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The LA Trip...

Suggested I would do a blog about it, so finally am getting around to it...

The trip is one word was amazing.

The reason it was amazing was the fact that it was a) needed b) did so much on it c) culminated in winning big at the LA Web Fest.

We (Paige and I) arrived on Saturday March 31st in time to attend the HollyWeb Fest. It was neat cuz it was on Hollywood Blvd. The highlight of that fest was our first intro to meeting other series creators and actually went out for dinner with a group of new found friends between the showing and the awards ceremony. Highlight of the awards ceremony was that Ivan Hayden from Divine (another local series) picked up some awards and I got to meet an actor named Sam Pancake who was f'ing brilliantly hilarious in Pretty the Series. Lowlight of the festival was I accidentally left my iPhone (aka everything phone) in the towncar that dropped us off at the event so I felt a piece of me was missing the entire night - damn you technology addiction!

Next day, after finally retrieving my phone, Paige and I decided the goal of the day was to go to a Ducks game. Rented a car and headed out toward Anaheim. Thought we'd be able to get super cheap tickets and potentially even move to better seats... didn't realize it was last game of the season and potentially Teemu Selanne's final game... it was a sellout - which was a blessing in disguise as we decided we'd head over to Huntington Beach. Which was so cool. A beautiful endless beach... that was basically abandoned because there was like the craziest wind storm going on that day, so much so that it was a news story. For whatever reason it was a hell of a lot of fun walking the beach with the crazy wind and huge waves crashing in. We then drove the scenic route back to LAX area where our hotel was, finding a quaint Thai Restaurant along the way. Highlight, great day. Lowlight, because of the wind every photo we took I look like Kid from Kid n' Play.

Day 3 Paige and I did Disney and California Adventureland cuz I am deep down inside a child and always will be. Was a tad busy on that day which kind of sucked, but we stayed till midnight and managed to do all the rides and more. Highlight was I got Paige to go on the Tower of Terror with me. Lowlight, other than insane lines was the fact Paige beat me at the Toy Story Shooting Ride.

Day 4 we hooked up with Detective Madsen himself, Timothy Lyle - who had made his way to LA on our Day 3 and had already seen a bunch of the city while we were pretending we were 5 yr olds. The 3 of us headed to Santa Monica for the day, in which we took public transit - which included 'Surly the Bus Driver' and a fight between a thug looking kid and a 50 yr old man. Santa Monica itself is another gorgeous beach and it was another great day. It also has a really nice shopping strip. Tried Pink Berry for the first time - which is quite good. Walked through Bloomingdales where a basic leather jacket was $2,000 and shirts were a minimum $250. Highlight, Tim bought a $50 jacket he fell in love with... two minutes after leaving store we came across a street bum wearing the same jacket. Lowlight, neither Tim nor I had the foresight to use sunscreen... we spent 3 hrs at the beach in direct sun.

Day 5, Wednesday, we went to Universal Studios. I decided in advance that I'd get us front of the line tickets no matter the cost (roughly $50 more than usual). Possibly the best decision I've ever made. Another great day that included never waiting in line more than 5 mins whereas most of the rides had over hour long waits. *part of the motivation of this was to not be stuck in sun as my face and neck were severely burnt.

Day 6 saw Ian, the series Director of Photography arrive and we all went to Warner Bros Studio for the tour. Loved the tour! So cool to see the lots and hear all the stories about how they make "real" movies. Quite humbling really. We then went to the Observatory (cuz I've always been a Rebel Without a Cause fan). Saw our first celebrity since making it to LA... Beck. (also saw on trip: Bookeem Woodbine at LAX, the ex Chief of Staff from Greys Anatomy in Venice Beach and Dominic Purcell at YVR... that's it). But that didn't stop us from driving all over Beverly Hills using Tim's Star Map trying to check out Star Homes! Which is kind of pointless as most if not all star homes are very well concealed. Most also have football field length driveways. It was lots of fun though driving around Beverly Hills, then drove Mulholland Drive then ended up at the Kodak Theater and Grouman's Chinese Theater where we met Laura Adkin (Eva) for dinner. To complete this day we unwound by going to the ArcLight and watched 21 Jumpstreet (fun flick).

Day 7 saw Ian, Tim, Paige and I go to IHOP for breakfast to decide what to do that day. Attempted to do a studio tour of either Paramount or Sony, but both were sold out. So we went to Rodeo Drive to see a bunch of stuff we couldn't afford, then headed over to Venice Beach... and really got caught in traffic for the first time on the trip. Took about an hour and a half for basically a 10-20 minute trip. Good thing we were driving a Prius! They may look a little iffy, but I seriously dig electric cars... just take some getting use to. Venice beach is the most flavorful of all the beaches we visited and has the most T-Shirt Stores, Tattoo Parlors, and Medicinal Marijuana Certification Centers per capita than anywhere in LA let alone North America. We ended up at an Irish Pub a few blocks up from the beach for dinner and a few pints and got some awesome caricatures done by a very talented artist named Brian, who is also a filmmaker - who hopefully will be completing his feature film in the not too distant future!

