Biagio is off editing our documentary Dying to do Letterman, and has entrusted me with the reigns to this week’s Scream Queens behind-the-scenes post.

Allow me to channel my inner-Biagio…

THE CAMPY SIDE OF HORROR

When we start developing a season of Scream Queens, we know there will be an episode that deals with the campy side of horror. Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves…it’s all too much fun NOT to include.

Plus, the chance to make a fake movie trailer for a campy movie in just one day is one exhilarating challenge. It gets everyone, from the cast to the crew excited. It’s the day that’s the most work, yet the most rewarding.

ZOMBIES & SQUIBS

For this week’s skills test we knew we wanted zombies rising from the dead. Surprisingly (or not) it’s very hard to get a cemetery to allow you to dig a grave and shoot there … something about messing with the soil (or waking the dead.) Plus, figuring out a way to bury our cast alive without killing them left us with limited options.

So we decided to go with above ground graves, a la the New Orleans French Quarter (those are scary!) and our fabulous art department went to town.

To add another wrinkle to the challenge for the girls, we introduced squibs. Now, if you’re careful, they don’t hurt you (in a sense that you get seriously injured) but some of girls will tell you they did hurt a bit. Sorry ☺

Anyway, the real worry was that one of the girls would get lost in their performance and, without thinking, put their hand over the squib. That would pretty much blow their hand off. As you can imagine, the risk of them having said hand blown off had eveyone behind the camera on edge, too.

As a fun side note, the squibs get triggered on a certain radio frequency, so there was some last minute panic as we wondered if our walkies, transmitters or any random Downtown LA stuff would set the squibs off with no warning.

Thankfully we were working with an expert who figured it all out.

The day started early in the morning after a torrential downpour, which meant we had to move our location about 300 yards to get it out of an enormous puddle. Fun things we deal with in production, oh and it was COLD!

Doesn’t my husband look cute up there?

The performances were all very different. That’s the hard part with camp, the line between good and overacting is very thin.

Sarah’s performance had us all laughing, but not in the good way, although A+ for effort.

Gabby got tripped up with all the technical stuff, and while the other girls were finding their footing in camp, Tai delivered the only believable hungry zombie. Congrats!

At the end of the challenge art department informed us they had a back-up lid in case something went wrong. So Biagio and I decided to give our crew the chance to bury us alive. They seemed pretty eager to do it! Thank God, Biagio saved the day and got us out.

HOMA CLASS – COMEDY

You know how they say “dying is easy, comedy is hard?” No kidding. In “TV time” on the show the class is edited down to about 5 minutes, in real life these girls tried to get laughs for close to 3 hours.

We were lucky to have Joe Wengert from the Upright Citizens Brigade teach the girls some specific improv skills. And even John Homa felt he learned a trick or two to add to his repertoire.

Upright Citizens Brigade member Joe Wengert tickles John Homa’s funny bone.

In the end, we applaud the hard work put in by our girls. Luckily for all of this, however, this is Scream Queens, not Queens of Comedy.

As long as they learned enough to put to use in …

VAMPIRE OUTLAWS

This is one of the moments we all live for each season. We get to make a trailer!!! Cool!

Then the other shoe drops … we only have one day to do it!!!

Seriously, it’s the most fun we have and the hardest work we do, but when everyone gives 150% all day, and the next morning you can show them a finished trailer, it just makes every ache worth it.

I WANT TO SUCK YOUR BLOOD

So not sure if you are aware, but apparently there is this huge vampire craze going right now. Seriously! So we wanted to jump on the bandwagon … (also last season our girls LOVED playing vampires, so after 4 grueling weeks in the house, we wanted to give them something they could really sink their teeth in, haha)

We also love westerns (who doesn’t?) and when our location manager Laura dangled the Universal Studios backlot in from of us, we almost squealed. Actually we did squeal. It wasn’t hard to get the network on board after that.

So here we are, early in the a.m. at Universal’s backlot, on the Western set. We didn’t think the nicely paved cement road would do it, so we spent the first hour of prep throwing hay everywhere. It looked awesome, although at the end of the night, when we had to clean it all up, we did hear a some minor cursing

THE TRAM

All day, the Universal Studios Backlot Tram Tour (which hit a detour because of our shoot) would pass by at the edges of our set and announce, “To your right, an actual shoot for TV’s Scream Queens!” Not only cool for the girls and the crew (who cheered!) but particularly awesome for Biagio. His first job in L.A. was that tram tour guide at Univeral. Nice full circle moment.

Biagio tries hard to remember his tour guide schtick

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

The girls were thrilled. They understood how big this was. Many working actors never get the opportunity to work on the Universal Backlot.

Add to that fancy western clothes (vintage) with awesome fangs (custom designed) and they didn’t care how cold it was. And cold it was. Those of us behind the cameras had on multiple layers of clothes (about 10 layers on top, 3 at the bottom) and we were still freezing. Speaking of cold, here’s a little movie magic trick for you:

Our girls had big parkas and heaters between takes, but while on camera, they had to tough it out for their craft. It seemed the only place nearby where we could get back to normal body temperature was in a bathroom building a couple of hundred feet away, so that’s where we would sneak off to when we had a second.

RUN AND GUN

The shoot went great. We hit most shots if not all. The girls were troopers. Even Sarah, poor girl couldn’t help but swallow cold water each time she got dunked. But she held in as long as she could.

There was a moment where she thought she might need to go to a doctor, and knowing that would take her out of shooting for the rest of the day, she decided to stay and finish the trailer (she was also medically fine, although I think more than one got a cold, no pain no gain.)

It’s a testament to our awesome crew that we were able to pull off the day. First of all, Adam Sampson, our DP, ran around like a madman with the RED camera.

Flip cam footage of Adam Sampsom running the red as Tim Sullivan directs.

Our most awesome prop master Elvis Strange jury-rigged an air compressor to mimic a garlic detonation.

Our fantastic challenge supervisor, Matt Laesch, got us the greatest group of extras, him included.

Our amazing AD team got us done on time and on budget. And we personally, with the art department, tried to get tumbleweed to blow through the shot. Not as easy as it sounds, even the blower couldn’t get it done, so we ended up throwing it.

In the end, Caleb Emerson, Lead Assistant Editor, was on set capturing and organizing all the footage. And overnight, our edit team, led by Biagio himself, cut together the trailer we showed to the girls and the crew.

Here’s the original cut, shot and edited in just 22 hours. Still a little rough around the edges (you can hear Tim Sullivan yell “action” at one point if you listen carefully) but for a campy Vampire Western, we were pretty happy with the results:

AND THEN THERE WERE FIVE…

This was one of the hardest eliminations as we didn’t really feel like anyone deserved to go home, but someone had to leave. Sarah ended up being our 5th victim.

Sarah is a sweetheart and she had been struggling with some serious homesickness. Her beautiful daughter was waiting for her and she couldn’t have been more excited to be reunited with her.

While the other girls seemed intent on dealing with unfinished business on the show, Sarah seemed content with all she had accomplished and experienced. And don’t forget, as the winner of last week’s skills test, she’s also in a FANGORIA spread, on newsstands now. We’ll be seeing Sarah in the future, guaranteed!

We’ve got some more flip cam footage from the Universal Day coming, so be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to catch all of the behind-the-scenes action!

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Debbie Rochon joins Jaime King on Scream Queens

Being true to the horror genre is something we’ve worked very hard to do in every episode of Scream Queens. So you can imagine our hootin’ and hollerin’ when we learned one of the ultimate Scream Queens, Debbie Rochon, agreed to appear on our show, in an episode about “The Sexy Side of Horror.”

Welcome to Episode 4 of Scream Queens

Let’s get right down to it: this week’s challenge featured an amazing guest star, and offered a big-time prize. Debbie Rochon, named Scream Queen of the Decade, showed up to judge our ladies in a challenge with real-world stakes. It would be a photo shoot recreating classic horror archetypes. The prize? A photo spread in Fangoria Magazine!

Now, for any aspiring Scream Queen, appearing in Fangoria is a huge deal.

Debbie Rocked It

No, we’re not just kissing up to her, we swear. Debbie has years of experience and dozens of movies under her belt, and she was able to translate that into direction our actresses could follow. You saw them get better while working with Debbie.

Debbie directs Gabby to open up and scream

Time for more green goo! Debbie to the rescue

Even as she makes Sarah’s blood spatter look ferocious and realistic, Debbie still looks sexy. That’s a Scream Queen!

We wouldn’t be surprised to see Debbie do a lot of feature-film directing in the years to come. She knows her stuff.

Having Debbie and Jaime working in tandem on our set was awesome, and seeing Sarah win the spread in Fangoria was terrific.

Sarah had been having a bit of a hard time, and to see her get to shine was awesome. Sarah is one of the funniest, coolest people you’ll ever meet…and she does a wicked “Biagio impression.” (Apparently I can come across as hyper sometimes?)

Joke. Jaime. Debbie. Hockey Masks. Loving this horror fantasy!

Thanks, Tim Sullivan

Major props go to Tim Sullivan for helping us with this challenge. He made the phone calls to help us get this done…something, frankly, we didn’t think was possible.

Thanks, Fangoria

You have no idea what your participation meant to us. To be able to offer one of our ladies a spot in your pages was a personal highlight of our season. We are indebted.

And Then Caleb Emmerson Stopped By!

The man…the myth…the Caleb! Here with Debbie Rochon, Biagio, Joke, and Jaime King

Talk about a great day!

After the shoot, Debbie and horror writer/director Caleb Emmerson (Die You Zombie Bastards) gave us the dirt about working together on the Troma classic Toxic Avenger 4, explained why Debbie always pictures Caleb with poop on his face, and talked about their upcoming project, Caleb’s new film Frankie in Blunderland.

Caleb, as you may recall, wrote the trailer for season one’s “Reform School Zombie Squad” that won Clip of the Year on E!’s The Soup (though, in all fairness, James Gunn wrote the “vagina” line. James hates it when we don’t give him vagina credit.)

If you missed this gem, don’t deprive yourself! Take a walk down memory lane with us. This is from the first time the clip aired on The Soup. Caleb is sitting next to James Gunn.

L.L. Cool J: Ladies Love Cool John

Okay, let’s just call it like it is…there were a lot of cast members with crushes on John this season! So, when John had to teach the ladies to be seductive…by seducing him…some didn’t have to dig too deep.

I mean, Sierra didn’t even hide the fact that her heart yearned for John…

…and Sarah practically raped him with a Margarita.

Hands-off, ladies, John is happily married

The Geekiest Scare Ever

If you watch the show, you know that every week there’s some sort of “scare” that happens when we deliver the scripts to our actresses.

Now, we can’t do the big “boo-jump-out-and-scare-you” scares every week, because the cast starts to look for them, and it gets predictable. So we try to mix it up with “scares” that are funny or just plain weird.

As this week was about the sexy side of horror, we came up with the (brilliant? stupid? awesome? ridiculous?) idea of having a geeky stripper. The message: sexy is an attitude. It comes from the inside. Sexy’s not about how your look. Sexy’s about how you feel.

Or maybe the message was just that random strippers are freaky.

Either way, the girls got some message:

Sexy’s on the inside, right?

Getting Tongue from Elvis

We’d pitched an idea to Vh1 about doing a director’s challenge where our ladies danced with a giant snake, ala Salma Hayek in From Dusk ‘Til Dawn:

When Vh1 asked if we could have some kind of reptilian tongue shoot out of her mouth, we lied and said, “Absolutely!”

Turns out, it was even harder than we’d anticipated. Shockingly (or not) you can’t just go buy a prop reptile tongue at any old prop shop. So creative panic ensued.

Our art-dude extraordinaire Elvis Strange (who built the cocoon to hold 10,000 maggots in episode 3) along with our Supervising Challenge Producer Matt Laesch, and the two of us started brainstorming solutions. After much trial and error, here’s where we were at the night before the shoot:

As you can tell from that clip, while the tongues looked great, we still had to get them to wiggle and hiss. We didn’t know how we were going to do it yet. Too bad, since we were shooting in about 13 hours.

