Indie Film Nice Guys Makes it Big with Affordable Post-Production Solutions
Here's a great way to finance a first movie. Steal a fenced briefcase full of government-issued marijuana and return it to the FBI for the reward money. The Feds win, you win, and if your movie takes off you're on your way to a brilliant new career. This is the scheme that Tom Murphy (played by Corin Nemec) and his friends concoct in the new independent film Nice Guys, and, of course, it turns out to be more difficult than it sounds. But this is the stuff of great plots and truly memorable films, and if the early reaction is any sign, Nice Guys may be the next big independent hit. The film, which was made on a $100,000 budget, has already packed three sold-out shows at the Phoenix Film Festival and earned a special screening by the Screen Actors Guild.
A quintessential low-budget production, Nice Guys was shot in 11 days with most of its actors settling for a $75-a-day wage. The film was produced and directed by Joe Eckardt, and, in a truly independent fashion, was edited in his home studio. Using an Avid Xpress Pro editing system with Avid Mojo hardware running on a Windows desktop system, as well as an Avid Xpress Studio Complete system running on a second Windows desktop, Eckardt had virtually all the tools he needed to make his feature-length film. In particular, the Avid Xpress Studio Complete system provided an integrated suite of media creation tools, including those for high-end video and audio editing, 3D animation, compositing, effects, and DVD authoring capabilities.
In his implementation, the Avid Xpress Pro editing setup was used primarily for rough cuts, while the Avid Xpress Studio Complete system was used for virtually everything else. "[Avid] Xpress Studio Complete handled everything we needed to do on this film," Eckardt explains, in regard to the editing, audio, effects, and finishing tools. "It's a real workhorse and it's very reliable." The industry-standard Avid interface and seamless integration between the various tools in Avid Xpress Studio Complete enabled Eckardt to spend less time learning different systems (and shuttling work between them) and more time focused on the artistic aspects of creating the film. It also enabled a seamless exchange of project files and media with the Avid Xpress Pro system, as needed, for an efficient and cost-effective workflow. The result? A top-quality independent film, ready for distribution.
"[Avid] Xpress Studio Complete handled everything we needed to do on this film. It's a real workhorse and it's very reliable."
- Joe Eckardt, producer/director, Nice Guys
A Good Idea and Great Resources
Like many producers, Eckardt started out with a good idea and a lot of talent. His wife, Cecily Gambrell, who is also a writer, producer, and actor in the film, developed the screenplay based on an original story by Colby Kane. Dana Gonzales (Crash) was the director of photography, and Joseph Lorigo, who has a background in music videos (Outkast, Eminem, Queen Latifa), provided key editorial expertise for the film. Actors included the highly respected filmmaker Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Sin City), as well as David Faustino (Married with Children), Jason Mewes (Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Clerks), and Andy Dick (Old School, Zoolander). Nice Guys was co-produced by actor Danny Trejo, who came to the project after working with Eckardt and Gambrell on the award-winning documentary about Trejo's troubled early life and subsequent turnaround, Champion.
The film - which was shot in HD using two Panavision F900 cameras with Panavision DigiPrime lenses - was edited as part of a team effort that lasted approximately two and a half months. Eckardt, Lorigo, and Gambrell started by ingesting tapes on a rented Sony JH-1 HDCAM deck that was connected to two 500 GB FireWire drives. Eckardt and Lorigo then sorted through media using both the Avid Xpress Pro and Avid Xpress Studio Complete systems, creating bins, grouping shots, and syncing the video with audio that had been recorded onto a hard disk. "I love the Avid interface and how in a couple of mouse clicks you can create bins and sub-sequences and basically pull together your scene," says Eckardt. "With Avid Xpress Pro and [Avid] Xpress Studio Complete we could work any way we wanted, either simultaneously or in shifts."
About the experience of working with HD, Eckardt says, "The quality is so great that I often forget that we shot it in video." The filmmakers downconverted the original HD material for a standard definition offline, and masters were output on Digibeta and DVD. With Avid Xpress Studio Complete, Eckardt and Lorigo were able to offline the film and preserve the crisp HD look that they shot in. For screening purposes and circulation among potential distributors, they output to SD from Avid Xpress Studio Complete. Eckardt says that when they ultimately arrive at a distribution deal, they will perform an HD online, most likely on an Avid DS Nitris or a Symphony Nitris system. "If you shoot HD properly it can look just like film," says Eckardt. "We basically shot on HD because of budgetary limitations, but the result has been great."
