Practical low-budget filmmaking advice from Greg Pak, director of award-winning films including Robot Stories, Fighting Grandpa, Mouse, Asian Pride Porn, and Po Mo Knock Knock.

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Libby launches BroadwayDemo.com

David Libby is a composer who has worked frequently with director Greg Pak on projects such as the Planet Hulk trailer. In collaboration with Tina Marie Casamento, Libby has just launched a new website called BroadwayDemo.com, a demo and website production service for musical theatre actors. Check it out!

PakBuzz Q&A: Producer Karin Chien on "The Motel"

"The Motel" poster

Greg Pak: Congrats on all the recent success! Tell us a little about what you're doing to prepare for "The Motel" opening this coming Wednesday in New York. What can people do to help?

Karin Chien: Bring as many people as possible to see the film when it opens on June 28 at the Film Forum, and then tell everyone you know how much you love THE MOTEL!!

But, seriously, we are working with Palm Pictures on the marketing campaign, and are also doing a grassroots campaign, which involves spreading the word, via events, posters, parties, merchandise and the internet, throughout the indie film and Asian American communities. If you're part of an organization or school or a very large family, you can invite us to speak to your group, or screen a trailer, or put up posters, or write us up in your blog. Every little bit of extra exposure helps.

PakBuzz Q&A: Michael Kang on "The Motel"

"The Motel" poster

Greg Pak: Give us the quick rundown on what “The Motel” is about and what kinds of audience members will particularly love it.

Michael Kang: "The Motel" is about a kid who is growing up in a seedy hourly rate motel owned by his family. It's basically a story about the worst possible place to go through puberty. I think it will act as a healing force for anyone that had a terrible time going through those formative years (which is most likely all of us). It's a dark comedy in the vein of "Welcome to the Dollhouse." It also stars Sung Kang so I think teenage girls will really like it.

GP: Any special events around the opening that people should know about?

MK: In addition to our big premiere party being hosted by ImaginAsian, we are in the planning stages of working with groups like MK on throwing after parties every night. Basically, we think that after people see the movie, they will want to get drunk. The best way to find out about the venues and locations for these are if people sign up on our MySpace account at http://www.myspace.com/themotelfilm. There is also a podcast series of phone conversations I am having with key members of the film being hosted on the Film Forum website. We have a lot of fun stuff planned for the two weeks. Really, the best way to keep up is to sign up on MySpace or on our email list at The Motel website at http://www.themotel-film.com.

Steve Mallorca talks "Slow Jam King" -- screening now in NYC!

Ron Domingo in "Slow Jam King"

Steven E. Mallorca's award winning feature film "Slow Jam King" is now screening at the Imaginasian Theater in New York City. Click here for screening times. And read on for an interview in which Mallorca talks about everything from his set getting raided by police to his favorite slow jams.

Greg Pak: Tell us a bit about the film and who should go see it.

Steven E. Mallorca: "Slow Jam King" is an offbeat road comedy about JoJo Enriquez, a Filipino-American wannabe gangsta-pimp who, in his attempts to answer his call to the streets, carjacks Vance, a traveling perfume salesman with an affinity to country music. Stuck along for the ride is JoJo's friend, Devaun, an ex-funkateer and reluctant family man, who tries to talk sense into JoJo and diffuse the situation. The motley trio embark on an escapist roadtrip to Nashville, where they discover truth, love, and the dirty underbelly of the Nashville country music scene. Anyone that's looking for a good time, enjoys genre-bending films, and likes their humor on the irreverent side with a healthy dose of multi-cultural absurdity should come out to check out "Slow Jam King." I sort of equate this film to early '90s Native Tongues hip hop - it's fun and a little absurd, but with a conscious voice to it - like if De La Soul, or Tribe Called Quest were a hip hop movie.... or better yet Prince Paul. So if you're a fan of that kind of hip hop, you'll definitely get into "Slow Jam King." Also, I think that anyone who's a do-it-yourself filmmaker or musician can enjoy the film, too.

RGB rather than CMYK solves oversaturation problem in Final Cut Pro

A quick FilmHelp tip from Greg Pak

While cutting images from "Incredible Hulk" comics into the "Planet Hulk Trailer," I noticed that some of the art, which looked fine in Photoshop, appeared strangely oversaturated in Final Cut Pro. The problem? The images were CMYK rather than RGB. To change the color mode, I used Photoshop, navigating to Image > Mode > RGB Color. Imported into Final Cut Pro, the new RGB versions of the images looked just fine -- no more oversaturation.

