M

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K
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RETELLING

BY

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MARTIN

F
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WISNIEWSKI

L
M

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CONCEPT
I

So we decided to make a short film using some of the story elements we learned
over the years. It was an exercise just
as much as a shoot; shake the cobwebs
off and test some of our story theories.
We were not going to be precious, if the
film was good wed release it. If it sucked
we would use it as kindling . We used a note
book and Final Draft 9 to write the script.

We applied our short story theories to the

script. Between the two of us, the 7 page
script was written within three hours. Ayz the
director did most of the writing, I made notes
and wrote the first page. The film would be a
simple two character crime thriller. The story
would be bare bones and have to move forward very quickly. Our length for the film from
the outset was no longer than 6 minutes.

I like to write on a notepad first. Just

a habit Ive developed over the years.

AYZ - Dude you know what we should

do, make a remix film. Release the
stems and make a how to booklet for
young filmmakers.
This particular project was going to be small
in scale. All of the props and production elements had to be things we owned, or had access to. We would shoot days in the elements
because we didnt have money for lighting.
Ayz sent the script out to our collective of filmmaker friends that very same night. Our buddy
and bad ass cinematographer Kevin Rasmussen was in immediately. If you are reading
this saying oh they just called a cinematographer -- I directed and shot 30+ music videos without ever using a camera operator or
cinematgorapher. THIS IS AN EXCUSES FREE
ZONE!

REHEARSAL
O

Ayz and I originally planned to shoot the short on a Canon 7D with some of the 42mm
Russian lenses we own. The dialogue wasnt dense/complicated, so Ayz knew
the actors could be friends, people he felt had the potential to pull it off. It helps
when those friends are creative directors/producers, and one of them is the hand
some guy writing this.
Not casting the roles in the traditional sense took the pressure off of us.
We met up at a studio space that , Shervin, the other actor owned. We
went out for lunch in Yorkville like the fancy douches we are and discussed some ideas. When we came back the actors left to read lines
and rehearse off the page. It took us about 45 mins to get comfortable.
Once we felt ready we invited Ayz to come and watch the whole thing.
Its time to do a rehearsal and run through!
I had never acted a lick in my life. Shervin had a little experience.
On the first run through, the director, Ayz, started to notice something:
The actors brought real performances and ideas to the characters.
We did more run throughs and Ayz gave us additional notes. The performances were coming to life with each additional adjustement. Suddenly, Shervin dug deep and delivered a performance that blew us away.
AYZ - FUCK IT lets use the RED and see if we can get some lenses!
Our second rehearsal would be at the location while we were location scouting.

CHECKLIST
W

I made a checklist of all the props

and equipment we required. It was a
lot more than a shotgun mic and a
Canon 7D. But still tiny scale compared to features weve made in the
past. Beggars cant be choosers so
we structured our shoot around the
days we could get some anamorphic lenses from our producer friend
Judd. We own an original RED camera (from a previous feature shoot)
and accessories, so audio equipment
was going to be our one major hurdle.

We got the Lavs, and found an old

shotgun mic we had lying around.
We made a make shift boom from a
green screen stand with some gaffer
tape. Heres the thing: when you decide to go ahead and move forward,
shit just happens to appear. Whether
it be helping hands, equipment or locations. Remember that people like to
be involved in something thats happening. People are fascinated by film
-- thats your ace in any situation.

D AY O N E
W

We purposely shot days outside, because it would

not require lighting or time consuming set ups/
turnarounds. Our first day of shooting never happened, it was dark overcast and raining. The weather
was never going to match our next two days which
were supposed to be clear and sunny. So before we
started we already lost a day; typical indie bullshit.
We didnt get discouraged though. We just used
the time to block our shots and set up our laptop workstation. I ran a final equipment check
and made sure we had wardrobe and props,
while Kevin (the cinematographer) and Ayz discussed lens choices and angles for the shots.
We made our schedule for the next day, we would start
with all the driving shots first. They would help warm
up Shervin the actor and we could get some of the
lengthy set ups out of the way. We hung around, talked films for a few hours and headed back to the city.

