Fluorescent Beast: A Deep Dive into Indie Film and Visual Effects with Filmmaker Paul Osborne

Get ready for an intriguing conversation with the celebrated writer and director, Paul Osborne. As we traverse his professional journey, we find ourselves in the heart of indie filmmaking, where passion meets creativity on a budget. Learn how Paul transitioned from the production department and carved his own path in the world of independent crime thrillers. Listen as we explore the making of his films like the dark comedy Fluorescent Beast and the recent Cruel Hearts. You'll also get an insider's view on the critical role of visual effects and digital technology in amplifying the storytelling of indie films.

We further delve into the practicalities of realizing stunning special effects within financial constraints and how the magic of visual effects enriches rather than replaces the work of special effects artists. The conversation gets even more riveting as we dissect Paul's latest film, Fluorescent Beast, delving into its unique plot and the intricacies involved in creating special effects with burning elements on set. Discover how every effect is painstakingly planned and executed to maintain the visual consistency and authenticity of every scene.

Finally, Paul spills the beans on the intricate task of crafting a realistic, yet not-quite-human character for Florescent Beast. He opens up about the complexities of digitally replacing an original painting, emphasizing the importance of meticulous pre-planning with the visual effects artist. We also touch upon the challenges of disseminating independent films in the era of streaming services. So, buckle up for a fascinating exploration into the world of indie filmmaking and the art of visual effects, where every frame is a canvas and every effect, a brushstroke. Whether you're an aspiring filmmaker or a cinema enthusiast, this conversation with Paul Osborne promises to be an enlightening and engaging experience. Don't miss out!

Transcript

[Paul DeNigris]: 0:00

A depressed office drone finds the monotony of his life suddenly disrupted when he's given a super secret assignment that neither he nor anyone else seems to understand. In Paul Osborne's dark comedy Fluorescent Beast, this week on the VFX for Indies podcast Hello and welcome to this episode of VFX for Indies, the podcast about the intersection of visual effects and independent filmmaking. I'm your host, Paul DeNigris, VFX artist, filmmaker and CEO of Foxtrot X-Ray, a boutique visual effects company. With me today is Paul Osborne. He is the award-winning writer, director of a number of indie crime thrillers, including Ten ‘Til Noon, which you see on the poster behind him, Cruel Hearts, and the upcoming Fluorescent Beast. Welcome to the podcast, Paul.

[Paul Osborne]: 1:08

Oh, thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me.

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:11

Right on. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule. Paul lives on the other side of the world in England. He used to be an Angeleno, but he moved to England a couple of years ago. And we connect when we can, when we can time the time zones correctly. But we recently wrapped up a last little bit of work on Fluorescent Beast. a film that you shot what three years ago now? Paul? Pre-pandemic?[Paul Osborne]: Uh, we wrapped,

[Paul Osborne]: 1:44

Yeah, we wrapped it up in May of 2019.

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:47

Oh, okay, so almost four years ago now.

[Paul Osborne]: 1:50

Ah, don't bring it up.[Paul DeNigris]: Give us a...

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:52

Ha ha ha. The joys of independent filmmaking, right?

[Paul Osborne]: 1:56

Hmm.[Paul DeNigris]: Everything takes longer than

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:58

it's supposed to.

[Paul Osborne]: 1:59

Hmm hmm.[Paul DeNigris]: Well, before we dive into the

[Paul DeNigris]: 2:04

Hearts and Fluorescent Beast, just give our viewers a quick overview of kind of who you are, what you do, your position in the industry, kind of where your career is at.

[Paul Osborne]: 2:15

My position on the bottom. Well, I'm an independent filmmaker, as you said. I'm a writer, a director, an editor. And yeah, I've directed four independent features. One was a documentary, three narrative features. And I wrote and produced another one, Ten ‘Til Noon, that you mentioned earlier. Yeah, I don't know. I moved two years ago from Los Angeles to London with my wife and son. And I just, been around the block, you know, I've done I started in production, worked in the production department did props, did camera, did sound, went to post production, did, you know, ton of editing, some feature editing and then sort of flopped over where I wanted to go, which is the writing side. And after a lot of time, you know, dodging around agencies and development companies not getting anything made, I decided to go the independent route. And that brings us to where we are today.

[Paul DeNigris]: 3:15

So neither of the films that you've brought to me to work on with you are what we would really call visual effects films, right? They're much more of the kind of the typical project that I work on with my team and also the kind of project that we love where it's, our work can be invisible, right? We're really there just to serve the story and not be flashy and not be in your face. So...

[Paul Osborne]: 3:42

Yeah.

[Paul DeNigris]: 3:43

Yeah, I mean, give us a, like, just give us a quick overview of Cruel Hearts and what it was about and kind of, you know, how we used visual effects in that film.