Day 8, I decided I should probably attend the LA Web Fest - which had started on the Friday. The motivation to actually attend the festival had been minimized by the fact they weren't organized and didn't have a schedule for the festival until the Friday it began. But, once I decided to join in the festivities, I'm extremely happy I did. (we were staying at the hotel where it was being held, so I literally went downstairs to attend it). Everyone else decided to do the same. We spent the day watching series from all over the globe, meeting tons of great series creators, sharing stories and overall just having a great time. Georgie made it down to LA on this day and he and I joined in a panel about making web series in Canada. We then had a showing of our series and got to meet the creators of Clutch and watch the insanely good series El Porvenir and meet it's director Manny. (our entire "block" ended up being in the top ten series) . We then spent the rest of the night drinking at the lounge of the hotel with our new friends.

Day 9, we decided we best do one more touristy type thing, so we all headed over to Manhattan Beach for a bit. It was Easter Sunday so most places were closed but we managed to find a pub that was open and had a damn fine lunch before heading back to chill before the awards ceremony in the evening.

I didn't have overly high expectations going into the awards ceremony, though one of my goals before even making the series was to make a series good enough to win the big award at the LA Web Fest.

After winning 8 awards for outstanding achievement, we were quite pleased with the recognition we received. When they finally got to the grand prize announcement (top ten series getting to go to France), I had written us off as a potential winner as 3 Canadian based series were called in the first 5. They waited until the final one to call our name... which took me off guard as at that point I was already thinking about the Coronas I planned to drink at the lounge. But instead I got to go to the podium and receive the award that comes with a free trip to France(!!) and be part of a group of amazing series (they are all great shows, and very diverse, you should watch them - links are on the Link World page). We ended the night back at the lounge drinking and celebrating with our new friends, including Steiner who has a great travel series called Inland Sea - http://www.theinlandsea.com.au/. Overall, the awards were a really nice ending to a great experience - one that was great even without any awards. I recommend to anyone who makes an independent web series, submit it to the LA Web Fest and attend if you are selected.

Day 10, Paige and I packed up in the early morn and went back home to real life... with a boatload of fond memories and a goal to make another series (or another season) so we can attend again!

#hitman 101 #making of

Post Report One... and Only

I did have every intention of doing post production reports throughout the process, but we worked so hard actually doing the post I just didn't have enough energy to give updates. So this will be my one truncated post about the post production of Hitman 101.

I must preface it as a bit of a weird feeling, thinking about how much work was put in, wondering how the hell we actually pulled it all off. The picture editing was fairly painless. I edited as I shot, then upon completing the shoot got to picture lock by November. The hard part was the sound design, music and visual effects.

Luckily, I was blessed with a great team - Sound Editor Alex Shamku, Visual Effects Artist Pranjal Verma, and Composer Marc Alexandre.

If we ever won any post production award, at the podium we'd need to begin it with... "First off I'd like to thank Dropbox, without you none of this would be possible."(http://dropbbox.com) It was Pranjal that first suggested I attempt to use it instead of physically driving the files to him from Surrey to Downtown Vancouver to transfer them onto his hard drive (which is anywhere from 30min to an hour trek). Once I joined dropbox and figured out how it worked - it was such a benefit for the post workflow!

Visual Effects:

For working with Pranjal I would send him Targa image sequence files of the shots I needed Visual Effects on and explain to him what it was I wanted done. He'd then go to work on it and send me back examples. During the time we worked on the series, Pranjal would also get contracts for paying visual effects work, so I tried my best to not overload him. I had hoped we'd find other graduates wanting portfolio work, but never did, so I took the bull by the horns and did my best to learn how to use After Effects. I gave Pranjal all the Hard Shots - what I call the Hidden Effects of Hitman 101 (after watching the series - watch the Video of his Effects in the Extras and Behind the Scenes section). I did the gun effects after taking a crash course on AE from Lynda.com and from watching FreddieW and Corridor Digital tutorials on YouTube. *Gun FX work mostly because of sound design, which disguised my weak skills well.

