How to shoot a film for free

For a blog whose blurb claims to be about a "Mastering engineer and DVD Author" there's been very little about DVD and films here! Here's a post to redress that balance slightly.

One of my favourite DVD projects of recent years is Greg Hall's magnificent cult triumph "The Plague". SRT created a new 5.1 upmix and re-master of the original stereo soundtrack, plus a new upscaled master tape for the film's digital cinema debut in Covent Garden, and later the authoring of the DVD, all under the watchful eye of Tom Swanston from WYSIWYG Films.

Originally shot on mini-DV for only £3500 (!!!), "The Plague" is a fantastic mix of black humour, social commentary and improvised drama, and has won awards and garnered praise from all corners, not least none other than Mike Leigh, who said

"It's anarchic, crazy, kind of rough-edged and raw, but it's got an amazing energy, and it embraces white kids, black kids, Asian kids, kids up to no good, boys and girls out on the street. It's a full length film, made low budget, so it's absolutely a gang of people getting together with great imagination and wit, and a bunch of talented actors. It pulsates with energy."

We were all proud to be involved with it (and had a great time at the premier!)  Meanwhile Greg went on to direct "Kapital" for the Man

chester International Film Festival, a bold collaboration with composer Steve Martland, and is currently working on "Bash The Rich", an autobiography of Ian Bone, as well as numerous smaller projects. I highly recommend his blog, Broke But Making Films as a great, inspiring read for any would-be indie film producer, but his latest venture will be particularly exciting to follow, I think.

After his "naive" success making the Plague for such a tiny budget, Greg has decided to make his third feature film for no money at all. No, I don't know how this is supposed to work, either! As he says it's a "slightly mad" idea, but if anyone can do it, Greg can - he has "the equipment, the crew, the actors, the determination and the mad glare in my eyes to be able to do this" - and my bet is that the results will be inspirational.

Best of all, he will be blogging it for our education and enjoyment. As he says in his latest post:

I will blog and keep a video diary of the whole journey. We will show the improvisation period that is often kept secretive, the madness of shooting on no money, the turbulent editing process and the possible festival circuit and uk cinematic release of the film. Everything you need to know on how to - or possibly how not to - make a no-budget feature film.

As anyone who has checked out the fantastic extras on the DVD of The Plague will know, coming from Greg this is no idle claim. I for one will be keeping a sharp eye on his RSS feed in the coming weeks and months, I hope you will too.

And you could do worse than rent or buy a copy of "The Plague", while you're at it, too!

CD & DVD on the same disc

Richard Durrant's DAVD discs arrived today - CD audio on one side, DVD on the other of a single disc. This is a format I've been wanting to promote for years, back when the only option was DualDisc, but manufacturing costs plus licensing and compatibility issues put paid to that.

But all that is history now, and you can get a DAVD pressed up for only 60% more than a normal CD. That's incredible value, compared to a 2-disc CD and DVD package which costs more than twice as much, including the packaging. And as a format it beats Enhanced CDs hands down, if you ask me.

So, what are you waiting for ?!

And, speaking of Richard, here is a video of his single-handed live performance of one of my favourite things, Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint, a piece for 12 guitars... prepare to boggle.

Next post DIY Mastering #4 - Speakers

Discroom - a new DVD site

Just a quick post linking to Discroom - a new site with help and information for DVD authors, put together by my good friend and fellow DVDAfterEdit user Jake Russell. It's just getting going at the moment but it's certain to become a treasure-trove of useful information as time goes by. I met Jake at the NAB show in 2004 when we were both demoing DVDAE v2, and we've stayed in touch ever since. Discroom is concentrating mainly on DVD Studio Pro, part of Apple's Final Cut Studio package, which we use at SRT for many of our DVD titles. I think I'm going to keep things here focused pretty tightly on mastering, but anyone interested in DVD authoring on a Mac should definitely check Discroom out - for example, his latest post is about authoring a simple "play and stop" DVD.

Where I'm At

So here it is - my first post - written while copying sources for a new Paul Weller box set one of our customers is putting together. Sadly it all comes from 16-bit CDRs rather than hi-res files or original tapes, but it's still a pretty cool project. I probably won't get to master it, unfortunately, since we have some DVDs coming in which need authoring and I'm commited to a large Interactive Whiteboard CD-ROM as of next week, but I know Simon will do a great job. On the other hand, once the sources are compiled in the right order they'll get sent away for approval by Universal, and that will take a while, so perhaps I'll be free by then. I'll have to fight him for it...

Looking forward to Richard Durrant's session on Monday - it sounds very different to the bonkers "Horse" album he produced for John Douglas Clark, which we worked on before Christmas. ( "...half album, half sound installation... described variously as 'Ivor Cutler meets Pink Floyd' and 'John Shuttleworth meets Prof. Stanley Unwin' " ) And, I'm really looking forward to working with Christine Tobin again next month - I was really pleased with the way her fellow artist and partner Phil Robson's album "Six Strings and the Beat" turned out last month, despite both of us struggling with the after-effects of flu. And looking forward to getting copies of the Opeth "Still Life" DVD - progressive Swedish Black Metal wouldn't necessarily normally be my listening material of choice, but Jens at Fascination Street did such a great job on the new 5.1 surround mixes, the band play really well and the menus came out nicely, though I say so myself. Plus I'm sure the packaging will be highly decadent, which should be fun.

So that's "where I'm at" at the moment - I think future posts will have updates on these and other interesting or enjoyable projects, plus ramblings on subjects like Mastering and DVD authoring - for example Blu Ray's so-called victory in the "Format Wars" and what it means for our customers who want to release in hi-def - and indeed if HD on disc is going to be a success at all, or go the way of SACD and DVD Audio...

Currently I am listening to "Seventh Tree" by Goldfrapp and loving it...