[Paul Osborne]: 3:54

Well, as you say, like these are not the typical visual effects movies. Cruel Hearts is a character driven dramatic thriller. It's it's it's, you know, when you're making an independent film, it's always good to remember that actors, good actors are not expensive to find. There's a lot of them. And dialogue is cheap to shoot. So write good dialogue, get good actors and then you have something. So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a character based piece. It's a it's more of a chamber piece. And you don't often think of visual effects in those regards, but you are... there's two different kinds of visual effects that happen in those situations. And one of them is, you know, there's there are there are bursts of violence, you know, there's the usual gunshot, the you know, the occasional spray of blood, those sorts of things. And on a limited budget, a lot of that's easier to do in post production, and less expensive to do in post production. Some things. A lot of things, we don't get them right on set. Even when you're intending to, when things are going according to plan. Yeah, a lot of it's still there. And also there's the second aspect of it is sort of things you can clean up in production, things that go wrong in production, the occasional boom shadow and clean up. Things that normally would have been a gaping error in the pre-digital age can now be corrected and fixed. And, you know, things that would pull the audience out of it if you weren't able to fix it. So sort of the, yeah, the intentional effects. and the unintentional fixes that come to post-production.

[Paul DeNigris]: 6:05

Yeah, that's pretty much the two big categories that we work in, you know...

[Paul Osborne]: 6:09

Pretty much.

[Paul DeNigris]: 6:09

what we call clean up and then and then you have more hero effects. So what problems? And I know this is a while back where we're going back into deep into history.

[Paul Osborne]: 6:21

No, not that far, not that long ago.

[Paul DeNigris]: 6:23

Not that far, but I mean, everything before the pandemic feels like it was a million years ago.

[Paul Osborne]: 6:28

That’s true. Back in the BC era.

[Paul DeNigris]: 6:31

Yeah.

[Paul Osborne]: 6:31

Yeah.[Paul DeNigris]: In the before times. So you wanna know what sort of went wrong?

[Paul DeNigris]: 6:37

Yeah, so there were, I know there were obviously, there were some things that are in your face, right? The gunshots and things like that and

[Paul Osborne]: 6:47

Right.[Paul DeNigris]: some of the blood enhancement. But

[Paul DeNigris]: 6:49

very subtle and sometimes it was a matter of, like you said, it was the cleanup and the fixes. And sometimes it was, hey, we can't soak this carpet with blood,

[Paul Osborne]: 7:00

Right.[Paul DeNigris]: practically, because it will

[Paul DeNigris]: 7:04

the turnaround and all of that sort of stuff, right? So you know, what are some of the things that we helped you, that VFX helped you solve?

[Paul Osborne]: 7:11

Well, on that film, you know, we had, it's a noir thriller, we've got the gunshots, we've got the double crosses and the bang bang bangs, that happen. And as far as the muzzle flashes, that stuff we'd planned to do as a post-production effect, it's less expensive and certainly safer to just bring in some airsoft BB guns without BBs in them, fire those off and add in the muzzle flashes later. That was always our plan, rather than bringing in an armorer and bringing in a cop and... dealing with blanks and certainly all the dangers that are in those, especially when the guns are close to other actors. Blanks or no, you fire any kind of round, it's dangerous. So that was always planned. But what we did plan to do on set was all the blood effects, practically. And as what happens, this also happened on the movie, Favor, which I know you didn't work on, our feature, Favor, from a few years before that, but we, in both cases, our on set visual effects people handling the blood effects, handling the squibs, handling the spurts, were not really up to snuff. Part of that's budgetary in terms of finding people who are experienced, who’ll work on your budget. And part of it's also a budget of time. You don't have, you need to budget in, you know, two to three times as long to shoot a scene if you're gonna have blood effects. Often they take time to get right. They don't work. You have to reset. You have to change the clothes and soon you sometimes you just run out of time. So it's a combination of those two things. On Cruel Hearts, we just you know, there were certain... blood hits that weren't working, squibs that weren't working. And, you know, in the end, we got what we got on set, but it meant coming to our post visual effects people you to hopefully to fix them. Hat in hand going: Please. Please fix them. So, you know, certain things in those hero effects were planned, certain things were not. But the big one in that film was the blood effects. There was some blood splat against a wall that had to be added. There was a chest hit that had to be added. There's one character who is lying on the ground and riddled with bullets. And we needed to make him soaked in blood. And he only had a couple of trickles going on. And that was something. But there's something else that happens in these films. This is with anything because visual effects aren't just patchwork at the end fixing a problem or completing an effect that you couldn't complete on set, whether you plan to do it that way or not. You know, it is a creative process. And, you know, the word is always the last rewrite of a film is always the edit. The last read of the film is always your post production. It's not just the edit, it's the color corrections, the mix, and it certainly is the visual effects. And so there were, I know there were things that were added in visual effects in that film. I think you suggested that we ended up doing that ended up. Oh, yeah, let's try that. You know, we have the opportunity, if you wouldn't mind, we have the opportunity now to add this new element that was never planned and improve the shot. And one of those you mentioned is actually the blood soaking the carpet, because I think we wanted to add a little bit of blood in the carpet. You're like, he's been riddled, wouldn't he just we could do a whole, and you made this beautiful, balletic, just like blood spread out from him that we never thought about, but it completely makes the scene. And so that's a situation where, you know, it's not just about fixing or adding something that was planned, but coming up with something new. And using that opportunity while you're in there to create a whole new element. In Favor, this also happened, in the movie, Favor, with a guy being stabbed and the visual effects artist decided to have the blood splat at the screen, splat towards camera. I thought great. That wasn't something we thought about. All you were doing was adding a little bit of blood on his shirt. He did this whole splat and he decided to add a splat on the lens. He created a splat on the lens. And I think he sent it to me as a joke, but it was kind of amazing. I'm like, that's a terrific like, almost wink at the audience. And so we kept it in.

