Words Fail Me will be released next week
The editing is complete and the episodes are ready to go. I’m really happy with the way things came out. Sure, there are spots where I look and think that something could be better, but overall I think it looks and sounds professional and that the actors all came through and most importantly, I still laugh after watching an episode for the 200th time.
In the next few days I’ll write up a more detailed account of how it was made on the blog.
Here’s the trailer again:
Mixing sound for Words Fail Me
I feel like a kid in a high end post-production facility (at Periscope Post & Audio).
Episode screening at The Spectacle film night at the Annoyance Theater!
If you’re in Chicago, then you have a chance to watch an episode of the web series live in a theater, THIS Sunday!We’re not releasing any episodes on the web yet, but the cinematographer, Hannah, runs a monthly short film screening event called The Spectacle and she invited me to screen one of the episodes.
There will be a bunch of other great short films screened and it only costs… $2.
I’m going to show one of my favorite episodes, with Cole Millette and Matt Ciavarella. It’s about a desperate father trying to reason with an enamored babysitter (but not in the way you’d expect).
Here’s the details:
When: Sunday, 5/3 at 7pm
Where: The Annoyance Theatre (851 W Belmont)
Tickets: $2
Posted a full trailer for Words Fail Me
A comedy web series about desperate people in absurd situations.
Words Fail Me is wrapped
We shot episodes two through five this past weekend in locations around Bucktown and the West Loop in Chicago. Everything went smoothly and we had a ton of fun. I really couldn’t ask for a better group of people to work with. I’m reviewing the footage and putting together a new trailer this weekend and I’m hoping to start releasing the full episodes in May or June.
Words Fail Me — filming complete
Filming is now complete for the web series I created, Words Fail Me. You can check out on-set photos from the filming in Chicago. I’m putting together a trailer this weekend and then editing all six episodes over the next few weeks.
Words Fail Me Production is set for March 20-22
We’ve locked down the actors and the locations for filming the last five episodes of the series (one has already been shot)! We’ll be filming mostly around the West Loop and in Bucktown, including at the awesome Red June Cafe.
Screenplay feedback and accepting that something is broken
I did a staged reading of Begin, a screenplay I recently wrote. It went very well, with lots of laughs in the right places and the audience stayed tuned in throughout the 90 or so minutes of the reading, in large part because the actors nailed it so well. There are two reasons why I love doing a reading like this: feedback from the audience and feedback from the actors.
From the audience you learn where it’s working and where it stalls and where it’s funny and where the jokes land flat. And from the actors you learn if you’ve written roles that are fun or interesting to play. And you can see if the characters come to life when the words are spoken out loud, or does it just feel like someone’s reading some lines? It helps to have actors that prepare and commit to it.
Afterwords, we did a Q&A, where I was asking questions of the audience to get their feedback on some of the story and theme issues that I’ve been struggling with — mostly things that were pointed out as weaknesses by Blcklst readers.
I asked the audience: “I’ve gotten some feedback that said that the reader was not clear about what the theme or the point of the story is. Do you agree with that comment and why” And I saw many heads shyly nodding.1.
A lot of the feedback was related to the main character, about why he was making the choices he was making and how it seemed like things were happening to him, very funny things, but things that didn’t necessarily relate to his larger arc or the theme of the film. This type of feedback is invaluable because it provides another data point, more evidence that this is in fact a problem, not just something one reader had an issue with. But it’s also a bit strange to me, because I know exactly what the theme is, and in my head it’s so obvious that I was worried that it would be too obvious.
But when 20 people nod their heads in unison, it’s hard to ignore. I tried to communicate something and I failed, as much as I wanted to believe that everything was working well. And now that I’ve accepted that, I can begin the work of addressing those issues and with some luck, take it from “a funny movie” to “a really good movie that’s also funny.”
I used to have this feeling, like a fear of putting stuff out into the world because I wanted everyone (or the people I care about) to just say “this is great, I love it, it’s perfect,” so I wouldn’t have to change a thing. But I’ve been braver lately and try to seek out critiques from people that will be honest about the issues in what I write, so that I can make my work better.