We tried to place the burden on the actresses, but when the girls shook their heads to make the tongues wag, it was bad. They looked like they were having a seizure. Plus, when they opened their mouths, the tongues just rolled out and hung there.

Elvis did an amazing job with the almost zero-budget we gave him, making the molds, and creating the snake-like tongues, but even geniuses have a hard time getting around the laws of physics.

Enter Adobe After Effects

We decided to take a hybrid approach that would involve a partial CG solution. Since there was no budget for a Visual FX studio, it would take every ounce of After Effects skill I have (which is just barely enough.) Here’s what we decided the day of the shoot:

1. Shoot the girls hissing with no tongue.
2. Attach the tongue to fishing wire, and re-shoot the girls while we wiggled the tongue.
3. In post, pick the best tongue action and rotoscope it out.
4. Speed up the vibration and make the tongue unroll and “shoot out” in After Effects.
5. Copy that same tongue on to each of the girls faces to save time.

This was way better than making a completely computer generated tongue since that would be REALLY hard. Plus, this way the lighting of the tongue was guaranteed to match the lighting in the scene…after all, it was filmed in the exact same space and lights. We’d just cheat it on to different girls.

Here’s a quick video breakdown of how it worked:

It’s not perfect, but the network was very happy, and given the budget we had to work with, and my limited abilities, we were happy, too. My advice: hire real Visual FX pros if at all possible, but don’t give up on a “money” shot just because you can’t afford it. Get creative and find some way to get it done.

Oh, and hire Elvis Strange.

Never Ask Your Actors to do Something…

…you wouldn’t do yourself. A motto it sometimes sucks to live by. Like this fine day.

We brought in a 50 pound albino boa constrictor, and both the girls and director Tim Sullivan would have to work with it.

So, as I talked about in this post, it was time for me to step up and do the initial testing. I was scared to death (but think I almost hid it well.)

Joke’s Walkthrough

Joke explains how the challenge will work

Because Scream Queens is a competition, it’s important to keep things as fair as possible. For legal purposes, each week Joke walks through the blocking for each scene to give the girls a basic idea of how things should work. That way the actresses all start from the same baseline. Of course, this week that put Joke on a catwalk in a strip joint. Man do I love my wife!

“Crawl on all fours like this…”

Tim Showed No Fear

Tim boldly grabbed the snake, and looked far more graceful than me. Way to go, Tim!

Funny story about this snake (whose name is Bruce.) He LOVED this stupid chair we brought in:

After every take, it was nearly a 20 minute chore for the wranglers to unwrap the snake from the wooden legs. Bruce the albino boa constrictor would tie himself in knots, setting us WAY behind schedule for a while there. So if you’re going to work with a snake, try not to block the scene so your wiggly friend ends up in what amounts to a jungle gym for reptiles.

The Girls Did Great!

“I can’t believe they went for this!”

By the way: YES, that is the same snake Britney Spears made famous. Just look at the side-by-side. Can you tell which one is me?

Actor Bru Muller

“After years of struggling, we’ve finally made it to this stripper pole.”

True confession: not too many years ago we made a living shooting and cutting actors’ demo reels. Bru was a regular, and he’ll tell you he was the pickiest client we ever had. In fact, we’d go so far as to add CG effects, new sound tracks, and duplicate his footage to give him more screen time. We even mapped the reflection of an explosion into his glasses once to make his part on Alias seem bigger.

It was kind of ridiculous in terms of doing an actor’s demo reel, but was actually priceless in my development as an editor. Somehow, thanks to Bru, I got to edit every style of film and TV ever made, all while working on his ever-evolving reel. It truly shaped my editing skills. And his reel wasn’t too bad, either.

Since then, Bru has gone on to act in all kinds of TV shows and Movies, across from A-List actors and on giant sets around the world…and in every tiny project we’ve ever begged him to appear in. Finally, after years of working together, it was great to book him on something that would air.

Bru, we told you we’d get you a paying gig some day.

We’ll Miss You, Allison

It’s safe to say Allison is going to do just fine.

This week, Allison Kyler got the axe. Incidentally, the next day she booked a huge TV commercial, so that was a nice parting gift.

Allison is a great actress, was TERRIFIC TV, and a total pleasure to work with. She had her bad week…and it was enough to get her sent home. Still, we look forward to working with her again down the line. She’s a team player, and any director would be lucky to have her on a professional set. Team Allison lives on!

More Scream Queens Secrets To Be Revealed!

So be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to keep up with all the Scream Queens action.

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This is harder than it looks.

As you’ve seen in the teasers, on this coming episode of Scream Queens our ladies are dancing with a giant snake…the same snake that graced the shoulders of Britney Spears.

That didn’t make it any less scary.

“Well, this is different.”

This is the day of the challenge, and we’re in the back room of a strip joint, trying to figure out how the girls will be able to dance with, and gracefully remove, a fifty-pound albino boa constrictor. As you can see from the below video, this is rather…um…complicated. Helping out is our creature wrangler Chris Giacoletti (also responsible for the 10,000 maggots we had on episode 3 of Scream Queens.)

You Want Your Actors to do What?

We always say we wouldn’t make the cast do anything we wouldn’t do ourselves, so it was time for me to put my money where my mouth was.

Here’s me being the guinea pig. Yes, I’m scared out of my mind.

Major props to all of our ladies, and director Tim Sullivan, for bravely tackling the challenge.

Thanks to Elyssa Williams for the flip-camerawork and her hilarious commentary.

The full episode 4 behind the scenes post is just around the corner, so be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to catch all of our dirty little Scream Queens secrets.

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When you’re making a TV show, there are days when every single thing goes totally wrong.

But sometimes, you get exactly what you want.

Welcome to Episode 3 of Scream Queens

After wanting to scratch our eyeballs out and die in pain rather than spend one more millisecond on episode 2 of Scream Queens, I was pretty much convinced our season was cursed. Turns out, only episode 2 was cursed (that was more than enough!)

Still, episode three was going to present a lot of challenges. What else would you expect when you’re working with the guys from Avatar and 10,000 maggots in the same hour of TV?

The Third Floor

Talk about geeking out! I’m still blown away that the same team who did previs on Avatar showed up to do a challenge with our Scream Queens. The Third Floor is one of the top previs companies in Hollywood. Here, CEO Chris Edwards talks about what they do, and where the name “The Third Floor” comes from (TEASER: It has to do with George Lucas and Skywalker Ranch)

Our first encounter with The Third Floor was at a Director’s Guild event called “Digital on a Dime” (funny, since there’s no way in heck to do this for a dime.) They did, however, put on an amazing demo.

A girl in a tricked-out, space age body suit walked onto stage. Projected behind her on a movie screen IN REAL TIME was her every move…except she was a giant monster stomping through a virtual environment. Whatever she did was perfectly mimicked by the beast on screen.

We immediately said, “That would be the coolest Scream Queens challenge ever!” That was long before we even knew if there’d be a season 2 of Scream Queens, so this challenge idea was well over a year in the making.

Would They Do It?

When season 2 of Scream Queens was finally picked up, we called friend and colleague David Conley (a VFX producer on projects like Terminator: Salvation and Cloverfield) to see if he could pull some strings and get The Third Floor to help out a reality TV show with no money. (David is the same guy who got us into Henson’s Digital Puppetry Studio for another geek-out fest.)

The Third Floor was very open to talking, and generously helped us pull off the most technological Scream Queens challenge ever.

Choosing a Character

We brainstormed a bunch of different characters our Scream Queens might become while wearing the suit. Monsters, sucubusses (succubi?) werewolves, demons…the discussions went on for WEEKS. In the end, we loved the idea of a puppet trapped in an eerie attic. The scenario provided many opportunities for cool acting choices.

In the scene, the puppet is brought to life by a lightning strike, escapes the box they’ve been in, only to realize they’re trapped in the attic. What to do? Crash though a window to possible escape (or certain death?), of course.

What’s a motion capture challenge without a little action?

Additionally, playing a puppet meant the ladies would need to really think about how to move, being made with all those joints, pieces and parts. Finally, since this challenge was about acting without words, all emotion had to come from their body language…not easy!

Expensive Clothing!

It’s a $100,000 + suit the girls had to wear. Needless to say, we only had one of them. (As a funny aside, due to an early miscommunication, we thought it was a $1,000,000 suit. Glad we never pitched it that way to the network!)

This meant about 45 minutes of downtime between each girl’s performance as the suit was removed from one actress, and then calibrated for the next.

In the end, the girls made some great choices. Allison Kyler looked particularly kick-ass in her scene, and while Jaime may not have agreed with her acting choice, there’s no denying that her performance gave us one of the shots of the season:

Allison strikes a pose

But it was Sierra, tapping into something great, who won the guaranteed callback.

Sierra really shined in her performance.

After more than a year of hoping, planning, and dreaming, we got to geek out over working with the guys who grew up at Skywalker Ranch, and pull off our biggest acting challenge yet. Happy, happy, joy joy.

Yes, we were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves!

John’s Class

He had to help the girls cry. Um, too easy?

The Scare

In an ep about acting without words, well, we had to go there…

Everyone’s scared of mimes, right?

The setup was this: The girls would stumble upon a gift box. The box would vibrate, hopefully scaring them. When they opened it (probably thinking there’d be something crazy in there) they’d find a phone with the message “Sometimes the deadliest killers are silent.” At this point, our Mime would have snuck up behind them.

When we tested it, the phone wouldn’t vibrate the box enough. So we made a fake bottom on the box, and put a remote controlled truck in it. When the girls approached the box, we “drove” the truck back and forth to make it shake. The girls JUMPED which was awesome, and then Mime terror reigned.

Maggots!

Karlie takes a maggot shower, courtesy us.

First off, all credit for this challenge turning out awesome goes to Joke. The original idea for this (since it was an episode about acting without relying on words) was to do a scene of a girl coming home, realizing her house had been broken into, the place trashed, and her friend dead. The whole time, the only thing she could say was “No” with each “No” conveying a different meaning.

Inspriation for this came from one of our favorite scenes of all time, right out of HBO’s The Wire.

WARNING: THIS IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK, FAMILY, OR SMALL CHILDREN, AS IT USES THE “F” WORD OVER AND OVER AGAIN AND CONTAINS NUDITY:

Pretty awesome scene, all about using one word to mean a whole lot of different things. However, as a reality TV challenge, it was feeling a little flat to us. And let’s face it, “No” is just not as cool as that “F” word.

With just a couple days to go before we shot the challenge, we started to worry. “What if it’s just totally lame?” we asked each other. We felt like we needed something more.

That’s when Joke said, “I got it! Let’s dump maggots on them!” (Do I have the coolest wife in the world or what?)

Can’t blame me for this one!

Now, the idea of working with Maggots came from an early brainstorm session we’d done with director Tim Sullivan. He’d said that every movie he’s ever made entailed the actors dealing with real maggots. We’d been looking for a challenge to work the little buggers into, and Joke’s idea seemed brilliant.

So, we brought in about 10,000, farm-raised, perfectly sterile maggots, and at the magic moment, dumped them on our ladies.

When the girls were acting, we had a dude on a ladder dumping them down. For the insert shot of the maggot “cocoon” awesome art dude Elvis Strange built a balloon inside of some cool, gross moldy looking stuff, and inflated it with an air pump until it exploded.

Major Props to Sarah

All the girls were freaked out by the bugs, but Sarah was especially panicked. Yet, despite that, she overcame her fear and did the scene. Her commentary on it was so hilarious, in fact, it got us our first mention of the season on E!’s The Soup, complete with video of Sarah.

Spooky House

The location we shot in was pretty scary…for real. A week earlier there’d been a drive-by shooting on the street, so the local police kept swinging by to make sure we were okay.

