Production Notes on Robot Revolution

Production notes on Robot Revolution

by Andrew Bellware (Director)

The script, a screenplay by Steven J. Niles, is written as a POV tale of woe and hardship as a police officer and her Robot partner try to track down a terrorist who unleashes a nanobot virus in an apartment building.

The initial idea is that the movie is told in flashbacks, primarily from the robot's onboard camera. Which is a stunning idea that Steven came up with. But we didn’t do the entire movie in POV shots, we shot between POV and a more traditional “angle” of handheld camera. The intent is to keep the energy of the action and being “you are there” but with a somewhat heightened reality of a mobile camera.

Virginia Logan as Constable Hawkins.

I tend to think of movies as either being “ensemble” pictures or “Alice In Wonderland” pictures. That meaning either we follow a single character or an ensemble throughout the movie. This particular movie has a strong point-of-view character in Constable Hawkins, played by Virginia Logan, but she ends up with a large gang of undesirables and miscreants whom she must save from the nanobot plague. So photographically we go (gently) between the literal point-of-view of her robot partner, and her subjective point-of-view. The idea of shooting the movie from the robot’s POV was one that was supposed to have made shooting it easier. But that was not always the case.

One tricky thing which the script called for was a rear-view mirror which our robot, ARGUS, looks into. And as the camera is supposed to be Argus’ eye, he’s supposed to see himself. I couldn’t think of a good practical way to do this shot until I saw a monitor for a vehicle backup camera. Of course, there aren’t rear-view mirrors in their vehicle, there’s a rear-facing camera and he sees himself in that. The irony is that the shot where that happens doesn’t make it into the final cut of the picture.

Another shot I wasn’t sure we could get did come through. At one point a huge and menacing robot walks down the hallway, stops, and deploys a cleaning brush. I was prepared to cut the cleaning brush from the shot but our visual effects supervisor, the extremely talented Ian Hubert came up with a cleaning brush! (As well as a 30mm cannon from the top of that robot in a later shot.)

Jeff Wills as ARGUS

One issue with a full face-covering helmet is that typically means the actor inside cannot hear. Usually they cannot see either. So whenever Argus was on set, the actor needed a “babysitter” to chase after him and lead him “back to one” at the end of each take.

We tried, as much as possible, to use practical effects. Although most guns cycle faster than a film frame, we’re so used to seeing them rock back-and-forth that we did what we could to make our guns “flashy” yet safe. A liberal amount of baby powder on the inside of the barrel helped.

Sarah Schoofs recording ADR.

We had a couple noisy locations on this picture --  like the fact that the furnace had blown out and a temporary one was installed that was amazingly loud -- right next to where we needed to shoot. There was no option to turn off the furnace so we just ploughed ahead.

Today we get to solve some of those sound issues! We’re replacing dialog  using an Oktava 012 microphone -- the same mic we used for boom on set (although this movie was almost completely recorded with wireless lavalier microphones). And there's a bit of distance on the mic, it’s not right up on the actor’s face when re-recording the dialog. This tends to make the dialog “fit in” better with the rest of the movie.

One thing I’ve discovered about doing dialog replacement is that it seems that for most actors, seeing the picture while they record isn't terribly helpful. So we've abandoned having a picture monitor in the booth. I'll play the line three times and then go into record. No bloops or leader or anything. It’s much easier to get back into the space you were in as an actor if you just listen.

The visual effects were a fairly straightforward part of post-production. And except for a couple last-minute location changes the structure of the picture pretty followed what Steven J. Niles wrote.

For music, the Australian-based Hurry brothers created a rhythmic and driving score to maintain the tension through the picture. We experimented with a couple different “moods” for the ending of the picture before we decided on the arch-dark version we have now. At the last minute we flopped the open and end-title credits, which also changed the mood and worked well with the new ending. Now that the picture is completed I have to find a place to put all the robots parts!