Music:

For the music I would first send Marc the cut of the film via dropbox so he had it, then I'd send over notes. We met once for coffee beforehand to discuss my thoughts on the score, then had one sit in session where we played around, but it became apparent early on that I'm an asshole and it made more sense for me to sit in on sessions with Marc... I kid, the thing is I don't know music, I can't explain it in writing nor articulate it in words. But, if I hear something I can say I like that or I dislike that etc. So it was just way easier and quicker for me to sit in on sessions with him and give realtime feedback - which helped because Marc is also a Lawyer and a Recording Artist (http://marcalexandre.com) and his time is valuable. So we managed to save a lot of time this way, and it was quite fun too. Marc is a cool guy and easy to work with. It never felt like work. Even though the commute to and from his place would average an hour each way (mostly because of traffic), I had discovered John August's Scriptnotes Podcast, so the commute was never arduous. As we progressed, Marc got a handle on my music taste and the visits became less frequent. And well, the result of his great work is there for anyone to listen too - in the series and on the Music page on our official site. To cap it off he also already won an award for best original score based off his music for the 3 episodes that aired in 2011.

Sound Design:

This was the most intense part of post. Alex was such a Godsend for the project. He was our boom op and just a pleasure to have on set as one of our only crew members. When it came to post sound, I didn't actually count him in as a potential sound guy to work on it because he didn't have any schooling nor really done it before. I ended up hiring a guy who graduated from sound design school and he was a complete disaster that nearly derailed the entire series from the get go - yet, Alex diligently went about building sound effects for me, and in fact sound designing episode 2 to the point I was like huh, he's pretty damn good at this. Add to that he was motivated and a hard worker and next you know, he was THE sound guy for our series. And the proof of his skills is evident in every episode he worked on. Our workflow went as follows... I'd prepare the audio in Final Cut Pro so it wasn't too messy, then export an OMF File for him. I'd send it through Dropbox. I'd then give him initial notes as would he on what he thought the episode would need. He'd first clean the dialogue using IzotopeRX (the other thing we'd thank on the podium) and work on leveling the dialogue so it all comparable within a nice sounding range. Meanwhile I'd start stockpiling sound effects from my Libraries I thought he might use and send them over via dropbox. I'd also do Foley using my Mic connected to my Computer via an Apogee One. Alex would work on the project, then send mixes to which I'd watch, take notes and send back. This would continue on until we had a completed episode. Unfortunately we didn't get wise on the best way to correspond until near the end of the editing, but to begin I would give him notes via a simple text edit file via dropbox to which he could respond in and cross out stuff he completed. We also would text back and forth... then near the end of it, like in episode 11 he brought up the idea of using a Google Document - which worked awesome. There is no reason people can't work with each other on opposite sides of the world just using Dropbox to send files back and forth and a Google Document to write notes in realtime and chat. It worked perfect, I only wish we'd discovered Google Documents sooner.

Alex is a night owl, so I got use to staying up until 4am on a regular basis working with him. The way I saw it, here's a guy volunteering his time to work on my project, the least I can do is be dependable and supportive of him. So he turned me into a vampire for at least a month and a half. Because I was helping him, and constantly finding and sending sound effects and creating Foley he could potentially use, it became apparent that we might speed things up if I did some of the audio editing myself. So we did a bit of a role reversal. I took on editing some of the "simpler" episodes (after he Izotoped the Dialogue for me first of course) and I'd send him mixes for feedback. It did help speed things along, especially when he went away over Christmas to Germany for two weeks. Instead of the project halting and potentially missing the scheduled dates of release, I completed ep's 4 and 5. When we thought we had an episode complete, we did our due diligence and sent it around to our trusted friends to give us any last minute feedback and outsider perspective. We really did a good job of keeping up a high standard. We never cut any corners and always tried to fix any issues we had. There are only a couple instances where bad sound or lack of sound snuck it's way through. But, I am extremely pleased with what we did. I am sort of the belief with sound design hard work does matter. Neither Alex or I have any schooling or background in it, we just put time in and worked through any sound issues we came upon. In episode 11 we had such horrible sound, the end result might just be my favorite accomplishment of the series. We have a bunch of ADR throughout and we added Foley and Sound Effectsto replace about 90-95% of the soundscape of the episode. I actually put on a variety of outfits and "walked" the entire episode for every character for Cloth sounds. (My favorite Foley accomplishment is the plastic sounds in ep12 - Plastic packaging from inside a box of Cheerios).

So, I'd send Alex sounds, he'd take those sounds and somehow make them sound kick ass and a part of the mix. He also made wicked gun sound effects on his own. Dude has mad sound skills and I think he has realized he has a future in sound design and is seeking out ways to learn more and broaden his arsenal. We worked non stop for 2 months with only one hiccup being a night Alex didn't save as he worked and a computer crash killed a full nights work - but of course Alex slept for four hours then got back on it until he was back to where we'd been. It was a really cool experience hearing our project take shape and realizing how episodes I wasn't sure I liked would go from "meh's" to "Holy, I'm liking this episode" solely from improved sound.