Your bullets don’t scare us, bad guys

The house itself was used in Rob Zombie’s Halloween, and right across the street was the house from People Under the Stairs…so kind of a perfect place to shoot horror.

In The End…

Karlie got the axe this week, leaving seven girls vying for a role in SAW 3D.

Sarah comforts Karlie after she gets the news.

From a TV producer’s perspective, less girls = more time for story, and more time for each girl to succeed (or fail.)

It’s very hard in the the early episodes of any reality TV show to balance introducing characters, challenges, and story lines. That said, we were really happy with how episode 3 turned out…our most ambitious episode to date. Well, until next week!

Rolling into episode four (in which a life-long dream of both mine and director Tim Sullivan’s was fulfilled…stay tuned!) the show hits a great stride that continues right through the big finale. So keep watching! Have your own questions? Ask us in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you.

And, of course, be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS for all the inside dirt!

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Biagio strikes a terrifying pose for cinematographer Adam Sampson on the set of Scream Queens.

Adam Sampson is the mad genius behind the look of Scream Queens, both seasons 1 and 2. This time around he got to add a new toy to the mix…his shiny, new RED camera.

Here, he discusses the difficulties of lighting and shooting both RED and reality footage at the same time, shows off some of the filmmaking tools he got to play with, and talks about shooting the show.

More behind-the-scenes stories coming soon, so be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to keep up with all the fun.

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3. Scream Queens Contestant Rosanna Pansino Answers Your Questions If you’ve been watching our show, Vh1′s Scream Queens, you know that on episode two, the vivacious Rosanna Pansino got...

While we’re putting together our behind-the-scenes post for episode 3 of Scream Queens, we thought we’d tide you over with this piece we put together on our season 2 Director and Judge Tim Sullivan. Enjoy!

Our full tell-all, true confession, no BS story on episode three of Scream Queens is just around the corner, so be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to get all the latest!

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Scriptchat is everything that’s right about Twitter, the internet, and showbiz today.

What’s Scriptchat?

Brainchild of Mina Zaher, Jeanne Veillette Bowerman, Jamie Livingston, Zac Sanford, and Kim Garland (five delightfully rambunctious people you must immediately follow on Twitter ) Scriptchat is a way for working and aspiring screenwriters to get together and chat on the web.

It’s a friendly, helpful community, overflowing with advice for anyone who wants to write.

The Scripchat gang have a great explanation of how to get involved in Scriptchat here. It’s not hard to do, and you owe it to yourself to check it out.

For Months…

We’ve seen the Twitter hashtag #scriptchat pop up, and from some people we really respect. But between running our production company, and producing season 2 of our Vh1 show, Scream Queens, we haven’t been able to really check it out…until tonight.

Special Guest Jane Espenson

So go figure, the first night we pop our cyber-heads in, we’re blown away. Jane Espenson, (whose TV credits include Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Ellen, The O.C., Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Battlestar Galactica, just to name a few) shows up and starts handing out career-changing tips and techniques.

Just a few tidbits:

When inventing characters, start with what they want. Then think about what frustrates them.

Biggest mistake by new writers: not polishing scripts enough or the opposite: never finishing them.

You can INSTANTLY make a character endearing by giving them unrequited love or other foiled desire.

Don’t worry about “likeability” -issue won’t even be brought up if a character is strong, memorable, chewy.

BTW, for more great advice like this, go live at Jane’s blog, and soak up every bit of advice you can. Also read the transcript from Jane Espenson’s Scriptchat.

A Valuable Community for Any Creative

If you’ve been around this blog, you know we preach the idea of Hands-On Producing.

Yes, we’ve directed, edited, even sound-mixed and on-lined many of our projects ourselves. While all those skills are helpful to any aspiring producer, nothing trumps great story sense.

We’ll continue honing ours until the day we kick it, and #scriptchat is the newest tool in our arsenal. Check it out!

And be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to keep up with our latest shenanigans.

Related posts:

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If you’ve been watching our show, Vh1′s Scream Queens, you know that on episode two, the vivacious Rosanna Pansino got the axe, after the pressures of reality TV caused her to shut down a bit.

However, Rosanna has no regrets, and has been doing great since her perky exit, earning gigs on Warren the Ape, Glee, and an upcoming indy film…and of course, her now legendary appearance on everyone’s favorite podcast, NSFW.

We sat down with Rosanna to hear all about it, and to answer YOUR questions. In part one of the interview, Rosanna fills us in on what’s been happening since her time on the show.

In part two, she responds to questions and comments that came in from the Twitter-sphere.

Thanks to @David_Fulde, @danbowen, @AndrewMayne, @TheFunnyJosh, @JustinWHedges, @Chimaera96, @XIIISlaughters, @BradWollack and @kingisafink for sending in your tweets.

Rosanna on Life After Scream Queens

Rosanna Answers Your Questions

More Shocking Confessions Coming Your Way

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to keep up with all the Scream Queens Behind-the-Scenes action.

Questions? Comments? We’d love to hear from you below!

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During each season of TV we ever make, there’s one episode in which everything goes wrong. One episode that makes us want to quit the biz, curl up in to a ball, and die.

One episode…that’s cursed.

Welcome to Episode 2

Things started innocently enough. After elimination, the remaining contestants returned to their room, and we had some pretty good reality moments. Lots of hugs, especially between Sierra and Rosanna, who were becoming fast friends.

That’s pretty much the last moment of sanity we had this episode.

Maybe our first mistake was making this an episode all about “Evil.”

Witchy Ways

Jaime cooks up a wicked brew for our ladies.

The theme of the week was showing evil by playing horror’s “bad girl.” Jaime met the girls and announced that for this week’s first challenge, they’d be tackling a real classic: the witch.

The location was pretty cool. It was the old L.A. zoo located in what is now part of Griffith park. We were shooting in what used to be home to bears or lions or something (no one seems to know for sure.)

And here’s where the madness begins.

Giving Thanks?

We shot the day after Thanksgiving. Since we couldn’t afford to rent out all of Griffith park, there were people everywhere! Not the case when we scouted on a normal weekday, of course. (Note to self: apparently holidays are a bit busier than regular days.)

Thanks to picnics and screaming kids, there was no way to get a clean reverse shot of our actresses. Total mess, and more and more people kept showing up.

On top of that, we ran into a lighting issue that pushed us back another thirty minutes. With every moment that ticked by, our backdrop was turning into beach-blanket bingo. Not good for camera, and potentially a huge distraction for our actresses.

We asked nicely, but almost none of these post-turkey party-people were amenable to just “doing us a favor” and moving. After all, we looked like a big film crew with lots of money (if only they knew!) and they had prime picnic placement. We’d have to do better than polite pleading.

“What are we gonna do with all these people?

It wasn’t like we could start greasing palms with Benjamins, so we resorted to an age old bargaining technique: bartering.

We passed out food from the craft service table to convince people to move. A Diet Coke here, some Sun Chips there, “Ham and tater-tots if you could just move your family 15 feet that way, sir.”

“Oh, you’re a vegetarian? We have a veggie tray!”

“Twizzlers, anyone?”

It was one of the wackier solutions we’ve come up with in our day, but it worked. By the end of the scene we were only a little bit behind. Seemed we were out of the woods. Then came…

The Homa Class that Made Us Homicidal

The idea of the class was simple. John would teach our ladies that when playing evil, it’s all about the emotions, not about the words you’re actually saying.

For the most part, everyone was doing great. Until John got to one of the kindest, sweetest actresses on the show, Rosanna.

While the other girls worked with each other, John decided to sit down with Ro. She’s a terrific actress, and blew us away in her auditions, but the judges worried her acting was suffering under the pressure of the competition itself.

This is very understandable. We film long hours with our ladies, they have very little time to prepare, and expectations are high. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. John wanted to get Ro out of her head, and to a place that was real for her.

But after a few moments, she froze. John was trying to get her to say something, anything…and she just froze. In the control room (far away from the class and well out of earshot) we were on the edge of our seat, rooting for Rosanna at the monitors, “Come on Ro, come on! Say something!” Finally, she spoke, but it was clear she was struggling.

Now, we love all of our contestants, but anyone will tell you Rosanna is an especially kind person. Plus, through the audition process she’d done really good work. So we knew she had more in her.

Failing in John’s class is okay, as long as you listen to him and improve. But Ro never seemed to make it out of her head. One of our personal faves was shutting down, and we were hating it. We knew she had so much more in her, but it seemed like the pressure of the competition itself was getting to be too much for her.

A Bloody Mess

For the final director’s challenge, our ladies played a serial killer who liked her dead meat. We were lucky to get actor Trevor Wright, star of Tim Sullivan’s 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams, and appearing in David Fincher’s upcoming “The Social Network” to play across from our actresses (Thanks, Tim, for making that happen!)

One problem: we needed to slit his throat.

Biagio’s not feeling the knives.

The prop knife we had wasn’t playing on camera. It just didn’t look right. Someone (I think it was me) mentioned using a real knife, and then someone (I think it was Joke) pointed out we didn’t want to accidentally kill Trevor. An excellent point. So that idea was nixed.

We went through a bunch more options. It’s amazing just how bad a fake knife can look on camera. Too plasticky, too shiny, too goofy. We felt like the Dyson vacuum guy. 6,432 tries later, we had it.

A Second Chance?

In any good episode of TV, you have someone to root for. At this point, Rosanna was definitely the underdog, after her performance in John’s class. If she could pull it together, and turn out an awesome performance, she might be able to redeem herself. That would be a great story!

While she did much better in her scene than she did in class, she was still struggling. We all knew she was talented, including Tim (who’s publicly said he’d put Rosanna in any of his movies.)

But with such limited time to shoot, her lack of sleep, and having come off a very stressful Homa class, it seemed Rosanna’s acting chops were falling prey to the pressures of starring on a reality show.

Did Karlie Just Poison Herself?

Karlie licks raw meat.

Then, in an attempt to add some extra drama to the scene, Karlie goes ahead and starts licking the raw meat the girls were slicing. We all SCREAMED. I’m running around going, “Did she swallow that? Tell me she didn’t swallow that!” Needless to say, the medic was put on high alert. Karlie turned out fine (and it made for great TV) but seriously? Seriously?

On the Plus Side…

Gabby, who’d completely blown her director’s challenge the week before by getting lost in “Gabby Land” (a phrase coined by Tim) gave a great performance (later winning leading lady), as did Tai and Jessica. Most of the other actresses held their own. Sierra slipped back into some of her bad habits (acting like a porn star), and it was clear Tim wasn’t happy with her. It seemed Sierra and Rosanna were racing to the bottom…two girls we both adore.

Sierra and Rosanna support each other after the challenge.

Technical Difficulties

Since John and Jaime have to see the girls’ scenes edited (roughly) together in order to weigh in on who should stay and who should go, I was editing them at the speed of light on my laptop (seriously, you could see those Millennium Falcon jump-to-light-speed streaks around my head.) Just about done. Had given all the girls equal editing time to make it fair. Ready to show the judges. And then…

Out of nowhere, I get the “You are now running on reserve battery power” message. My eyes darted to the left. Yup, someone had accidentally walked away with my power cord, and in my deep “editing trance” I never even noticed it was missing. Just as I start looking around, the screen goes black.

I snag Joke’s power cord and plug in. Guess what? Turns out since I have the “big” Mac laptop and she has the “little” one, it wouldn’t bring my completely dead laptop back to life. Her adapter is smaller and less powerful. Works fine if there’s juice left. Fails miserably when there’s not.

With the Grand Ballroom quickly approaching, and John and Jaime waiting to watch, the edited scenes are sitting on my dead laptop.

Mad Dash

Everyone’s ripping through their bags searching for my “big” laptop plug. Never recovered it, but ten minutes later we found someone else with the same size laptop. Their adapter saved the day. (I bought a new adapter the next day and obnoxiously wrote BIAGIO all over it. Least it never disappeared again.)