Collaborative Offline Editing
Eckardt notes that Lorigo brought his exceptional music video editing experience to the film. "They work absurd hours in music, so that helped a lot," Eckardt says wryly. "But seriously, Joe is an amazing editor who has used Avid systems for years and really knows how to create an awesome look on film." Lorigo, who had used Media Composer systems on prior projects, picked up Avid Xpress Studio Complete in no time. Eckardt says that in addition to sailing through scene development with the drag-and-drop timeline, they both used the multicamera editing feature to view and edit footage.
"Ninety percent of the film was shot on two cameras, so multicam saved us a huge amount of time," says Eckardt about the ability to view coverage from both cameras on the same screen at once. He also says that the locators available in both editing systems enabled him and the others to share their creative ideas quickly. "We used a ton of markers and were constantly asking each other for opinions on what we had done. It was a very democratic process." Eckardt also notes that with the Avid Mojo hardware and its expansive I/O capabilities, he could view content, complete with effects and enhancements, on a large broadcast monitor and see exactly how it would look. This was the case even when his sound editor was doing the sound mix using the Pro Tools LE audio editing component in Avid Xpress Studio Complete.
Eckardt used the Avid DVD authoring tool in Avid Xpress Studio Complete to generate rough-cut DVDs, which he then gave to Trejo for review. "It was amazing, I would just point and click and the content would write to the DVD. I must have done this a dozen times."
Effects, Sound, and Finishing
Lorigo delved into the Avid Xpress Studio Complete system's full range of real-time color correction and effects features. "Even though we start the film with a dark and dramatic look, it transitions into a very colorful and lively look. Color correction really helped us kick butt in this regard. We could saturate the colors without going overboard. It was perfect for what we needed." Eckardt adds that color correction also helped to save a scene that would have otherwise been unusable. "We had one scene that was shot horribly, but our DP was able to fix the dark and grainy look with [Avid Xpress Studio Complete]. It's a great little system."
It was amazing - I would just point and click and the content would write to the DVD. Joe Eckardt, producer/director, Nice Guys
Eckardt and Lorigo also used Avid 3D effects to create a 3D particle that results from a gun blast and to convert 22 cut-out 2D drawings into a montage that accompanies the opening title sequence. "It worked great. We brought the images into the [Avid Xpress Studio Complete] effects tool, converted them to 3D, and then dropped them into the sequence," says Eckardt. Also, by using the SpeedRamP plug-in, Lorigo was able to accelerate a three-minute comic montage of the Rocko character breaking into the marijuana-filled briefcase, thereby making his desperate act even more humorous.
While Eckardt and Lorigo did baseline audio editing, sound finishing was handled by freelance sound editor, Rob King. King arrived at Eckardt's home studio and mixed the audio on the Pro Tools LE software included with Eckardt's Avid Xpress Studio Complete system. With just a few mouse clicks, King transferred the audio and visual material from the Avid Xpress Pro software (also included in Avid Xpress Studio Complete) to the Pro Tools LE software. As a result, King was mixing within seconds of file transfer. For the score, Eckardt worked with Didier Lean Rachou (Sex in the City) who selected the music and used an MPEG4 video reference that was rendered out of the Sorenson Squeeze Compression Suite. With Avid's multi-format support and drag-and-drop simplicity, Eckardt simply imported the files that Rachou prepared and dropped them into the timeline.
Mission Not So Impossible
Eckardt, who started out in the film industry less than 10 years ago with a four-day production assistant's job on Herb Gardner's I'm Not Rappaport, has since turbo-boosted his career in a way that many Hollywood dreamers only imagine. His early industry work led to personal assistant assignments with Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Jennifer Garner. In this role he was often negotiating contracts and speaking with high-level financiers, whom he later approached for the films that he is now beginning to deliver. In addition to Nice Guys, he is currently developing the dark comedy A Happy Death, which will star Chevy Chase, and the dramatic narrative I Ride Alone, which will star Hulk Hogan.
Eckardt aims to continue the editorial success story that he achieved on Nice Guys. In addition to Avid Xpress Studio Complete and Avid Xpress Pro systems, he is considering using a Media Composer Adrenaline system for full-featured editing on upcoming projects, as well as an Avid Unity LANshare solution for shared storage and networking.
Not bad for a kid who taught himself the Avid interface only three years ago. "I love Avid," he says.
* CREDIT: Courtesy of The Film Emporium: AMPC