View the final product at Pakbuzz.com or YouTube.com

David Libby talks score -- an interview with the composer for the "Planet Hulk Trailer"

Pakbuzz Q&A is proud to present an exclusive, in-depth interview with David Libby, the composer of the scores for the Greg Pak films "Happy Hamptons Holiday Camp for Troubled Couples," "Super Power Blues," and "Planet Hulk Trailer."

[UPDATE: Libby has launched BroadwayDemo.com, a demo and website production service for musical theater actors -- click here to visit the site.]

Greg Pak: We've worked together on three different short film projects now, but I'm realizing I have no idea how you work your magic -- I email you video and tell you some of my ideas for the score and you email me back links to gorgeous music. Walk us through the process a bit. First, the technicalities -- what kind of equipment and computer system do you use? Is all the music generated through synthesizers and computers or do you do any live performances? And how do you keep the neighbors from calling the cops with noise complaints?

David Libby: I have very cool neighbors, no doubt! I'm always playing piano and my wife is a singer, and we've never had a complaint. Actually, we've even gotten requests to play louder because they like it! The only down side to this is that I can never move.

Once I get the video file you email me, I import it into music production software called Sonar. I have a Kurzweil PC88 keyboard which is connected to my computer, but I don't use the keyboard for sounds. I only use it to trigger sounds that are generated on my computer by a software sampler called Gigastudio, which produces the most realistic sounds currently on the market. So, when I play my keyboard it triggers sounds that are generated on my computer by Gigastudio, and those sounds are recorded on my computer by Sonar. I also use Reason and Acid type loops for sound generation, and Sibelius for music notation when I want to write something out.

In FCP, "Color Corrector" better than "Brightness and Contrast" for adjusting brightness and contrast

By Greg Pak

While working in Final Cut Pro on a new short film, I discovered that, strangely enough, the "Color Corrector" tool works far better than the "Brightness and Contrast" filter for adjusting the brightness and contrast of an image.

The Brightness and Contrast filter can be found at Effects > Video Filters > Image Control > Brightness and Contrast (Bezier). I could use the Brightness setting to lighten an image, but the image would appear washed out. And when I used the Contrast setting to fill in the blacks, the colors would begin to blow and the image would begin to look almost solarized.

The Color Corrector tool can be found at Effects > Video Filters > Color Correction > Color Corrector. Tweaking with the "Whites," "Mids" and "Blacks" settings gave me the kind of control I needed to brighten the image and adjust the contrast without degrading the image.

System: Macintosh G4 533 MHz Dual Processor running FCP HD 4.5

Video darkens when converting to MPEG-2 for DVD production -- problem and solution

By Greg Pak

I recently noticed that my new short film looked considerably darker on DVD than in Final Cut Pro. I hadn't seen this problem with DVDs I'd made of other projects I'd cut in Final Cut Pro.

The problem: The project was shot with the Panasonic DVX100 in 24P. The sequence in Final Cut Pro was set at 23.98 frames per second. I had been exporting this sequence directly to NTSC MPEG-2 for the DVDs. Apparently, FCP makes images darker and more contrasty when exporting from a 23.98 fps sequence to an NTSC MPEG-2.

The solution: I exported the 23.98 fps sequence to a 29.97 fps DV/DVCPRO - NTSC Best Quality QuickTime file. I then cut that QuickTime file back into a 29.97 fps FCP sequence and exported to MPEG-2. And now there's no noticable darkening of the image.

I did notice that the process of exporting the 23.98 fps sequence to the 29.97 fps DV/DVCPRO file seems to have affected the colors very slightly, making them a touch warmer. It's a faint enough adjustment that it doesn't bother me -- and it's vastly preferable to the darkening which had been happening before.

System: Macintosh G4 533 MHz Dual Processor running FCP HD 4.5

MT-Blacklist to fight comment spam

By Greg Pak

If you create a blog with open comments, you'll soon discover that scumbags like to post spam in the comment sections of blogs. So what to do? If you're using MovableType, you can check and ban the IP addresses through which the spammers are accessing the internet. But that's pretty ineffective, as spammers tend to use a variety of IP addresses. You can use a plug in which creates an image with a code which anyone posting a comment must reproduce in a form field. But spammers have actually started manually filling in those forms -- or they've cracked the code to automate the process.