Grand Ballroom

By this point, I was convinced the ceiling would cave in, there’d be a freak tornado in downtown L.A., or maybe a stray Electromagnetic Pulse would just render every piece of electronic equipment useless.

As it turned out, the worst part of elimination was seeing poor Rosanna sent off the show. Her eyes said it all: she knew she hadn’t been able to show us her best.

We Love Rosanna

For the record, Ro’s a great actress, capable of far more than she was able to show (we’ve witnessed her talent) and I hope we get to cast her in a movie down the line. As I write this, she’s filming on GLEE (a show with slightly more viewers than Scream Queens) and appearing regularly on Warren the Ape. You’re going to see a lot more of Rosanna, and we’re all rooting for her.

Was it a Cursed Episode?

Yes. Absolutely.

But while it made our life a living hell, The Curse of Episode 2 was downright deadly for Rosanna. She got the axe.

More Shocking Confessions Coming Your Way

Be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to keep up with all the Scream Queens Behind-the-Scenes action.

Questions? Comments? We’d love to hear from you below!

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Katrina Hill, AKA Action Flick Chick, was kind enough to pay us a visit on the set of Scream Queens this season.

In a lot of ways, we were nervous! In addition to winning woman of the web, and having about a bazillion followers on twitter, she’s just super-cool, and we didn’t want to let her down.

While her upcoming post on the Scream Queens ep she visited for is still some weeks away, Katrina posted this interview we did in the back room of our “secret set.”

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While we’re working on our behind-the-scnenes post for episode 2 of Scream Queens, we wanted to share this great interview put together by G4 with four of our Scream Queens. Get to know Allison, Sierra, Rosanna, and Jessica and hear what they REALLY thought about living in the house!

NOTE: Streaming from G4 so make take a second to load:

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An “Italian Vogue” Iron Maiden? A “Fricken Sexy” Saw Logo? And did he say, “Ubatuba?” It’s Extreme Makeover: Horror Edition!

Here’s the behind-the-scenes, before-and-after action as set designer Kenny Davis makes horror “fabulous” on the set of Scream Queens Season 2. Be sure to watch episode 2 of Scream Queens tonight, 10pm on VH1!

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We recently started a “Featured Kickstarter Project” here at the blog as to help support independent filmmakers.

The first film we pledged to and highlighted, TILT, from Phil Holbrook, Julie Keck, and Jessica King recently reached their goal. Congrats! Can’t wait to see your movie.

A Musing

The next Kickstarter project we’re highlighting comes from two extraordinarily helpful, generous people we follow on Twitter: Phil Seneker and David Spies. David also keeps a fun, insightful blog on screenwriting. We pledged $10. As with all Kickstarter projects, if they don’t make their goal we won’t be charged.

We’ve also added them to our sidebar (look to the right) to help everyone keep track of how they’re doing.

You can read all about their project on the Kickstarter page for A Musing.

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The acting class in episode one of Scream Queens involved our actresses smashing pumpkins in order to get in touch with their inner rage.

Just TV Fluff?

While we fully admit to choosing this acting exercise because we thought it would be great TV, it came from a very real place…an exercise Scream Queens acting coach John Homa did on the set of Interview with the Vampire…with a young Kirsten Dunst.

Remember the scene where the child vampire, played by Kirsten, cuts her hair and it grows right back? She then screams with blood-curdling rage. It was for this scene that John came up with the exercise of physically slamming things in order to help the young actress channel extreme anger.

Here’s a snippet from a brain-storming interview we did with John over a year ago when we were discussing what techniques might work for the show:

More Behind-the-Scenes Action on the Way

More videos, interviews with John Homa, Tim Sullivan, and Jaime King, and lots to say about each episode. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to keep up with all the Scream Queens Behind-the-Scenes action.

Questions? Comments? We’d love to hear from you below!

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The deadline for one of the first TV pilots Joke and I ever delivered collided with my Dad flying in to Vegas. He wanted to see us, since we were “just” in L.A.

Not wanting to feel like a horrible son, or ruin our budding careers, it was time to improvise.

I decided to finish editing, create all graphics, and prep the timeline for sound mix…you guessed it!…in the car, on the way to Sin City.

Should you one day find yourself with a deadline you can’t push, a G-Raid full of footage, and an aging laptop with shortened battery life, here’s how you, too, can edit your project while driving to Vegas:

You need a driver.

Do not attempt to drive and edit at the same time. That could lead to disastrous results (and your driving wouldn’t be so good, either.) Thank goodness I have a wife and business partner who puts up with my shenanigans. (Love you, Joke!)

A fully charged laptop.

As per number 5 below, part of your editing strategy while heading to Sin City is creative power management. Make sure your laptop is fully juiced before you rev your engines.

One of these bad boys:



A power-converter thinggee (the technical term.) Available and over-priced at most Best-Buys. Necessary if you’re going to power…

Your Firewire Drive

This is assuming you can’t just fit your raw materials on your laptop internal drive itself (which would make life way easier!) In my case, I had hundreds of gigs of footage. With just one power source (the car’s otherwise useless lighter) you’ll need…

A Creative Power Management Strategy

Here was mine: I started with the fully-charged laptop, plugged the firewire drive into the converter, and edited away. About the time the computer’s battery was ready to call it quits (like 90 minutes later) I ejected the drive, and plugged in the computer.

What’s that you say? No drive, no media? No problem! Time for some After FX and Cinema 4D title design (or Motion, Photoshop…whatever.) Unleash your creativity as your laptop recharges. Not the easiest thing to do, but with practice, I was able to rotoscope using the trackpad while bouncing down I-15.

Laptop recharged? Rinse and repeat.

There you have it. Go edit your movie while charging into your own, real-life “Hangover.” Just try not to lose too much at the roulette table.

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The first episode of any big reality show is an insane soup of long hours, last minute details, and impending disaster. As the executive producers and lead creative voices of the show, it’s your job to pretend you believe everything will be okay.

Overly Ambitious?

So, somehow we convinced VH1 and Lionsgate that, in the course of this episode, on time and on our tiny reality TV budget, we could:

1. Have a boogey man crash through the ceiling, shattering glass everywhere.
2. Center John’s acting class around smashing pumpkins with a baseball bat (and clean up fast enough to shoot our next scenes 15 minutes later.)
3. Sneak a “little person” into a fake table without letting our ladies catch on, so we could scare them with a phantom hand.
4. Build three sets from scratch in order to shoot 10 versions of a fake movie teaser starring each of our 10 actresses.
5. Edit those together in time to choose a winner for elimination.

Oh, and do all that in just three days.

Pressure Was On

But, as mentioned above, we’d convinced ourselves, and everyone else, things would all work out. Thus, judges John Homa and Tim Sullivan both seemed chipper on day 1:

Crashing Through a Ceiling (Without Killing Anyone)

For our night one acting challenge, we wanted to create a grand entrance for our surprise acting partner. Having chopped through a wall with an axe season 1, we weighed our options for something even more startling.

I really wanted to do an explosion, will full-on pyro, and blow up a whole wall. It wasn’t meant to be. (Peter Spoerri, our Head of Production, almost shot me.) Joke consoled me and said I could blow something up on another show.

Once we came up with crashing through the ceiling as our big reveal, we all got really excited. Could we do it?

What we came up with was to build a rig on the roof (see photo to left) which would support our stunt man, Chase Rivera. He’d be dangling from a wire, through an open, existing skylight. A tinted glass light-box was built to conceal him and look like part of the ceiling.

However, break-away glass is REALLY expensive (on our tiny reality show budget.) We could only afford three panels. 1 for rehearsal, 1 for the shoot, and 1 more just in case. Hey, no guts, no glory, right?

The first rehearsal was awful. We had no choice but to blow another panel and try to get it right. 2nd time around looked much better. So just one piece of glass left to get it right in front of our ladies.

In the control room, we were all freaking out. If we didn’t pull the scare off, it would be a lot of wasted resources, and I was going to be really cranky the rest of the season. Most importantly, we didn’t want to ruin the whole point of the exercise: for our girls to experience real fear before their first acting challenge.

It didn’t help that our stunt man had to dangle above the fake glass the entire time our ladies were entering and meeting the judges. One false move, one bump, too much noise…and the scare would be blown. So Chase Rivera hung, suspended above the glass, silently, for nearly 45 minutes waiting to crash through. Here’s how it went:

Little Larry

Our scare in the kitchen (used as a fun way to announce script delivery) entailed a hand shooting up out of a bowl of gum-balls. This meant putting a monster hand on Larry Lawrence, AKA “Little Larry” and shoving him into a fake table.

We had to do it quickly, and while the girls were in the next room, so poor Little Larry wouldn’t pass out in there! Way to go, little Larry. Scare worked great.

Shooting 10 Movie Teasers in 8 Hours

The idea for the first director’s challenge was to have each actress star in a short teaser for a fake film. To pull it off, we built three sets on a local stage, and ran our girls through each one at a rapid-fire pace. For the final shot of the teaser, a demon hand punches through the wall and grabs our ladies.

Here’s a little flip video of us acting like kids in a candy store, getting ready to test things out. The video stars our Supervising Challenge Producer, Matt Laesch, and our Head of Production, Peter Spoerri, who agreed to stand in for the 4’9″ Rosanna.

Jessica Ortiz was this week’s leading lady. She did a great job in the teaser, considering she only had a couple of takes o each set-up. Most movie teasers are put together from hours of footage of great takes. Of course, she had a grand total of about 2 minutes to choose from.

I cut this trailer together on my laptop on set, and this is pretty much how it stayed (that whole time/money thing.) While certainly not as polished as a real Hollywood teaser, we were all proud of how it turned out no shoot time and about 4 hours of laptop editing and some quickie Final Cut Pro titles. Major credit to DP Adam Sampson, who shot this on his RED (same camera used on features like District 9.)

Stay Tuned for More Behind-the-Scenes Action

We’ve got more videos coming from episode one, interviews with John Homa, Tim Sullivan, and Jaime King, and lots to say about each ep. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, swing by our Facebook Page, or Subscribe via RSS to keep up with all the Scream Queens Behind-the-Scenes action.

And of course, if you have questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you below!

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We can’t believe it was just a few days before Thanksgiving, 2009, that we started shooting season 2 of Scream Queens. 9 months later (kind of like having a baby) we’re on pins and needles as our show, Scream Queens, returns for a season 2 tonight, 10pm, on VH1.

We All Have Dreams

This show is about dreams–on many levels.

It’s about dreaming that a Hollywood career can happen.

It’s about being brave enough as an actress to put your life on display for the world to see, in order to compete for an ultimate dream: the acting break of a lifetime.

It’s about using dreams to fuel you when the going gets tough, and your goal seems impossible.

And for us, it’s about making a TV show that helped others achieve their dreams even as we chased after ours.

Thank You, Scream Queens Fans

Because you stuck with us season one, you made this season two possible. We love you for it. The two of us, along with close to 200 amazing crew members, worked as hard as we could to make the season 2 you deserve. Tonight, we humbly present you with our 9 month journey.

Mondays, 10pm, on VH1

We hope you’ll be watching.

Love,
Joke and Biagio

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We proudly present the behind-the-scenes, “Making of Scream Queens.”
Scream Queens returns this Monday, August 2nd, 10pm on VH1:

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This is our 100th post! We want to celebrate with you and our Scream Queens.

We’ll Make You Famous!

We want to post pictures of you on our Scream Queens Famous Friends page. Who are those famous friends? Why, YOU, of course!

Your Time to Shine!

Here’s two ways to get on our Famous Friends page:

1. If you are in New York or L.A. there are large, digital billboards playing the Scream Queens banner like this:
   

   We’re asking YOU to take YOUR photo in front of one of the billboards and send it to us! We’ll post a gallery of our “Scream Queens Famous Friends” here on the blog!

   In N.Y. the billboard’s in Times Square. In L.A. you can find them on the Sunset Strip. So if you’re driving along and you see one, (carefully!) hop out and grab a shot!