D AY T W O
L

We shot two full days 10am to 8pm, we were

pushing our luck but didnt let it discourag us.
Oddly enough all the complicated shots and acting scenes moved very quickly, but the inserts
killed us. It took us a few takes to get the simplest shots, which slowed down our schedule.
As a producer I knew this was going to complicate our final acting scenes. My experience
told me wed be chasing the light at the end of
the day, and we did! The pressure on the actors (me!) to perform was really stressful, but
I had a real nervous energy for our first acting
scene on the log in the forest. My brain went from
knowing all the lines to suddenly going blank.!
Ayz
A

called
I

out:
!

And just like that I remembered my lines again.

I learned a huge lesson though never produce
AND act in a no-budget short film. Its just way to
stressful. However, on the flip side youre acting and reacting on instinct which is good for the
process. I had all these ideas of what I was going
to do with the character, the camera rolled and
I felt like I was out of my body. My brain was doing what it felt like doing, I was just a passenger.

D AY T H R E E
P

On day three we needed to get a lot done and we were going to start with our most complicated shot of the film (car
exterior trunk to window - film intro). We drove a pick up
truck beside the 53 Chevy, down a quiet back road. Kevin
was in the truck bed with a tripod and camera. Somehow we
managed to only do this shot twice and nailed it on the second attempt! We did a third for safety -- but it pumped us
up, Back to our basecamp we went, really feeling ourselves
(ahahahha). We started to shot inserts and all the walking
through the forest scenes. At the end of day near dusk we
would shoot our showdown. Once again the inserts killed us,
our lack of equipment made any moving shots incredibly difficult. Racking focus by hand, no nd filters, two pipes and a
make shift dolly with an unstable tripod on it (FML). Kevin is a
pro, hes like lets reset and do it again, quickly lets go like
soldiers we ran to our positions and did it again. We were
running out of sunlight, and of course now its time to shoot
the climax of the film. Once again my mind went blank just
before Ayz yelled action. We shot so quickly I really dont remember much, just that we kept moving around to get light
on our faces. It was funny, Kev was like if you feel the suns
heat on your face, thats your mark!. We finished and scrambled like mad men to drive over to a field to get the hero shot
of me walking to the Chevy across the vast field at sunset.

1 s t A S S E M B LY
D

So we labeled the footage and lined up the

sound. We didnt record the audio into the
camera, it was a stand alone XLR recording
device with two channels. LAV and shotgun
mic (L and R channels). We recorded the
audio in sequential order like the takes, so
that labeling and lining up audio was a days
work in post.

I used to be a music video director/editor so I never recorded audio in camera. So

lining and syncing audio in 30 or so music
videos was practice that finally paid off. It
took less than a day to prepare the footage.
Once we were organized, Ayz came over and
we looked over all the footage. We choose
our favorite performances and takes/shots.

Now its time for the first assembly. We put

the rough skeleton of the film together, it was
a bit under 10 min and made Ayz the director
downright suicidal. He proclaimed I couldve
sworn we had a good film.. That first assembly took about 8 days, it was long bloated and
didnt have all the story beats. First assemblies are always brutal, they are the worst
representation of what the final film will be.

EDITING
S

Now were ready to add some temp music tracks. The

films missing flow and polish, but we knew we had
something. The script was direct and concise so we
would use it as our template just incase we got lost in
the edit. We really noticed how much the music was
heightening the visuals and bringing the project to
life. The music was written into the script but this was
the first time visuals and music would actually meet.
When youre in the edit its a culmination of: taste/
style, polish, hard work and shaving off the unnecessary self indulgences. This is the killing your darlings
stage. Some of our favourite shots and performances didnt make it, Remember if theyre not making
the film better they need to go. We went through
about 4 edit/drafts. We both took the final cuts and
made adjustments individually. The culmination of
those two edits is the final film (Ayz + Martin edits).

Things to do list. That god

damn notebook again.