Robot Revolution March 2015

So apparently Robot Revolution is being released on March 10, 2015.

Order early. Order often.

Today in the machine

So today I took a pair of black pants, put a robot armor calf piece inside them, and shoot them with a paintball gun loaded with dust pellets. I shot it overcranked. I have no idea what it's going to look like.

ADR

We had a couple noisy locations on this picture and there really wasn't any option other than some ADR to deal with them.

Sarah Schoofs doing ADR in the studio.

 I've been using an Oktava 012 microphone -- the same we'd be using on set (except that this movie was almost completely recorded with wireless lavalier microphones). And there's a bit of distance on the mic (you can't even see it in the picture above.)
It seems that for most people, seeing the picture while they record isn't terribly helpful. So we've abandoned having a picture monitor in the booth. I'll play the line three times and then go into record. No bloops or leader or anything.
I think this makes it easier. You just need to memorize the cadence of the original and you're not distracted by picture.
I do try to line up each line for sync immediately after they record the line. Just to, you know, make sure.
There's a standard impulse response in Samplitude -- a 1.1 second "garage" reverb. I've been using that to give a bit of controlled distance and room on the ADR. Honestly I've lost all perspective -- literally and figuratively -- but it seems like the right sort of sound for ADR. The tail of the reverb doesn't do weird things the way the tail of a reverb which is more appropriate for (say) guitars and pianos would be.
We have two more actors we need ADR from. And then (hopefully) we will deliver final picture.

Louder Bot

We don't tend to "test" our movies in any normal sort of way. What we will do, however, is show them to people for notes. The writer, the producer, the editor, the composer(s), all get to give notes. But these are people who have been, how shall we say, emotionally intimate with the picture.
So the biggest notes come from the distributor.
His particular notes were that the robot wasn't mechanical enough. More heavy robo-cop-esque. I made the robot more a "stealth" 'bot. But he's got to feel some weight.

So we're going through and adding some more bigness to his footsteps. A bit of a whirr and a bit of a clank.
And yup, I had been blind to the movie needing that. It totally needed it. And now the movie is better for it.
There were also a couple scenes I thought we could get away without doing ADR on. Those scenes need ADR. I was really too close to the movie to tell on my own but those were some additional notes by our sales rep/distributor.
So we're organizing the ADR. I was really hoping to have whole acts done by the end of the weekend but that doesn't look like it's gonna go down. We'll see what we can get though.

Whew, Finished

So last night around ten o'clock I "finished" Dead Raid (the new title for Dead Residents.)
Immediately, of course, I found an error -- some missing bullet hits and ricochets in the first act. But there's a whole movie, color-corrected, with 5.1 mixes in both full English and with the Music and Effects split out.

At this point in the movie-making process I'm usually pretty annoyed with the movie I've been working on. And no, I don't typically blog about that. But this picture I'm still feeling pretty good about. A lot of the effects the writer, Steven Niles, was going for worked. Those can be hard for a director (me) to pull off but I think that somehow we did.
We're late on the delivery for this movie. Originally we'd promised February 1 (and you'll notice it's early April now). But we created a new prologue (and postlogue) which are kinda fun. The movie will be delivered by Cannes.
There's still a tremendous amount of work to do. First there's the quality-control checks. New mixes, new renders of effects, all that sort of thing has to be dealt with -- all in an effort to make the movie better. A complete transcription of the audio, along with timecode, has to be created. And just for fun, a copy of every single contract has to be double-checked and scanned and made into .pdf files. Then there will be a load of other paperwork -- mostly me signing pieces of paper which say how long the movie is, what the aspect ratio was, and a notarized form promising that the movie was made in the United States. 
I'd love to say I'm going to take the weekend off. But we have two more movies lined up for this year and somebody's got to get on the pre-production train for 'em.

Day 14

So apparently at some point I said "Doesn't there need to be a prologue to this movie?" And apparently the answer was "yes".