2. If you’re not in L.A. or N.Y, send us your own Scream Queens photo (get creative!) and we’ll post that as well! That’s exactly what the team from Tilt The Movie did! You can use the billboard or not…just come up with your own Scream Queens-Themed photo and we’ll make you famous!

   We’ll Shout it Out

   We’ll be happy to include your Twitter, Facebook, Blog, or whatever other info you want with the photo you send.

   You can tweet us the pic @JokeAndBiagio or email it to

   social AT jokeandbiagio DOT com (you’ll need to make that a real email address.)

   You’ve all been so great, we’d love to immortalize you in our Scream Queens Famous Friends Gallery!

   Thanks.
   Joke and Biagio

   
   
   

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   3. Scream Queens Contestant Rosanna Pansino Answers Your Questions If you’ve been watching our show, Vh1′s Scream Queens, you know that on episode two, the vivacious Rosanna Pansino got...
   ]]> http://www.jokeandbiagio.com/can-you-send-joke-and-biagio-a-photo/feed 0 http://www.jokeandbiagio.com/cinematographer-meet-us-stupid-producers http://www.jokeandbiagio.com/cinematographer-meet-us-stupid-producers#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:05:31 +0000 Biagio http://www.jokeandbiagio.com/?p=2135
3. Cinematographer Adam Sampson Shoots RED on Scream Queens Biagio strikes a terrifying pose for cinematographer Adam Sampson on the set of Scream Queens. Adam Sampson is the mad...
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5. Two Aspiring Reality TV Producers Who Get It. Follow Their Lead. A while back, I posted a story about a couple of hopeful producers who weren't prepared to meet with us....

What makes this even funnier is how dead-on true it is.
WARNING: Not Safe For Work!

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2. Indie Filmmakers, Meet Interactive Fiction What if potential viewers could "live" the story of your movie? Cool, huh?...
3. Two Aspiring Reality TV Producers Who Get It. Follow Their Lead. A while back, I posted a story about a couple of hopeful producers who weren't prepared to meet with us....

]]>

We’re starting a new feature here at the blog called “Featured Kickstarter Project.”

Kickstarter offers a way for independent filmmakers to raise money for their projects through crowd-source funding…in other words, we all pull together to help out our fellow filmmakers.

Now, if we all gave to every film that asked…well, we’d all be broke. We think it’s important to find projects that you’d want to see made, and give a small amount, even if it’s $1. In many cases, you get something for your money.

The first film we’ve pledged to ($25) is TILT, from Phil Holbrook, Julie Keck, and Jessica King.

We’ve also added them to our sidebar (look to the right) as our featured Kickstarter project. In the future, we may add others. In addition to helping out the movie, our $25 entitles us to a DVD.

What’s more, if they don’t make their goal (and they BETTER!) we won’t be charged.

For now, we’re excited about TILT and hope you’ll consider helping this filmmaking trio make their goal. Just 11 days to go.

Read all about their project on their Kickstarter page, and check out their awesome blog.

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FEARnet did an amazing piece about Scream Queens Season 2! We premiere Monday, August 2nd at 10pm on VH1. Our full court press is now on! Please tune in, support our actresses, and help us get a season 3.

10 Days to go! Set your DVRs!

Related posts:

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3. The Making of Scream Queens Season 2 We proudly present the behind-the-scenes, “Making of Scream Queens.” Scream Queens returns this Monday, August 2nd, 10pm on VH1: VH1...

Designed by Joke, programmed by Biagio, it’s the official Scream Queens 2 iPhone app. Free!

Made With Love

There was no budget for this app. It was a labor of love–our love for all the fans of Scream Queens. Thank you so much for supporting Scream Queens, and making season 2 possible.

Bad Day? There’s a Scream for That…

Press the giant scream button, and this year’s cast will unleash blood-curdling screams on your behalf! You can even email your favorite screams to friends or co-workers and let them feel your pain.

Season 2 Sneak Peek

Meet the cast and judges of Scream Queens Season 2, play sound bites, and learn what makes this season’s cast tick.

Cool Behind the Scenes Vids and Pics

Updated after every episode, new behind the scenes pictures and videos from the set of Scream Queens.

iPhone OS 4.0

It’s built, tested, and runs on iPhone OS 4…it may install on 3.1, but as we had limited resources to build this (just the two of us!) we were unable to make it fully backwards compatible.

Please Help Us Get The Word Out

We love Scream Queens, and are very proud of the show. We’d consider it a personal favor if you could get the free download, and, if you like it, write us a review in the app store.

Now available in the App Store. Get it here: The Official Scream Queens Season 2 iPhone App.

Scream Queens iPhone App Commercials

Shot and edited in 2 days, these are our guerilla spots promoting our iPhone app:

Update!

The Scream Queens App was featured in the New and Noteworthy Entertainment Apps section of the iTunes Store!

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3. FEARnet Covers Scream Queens Season 2 FEARnet's keeping their eye on Scream Queens....

We proudly present the trailer for our TV show, Scream Queens Season 2:
(May take a moment to load as it’s streaming from VH1′s servers)

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We’re a relatively young company. We have a few solid projects under our belts. Still, we wondered if anyone would be interested in a blog from young producers making their way through the biz. After all, we’re still some years away from being Bruckheimer.

Thanks for Reading…

So it was a really nice surprise when David Spies wrote a letter to MovieMaker Magazine to inform them we should’ve been included in the “50 Best Blogs for Moviemakers” issue.

MovieMaker heard David, and printed his letter in their current issue.

Here’s a few of his kind words:

Joke and Biagio, a husband and wife producing team, offer true stories from two working producers…real insight into how to break into the world of Hollywood producing…a look at some of the hardware and software used behind the scenes…and fun tales from the lives of two producers, who happen to be married to each other.

Well, David, we’re blushing over the fact that you took the time to share our blog with MovieMaker. You keep an excellent blog yourself, and anyone interested in screenwriting and story telling would do well to visit David’s blog regularly, and to follow him on Twitter.

And to all of you who’ve been kind enough to hang out here at Joke and Biagio, we appreciate it. We have some exciting posts planned for the next few months…stay tuned!

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Filmmakers and TV producers dream of creating work that changes lives. Inspires people in some way. Affects even the smallest change in our every day world.

Today, a 15 year old filmmaker in Toledo, Ohio, has become our inspiration.

Make a Wish

Albert Bryant, suffering from a form of Mitochondrial Myopathy, a muscular disorder, watches our TV show Scream Queens. At the end of last season, he shared his one request with the Make-A-Wish Foundation: to meet Scream Queens’ acting coach John Homa.

Never Stop Dreaming

Albert says the meeting inspired him to make his own movie, and that’s just what he did. Shaving his 86 page original script to 25 pages due to “budget concerns” Albert’s now in production on his first film, “Vampire Chicks.” Total budget: $140.

Albert, You da’ Man

You’ve got more courage and determination than the most hardened of Hollywood moguls. We’re honored that you’re a fan of John and the show. The whole Scream Queens family is a fan of yours.

You are a shining example of what we call a Hands-On Producer, and we can’t wait to see your movie!

Want to support Albert?

The Toledo Make-A-Wish chapter can be reached at (419) 244-9474.

And leave him a good luck message in the comments below!

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What do producers do?

Producers make stuff.

What kind of stuff?

All kinds of stuff.

Why does the world need producers?

Without producers, stuff wouldn’t get done.

Can you be a little more specific?

Maybe you want to work in showbiz, launch a small company in middle-America, or even put a blog online. To make any of those notions a reality, you have to produce them. You need a producer’s mentaility.

Why? At its very core, being a successful producer means one thing…

Take an Idea, and Make it Real

The idea is the easy part. Ideas are a dime a dozen. I’d go so far as to say an idea, in and of itself, is almost worthless. What IS worth something is the execution of an idea. Actually making something concrete, in the real world, out of the abstract idea that exists in your head.

Go Produce Something

Don’t lose yourself in a bottomless pit of “great ideas.” Pick one, and go execute it. Produce that short film. Build the website you’ve been planning forever. Make that iPhone app you’ve been dreaming about making. An idea executed is an idea produced.

Go be a producer. Go make stuff.

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Got this question from @txfilmgeek on Twitter, who’s been doing reality TV and corporate work in Dallas for the last four years.

…do y’all have any thoughts or tips as far as the editing/post side of things on transitioning out to LA?

As a matter of fact, we do. Here are some tips for anyone considering the move to Hollywood (something we both did ourselves.)

1. Be Awesome

Know your craft, whatever it is, inside and out. Be ready to prove it by having top notch samples of your work available on DVD and online.

The online clips are especially important…many companies weed out candidates by viewing a web link before setting up a meeting.

I admit, I’ve rejected a few editing submissions immediately because the clips posted on their sites were lousy. Crewing up a show happens at a break-neck pace, and there’s no time for us to see past a bad work sample. So have your A-Game material ready to go.

2. Be Proactive

When you move to L.A. no one knows you. Doors won’t magically open. You need to be persistent and creative when it comes to landing your first gig. Use every avenue…query letters to production companies, posting your resume on industry related websites, alumni associations, tapping family friends, and finding job postings at industry forums like realitystaff.com.

The truth is you get your first gig for one reason…the person they want to hire is not available. So when a company is scrambling to fill a last minute slot, you increase your odds by being as visible as possible. A great way to do that is to…

3. Be Helpful

Find ways to share you expertise with others for free, whether by blogging about it, tweeting about it, volunteering your services to indie filmmakers, or any other creative way you come up with to demonstrate how talented you are. If you’re good, people will notice, and they’ll call you for paying gigs.

Take Nate Orloff, our new lead AE and star of our How to Write a Screenplay on the iPad video. I found Nate on Twitter. He was answering Final Cut Pro questions (quite passionately!) So I called him in for an interview, and hired him.

4. Be Humble

It may not seem fair, but be ready to prove yourself by taking a lower-level position. For instance, you may be an incredible editor…but no one on the west coast knows that first hand. You can hold out forever trying to get a coveted editing gig. Or, you could take an assistant editing gig (much easier to come by) put in long hours, kick ass, and impress everyone so much they have no choice but to promote you.

5. Be Willing to Learn

Okay, you’re awesome (see #1 above.) Talent and passion are required, but not enough. Every network, studio, and production company has their own way of doing things. They’ll have workflows you’ll need to adapt to and follow. Some of these “rules” may seem silly to you.

This is NOT the time to be a rebel, hoping to prove that you “know better.” You’re the new kid in town, so when you get that first job, it’ll be their way or the highway.

Even we, at the executive producer level, must learn and adapt to every studio and network we work with. You must find a way to do your best work while following your new employer’s established methods.

What’s Your Advice?

What sites/groups/trade papers are you reading right now to find work? Any great first gig stories? Would love your comments!

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Justin Hedges, one of my twitter favs, and author of the blog The 3 a.m. Screenwriter, asked us a question today. He may be meeting with a celebrity later this week, and wants to know how to stand out in the crowd.

We’ve been fortunate enough to have a few big meetings with celebs over the years.

Whether sitting with potential hosts for Scream Queens (like our new host Jaime King) convincing Stan Lee to do a pilot with us (he did), or proving we could run a show alongside Ashton Kutcher (Beauty and the Geek) we’ve gone into some “big rooms.”

Were We Nervous?

Honestly, before every one of those meetings, we’d look at each other and say, “Holy Shit!” We’d then compose ourselves, and prepare. After a good number of these “dream” meetings, we’ve learned something we’re going to share with you.

Here’s the secret that will help you keep your cool and look like a pro when you get that big celeb meeting:

SECRET: The Meeting is About the Project, Not the Celebrity

That’s it. Keep this one simple tip in mind, and everything else will fall into place. You’re not there as a fan, you’re there as a professional, and your project is as much an opportunity for the celebrity as it is for you.

If you don’t believe in your project enough to know that’s true, cancel the meeting.