[Paul DeNigris]: 11:35

Sometimes us VFX guys, we have to do stuff just to amuse ourselves in post.

[Paul Osborne]: 11:40

I know there's one there's one moment that also in Cruel Hearts I don't know if you remember this but the blood spread... the character is addressing camera is addressing the characters standing over him which is the camera subjective and he's dying and the blood is spreading and as he's as the life's leaving him the blood spread slows and as he dies stops and he's dying very he's just getting he's not like doing a big dramatic but he just slowly The life is leaving his eyes. It's a very quiet moment. But the blood just slows and stops. And you sent that to me and I was like, Paul, that's amazing. You've got the blood like matching the mood of his death. And you were like, wait, what, it stops? Shit, no, you like it? You're buying it? Good, okay, that was not intentional.

[Paul DeNigris]: 12:36

That's right, I do remember that. It was a happy accident. And then you further art directed it and you said, let's have it stop before it passes his eyes, right? I think if I remember correctly.

[Paul Osborne]: 12:48

I gave notes![Paul DeNigris]: you were like, let's stop it

[Paul DeNigris]: 12:50

just as it reaches the level of his eyes, right...?[Paul Osborne]: That's... fuck, that sounds like me, Paul. That so it was a happy accident and then

[Paul Osborne]: 13:00

It was a...

[Paul DeNigris]: 13:01

a bit of art direction. And yeah, try doing that with a practical blood spread, you know.

[Paul Osborne]: 13:07

It was a creative urge from you, an accident from wherever, and then a note from me, great. Ha ha ha.

[Paul DeNigris]: 13:15

Yeah, yeah. And that's the joy of independent filmmaking at every stage, right?[Paul Osborne]: At every stage. Well, I mean, in filmmaking,

[Paul Osborne]: 13:22

in, we'll get to Fluorescent Beast in a moment, but there were things in Fluorescent Beast where you were suggesting we should do this, we should do this, we should try this. And that's honestly, like, from my point of view, as a filmmaker, that's what I want. I want to work with other filmmakers, I want to work with other people who want to make the film better, and come up with ideas. And again, visual effects are often thought about as a last stage. And they really ought not to be.

[Paul DeNigris]: 13:44

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So it sounds like your experience on Favor probably informed some of your choices in terms of knowing what you could and couldn't do in VFX and how you could deploy VFX to fix some of these issues, the defective squibs and whatnot. Is that the case where Favor really kind of influenced the process on Cruel Hearts?

[Paul Osborne]: 14:09

Well I think every film you make influences the films that come after it. You're always learning. But I mean, I think I learned more on Cruel Hearts from you because the problems on Cruel Hearts were more pronounced. And solving those problems, making those bloody moments in that film look real, read as real, the way it was done, which was really taking practical elements and repurposing them in creative ways, you know, not adding new elements. And a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it. And that really taught me a lot more about, on my end, how to bring things into visual effects. So, but yeah, you learn in every film. Favor certainly taught me some things, but Cruel Hearts was a much more extensive job.

[Paul DeNigris]: 15:00

I remember a shot, a couple of shots in Cruel Hearts where Patrick has to punch, he has to punch a tile wall in a bathroom. And then, and so you had us add the cracks in the tile, but then also split his knuckles. So where did that, was that something that you thought of in production or was it only after you saw it in the cut that you realized...