Virginia Logan takes one for the team.

So now we have a new opening. Steven J. Niles re-wrote a terrible outline I'd created. Then we brought in Anouk and Kire.

Kire Tosevski rockin' the post-apocalypse with my sherpa sunglasses.

Then I got the bright idea that Anouk should play the thing mostly in French and dance around. I did a little dance for her to show her what I meant. She looked at me like I was insane.

The Queen of Mars did that awesome Yellow Sign tattoo on Anouk Dutruit.

Robot 43 (Maduka Steady) comes to the rescue.

We shot entirely in the basement of my building. I'm so lucky to have such an understanding super.

I'm just amazed at how inherently limited the color palette is. It has something to do with the way I suck the color out on camera but still, the art direction is perfect for us.

I just wanted a shot with this kind of depth in this sequence.

Strange Works

Strangewerks Films movie Lifeform has quite a bit of crossover to Pandora Machine movies. Indeed the star of Lifeform, Virginia Logan, is the star of our new movie Dead Residents.
Brian Schiavo talks about animating the creature. Our own Nathan Taylor worked on the rigging of the monster.

Maduka Steady as the evil robot Argus in 1202 (stills for key art).

Day 13 of Dead Residents

I do wish this picture were more in focus. It's hard to selfie with a DSLR. Virginia Logan makes me look much better.

Steve Deighan fights off a plague of zombies. I'm channeling my... what was that movie? Susperia?

Anne Michele and Vincent Marano play the Goldfinches. I haven't seen Vinnie almost since Theatresource went bust. It was awesome working with him again.

Mary Murphy, Steve Deighan, Vincent Marano, Anne-Michele Abbot, Virginia Logan, Sarah-Doe Osborne, and Matthew Trumbull. The walls are by Marcie Kintish. Lighting by the Marsian Queen. Note that the top of the frame will be chopped off at a 3:1 ratio in this movie.

Big day today. We shot this, our final day of principal photography on Dead Residents from noon until 9pm. Without lunch. I feel a bit jerky-terky about that but everybody just wanted to press on through (and we did have lots of snacks) so we make it sort of a "French hours" day.
We did shoot a boat-load of dialog. We actually had the writer on set! He brought a friend. We had another friend-of-a friend. And we didn't feed anybody!

Dead zombies in the hallway. Dirk Voetberg, Tarantino Smith, Khalid Low, Kate Britton, Steve Niles (the writer for crying out loud!) and Pete Torres (who we made play the robot in a number of scenes.)

Here's a great shot of Khalid showing The Martian Queen's brilliance at making bullet holes.

We also had help from Pete Torres, a buddy of Mozz Mendez who lives here in Jersey City. He became our designated sound department.
Did we shoot our storyboards? Not really. I found a better angle than what I could get from the boards and we shot our way out mostly with that.

Instead of Storyboarding

Instead of doing the storyboarding I'm supposed to do for Sunday's shoot, I'm writing this post.

Ian Hubert's robot from Tears of Steel is coming for you in Dead Residents.

If you want to know how real movies are made, read John J. Bruno's blog. Here he talks about color revisions in scripts.
I try to print as few versions of scripts as possible in hard copy. We don't print versions in different colors at all. We try to use file version numbers ("1202 Dead Residents v6.08" etc.) although sometimes that screws us up.
Starting on this movie I've noticed people on set are using iPads much more. There's some fancy-pants software for actors to mark up .pdf files and even read sides with you and such. I suppose I should find out what that app is.

Phillip Drawbridge is selling the 3D model of the HMS Fairborne.

Wow. I wish there were a good Carrara to Blender exporter. I'm totally buying it anyway. We'll figure it out. I wish our ship in Prometheus Trap looked this good.

How To Shoot A Martini

We're headed boldly into the last day of shooting Dead Residents.
Lessee. We still need a robot. We're low on zombies. We have a million pages with ten million lines of dialog all in one small apartment set. To which I say "eek!"