For some other tips to get your head in the right place, check out this post we wrote on working with celebrities.

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Well, we’ve been blown away with the attention we got on our last post, How to Write a Screenplay on the iPad, getting shout outs from The Unofficial Apple Weblog, Filmmaker Magazine, Prolost, and SlashFilm.com, among others. Thanks so much to all of you for the kind words.

We’ve got some other things in the works related to the iPad in film and TV production, and will be back with some more free templates and videos starring the obnoxiously handsome Nate Orloff soon. In the mean time, if you missed my over-caffeinated description of Nate’s iPad mojo, here it is:

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Yes, We’re Geeking Out

Sure, Final Draft has announced that there will be some kind of iPad version of their screenwriting software, and Black Manna has a screenplay program that runs on the iPhone (which theoretically should work on the iPad in a zoomed in “iPhone” manner, but the company says they’ll be releasing an official iPad version soon.)

In the mean time, if you have your shiny new iPad, and want to write a screenplay in full on iPad mode…what to do?

Get Pages for iPad and Try Our Template

If you have an iPad, chances are you’re going to buy Apple’s iWork app Pages sooner or later. At $9.99 it’s not a break-the-bank piece of software, and it’s sort of a must-have for iPad owners, anyway.

The full, desktop-version of Pages ’09 has a screenplay template, but…alas…that template is missing from the iPad version. Besides, that template’s not very good…the margins are wrong, and it doesn’t work the way I’d like it to.

So We Experimented

Since I’m used to not sleeping these days, I stayed up last night and built a new screenplay template for Pages 09. We then took that template, added some hot keys, saved out a Pages doc, emailed it to Nate’s iPad…and voila! It worked!

Well almost…a few things didn’t come over. The style names look weird (they were chopped to the first two letters for some reason) and a there’s no F-Key support on the iPad, so you can’t use hot-keys to choose style elements. Still, you now have a way (albeit hacky) to write screenplays on your iPad.

Perfect?

Heck no, but we’re still geeking out. I mean, what fun is a new gadget if you don’t try crap with it? To write screenplays on your iPad, here’s what you do:

• 1. Download our iPad Pages ’09 Joke and Biagio Screenplay Template.
• 2. Email it to your iPad.
• 3. Open the file and get writing.

Of course, if you don’t have an iPad, but would love to use a screenplay template in Apple’s Pages ’09, this template for the desktop version of Pages ’09 will do the trick.

It has a few more bells and whistles than the iPad version, with instructions on how to use it as well. I may post a video on this somewhere down the line if there’s interest.

So what do you think…just a bunch of geek nonsense? Is it cool? Am I working Nate to hard? Chime in!

UPDATE: Because a few of you have asked, here is a link to the wireless keyboard Nate’s using in the video: Apple Wireless Keyboard (Retail Packaging)

Speaking of Nate, here’s the video of us being way too geeky for our own good, demonstrating how to write a screenplay on the iPad:
UPDATE: Apple has fixed Pages so you can now get the menu in landscape mode, making this template much more fun to use. Thanks, Apple!

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There are some great screenwriting programs out there, both free and paid. Final Draft is known to be the Hollywood standard for paid apps, and the do-it-all-in-one-app-for-free phenom Celtx is a must try. It’s free, after all, and it works like a real screenwriting program (if not feeling the most “Mac” like.)

Here’s another option you might like to try, that turned out a little better than I expected.

You may have heard about the geeky shenanigans my lead assistant editor and myself have been up to, figuring out ways to use the iPad for film and TV production. On of those experiments was finding a way to write screenplays on the iPad.

Well, here’s one for those of us who aren’t as cool as Nate and still write on our regular old macs.

I Made a Template in Pages ’09

While there were a few Pages screenplay templates out there (including one that comes with the program) they weren’t quite right for me for one reason or another. So I built this little template, and I like it more than I thought I would.

No Bells and Whistles

It’s just a template, so it doesn’t do all the things you’d wish a screenplay program would do. No automatic MORE’s and CONT’Ds, no just pressing the TAB bar to automatically change the screenplay elements. However, I was able to build in some rules that make some things automatic.

About this Template

This template uses 12pt courier font.

Margins are set with Slug-lines and Action blocks 1.5 inches from the left and 1 inch from the right, Character names at 3.5 inches from the left, Parentheticals 3 inches from the left, and Dialogue 2.5 inches from the left. Top margin 1 inch and bottom margin .75 inches. Page numbering begins on page 2, and hyphenation is turned off.

These settings are pretty standard depending on which book/website you go by, and seem to line up well with professional screenwriting software.

How it Works

Unlike a dedicated screenplay program, there are no automated MOREs or CONT’Ds. Also, using the TAB key won’t change from one type of screenplay element to another, so I built you a couple ways to move between elements.

Using F-Keys:

F1=Slug-line, F2=Action, F3=Character,
F4= Parenthetical, F5=Dialogue, and F6=Transition.

Using Styles:

Open the styles drawer and click on any style to select the kind of block you want, or to covert from one kind of block to another.

Using the Document Flow:

Pressing RETURN (ENTER) after a Slug-line or Transition automatically moves you to an Action block.

Pressing RETURN (ENTER) after an Action block gives you another Action block.

Pressing RETURN (ENTER) after a Character name or Parenthetical automatically moves to a Dialogue block.

Pressing RETURN (ENTER) after a Dialogue block immediately moves you to another Character block. This makes it easy to write back-and-forth conversations.

Behavior not Right for You?

If any of these behaviors annoys you, you can change them.

Simply place your cursor in any block of any type, and click on the blue “Inspector” button in the top of the document window (or navigate to View->Show Inspector.)

In the inspector, click on the big “T” button (for text.)

Next, click on the text inspector’s “More” tab, and midway down the window you’ll see a drop-down labeled “Following Paragraph Style.”

Change that to whatever type of block you’d like to automatically follow the current kind of block.

The template itself has these same full instructions built in. To use it, just download it and put it in your My Templates folder, or if that’s too much trouble, you can just double-click the downloaded file and a new, untitled document will open up in Pages ’09, ready to go.

Useful?

If you like this template, please tell your friends to visit our blog and to follow us on Twitter:
@JokeAndBiagio
Thanks and enjoy!

Download the JNB-Screenplay-Page-Template here.

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Is the iPad worth the hype? Can it make a difference in film and TV production?

This is part one of a several-part series that will look at some real-world production and post-production uses for the iPad.

Is the iPad Useful?

Clearly, the iPad is cool. We wonder, aside from being a cool life-style gadget, if it will also prove useful in a production and post-production environment.

Over the coming weeks, we’re going to see if the iPad makes our workload easier, or if it’s just a fun, pretty toy that gives us the illusion that we’re hip.

iPad Comes to Joke Productions

While today’s demonstration might not feel ultra-cool or earth-shattering, one Joke Productions’ team member is already exploring how to make his job easier using the iPad, and is excited with the possibilities.

Meet Nate Orloff

Our up-and-coming lead AE Nate Orloff (the first person we’ve ever hired off of Twitter) just got his new iPad. While he hasn’t had a lot of time to play with it, he’s already set it up to do a few things around the office to make his job easier.

In this short video, Nate talks about using Screen Sharing to hop onto any one of our 30+ Macs here at Joke Productions. He also demonstrates some simple Final Cut Pro playback and explains why an iPad made sense for him.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll have more videos detailing the ways we’re using the iPad both around the office and in the field. Everything from tape logging to screenwriting, to viewing dailies (and whatever else we come up with.)

Will it prove to be a great tool or a just a cool gadget? That’s what we’re setting out to discover.

BTW, the app Nate’s using (available for both iPad and iPhone) is called iTap VNC client. You can check it out here.

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There was a golden age of computer games.

A time just before video game graphics were all the rage, and just after home computers became a reality for many…the days of interactive fiction.

Filmmakers, it’s time to bring those days back. To find out why, read on…

What’s Interactive Fiction?

Imagine a book that you don’t just read…you participate in. A story in which you become the main character, and your choices and decisions advance the game, or “story.” That’s interactive fiction.

It’s played on a computer, iPhone, or other device that has some kind of keyboard. You make your way through the story by telling the computer–or “story”–what you want to do. Here’s a silly example of what the start of a story might look like:

You are standing outside the gate of Universal Studios, carrying a script.


>_

You would then tell the computer (the story) what you want to do by typing something next to that little carrot-looking thinggy.

Playing the game might look like this:

You are standing outside the gate of Universal Studios, carrying a script.

You type:

>Look at the script

Story answers:

Your opus, SPACED, something you've pitched as "Pulp Fiction meets Star Wars." If only you could get a studio executive to read it...

You type:

>Go through the gate

Story answers:

A security guard jumps out and stops you. "Name, please?"

You type:

>say Biagio

Story answers:

The guard frowns. "That name's nowhere on this list, son."

And so the game, or story, would continue, with me, the hapless Biagio, struggling to get my fictitious script SPACED into the hands of a studio exec.

This silly example gives you an idea of how interactive fiction works, but you should know that there’s a wide range of “games” or “stories” to play out there, everything from simple treasure hunts to character-driven stories that rival published literature.

Best of all, these games are mostly free to play and to download. If you’d like, you can learn more about how to play/read interactive fiction, or where to find great titles to play, or what kind of titles are out there.

Why Interactive Fiction is Good for Indie Filmmakers

First, off, and let me be clear, NOTHING is more important than producing a great project. All the buzz, bells, and whistles in the world mean nothing if your project sucks. So let’s assume (a big assumption) your project is AWESOME and brilliant all on its own.

In a cluttered landscape of filmmakers trying to stand out, we’re all doing anything we can to get noticed…Twitter, Facebook, Blogging, Tumbler, etc., etc.

This is fine for letting people know about your project…but does it really do anything to connect potential viewers to the story you’re trying to tell, the world you’re creating, or the characters you’re bringing to life? Does it help people connect with your project on a level other than “I’ve heard of that?” Probably less than we’d all like.

How Interactive Fiction Could Change That

What if instead of just watching a trailer, a potential viewer could wander through your amazing universe (just think how cool this could be for an indie film like INK.) What if they could play the interactive version of your movie? How fun (and different) would that be for a character piece like Snow Bunny by Julie Keck and Jessica King? What if you could become another documentarian making your way through the world of mercenaries in an I.F. version of David Baker’s Mission X?

Ways Filmmakers Could Use Interactive Fiction

Just a few ideas:

• Create an interactive walkthrough of your amazing world with its own, unique story.
• Write a prequel story that allows a player to “live” your film up until the beginning of the movie.
• Create a one-room story where the player can hang out with a character from your movie. Could be the main character, or a colorful secondary character you wish you could’ve highlighted more in your film.
• Give players alternate endings to your movie, where they get to make a different decision at a critical moment, and experience several different outcomes.

But isn’t Programming Interactive Fiction Hard?

It’s a scary time. After all, people are learning to make their own iPhone apps to help their films stand out (something Who Shot Mamba by Brian Spaeth is actually doing really well.)

Many filmmakers groan at the thought of learning such a complicated skill, or paying someone who has the skill a lot of money. After all, the code to program an iPhone looks like this:

@interface JNBRequest : NSObject {
  NSString*             _URL;

  NSString*             _httpMethod;
  NSData*               _httpBody;
  NSMutableDictionary*  _parameters;
  NSMutableDictionary*  _headers;

But what if I told you getting started programming interactive fiction is as easy as typing this:

"My Screenplay Adventure"

The player carries a script. The description of the script is "Your opus, SPACED, something you've pitched as 'Pup Fiction meets Star Wars.' If only you could get a studio executive to read it." Understand "screenplay" as the script.

The guard is a man. He is in a room called The Studio Entrance. "You are standing outside the gate of Universal Studios, carrying a script."

Wait…am I claiming those regular looking sentences are computer code? Absolutely…if you’re using a language known as Inform 7, a computer language that uses natural looking sentences to help you program your interactive stories. We’ll talk more about that in part 2, coming soon. (Be sure to subscribe to Joke and Biagio or follow us on twitter so you don’t miss it!)

