^^^
Much appreciated. I checked out some of your youtube stuff too by the way and it's pretty cool.
Treesnogger said:
Then, why not ask around here if some else could do the job? I'm sure there are some people interested (including me

)
I've actually started working with a different artist already. But here's the problem, for this movie, I had a very specific idea for what I wanted; blues/western guitar. This evolved into something like the soundtrack from
Dead Man, an art-western staring Johnny Depp, which I very much liked. The new guy is making some great stuff: the problem is that it sounds nothing like what we have already, and that's a problem I think I'd encounter with involving anyone other than the original artists. That, and most everyone I talk to can't do the style of guitar I want, and even more often can only give me synth stuff, which I don't like at all for this movie.
alec said:
Also: I've watched some episodes again and I have to say I like the third installment best so far.
Really? That's nice to hear: I actually feel like the scene in the hotel room is the movie's weakest point: the final cut of it wasn't so bad, but originally that scene was over 6 minutes long and dragged like fuck, with a lot of unnecessary dialogue that I ended up axing.
Astiaks said:
Dude, my heart just fell on the fucking floor. You have some taste. I love Spaghetti westerns and i love Ennio Morricone.
Hopefully i can watch that version of the movie someday.
I'll always think of the Ennio Morricone soundtrack cut of the last scene of this movie as the -real- final cut. That's why I didn't mind so much premiering it with that music: from the moment I started visualizing that scene, I played it out in my mind to that music, even before we started working on the original score.
Okay, big wall of text time:
Daruth_Winterwood said:
Needs a soundtrack or a the very least a sound scape. Also dub your voices in post-production
What you hear in the movie is the product of a month or so straight of nothing but sound work. It's not great, but it's gold compared to what I started with. Most of the sound effects, including nearly every gunshot, were recorded by myself with a Tascam p2 recorder. Several key lines were dubbed in post-production although I didn't have the time or the access to equipment to dub everything.
But, soundtrack first and foremost, there's almost no atmosphere.
At some points, particularly in part 5, I deliberately wanted very little background sound effects. Chances are, if there's no atmosphere, it's because I wanted it that way.
Get somebody with a good eye for cinematography, a lot of the angles I'm seeing are making the action look incredibly stale.
Some things I deliberately shot that way, others came out that way because some of this footage was shot years ago before I took classes in cinematography. In general, the further along in the movie you get, the better the cinematography gets, since I personally got better at shooting. However, if it helps, one of the cinematographers who got involved later on in this film now works in New York as a professional union Jib Operator on major network TV. You can see more of his work in the Dr. O videos, also available on my youtube channel.
Do some colour correcting on the scenes too. Or if you already have do some more. I wanna see that wasteland look scummy as hell dammit!
Alright, I almost took offense to this part. Here's some before and after shots of the color correction I did. I'm no expert, but it took weeks to get it the way I like it and there's a clear improvement I feel.
The opening, just in general improving the image. You can also see the truck that we digitally removed from the background in these shots:
Before:
After:
The hotel room scene, where I had to make bright as hell daylight look like one oil lamp was lighting everything:
The desert, which I wanted to make look 'scummy as hell dammit!':
And the caravan attack, which I wanted to do the same to:
There is a process in motion picture film developing called Bleach Bypass, which makes some colors look very washed out and faded while emphasizing blacks. When creating the visual look for Mad Nation, I did my best to replicate this, while still also emphasizing browns, grays and other colors of dead foliage and worn materials.
Get some older actors too or at the very least make them look like they haven't washed all their lives.
Even though it's already been addressed twice in this thread alone, I'll address it again: I got older actors whenever I could. But yeah, I agree there's several characters that look too clean. I'm working on finding a competent and reliable make up artist, but they all turn out to be flakey as hell for some reason.