Here's Alex's thoughts on post in his own words:

Having not really done any sound design before, I was both excited and scared at the opportunity to test my knowledge and skills. I've done a lot of reading about sound in film and wanted to apply what I had learned. But reading about sound can only get one so far. To prep, I went on youtube and listened to a lot of fight scenes, shootouts, anything big budget with good sound that was available. If it wasn't available, I'd watch it on DVD or Netflix. My goal was to get a sense of what the big budget films sounded like, and keep that in mind while I designed the soundscapes and elements.

A lot of time and effort in post-sound is spent trying to make things just sound "normal". To foster that suspension of disbelief and maintain the illusion of the world you are creating, the sounds have to match appropriately what you want conveyed on screen. In production, your best friend is the silence of everything that isn't a line by the principle actors. In post, the footsteps, background sounds, doors, sound effects and any other foley has to then be added to the scene so that production silence is filled with a realistic soundscape. A sign of a job well done is when viewers don't notice anything at all. To save time, I made use of some sound libraries and also the website 'freesound.org' which offers creative commons licensed, community-uploaded, royalty-free sounds. For anything I couldn't find (or that Scott didn't have), we recorded it ourselves. We were on self-appointed time deadlines, so I would do some of the mixing at the same time I was layering in effects, ambiences, foley, adr and the score. When I had all the elements placed and dialogue cleaned, I would begin the 'fine mixing'. This is where Scott's "Backup Ears" would be put to use, hunting down glitches in the sound that creeped in. There are a lot of little things in the soundscape I would miss because I was so fixated on working in a specific section of the episode. Scott liked to call them 'bogeys'. Mic bumps, throat sounds, lip smacks, squeeks, or just subtle little odd noises which would need to be located and eliminated. We used Izotope RX2 for general noise reduction but these specific noises needed to be enveloped, EQ'd, or spectrally edited out completely. The overall hardest part for me, personally, was trying to manage my time between working my day job, working on Hitman, and taking breaks to do other things or just plain sleep. I would be at work, dead tired, wishing I were back at home working with sound instead. I'd also fall asleep while mixing and Scott would end up texting me, wondering if I had been shot (there was a gang-related shooting in my building at one point in the project but thankfully I was asleep through it). Hitman was an extremely fulfilling and enjoyable experience to work on, and I am SUPREMELY grateful for the opportunity I was given. I feel now that I have a direction in the field of audio that I want to pursue, and I'm hoping I can vastly improve my own skills and put it towards making awesome creative projects even more awesome. Oh, and my personal favorite soundscape element to design was the gory impact splatters in Episode 12 when Staal gets shot in the face. Most of the design and mix deals in subtlety and realistic environment (re-)creation, so that one definitely put a smile on my face.

_________________

There you have it. The one and only report on post. Btw, we do have numerous Behind the Scenes Videos that might be of interest (if you've been following the blog). They are under the Bonus Link on the Menu - http://hitman-101.com

*Will probably go silent again with these blogs. If we're lucky Georgie might do a blog about his experience on the series. Chances are I'll blog about our trip to LA for the two Web Festivals sometime in April.

What's next? I will work on ways to promote the series. I still doubt we can make much of a footprint despite having a good show, but we'll see if I can come up with ways to get eyeballs on the series. Still have a few more items to make the series content complete - Outtakes are being edited, have a few more picture galleries to add and will eventually do a Commentary or two for the series. I'd love to do Cast Interviews, but am not sure if that will ever happen. Then it's on to the next project... which I'm leaning toward a short film made with festival aspirations. Till then.

Thanks for reading and thanks for watching our show!

#hitman 101 #making of

The FINALE of HITMAN 101

#hitman #hitman 101 #webseries #Web series #film

NIGH

This is just a quick journal to acknowledge my neglect in the "blogging" department over the last... I guess two months.

My excuse is somewhat legit.... we worked A LOT on the series, like ALL THE TIME. This is basically post production on 12 short films in two months by a team of a whopping 4 people - Composer Marc Alexandre, Visual Effects Artist Pranjal Verma, Sound Designer Alex Shamku and myself (with Alex and I being neophytes to boot).

Plus Alex is a vampire who works at night... all night, which forced me to do likewise as I played the role of his Assistant/Foley Artist.

Two months straight of dedicated post production is my excuse for not keeping up with the journal. Please forgive. And I also apologize for the burn out I am going through now that may see me neglect this journal even further.

Alas, at some point I will at least post a report on our post production adventures (after I make up on some of the hundreds of hours of sleep I am now missing).

To whoever has read the journal and whoever is watching the series I thank you from the bottom of my heart and I hope you enjoy the fruits of our labor. (Especially our Finale which is releasing very soon!)

#hitman 101 #making of