For now, I want to know from you, filmmakers…is interactive fiction a cool, different way to connect with your potential audience? What do you think?

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It’s been a crazy couple of months.

We’ve been editing Scream Queens season 2, while producing and editing two pilots. It reminded us of something:

Producing = Not Sleeping

We always talk about the importance of being a Hands-On Producer, of being able to step in to any position when money is tight — so that you can actually finish your project.

One thing we may have never said, though, is that means a lot of hours. A LOT.

Prepare Yourself for Battle

Awhile ago we made a list of things you should do before you go into any production to make sure you survive with minimal damage to your body and soul.

While item 3 on that list mentions “you won’t be sleeping” I realized that may be a point worth hitting again…seriously, YOU WON’T BE SLEEPING.

In the last two weeks alone, we’ve pulled about seven all nighters. Starbucks is very happy with us.

Going on no sleep affects you in many ways, so when the sleepless nights start, keep these 3 things in mind…

Be Careful

No sleep can be a necessary evil of the job. Accept that, but with EXTREME caution. I’ve spent more than one night sleeping in the edit bay because it was probably a bad idea to drive home.

Be Nice

When you’re tired, you can get cranky (just ask Joke…I’m not as good as I used to be on no sleep!) Realizing you haven’t slept, know that your temper might be short, and the expressions on your face may be…well, uh…less than inviting. Make sure the people around you know they’re not the cause of your angry-looking, scrunchy face.

Going on no sleep also means it’s probably the wrong time to finally “get something off your chest” and “speak your mind.” Luckily, I learned that one about ten years ago. (Sorry, my old Pizza Hut manager, but that’s a story for another day.)

Heal

No matter what you think the cost might be to your career, you must take some time off to heal. If you don’t schedule your “crash time” after a daunting project, you’ll burn out, screw up, and DEFINITELY hurt your career.

We all want to seem indestructible when proving and re-proving ourselves in such a tough industry. That’s fine…no one has to know you’re off “healing.”

Blame your time off on something else…you’re busy on another gig, family emergency…whatever. Keep up that workaholic front if you feel you need to…but carve out time to get back in top form. Your body, and your career, will thank you.

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One of the things we talk about a lot on this blog is the importance of being a Hands-On Producer.

A major reason we broke into the business as quickly as we did was the fact that we produced “great tape.” Video pitches for our TV and film ideas that looked and felt like professional promos. Since we couldn’t afford to pay people to make our promos, we learned programs like Final Cut Pro, After Effects, and Cinema 4D so that we could make “pretty graphics” on our own.

Want to get into 3D?

If you’re looking to improve the look of your pitch tapes, and considering a 3D program, here’s my suggestion: download the free trial of Cinema 4D and go live at Nick Campbell’s blog, GreyScaleGorilla. Nick does incredible how-to videos on Cinema 4D that are freely available on his blog, and I personally am stealing his techniques on a daily basis (thanks, Nick!)

Nick also has great tutorials on After Effects and Photoshop.

HDRI Light Kit Pro

Today, Nick released a new kit for Cinema 4D called the HDRI Light Kit Pro. The kit itself is inexpensive ($69), although to use it you need to own one of the more expensive versions of Cinema 4D. That said, I already bought the kit, and will personally be saving a lot of time lighting my 3D logos and scenes. I’m already using it to create a logo for one of our VH1 reality pilots. Can’t show you that due to NDA, but will try to post some other samples soon.

Real World Lights

One AWESOME feature of the kit is the ability to light your scenes with real-world style lighting. If you’re a cinematographer and want to light a CG scene in a real-world manner you’re familiar with, using things like soft boxes, spotlights, and ring lights, it’s super easy to do. The HDRI Light Kit Pro even comes with studio presets…just pop in your logo, 3D car, or whatever your want, and it’s instantly lit to perfection.

Right for You?

This may be more than you’re ready for, but for those of you who’ve been considering Cinema 4D, Nick Campbell, his awesome blog, and the HDRI Light Kit Pro are three more reasons to make the leap.

Here’s Nick’s intro video about the HDRI Light Kit Pro and how easy it is to get great results:

HDRI Light Kit Pro Demo Tutorial from Nick Campbell on Vimeo.

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So, I got called a “Debbie Downer” tonight by someone trying to break into our business.

She asked me some questions. I gave her some straight forward answers. (To set the record straight, I may be more of a realist than an optimist, but I’m far from a pessimist.)

She Did Not Take My Answers Well…

In case no one has told you yet, this is a hard business. We love it, we work in it, we blog about it, we want to see others succeed in it…but make no mistake: if it was easy, everyone would do it.

make no mistake: if it was easy, everyone would do it.

That’s also why I find this business so rewarding. Every success is earned. Nothing is just handed to you.

For anyone just starting out, I guess that’s the lesson to learn: it ain’t easy.

We’ve talked on this blog about the numbers game, about giving yourself an edge by being a hands-on-producer, about knowing the odds and diving in anyway. All those things are true, but here is another lesson we learned the hard way:

Talent, Passion, and Great Ideas are Not Enough

Way before our first official credit in Hollywood, but after we’d produced our own pilots, we were fortunate enough to be in a conversation with a successful TV producer. He was honestly impressed with our work, and said these were the “best tapes” he’d seen in years. (Yes, we still used VHS way back then.)

He then told us something I’ll never forget: “No matter how brilliant your idea, no matter how good your previous work, no network will hand you two a budget to just go make a show. You don’t have the resume, you don’t have the credits.”

At first I thought he was crazy…maybe even jealous! We then ran into exactly what he was talking about, as every network politely passed on working with us.

It seemed show business was a club that was impossible to break into.

A Different Perspective

Now that we’ve made it to the other side, it’s really an easy issue to understand. People have sacrificed years and years of their lives to get to where they are in Hollywood. Their jobs, families, and survival all depend on bringing in the right producers and best projects. Why the heck would they want to risk it all for you, an unknown, unproven writer, producer, or director?

It’s Different When You’re Spending Someone Else’s Money

It’s easy to spend you own money however you want to on your own projects. What happens when a studio tells you what you can and can’t spend money on? You may be able to put a project together on your own, but what about working with a team? You know how to address your own notes, but what about a those coming from the network?

Once you get to be an Executive Producer, Director, Screenwriter, or receive any position of power, things get crazy. There are issues you’ll deal with at these high levels that you can’t even imagine. Unless you’ve put in your time in the trenches, you can’t know whether or not you’ll be ready.

Real World Shark Tank

Catch that TV show Shark Tank? You know when the sharks on the show say, “It’s MY money and it’s hard earned?” Well, same goes for the producers and network executives you are approaching. It’s their money, resources, and good name they’ve had to work hard for. You are asking them to risk their word–their reputation–on you.

Respect that, know that, and work even harder.

Let That Make You Better

I’m no Debbie Downer. I’m simply telling a truth you need to hear if you want to succeed in Hollywood.

Don’t look at the hurdles mentioned above as negatives. See them as your induction into showbiz. Smash through these obstacles and people will show you an immense amount of respect…because we all know how hard it was to get here. And we all know it’s even harder to stay here.

Put on your Game Face

Get prepared, get to be the best you can be, because one day, someone WILL give you your opportunity you’re dying for.

When you get into that position, where a producer, network executive, or studio puts their neck on the line for YOU, gives YOU your chance, you should work harder than you’ve ever worked.

You should feel privileged and proud. You should feel the immense pressure threatening to crush you…and rise above it. You should be scared and do it anyway. YOU should prove you deserve to be there.

Obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

–Michael Jordan

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I won’t lie…it’s 10am on a Sunday morning, and I’m tired.

We’re in post on a series and two pilots, so it’s game-time…and the ball’s in our hands. What does that mean?

My Saturday night was spent blurry-eyed in an edit bay where I made tweaks and changes to more cuts than I can count.

After a few hours sleep, I’m back, this time personally creating CG shots for Scream Queens that we don’t have the budget to outsource.

My head hurts, my back hurts, my butt hurts from this chair (and it’s not a bad chair.)

So why would anyone want to live like this? No sleep, no social life?

I’ll tell you why: because this silly little FX shot I’m pouring my heart and soul into is going to be seen by millions of people.

On a show that has our names listed as the company bringing that shot to TV sets everywhere.

It’s a dream I’ve had since I was a little kid…make moving pictures for the world to see.

Earning the right to do that is hard. Actually completing the work once you get the go-ahead is exponentially more difficult.

But know this: every exhausted moment spent living your dream is a gift.

Are you chasing a big dream? I believe every sacrifice you make to achieve it will be worth it.

And now, back to my swirling windows of Final Cut Pro, After Effects, and Cinema 4D…

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Just a quick post to let you know about our guest post over at Multi-Hyphenate.

The site is the brain child of Tyler Weaver, and is quickly becoming a power-house of great posts from filmmakers and artists working at achieving their goals and dreams.

Hope you enjoy!

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This is a short post I wanted to put up about a technique I’ve been fascinated with: Camera Mapping. Essentially, camera mapping allows you to take a still photograph and turn it into a 3D scene you can fly through. Here’s the best explanation I’ve found of how it works:

Here’s another great example:

I’m using this technique to replace some jib shots we can’t afford in an upcoming MTV pilot. While I’ll be using Cinema 4D, there are tutorials to do this with the FREE 3D Software BLENDER.

Here’s an example from Blender (there are some artifacts, but this is a great start)

Camera Mapping Test with Blender from Gifted Babies on Vimeo.

Here’s the link to Gifted Babies and their explanation of what they’re doing in Blender:

This will be a new technique for us. We’ll let you all know how it goes.

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Both cheering and booing masses are all-a-Twitter about the new iPad. Is it worth it? Who will use it? Will it really change our world?

I’d like to let you know how the iPad will make our Hollywood careers easier.

Pitching Big Ideas

Yesterday, Joke and I pitched a TV show to CBS.

It’s a big reality show. Easy to grasp hook.

It’s also chock full of twists and turns, bells and whistles–the kinds of things that can confuse executives who haven’t developed the show along side you for 3 months–especially in a 10 minute pitch.

So you need an easy-to-understand, clean presentation to help the room stay focused on the important parts of the show.

Enter Keynote

I’m a Mac guy, and our company runs on Apple products. Recently, we switched from Powerpoint to Keynote for pitch presentations. Keynote runs faster on my Mac than Powerpoint, presentations look more “Apple” like out of the box, and Keynote’s deadly simple to use.

In the room, I present the Keynote presentation to the executives, and both Joke and I narrate the pitch.

The Problem

You never know what room you’ll be in when pitching to an executive. Don’t know what the AV situation will be, or if you’ll be able to connect to a TV or projector. Most of the time, you can’t. So you must be prepared to pitch off of whatever device you’ve brought with you.

Yesterday, the room was tight.

At one point, I ended up kneeling on the floor pointing at my laptop. This was both uncomfortable and looked weird.

Still, given the circumstances, I wouldn’t have done anything different. The execs understood the show, asked the right questions, and were polite enough to giggle at my lame verbal sound fx.

Hello, iPad

Given the iPad’s size and the fact that it will run Keynote, this could be the solution I’ve been longing for. It seems big enough to pitch to 2 to 3 executives, while being small enough to handle.

Sure, it may take a bit of practice, but pitching a Keynote Presentation off a laptop you’re forced to place on your lap in a tiny room, as opposed to an iPad you can hold up easily…well, I’m all for the iPad.

Now, if I can just convince Joke to let my buy one…

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Get it while it lasts… Don’t know how long that link will work for!

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When I was in 8th grade I started a glam rock band called “Biagio.”

We had a song called “We Are Biagio.” We rhymed “Walls of Jericho” and “Shores of Mexico” with “We are Biagio.” That such poetry never became a hit song has doubtless left a gaping hole in the glam rock landscape.