Ian Hubert made our CG robot. It looks rather photo real. Here it a version of it on an alpha channel.

I am (I hope you're sitting down) actually storyboarding this series of scenes. Good grief. What has it all come to? I need to make the scene:

• Good
• Easy to edit
• Easy to shoot

In about that order. 
I always get concerned about annoying actors by doing a stop-and-start version of a scene where we are continually stopping, going back a line, starting up right through to when another character talks at which point we stop, back up, and start shooting the new character until another character speaks. It's very herkey-jerky. But it's very effective in the edit room.
A substantial amount of the movie has been edited. It looks good. I'm happy with how the story works.

Abby Singer Day II

... because one Abby Singer Day isn't enough.
That's right, we've done our penultimate day of shooting twice now. But at least that means that schedule-wise we're right on time.
You know, if you don't count the fact that we added a whole extra day.
We shall begin the illustrative portion of this blog post with a series of pictures of our Martian Queen.

Today we shot almost entirely in my building super's office. And he gave me some coquito he made. And all I can say is ho-ly-cow. That was some good stuff. Rum and coconut milk. Cinnamon. It tasted like there was some cocoa in it.
Oh man. I'm glad I had that toward the end of the shoot day rather than the beginning. I'm also glad I have auto-focus on my camera.
Ho. Ly. Cats.
That's some good stuff. Not good for one's diet.

The lovely Virginia Logan.

The. Er. Lovely Virginia Logan.

 Did you know that Virginia is in Sleep No More? Because she is. And it's awesome.

Virginia Logan, Steve Deighan, and Mary Murphy after the nanobot release.

 Today we shot almost entirely robot POV. You know, just like it is in the script! ;-) I love this cast.

Maya Graffagna after being shot by Virginia. We kill Maya twice in this movie. Ha!

Virginia had to be her own camera operator for this shot of being hunted by her own robot.

 The very ambitious goal I have is to have all of the movie cut together except for the scenes we need to shoot on January 5 by January 5. We absolutely must do it though, as we have to be done with all post-production (animation, composites, sound edit, music, final mix, color - correction, commentary track) by February 1.

The Marsian Queen does some robot acting for us.

Just some notes

We have two more official days of principal photography on Steve Niles' Dead Residents. I'm enjoying the way this picture looks. I don't want to say that it looks good because we're shooting on a GH3 instead of a GH1 but the GH3 certainly helps. 

I find that in post I'm lifting up the tones which are just above the black levels. The image below is a bad example because there's so much black in it to start with. But yeah, basically, we've been lifting the bottom part of the image. Note that we're just blending Magic Bullet Looks with the un-color-corrected image (about 64% color-correction in the "power mask" in the Magic Bullet Looks controller in Final Cut Pro).  

This scene where we fight the robot has been the one scene which has stressed me out the most. I've been worried about getting it to look right. 

My super has been extremely awesome about letting us use the basement of my building. I mean, it's really really nice. Every room down there looks art directed. We have one or maybe two more scenes to shoot there. We'll have to see. 

So far we're behind schedule by one scene. Which, you know, isn't too shabby for being 10 days into a 12-day shoot. 

Virginia Logan shoots robots in Dead Residents.

We did our first shooting with CO2 cartridges. The handguns offer very little kick when they're belting out CO2 actually. In that shot above we've put baby powder in the barrel and we get one frame of floof coming out of the gun. That's kind of funny because we're muzzle-loading. But I don't feel scared about crossing in front of a charged paintball gun. I mean if there were a paintball inside and if I were shot at close range it would hurt. But my eyes are protected by the camera itself (the lens would not be a world of happy if a paintball were shot into it point-blank).
The only charged and loaded paintball gun is the one we use to shoot at actors. Ha! No. We don't actually shoot at the actors. We shoot near them, sure, but not actually at them... er... all the time.
If you hit the right surface with the dust pellets you can kick up some nice fun stuff on walls and such without being nearly as dangerous as using something crazy like squibs. Yes, I do sound cavalier about the gun safety on our sets but we're actually sort of particular and we take some time making sure we're not going to get hurt.