It’s really hard to do that and admit that something I love is broken, but I don’t know if there’s another way to improve as a writer (along with practicing a whole lot). And getting there required changing my mindset from “making something good” to “continuously improve as a writer.”
After receiving zero response to my first question, I remembered that I had to tell them that they had permission to say negative things, which opened things up quite a bit ↩
My Adobe Premiere workflow for editing improvised scenes
I’ve been editing the first episode of my web series, Words Fail Me. The actors have a set of circumstances that they know in advance but all of the dialogue is improvised. It’s the first improvised video I’ve had to edit and it’s taken me a while to figure out a workflow that makes sense and isn’t insanely time-consuming.
I should say that this is the first time I’ve done this and that I’m still very new to editing in general, so your mileage may vary. But I’m putting it out there in case it helps someone.
With a scripted scene, you usually have 3-5 takes of the scene for each shot (wide, medium, CU, etc.). So basically the editing is about telling a predefined story using the different shots. But with this shoot, I had a general idea of where I wanted things to go, but the actor had a lot of input and free reign, within the basic constraints that I had laid out. All of that is to say that what we ended up with, story-wise, was a bit messy.
For this episode, we did a wide shot (without sound), a master (medium shot), and a CU. We did a few takes of the medium and CU, but there was no script and the dialogue changed. After each take, we took the parts of the story that we liked and emphasized those moving forward, but we didn’t make an effort to repeat the dialogue verbatim. The story beats stayed the same, but the dialogue changed. The beats within any given take also tended to change–some takes only had a few of the major story beats and they were often in a different order.
That’s challenging to edit because each take is a little different. With 45 minutes of footage, I would have to spend a lot of time searching for what I needed. So, I came up with a solution to break the process into smaller chunks and make it more manageable.
Here’s what I did to simplify the process:
- I reviewed the footage to get a general sense of how I wanted to structure the story (while putting together the trailer).
- In Word, I wrote an outline for the story, sketching out nine beats for the story, and then created sequences in Premiere for each story beat.
- I dragged all the clips onto the timeline and went through all of them, cutting them up into chunks that related to the various beats. If the first two minutes of a clip were related to beat 1, I would cut and paste that part of the clip to the Beat 1 sequence, and so on.
- By the end, I had nine sequences (one for each beat of the story) with five to six clips related to that beat. These were much more manageable chunks to work with (3-7 minutes each). I edited each of these sequences individually to come up with the best possible version of each beat.
- Once I had all nine beats the way I wanted them, I put them all on a master sequence and connected them.
- Finally, I massaged the master sequence to get it to work together smoothly, using the wide shot as a cutaway for any moments where I wanted the dialogue but didn’t want to use the video.1
The nice thing about working this way is that it separates three distinct tasks (‘writing’ the story, searching/organizing the footage, and crafting the actual edit to tell the story) into separate chunks so you don’t have to switch between cognitive modes. This freed my brain up to focus on one thing at a time. And it forced me to figure out how I wanted to tell the story before I started any of the actual editing.
Again, I’m new to this. YMMV. And please contact me if you know a better way or have any tips!
I wish we had shot more b-roll because it would’ve this easier and created some diversity in the imagery. Lesson learned. ↩
Watch the trailer for Words Fail Me, my new web series
Words Fail Me is a comedic series of portraits of self-involved and seriously flawed people who desperately need something from each other but just can’t find the right way to put it.
Set in Chicago, the series rolls up its proverbial sleeves to ask some questions you didn’t even think to ask: what do you do when you wake up to a new roommate, get extorted by your babysitter, or spill CIA secrets to the tamale guy?
The stories are written in advance and the dialogue is improvised by actors that Robert met while taking classes and hanging out at The Artistic Home theatre, as a way to give some serious actors with dramatic chops a chance to do comedy.
Production is by Hannah Welever (cinematography), Erin Turney (sound), and Erin Miller (production assistance). They are all very good at what they do and you should hire them if you need this sort of thing.