John August

Search Results for: youtube

Permitted filmmaking

Film Industry, Rant, Rights and Copyright, Sundance

Writer/director [James Ponsoldt](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1242054/), one of the fellows at this summer’s Sundance Filmmakers Lab, emailed me some information about new regulations on filming in New York City’s five boroughs. Under the proposed rules ([.pdf](http://www.nyclu.org/pdfs/nyc_photo_permits_proposed_rules_052507.pdf)), a city permit would be needed for:

* Two people with any camera, shooting in a public location (defined as any area within 100 feet of where filming begins) for a half hour or longer, even if the camera is hand-held, including set up and breakdown.

* Five people with one tripod, shooting in a public location for over 10 minutes, including set up and breakdown.

I have no doubt that the rules are well-intentioned. Anyone who’s lived in New York or Los Angeles has dealt with the inconvenience of film crews — that’s why there’s a permit process. But there’s a difference between a true film shoot, with its trucks and dollies and light stands, and two guys with a videocamera.

Would these rules really get enforced? It’s hard to say. But even rarely-used laws are a Bad Thing if they criminalize free expression. Videotaping a protest march could be deemed illegal under these rules.

Thanks to sites like YouTube, video has become the new generation’s media of choice. It’s their printing press, their pamphlet, their church-door-upon-which-to-nail-theses. Placing undue restrictions on video creation undermines the spirit of the First Amendment. The Mayor’s office needs to find a way to control the burden of filming (trucks, traffic, noise) without restricting expression.

[Picture New York](http://www.pictureny.org/) has more information about the proposed rules, including a petition.

As for Los Angeles (and other cities), I can’t say exactly what the current rules are. At USC, we had to get LA film permits for our student films. That was a university policy, and made sense given their concerns about liability and guild relations. (We were able to use SAG actors under a waiver.)

This was before the age of tiny, ubiquitous videocameras. You can now shoot a film without anyone realizing you’re shooting a film. If it’s you and a buddy with a tiny camera, should you really have to register with a governmental agency? I say no. And I hope that New York’s proposed rules wouldn’t make that mandatory.

Location scouting vs. reality

Follow Up, Projects, The Nines, Video

Looking through my [YouTube account](http://www.youtube.com/user/johnaugust), I realized that I’d actually posted (and [blogged about](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/location-scouting)) our location scouting footage more than a year ago, shortly after we’d wrapped shooting.

I thought I’d go back and grab screencaps from the movie to show you what some of these places looked like as shot. (The following are in the order of the clip, not the order in which they play in the movie.)

forest

No, it’s not a plate shot. The trees really are that Burton-esque.

park

Half an hour outside of Los Angeles. If those mountains look familiar, that’s because they were featured every week on M.A.S.H. Yup, it’s “Korea.”

malibu

Securing a “forest road” was surprisingly difficult. Bonus note for the DVD: Everything green on the ground was poison oak. We had to destroy some padded blankets afterwards, because it was impossible to get the itch out of them.

tapia

Probably our single most difficult location. A blind curve, and a 360-degree shot, on a hot day without shade.

Yards away from the previous location was this great trail. The biggest challenge was keeping the wireless mikes in range during a two-minute walk-and-talk.

The Hearst Building downtown stood in for several places. A sheriff’s department booking area…

police

…an adjoining hallway…

hallway

..and a very seedy Hollywood motel room.

I scouted New York locations while meeting up with Hope Davis to pre-record a song she sings in the film. That’s when we picked the Millennium Broadway Hotel as our base:

new york

Keep in mind, the location scouting clip only includes the places we ended up shooting. It took us weeks to find (and secure) the places we wanted to film. This was my first time scouting with a videocamera, but I can’t imagine doing it without one. Photos alone don’t give you a sense of what the lens will see, particularly when it’s in motion.

It’s also worth noting what a huge difference proper cinematography (and color timing) makes. Some of these locations look vastly different based on how they were shot, and how they were timed in post. I never signed off on a location unless my d.p. had seen it and approved it. She was the only one who could really anticipate how it would look when shot.

Three from The Nines

Projects, The Nines, Video

In preparation for the [trailer competition](), I wanted to see how footage from the movie would hold up when subjected to the Flash compression of YouTube and the other video-sharing sites. So I uploaded three clips in various formats to experiment.

The results? Two clips look surprisingly great. The third looks like ass.

The difference isn’t in the format, or the file size, but the background. The ass-y clip has a forest of sun-dappled leaves in the background, and the compression algorithms freak out trying to handle the level of detail. That’s not unique to Flash; sun-dappling is pretty much the bete noir of video. Several resources recommended applying a soften filter to tamp down the background noise. While it reduced the overall file size, it didn’t end up helping the video quality much.

In the end, the h.264 format ended up working out best for me, but as always, [YMMV](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/your_mileage_may_vary).Conveniently, the iPhone and AppleTV both use this format, which makes it easy to carry clips (and trailers) with me.

The clips are from the DVD that goes out to television stations, for use in reviews and news stories. They show the three different looks in the movie.

* [A Medical Situation](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5tJKiIe-dQ)
* [Kill Off the Hero](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLLAes11LHY)
* [A Videogame God](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQAEIkzOwGY)

The virtues of technology failure

Africa, Video

I brought my videocamera with me to Malawi, only to discover upon unpacking it that the main sensor was shot: it could record sound, but not video. In retrospect, this was a fortuitous failure.

Looking at things through a lens–or on a tiny flip-out monitor–creates a layer of distance, of safety. On a subconscious level, it feels like you’re watching TV. I would have watched, but not seen.

And given my obsessive need for coverage, I probably would have shot so much footage that I could never have begun editing it down.

So, lacking a proper videocamera, I just shot with my digital still camera. The clips had to be very short; I only had a 1GB card, and no way to off-load it. But I think it worked out for the best. What I ended up with are more like video snapshots. They don’t tell a story. They simply capture a moment.

I’ve posted a few more up in my [YouTube channel](http://www.youtube.com/user/johnaugust). Here’s a sampler.

Q: What side of the road do they drive on in Malawi?
A: The center.

There’s only one paved road in Mulanje, which has to be shared by cars, bikes and pedestrians. The dirt roads are strictly one car wide. They recently plowed the road towards Kumwamba Centre, so there’s hope it may be paved before too long. You can see the in-progress road on this second version of the drive to the church on Sunday, featuring the song that’s been stuck in my head for 10 days.