because I know how expensive they are, for now I've limited myself to renting. 

Oh, I'm definitely not discouraged, I'd rather keep at it than to never do it at all, and that was a first draft that I wrote, I wrote it in about ten minutes. I actually made a revision. I like the idea of of the character being stuck in a nightmare.... if that makes any sense... 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R5amGsOAGDk9DvZaZGJONWr9u3wGKn__/view?usp=sharing

I already have the thing casted, I'm shooting on the 25th of October. I'll probably keep making revisions until then but I'm confident it will turn into something better when the time comes to make it and the best part is that I'm not spending any money recklessly. Overall it's going to be about a $300 short.