FINAL EDIT
T

We went back and removed a few of the temp tracks

and decided to find songs we thought would fit best.
A few tracks sounded better and were more cinematic, but they did not fit tonaly. Just because you
personally like a song more doesnt always mean
its the right fit for the film. Tone is a fickle beast and
usually were most films get lost in post, knowing
when and where to make the right decision for the
film is just gut instinct and taste that comes from experience. No one knows your story better than you,
so that makes you the foremost expert on the material. That doesnt mean youre always right though,
so be open to ideas and other peoples creative input. Film is a fucking collaborative art form first and
foremost; the best collaborators bring great ideas.
We went out to create a grimey Crime-flick
that was also a fun ride. The film does not exist in a particular place in time and is ambiguous that way. It takes place outside of Toronto
and thats really all the audience needs to know.

SOUND DESIGN
W

We decided to export the final cut of the film from the

Mac Book and use the PC and Sony Vegas to do the
sound design. I was opposed to this idea at first, it
was a program that was unfamiliar territory to me. I
personally learned on Final Cut Pro and moved over
to Premier when Final Cut became horse shit. I have
to say after learning Sony Vegas, its actually the most
intuitive program Ive used. It allows you to move
at two to three times the speed of other non-linear
programs. To me trying out multiple ideas quickly is
the best approach to post production, and Vegas allows me to work at the speed of thought. Either-way
this is not an infomercial for mother fuckers that arent paying us, give it a try and tell me Im wrong :).

We imported the dialogue sound stems and lined up

the music we were going to use. Heres when we
ran into some issues. None of the sound recorded in
the car was useful, god damn sound guy (which was
also this guy btw!). We used all the sound libraries
we had purchased and collected over the years. We
literally made or overlaid every god damn sound
in the film. We used a USB mic and Mac Book with
Logic X to record folley (leather scratching, spoons
hitting) to get the sounds we needed. All our ADR for
dialogue was recorded on that usb mic or onto our
cells into the memo app, Im not going to tell what
parts -- cause youll never know the difference.
The sound design took us the longest amount of time in post (2 weeks).

COLOR/TITLES
P

We were split shifting audio and coloring at this

stage. Ayz is amazing with visuals and color pallets, so I trust his eyes more than my own no
pun intended. Ayz literally colored the files from
the RED RAW extensions on the files, we dont have
post coloring software or a computer good enough
to do it with to be honest. Plus this was intended to
be a fun little DIY project, no real colorists needed.
So now we had the colored film, sound design, dialogue/ADR all assembled. Great everything works
and we were happy. Most filmmakers would stop
here, but not us! The film needed more attitude and
polish: titles, grain/flicker and ridiculous sound effects. Ayz added gunshots over titles and we both
laughed, which to us is always a good sign. Ayz added fonts we would never use in our own designs, but
this film is made by a 70s grindhouse director who
thought they looked good. It was meant to look like
a washed out 30 year old print, a print youd find in
a dumpster. This is where your personal touches as
a director come alive. Its not just about the moving pictures, its about the film as a whole. So the
swearing movie as my parents called it was complete. Most filmmakers would stop here, but not us.

COMPLETION
8

So here we are. This is the first of more of these

to come. We will take more time to record, take
pictures and write diaries of our projects in the
future. Youre getting a culmination of what it took
us 10+ years to learn. The Wild Machine is a collective, its not a production company. We support
all art, but we just happen to be filmmakers. Robert
Rodriguez Rebel without a crew taught us that we
could do it years ago. So from now on we want to
create content thats great and give away any tricks
and knowledge weve picked up along the way.
If you have this book. That means you have the
stems, go out and remix the shit out of the film
its yours!, and then show us what youve made!
Time for us to get off the soap box and make
another film. If youve ever wanted to make
something, now is as good a time as any!

I like to talk its a gift and curse really! My

contact info is below send me a tweet or drop
and line by email if you have any question :).
martin@thewildmachine.com
Twitter: @martydubb416