The solution?

I'm very happily using MT-Blacklist, through which you can build a blacklist of website addresses which you cull from spam posts. When you hit "De-Spam," the software automatically deletes any message which contains the blacklisted URLs. And new comments featuring any blacklisted address can't be posted. This hits the jerks where they hurt -- if they can't post a link, there's no point in their posting at all.

If you end up using MT-Blacklist, feel free to get started with the blacklist I've built for use with this site. I'd recommend using a smaller list like this rather than the giant list you can download through jayallen.org. That list may be pretty comprehensive, but its enormous size seems to bog the software up a bit.

For my email, I've started using SpamFire from MatterForm. It's Mac OS X compatible and is working nicely so far.

Menus for screening on DVD

By Greg Pak

More than once when screening at colleges on DVD, I've encountered problems because the remote control for the DVD player was missing. Without a remote, it's often very hard to navigate menus and submenus. So for DVD screenings at colleges, I'd recommend making DVDs with no submenus and with the simplest main menu possible -- so that when you press "play" or "select" on the machine, the video plays.

Tape to film hint: Give your frame some breathing room

By Greg Pak

When shooting for a tape-to-film transfer, be sure to give your frame a bit more breathing room than you might otherwise. A little bit of the edges will be cut off when the tape is transferred to film. And a bit more will be cut off when you transfer from your negative back to video. The upshot is that if you've shot too tightly, you might see cut off chins and shaved heads, which can be claustrophobic and unpleasant.

Marlon Brando, In Memoriam

By Greg Pak

Marlon Brando died yesterday at the age of eighty.

There's a scene in "Streetcar Named Desire" in which a feather from Vivian Leigh's boa floats past Brando's line of vision in the middle of one of his lines. He keeps talking, but he bats at the feather it as it passes. It's a beautiful little moment. Incredibly simple. But I can't forget it. In that instant, Brando incorporates the world into his character. Nothing could happen -- no, anything could happen, and it would fit, because Brando is letting everything in the world be part of his character's world.

A similar moment comes in "The Godfather," when Brando's holding that now legendary little gray kitten. There's one instant in particular which stands out for me, when the kitten bats at Brando's hand. And again, he acknowledges it, accepts it, incorporates it seamlessly.

It occurs to me that both of these moments are somehow connected with play. Brando plays with the feather; the kitten plays with Brando. Even more specifically, the moments are about the instinct behind play -- the primal impulse we all have to follow moving objects. That's significant. Because while the profession of acting requires us to suppress a subset of our instincts as we hit our marks and remember our lines and screen out distractions, the scene only comes to life if we follow our instincts within the reality of the scene. So Brando, and all good actors, regularly performs tiny miracles. They screen out the boom overhead, the light in their eyes, the huddled crew, the weird fakeness of the set, the strangeness of their makeup -- and they allow in the feather and the kitten.

For anyone interested in learning more about Marlon Brando, I recommend first, seeing his movies, and second, reading Patricia Bosworth's excellent little biography entitled, shockingly enough, Marlon Brando.

Deck settings for using an AJ-SD930 with FCP

By Greg Pak

I'm working on a short film which we shot using DVCPRO50, which I learned we could edit on my G4 533 MHz dual processor machine, provided I upgraded to OS 10.3 and Final Cut Pro 4.5. Which I did.

The next challenge was getting the footage into the computer. We rented a Panasonic DVCPRO50 deck -- the AJ-SD930, which can be connected to a FCP system via Firewire. But for some reason I couldn't control the deck via the Lo and Capture screen. And I couldn't see digitized footage through the monitor.

After searching the web, I found a helpful document which provided some settings. Here are the settings I've ended up with, which seem to work:

Audio and Video Input are set at SDTI/1394.
SUPER: OFF
REC. INH: ON
TCG: INT - PRESET
MODE: EE
CONTROL: REMOTE

Finally, to get digitized footage to play back from the computer, through the deck, and out to the monitor, the video out cable needs to be plugged into Video Out 3 (Super).

I freely admit I don't understand all of these settings fully -- I only know that at this moment in time, they seem to be working for me.

