We’ve reached the finale of Make This Movie, Season 1. Thank you so much for coming along on the ride to making Counterintelligence. Many lessons were learned throughout the process, most of which were covered throughout the season’s 12 episodes. To highlight the ones that were and insert a few that weren’t, in this episode Chris will go down the list of 12 lessons learned while making this movie—one lesson for each episode. You’ll hear a few statements to back up these lessons from a couple familiar voices, David Pennington, Andréa Tolbert, Michael Hall, Mike Elliott, and Tim Kahn. And you’ll be brought back to Chris’ audio diary. You’ll even hear Chris’ personal theory on the two types of people in the world: Spielberg people, and Scorsese people. Counterintelligence is nearly complete now, and due out in the fall of 2018. Not all lessons have been learned or even digested yet, but we hope the ones that have been mean something to you and your filmmaking. We’ll … [Read more...]

  Season 1 of Make This Movie is nearing its end, but the season wouldn’t be complete without distribution. Distribution is the place where your film meets its audience; it’s where your baby ventures out on its own and overnight belongs to the world at large. And as with sending a child off on its own, the distribution process is replete with hard lessons and separation anxiety. In this episode, Chris covers the basics: from the heartbreak of the modern festival circuit, through different forms of distribution, finding an audience, and hatching a marketing strategy. He does this with the help of Jason Brubaker, founder of Filmmaking Stuff. Through excerpts from the Filmmaking Stuff Podcast, Jason shares insights into the new media landscape and how to harness niche markets to help your film find its fans, among other varied topics. They key to ethical and productive distribution and indie film marketing is honing in on an audience that is tailored to your film without … [Read more...]

In this Between The Frames segment, Chris discusses some specific post-production topics including: The facets of post, from start to finish Doing post from the start Managing the post-production flow Collaboration in post And, the creative post process He covers some best practices to get the most out of each. He also recommends a list of tools and apps that serve the post-production process, from organization to time management and communication. Here they are: Final Cut X - This is my chosen non-linear editing system. It doesn’t have to be yours. In short, I feel it’s a system designed more for the creative and less for the technical mind. But to each their own. If you haven’t tried it and want to form your own opinion, I recommend giving it a shot. Color Finale - This outstanding tool delivers professional grade color tools as a simple Final Cut effects plugin, allowing a colorist to do dynamic and high-quality work without ever leaving the … [Read more...]

Having locked the cut of Counterintelligence, there’s still a whole world of post that needs completion, even at the time of this episode. On the docket: scoring, color correcting, some minor visual effects, sound design, and sound mixing. Our score was composed by the great Noah Simons. Sound was mixed by Mike Elliott, who you’ll recall was also our Director of Photography. Everything else was done by me, and that’s where it got murky. As you’ll hear in the episode, the extended post tasks like coloring and VFX require a great deal of attention, organization, planning, and most of all accountability. Without these factors at play, post can drag on forever. On Counterintelligence, it certainly feels like it has. The finishing touches of post can get completely underrated in pre-production. They are where the film truly becomes a film, and as important to the filmmaking process as anything else. They deserve a filmmaker’s full attention. In this episode you’ll briefly … [Read more...]