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Video20Q Podcast 15 Zak Forsman

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Zak Forsman originally from Pittsburgh but now in Los Angeles, the director of the movie ‘I Fucking Hate You’ talks about making movies. That movie despite the title is in fact a love story and I enjoyed watching it the actors were really good and natural for the part they were playing.

Zak ForsmanZak Forsman is an American independent filmmaker whose emotionally-charged work is known for highly authentic performances and beautiful compositions. His work has been praised by Ain’t It Cool News as “Brilliant” and “Absolutely Gorgeous.”

His stories depict compelling human threads in a poetic and minimalist style. Zak has directed two shorts films, “I Fucking Hate You” and “Model/Photographer” which have won several international audience, jury and festival awards. He is currently developing two new features for production in 2010 and 2011 and serves as editor of the New Breed blog at The Workbook Project.

His wish is simply to provide a safe environment for the actors to explore the hopes, longing and loneliness of their characters in an effort to capture their humanity truthfully, and without judgement. Considering himself less a director and more of an interpreter, Zak nurtures a family-like atmosphere on set through guided improvisation and radical collaboration to elevate each artist’s creative contribution to the project.

The hope is to realize an understanding of the film that could not have been discovered alone. Further, for the stories to resonate in very real and unexpected ways with an audience starved for meaning in their motion pictures.

FILMOGRAPHY
I Fucking Hate You (2009)
Heart of Now (2010)
Eloquent Graffiti (2011)

Heart of Now by Zak Forsman

Sabi Pictures is his production company which he founded with his friend Kevin. He likes a high level of collaboration in his movies. Zak explains that he like to let the actors improvise  as the make the movie.

We also discuss what got him into movies and how he got to discover film makers such as Tarkovsky after being into war type movies inspired by movies like Platoon.

Zak is always itching to get the camera working on set filming something. Planing to write two screen plays in 2010. He will be working with people involved with Sabi Pictures.

He uses the SAG ultra low budget (Screen Actors Guild) agreement to determine the money spent on his movies.

Zak told me about the way he likes to use the casting process, letting the actor play off each other and see how the work together and how they can take direction .

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In my ramble at the start I talk about going to Girona and shooting video in a squat inhabited by some hippy types. They invited me in to see the graffiti they had in there place.

This morning I got my Shure SM58 microphone which I connected to the Canon Vixia HF100 via a converter cable going from XLR to 3.5mm jack. Works a treat and I am pleased that I will be able to get better audio with my shooting video. It will do until I can get a wireless lavalier mic. Although I do have a clip mic I can use with my Zoom H2 audio recorder.

I comment on a couple of cameras that I would like to try out. A JVC HM100 and the Sony NX5 which is only just becoming available now.

Camcorder extras

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I would love to have the same camera as my son, a Sony EX1 but there was no way that my funds would run to that sort of money. For the most part what I have, the Canon Vixia HF100 does what I need anyway. The lens is good enough although I have just bought a cheap wide angle lens to put on the front of it and while it didn’t make a huge difference it did help some. I felt I needed it for a documentary style video I will be producing starting this month. I will not have a lot of space to step back and get in all of what I want to shoot in a lot of places.

The other addition is for the audio. While I was in Liverpool before Christmas there was a friend there with a similar camera to mine and he had a converter cable to go from the 3.5mm mic jack on the camera to an XLR cable with a Shure SM58 microphone on the end of that. It worked pretty good and so I have got the same. The guy from Shure was suggesting a cable that they sell costing about 60  but I found one much less than that. Maybe it will work right and maybe it won’t. At least worth a try anyway.

I had tried to use a wired lavalier mic but while it works connected to my Zoom H2 recorder it did not work in the Canon Vixia camera. To have the EX1 would be great seeing as it has XLR inputs already. I can record the audio separate with the H2 and I might still use that method for some shooting. It is just that it takes time to marry the audio back up with the video afterwards. I think I had better start saving to get a better camera.

I have just set up a Video20Q Newsletter. I will only be sending infrequently because usually if I have something to say I will put it in a blog or post onto Twitter. But after seeing a video by IzzyVideo about running a site like this he was saying that he wished he had set up something like that much earlier than he did. Here is the place to get the video from Israel Hyman. Also do check out his Video site that shows how to use FinalCut Express. which is a series of very good video tutorials.

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Mac20Q Tip 15 Matching Audio and De essing

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I used this technique when I was making the Hunting Boar movie, because using the mic on the camera is a bad idea because the sound is always rubbish. Far better to use an external mic and the put the sound in after. I used the sound off the camera to help me line up the audio from the Zoom H2 recorder. In this video I show the steps I took to line the sound up in AmadeusPro, which is my preferred audis editor. I could have done it perhaps in FinalCut Express but I can see the wave form of the audio better in AmadeusPro. That way I get a better alignment of the sound with the video. At some point in time I will have to try and match my voice again with the video in the ADR way of working. The actor has to repeat over the short pieces of dialogue to match them with the lip movement. Lip syncing….

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