My next project
Words Fail Me is officially done, released, and ended. There won’t be any more episodes, unless someone decides to give me some money to make them. I’m moving on to my next project, an absurd and comedic short film called The Deadline.
Thanks for watching Words Fail Me and please check out my new project!
An interview I did with IFP/Chicago
IFP/Chicago interviewed me about my participation in their recent Screenwriter’s Workshop (and staged reading). It was a really great experience and I’m turning the script (THE DEADLINE) into a film soon. They asked me about the script, my writing process/inspiration, the workshop experience, and plans for the film.
Words Fail Me is an official selection at the NYC Web Fest
More good news on the festival front!
We were accepted to the NYC Web Fest, which takes place November 13 & 14, 2015 in New York.
They haven’t released the schedule or the location details yet but you can get updates and check out the other great series on their website.
Words Fail Me is an official selection at the Brooklyn Web Fest
Awesome news! We were accepted as an official selection of the Brooklyn Web Fest. We will be screening episode 1 on Saturday, October 10 at 5pm, at DUMBO Made in NY Center by IFP, 30 John Street, Brooklyn NY 11202.
Robert will be speaking on a panel the same day at 4:30pm, on creating a meta web series.
Process & production notes on the web series
I wrote up a series of blog posts on the writing, directing, and production process of my web series, Words Fail Me. You can find them individually on the site and I’ve assembled them all in one place here:
- Notes on Pre-production and Planning for a Web Series
- Notes on Directing for the First Time
- Notes on Directing Improvised Scenes (on camera)
- Notes on Soliciting and Interpreting Feedback on Videos (or other creative work)
- Notes on Editing Improvised Video Footage
- Exporting to ProRes from Adobe Premiere on PC
Exporting to ProRes from Adobe Premiere on PC
When I was working with the colorist on Words Fail Me, he asked me to export my sequence in ProRes 4444 format. ProRes is an Apple format. And I was working on Adobe Premiere on PC, which as of July 2015, doesn’t natively support exporting to ProRes.
There is a solution however–a company in Spain, Cinemartin, sells a plugin called Plin.
Once you download and install it, it adds a menu item under File in Adobe Premiere and you can now export to ProRes.
A few things about it:
- A few times it froze and I had to cancel the export, restart Premiere and start over again until it worked. It froze on me 2 or 3 times total.
- There is a bug that some people have mentioned where it won’t work if you don’t have enough disk space (1 terabyte) on your C Drive it won’t work. I only have 250 gigs on my C Drive and it worked fine.
- Their website isn’t generally user friendly and I think their English probably isn’t great.
If you’re OK with all that, then I recommend the plugin because it works well. The alternative would be to find someone with a Mac and export from their machine, but that’s a bit of a pain in the ass, unless it happens to be your roommate or you have one at work that your company doesn’t mind you using for this sort of thing.
The final episode of Words Fail Me
I released the sixth and final episode of my web series, Words Fail Me, today:
A review of Words Fail Me + an interview with me
Elena Colás wrote a review of Words Fail Me for Chicago Literati and gave it 3 out of 4 stars:
Robert Bruce Carter takes us back to the storytelling basics with his web series Words Fail Me. With a jolly soundtrack and quick editing, each pair of characters find themselves in wacky situations under a simple premise: I know something you don’t know. From there, things get delightfully weird. Fans of improv will love it, and the casual addition of absurd plot points gives both the actors and the audience more to chew on than just a simple sketch.
Elena also interviewed me about how I come up with ideas, my writing process, balancing day jobs and artistic endeavors, and much more. Read the whole thing here.
Note on Directing for the First Time
The first episode was also the first time I’ve directed anything, whether on stage or for the camera. I was terrified on the morning of the shoot — afraid that things wouldn’t go well, that my ideas wouldn’t work, that the crew would think this was stupid, and mostly that I would let the actors down and they would feel untalented because I hadn’t put them in a position to succeed.
We started rolling the first shot and they started improvising their scenario (this was what turned out to be episode 4 with the CIA agent and informant on the park bench). I didn’t know how long to let it to go or exactly what I was really looking for. I wanted to cut the camera about three minutes into the first take but I waited for another two minutes while I thought of something to say to the actors.
In later episodes, I was prepared for these moments and had a plan. It’s good to have go-to’s in your back pocket for when you don’t have any specific notes or adjustments, something I learned from Stephen Cone’s incredibly awesome directing class.
It occurred to me later that screwing up the moments between the first and the second take could probably tank and entire scene or day or even project.
I realized after the first episode that I needed to have more prepared in terms of story. So I had an outline of the beats and I had to have specific things for the actors to try, specific tactics that they could use.
The humor often came from details, and I wrote some of those details into the initial treatments. Some of them I jotted down as ideas in the outline, and some I jotted down while we were filming.
I like collaboration and many good ideas came from the crew.
Directing is the easiest way to hang out with your actor friends.
The actors I worked with are very good and that made things easy.
Each episode was only about 2-3 hours to set up and shoot, with camera rolling for 50-90 minutes of that time. Basic setups, minimal lighting, etc.
There isn’t much movement of actors or camera in this series. I want to do more visual storytelling in my next project. Better to isolate one variable to get the hang of it before adding in other variables, is my thinking at least.
Episode 5 of Words Fail Me
I released the fifth episode of my web series, Words Fail Me, today:
You can find out more about episode 5 or follow Words Fail Me on Facebook.