Now, perhaps you’re wondering what got me reminiscing about a 14 year-old “me” sporting a mullet and a Casio keyboard?

Caught My Ear

Twitter lead me to a young band I really like, Ives the Band. (Caution: link may launch iTunes.)

Coming up as an editor, I know first hand how the right piece of music can take a good scene and turn it into an emotional powerhouse. In listening to their album, I thought, “I want to cut to THAT.”

I reached out to the guys and they were kind enough to invite us to their show last week at the Sunset Strip’s infamous Viper Room.

How Does This Help You?

Let’s face it, there’s a lot of young bands out there who are really, really good. I’m not an expert on what’s fresh, new, and hip in the music world, but I know when something catches my ear, and Ives the Band did.

The reason I wanted to write this post is because these musicians have three ingredients needed for showbiz success–and success in general. Whether you want to be a rock star, a movie director, a reality TV producer, a novelist…these three traits are key.

3 Must-Haves for Showbiz Success

1. Talent

Clearly, the members of Ives the Band have talent. If you’re reading this blog, you are likely very talented in some respect as well.

Harsh truth: talent is probably the least important piece of the success puzzle.

YES–talent is a must.

Talent’s not your ticket to the big time, just proof you should take your shot at it.

But there are lots of talented people out there. Few translate that talent into success.

Many assume their “talent” entitles them to fame, magazine covers and movie premiers. Talent’s not your ticket to the big time, just proof you should take your shot at it.

Ives the Band is bursting with talent, but they’ve got more going for them than talent alone.

2. Personality…

…and by personality, I don’t mean “Rock Star” eccentricity–I mean the members of Ives the Band are nice guys. They’re not afraid to engage in intelligent conversation. They have a good sense of who they are. They don’t reek of that “neediness” rampant in so many seeking showbiz success.

If you come off as rude, annoying, or indifferent in your quest for success, people will either forget you or avoid you.

It’s important to know who you are as person, and be comfortable in your own skin. People want to work with people they like–people they don’t mind spending long hours with. Be that person.

3. Work Ethic

For 45 minutes, at the Viper Room, the guys called “Ives the Band” got to be rock stars.

However, Ives the Band is not yet Coldplay. They don’t have a gaggle of roadies to carry their gear, or a gigantic tour bus to relax in.

So, after they played their hearts out, the curtain closed, and the guys raced the clock to tear down their instruments, pack their gear, and get off the stage. Much like guerrilla filmmaking, putting on (and tearing down) the show was an all-hands-on-deck affair.

I venture to say Ives the Band sweated through many more hours of manual labor that day, not to mention years of hard work, just to enjoy that 45 minutes in the spotlight.

And that’s what living the dream is all about.

Surefire Success?

There’s no such thing. I don’t know if Ives the Band is going to attain super-stardom, though I’m rooting for them. (Decide for yourself…here’s the link to their album The Incredible Story of Mr. Birch.)

I do believe they have the right stuff, though. Take a page from their book. Hone your talent, let your personality shine, and have a fierce work ethic. That gives you the best shot at claiming your time in the spotlight.

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Recently, we talked about how excited we were to have one of our pilots receive a “green light”…meaning we get to make it.

Well, here’s your chance to come be a part of it!

Casting Notice!

We are looking for very creative people with a clear point of view. Clothing designers, Production Designers, Artists, Architects, Advertising Execs–ANYONE who can not only visualize great ideas, but also physically execute their vision. Creative thinkers AND doers.

Can you create something beautiful out of nothing? Can you sell an emotion or an idea with your art?

If you or someone you know, has an incredible eye for DESIGN, is tremendously CREATIVE in its execution, and wants to share his/her talents with the world … download and fill out the application and get it to us via email or US postal service no later than February 1st, 2010.

While the concept itself is top secret, I can say we are SUPER excited about this show. If you’re the kind of person who can create beauty out of anything, and present it in a stunning manner, please come audition!

And definitely follow us on Twitter for all the juicy updates!

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At a time when everyone’s talking about the stereoscopic 3D in Avatar, I had to take a moment to draw your attention to this AMAZING piece of “2D 3D”…a short film called “The Third & The Seventh.”

Wow.

100% CG, this is an excellent example of the kind of photorealism that can be achieved on a computer…if someone thinks beyond software, and approaches CG from a big picture perspective.

Why it’s so Good

Clearly Alex Roman, auteur of this amazing piece, is not following a “press an automagic 3D button” workflow. He’s made sure to build a piece that has excellent composition, mimics the real-life aberrations of film cameras, and is color-graded for maximum impact. Enjoy this video, then check out the Compositing Breakdown and Making Of videos below. Really amazing.

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As a producer/director/writer/whatever, there’s nothing more exciting than selling a project. However, in Hollywood there’s a big difference between “selling” a project, and actually making that project.

Big Phone Call

Last night we received the call you hope for and dream about: one of our reality pilots got the Green Light. It will actually be funded, we’ll produce the pilot, and with luck, it will make it to air, much as Scream Queens did.

That Took A While

Here’s what most people don’t realize: we “sold” the project on November 20, 2008. 412 days before the Green Light call last night. That’s roughly 58 weeks, 9888 hours, 593,280 minutes, or, 35,596,800 seconds.

That’s Okay!

Before a network or movie studio invest one penny in any project, they’re going to look at it from every angle, and make sure it will work for their audience.

They usually will buy a project in what’s called a “step deal.” That could include many steps, such as:

1. Write a script or flesh out a treatment.
2. Attach talent.
3. Cast contestants.
4. Shoot a mini-pilot, presentation, or tests to prove a “look” will work.
5. A million other things to make the people with the money feel better about investing.

When you get a Green Light, you’ve overcome a lot of hurdles to make your project. You’ve proven:

• You have a unique idea and a great project.
• There’s a market and audience for your show or movie.
• Someone trusts you enough to give you money to execute that idea.

Be Patient

The time between selling a project and making the project could be very long. Remember our post, Showbiz is Slow-Biz? Well, it’s the truth. So don’t expect your big idea to come to fruition over night.

Instead, look at it as a series of mini celebrations every time you get closer to the big go-ahead. When the Green Light finally comes, well, then the work really begins…

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There’s never been a better time to make a movie yourself. Just ask John Homa, judge and acting coach on Scream Queens Season 2.

While giving an interview for the upcoming Scream Queens EPK (electronic press kit) John got a little side-tracked, and went into a topic he’s very passionate about: taking responsibility for your own Hollywood Success.

In short, don’t complain about not making movies…just go make a movie!

Here’s John getting all worked up:

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You may have seen this already:  http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/18545

Well, I’d like to start 2010 by telling all of you how proud I am of my “bespectacled, fast-talking spin-meister who’s nothing if not a master at conveying a sense of bottomless enthusiasm.”

Maybe it’s our political landscape or the lack of investigative journalism in the mainstream press that has led to the negative connotation of the word “spin,” but in the world of story telling, or even in our every day life, a good dosage of spin is necessary.  If you can’t put a spin on the story you’re telling, maybe you should leave it to someone else to tell.  

And the same goes for life.  There are so many ups and downs, so many challenges and obstacles that you have to put a spin on things not to get overwhelmed.

That’s what I’ve learned from my very own spin-meister.  Biagio has always been a glass half full kind of person, a dreamer.  And while I am the “yin to his yang” and sometimes more realistic as I like to call it, he’s taught me to see things as I want them to be.    

To succeed in this business, there will be times you have to fake it ’till you make it.  You’ll have to spin yourself into believing you can succeed. Besides, the truth is you won’t know if you can swim until you dive into the deep end.

So my wish for your 2010…is that you spin.  Become your own spin-meister. If you don’t believe in you, fake it, and you may very well make it.

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You are part of a special group of people.

That group includes:

• You.
• Us.
• Steven Spielberg.
• Charlize Theron.

It includes our new Twitter friends like:

• @Jaime_King
• @TravisLegge
• @indiemoviemaker
• @davidspies
• @KingIsAFink
• @Michael_Rooker
• @PattyFantasia

and

• @Maria_56…

…just to name a few of the great “Tweeps” we met in 2009.

All of us have one thing in common:

A Hollywood Dream

Reaching “The Big Time” can take a long time. We’re all at different places on that journey.

Some of us are already working in the industry.

Others, like Mr. Spielberg, are living the dream, but aiming ever higher.

Maybe you’re somewhere in between, or just taking your first steps towards dreams of Tinseltown triumph.

No matter what anyone tells you, there’s one thing you need to know. In Hollywood, your success or failure is entirely up to you.

Take Your Dreams Into Your Own Hands

If you’ve been around this blog at all, you know we’re big on Hands-On Producing.

In a relatively short time (in terms of Hollywood, anyway) we went from working out of our shoebox, one-bedroom apartment to having our own, full-fledged production company–all because we bit the bullet and put our money where our mouth was. (And by the way, that was NOT a lot of money.)

Yes, carrying the rent for 8,000 square feet of office space and around 20 edit bays comes with it’s own set of stresses. For that matter, so does working professionally as a writer, director, producer, or any other job you want in Hollywood.

If you’re up for it, here’s how you do it:

Become Awesome

Simple enough?

Okay, How Do You Become Awesome?

Go make stuff. It doesn’t matter if you’re a writer, a director, an actor or actress, or a producer: the only way to really get an edge in today’s Hollywood is to learn to do EVERYTHING yourself.

How come? Read Why You Need To Be A Hands-On Producer.

Whether you want to make movies, want to break into reality television, or anything in-between, you can’t go wrong by diving in head first, getting your hands dirty, and completing a project.

By that, we mean starting with nothing, and ending up with a concrete piece of tape you can show somebody. A short film, a pitch for a TV show, a movie trailer, a music video…you get the point. Something you made that you’re proud to show.

That’s a solid way to break in to Hollywood.

Want Proof?

These two young, aspiring producers took our advice. They went away and produced a solid three-minute tape to help pitch their reality TV show idea.

Here’s what happened: we did a small re-edit on their tape, and then we sold their show. Alongside the two of us, this ambitious duo will be producing their first project in Hollywood.

(More to come on that, so be sure to subscribe to Joke and Biagio or follow us on Twitter to catch the juicy details.)

We’re Here To Help

We know how hard it is to break in to show business. Things get even harder once you’re producing real life projects (like our latest, Scream Queens Season 2, our documentary Dying to do Letterman, or our new scripted project Rooker.)

In 2010, we want to give you an edge on your competition. We’ll be blogging and tweeting simple truths to help you break in to the biz:

• Real-time tips from the trenches of production and post-production
• Tricks and tutorials about the software we use to make film and TV
• Interviews with other filmmakers we hope you’ll find as insightful as we do
• Behind the scenes videos from our productions
• Links to other great resources (much of which we’ll do on Twitter, so be sure to follow us!)
• And, at long last, a real treat: I’ve finally set up Joke’s computer and iPhone so she can blog all by herself! (Sorry it took so long, honey!) Until now, we’ve been writing many of these posts together. Now, Joke’s unleashed! Look out! You’ll be getting opinionated commentary and insightful tips straight from my wife and business partner, Joke!

Keep Learning and Honing Your Craft

You can never stop learning. Ever.

We ourselves will be learning and exploring all sorts of new technologies and filmmaking techniques in 2010. We’ll share our journeys with you here at the blog, and probably even ask for your help.

(For instance, right now I’m sharpening my 3D modeling and photo-real rendering skills, and learning to use Apple Motion as a sometimes-replacement for Adobe After Effects. Oh, and producing 8 one-hour episodes of TV for VH1. Sleep? What sleep?)

Keep learning and improving until the day you drop dead. That gives you the best chance of long-term Hollywood success.

When You Get There…

When that day finally comes and you get your chance, whatever that is, push yourself out of your comfort zone and deliver something amazing. We’re rooting for you.

Here’s to 2010. See you on the red carpet.

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Call us suckers, but this is all we had to see. We’re there.

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