Avoiding and Dealing with FireWire Harddrive Crashes

1. Don't mess with cables when the computer is running.
2. When in doubt, download the most current software and drivers for the hardware.
3. DiskWarrior rules.

1. Don't let people borrow your equipment/computers unless you're clear about what they're doing and you've taken precautions to safeguard your data.
2. Never reinitialize unless you're ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN of what you're doing. Namely, never reinitialize your drive unless you're absolutely certain it's actually your drive.

Manhattan Edit Workshop

By Greg Pak

Looking for an editing class in New York? Consider the Manhattan Edit Workshop, where you can learn how to edit with Final Cut Pro and the AVID from my buddy and fellow NYU grad Josh Apter, the very talented filmmaker behind "Kaaterskill Falls" and "Delivery Method." I recommend Josh without reservation. www.mewshop.com, info@mewshop.com, 212-414-9570.

Label tapes IMMEDIATELY

By Greg Pak

I recently had a disaster in which three dubs were mislabeled and the wrong program was sent to three different festivals. The big solution: When recording or making dubs, label your tapes with program information IMMEDIATELY after removing them from the machine. Great grief can thusly be avoided.

More dropping frames troubleshooting in FCP

By Greg Pak

Today I frustrated the heck out of myself trying to output my feature "Robot Stories" from Final Cut Pro to tape using my 533 MHz dual processor G4. I'd recently installed new drives and reinstalled all my software -- and the sucker kept interrupting the output with dropped frames.

Eventually I figured it all out -- and it was all stuff I should have known. I turned off file sharing. I disconnected from the internet. And I set the hard drive to never sleep. And it finally worked.

Fix for dropping frames on feature project in FCP

By Greg Pak

I had to put burnt in time code on a dub of my feature "Robot Stories." Using Final Cut Pro, I nested the sequence within another sequence, applied the Time Code filter under the Video subhead, and then rendered. Then tried playing back to tape. But the machine kept dropping frames Could not figure out why. Eventually I exported the whole movie out to a Quicktime file. Now I'm playing that file by itself -- no dropped frames.

I think there must be something about the processor demands of playing rendered clips which made FCP drop frames when the entire project was made up of rendered clips.

DVD projection tips

By Greg Pak

So I've finally learned how to make and burn DVDs on my Mac and am now screening with frequency at festivals on DVD.

A few tips for making DVD screenings run smoothly:

• Don't put labels on the DVDs used for the actual screening. Labels can cause some machines to stutter or fail -- instead, write out your label information on the DVD directly with a Sharpie.
  
• Send in your DVD early and exhort the festival folks to test the DVD on their machines. I haven't had a single problem yet, but DVDs made on home computers may not be compatible with some DVD players out there. Verify!
  
• Specify the aspect ratio of your DVD -- generally, 16x9 widescreen or normal television aspect ratio. Our "Robot Stories" DVD screeners are letterboxed, meaning you see the entire film frame with black bars at the top and bottom of each screen. If the DVD is played on a projector set to 16x9 or widescreen rather than 1:1.33 or normal television aspect ratio, the image will appear stretched horizontally, as the machine squashes it vertically, adding MORE black bars on the top and bottom. Not a pretty sight. Write the aspect ratio on the DVD itself.
  
• Politely request the return of your DVD after the screening. It's generally not a good idea to let too many DVDs of your film float around in the world -- no festival person would knowingly rip you off, but screeners tend to drift and you don't want to get pirated.

Deleting preference gets Internet Connect working again in OS X

By Greg Pak

While traveling this week, my 12" G4 PowerBook decided to stop letting me get online through dialup. My airport card was working fine, but the Internet Connect program through which I get online via dialup using Earthlink would quit during startup. I'm using OS 10.2.3 and have had precious few serious problems thus far, so I was a bit flummoxed. I restarted several times, which didn't do the trick. I reinstalled Earthlink, which didn't do the trick. I installed AOL (horror of horrors), which didn't do the trick.

In the end, I stumbled across the answer -- I found the preferences files for Internet Connect and deleted them. They live in the Users > Username > Library > Preferences > com.apple.internetconnect.plist

After deleting the program, I was able to start up Internet Connect properly. I had to then update Earthlink all over again, but I'm now able to get online again via dialup.