Abbey Singer Day

Day 11 of 12 on Dead Residents.

Maduka Steady, Virginia Logan, Mary Murphy.

My super let us use his office today. We really have to figure out what to do for him for Christmas.

Matthew Trumbull, Clark, and Mary Murphy. About to meet their collective doom.

See the mirror reflects our reality that... oh who knows.

Future cop with robot. Ha! Which is which??!

The Queen of Mars says "I am my own PA." ;-)

There is little more satisfying to me than a paintball gun loaded with baby powder.

Double Robot Composite.

This is a quick shot we did with both robots in the room. Camera's locked and there's a garbage matte for when we put Rik in the other helmet and in the chair. The camera got bonked (probably from me hitting "record" but it re-lined itself up seemingly just fine. A little "neo" from Magic Bullet Looks with a slight increase of exposure and less contrast.

Day 9

Today we had the lovely Kimball Brown and the excessively handsome Walter "Barny" Barnes.

Walter gets fixed up by Maya before a take.

My building's super -- I don't know what we have to do for him for Christmas but it's gotta be awesome. We got permission to shoot in the basement and the basement is... amazing. There are so many completely different environments down there.

Note this is the "ARGUS II" which enters with Yerkov. Totally different helmet.

Walter did an amazing job in the suit.

 Maya made a very cool costume for Yerkov.
We're shooting all ISO 1600 at f2.8 with a color balance of 5300K. This will be important to know in the event we have to do reshoots.

I love this shot with Kimball Brown because we get a slash of shadow across her eyes yet we still have kick in her eyes!

The shoot is going rather well. Every set and location is new (for us). I can't wait to see how it's going to turn out.

Day 7

La Reine de Mars waits to roll sound.

Clark on his first day. The awesome super at my building let us use the part of the basement I'd never seen before. This scene Clark blows it up watching his mother/zombie get killed with a baseball bat. On a side note, what rating were we going for here? On another note, I'd asked his mom if seeing his mom get killed would qualify as either traumatizing or awesome and she allowed that for him it would be clearly on the side of "awesome".

Dirk Voetberg as the sleazy landlord Bennicker before he comes to an untimely end by whomever that is behind him.

We stuffed Clark in a closet. He got me back:
Him: "Did you write this movie?"
Me: "No."
Him: "So you're just the director."
Writers everywhere rejoice and smirk.

Annalisa Loeffler going after a robot with a baseball bat. That's a Pandora Machine bag in the background which the Producer took away for the final shot. Many thanks to Virginia Logan for her baseball bat. Apparently kids these days all use aluminum bats. Back in my day you weren't allowed to play with aluminum bats.

Annalisa Loeffler's new Facebook picture.

Dirk Voetberg looks on while Clark slates a scene for Annalisa Loeffler.

Okay, so this is Annalisa Loeffler's new Facebook shot.

Annalisa Loeffler, Maya Graffagna, and the Queen of Mars look at video tap (yes, after years of not having tap, we have it once again) which doesn't actually show up when you take a still (meaning that the duration of the frame that is actually shot is not transmitted to the monitor, we are all otherwise actually looking at the frame you see above.)

Annalisa Loeffler and our little tribute to Sleep No More.

Clark in front of our two walls. These walls were built by Marcie Kintish and are freakin' beautiful to shoot. In fact that wall you see on the left is staying right there -- I'm gonna live with it. It's like a big piece of art on that wall.
Someone left those salt and pepper shakers in the front hall of my building yesterday for someone to take and I decided that someone would be me. It turns out they're electric salt and pepper grinders.
Clark wouldn't touch those pancakes. His loss -- they were delicious.

Die Königin Mars.