[Paul Osborne]: 15:22

Ah, it was after we saw it[Paul DeNigris]: it needed something? I didn't read it was too subtle. And so I'm like, you gotta help me. Help me sell this! Sell this thing. So I mean, that, that looks, those knuckles look terrific. I mean, we had like blood on them, but it was nothing. So again, learning curve.

[Paul DeNigris]: 15:42

Yeah.[Paul Osborne]: You know, you go, well, this

[Paul Osborne]: 15:44

up on a 60 foot screen and you go, no, it's not at all. You need a lot more there.

[Paul DeNigris]: 15:49

Yeah, yeah, that was a total cheat just having a little bit of a little bit of white show through as if he had split it down to the bone and it and it's like you look at it and you go, EHHHH, you cringe like it looks painful,[Paul Osborne]: it's great. Well, because

[Paul Osborne]: 16:03

the thing was,[Paul DeNigris]: as opposed to just blood smeared on his knuckles. I mean, that was just a low budget situation where we had a location and we couldn't afford to have them actually build a fake wall and have him punch it and have him crack it. That's what it was. So we had to punch it kind of, so he's punching a pillow. That's what he's doing. And the whole idea is when you cut back to, he realized what he's done, you're looking at his face while he's doing the punching and you cut back and you see what he's done to himself. And that had to read and thankfully, thanks to you, it does. But yeah, but it wasn't reading enough. You have to really punch it a lot more. And so that was something else we learned going forward is any day you have anything like that, you have a very salty and experienced visual effects artist or a makeup person does makeup effects. You have them on set.

[Paul DeNigris]: 16:54

Yeah, and a lot of the work that we do when it comes to blood or anything like that, it's a combination of the efforts of us in post and the efforts of folks on set. Whenever I'm talking about this stuff where we're fixing blood or we're fixing makeup, it's never... It's never meant as a, we're not trying to downplay the expertise of special effects people, because what they do is amazing and the limits of their ability based on time and money, right? That's ultimately it. I can push pixels around all day, right? I can push blood pixels all around all day and you can go, I want it to spray different. So I can swap it out to a different element, change the parameters on a particle sim. You know, I can do that. On set? You're burning money, you're burning daylight, you're in locations that you don't own, you have limited changes of clothes, right? So the practical makeup people are always operating with one hand tied behind their back, no matter what, right? So I want people to understand as they watch this, what I do, what visual effects artists do is never a replacement for good, practical, special effects makeup. We are an enhancement.

[Paul Osborne]: 18:16

Exactly. And honestly, that's the way it should be. In the low budget world, it's always, you know, the first thing is to find someone who can work with your budget who's either experienced, whether it's professionally or on their own, but can really deliver what you need. But even then, there are limitations. There are time limitations and money limitations. And I say this, if you can schedule twice as much time to three times as much time. shooting anything with any kind of makeup effects. If you got, you know, someone's getting machete-ed or shot or karate chopped or whatever it is, add in the time, not just for the applications, but for things to go wrong and to not get it right and have as many replacement clothes as you can because you are gonna go through them. But also if you do think you're gonna need, you're gonna go, if you plan ahead and go, you know, we're gonna need visual effects to help us with this post-production visual effects to help us with this. It's always important to talk to your visual effects person, your post visual effects person, as you say, and say, what do you need me to give you to create this? You know, like we're doing it, we're gonna do a guy getting shot in the head. This is something that we just did in the last film, a guy getting shot in the head. And so we're gonna have, you know, make-up effects put a bullet hole in his head. And what we're gonna have, we want it to appear when he gets shot in the shot. You know, it's a single shot on him and the bullet bang hits him in the face. So it's a question of getting a clean plate with a clean forehead. It's a question of getting, you know, and shooting a shot with the thing, with the wound there the entire time. And then you put the clean forehead image over the hole until the appropriate moment and getting a clean shot of the flash on him so that when there's a, you know, a practical light flash on his face that replicates the gun, muzzle flash of the gun and all these elements that are created on set, which when they come to you, you can go, put it together. rather than having to try to capture it. And honestly, that's often, it sounds like it's more work on set. It's often easier to get, to shoot individual elements, to have them, real elements, realistic looking elements, practical elements, to have them composited by a post visual effects person than it is to capture an on camera, perfect visual effect. from my experience.

[Paul DeNigris]: 20:39

Yeah. No, I think that's, that's absolutely dead on. That's what we in the industry call in the VFX side of the industry, we call a heal and reveal, right? the actor has the wound already. We heal it and then reveal it when the gunshot goes off Yeah.

[Paul Osborne]: 20:55

Love it, Heal and reveal. Yeah,

[Paul DeNigris]: 20:57

Heal and reveal.

[Paul Osborne]: 20:57

but let me know, there were other things, like we had a fire effect on the last film and it was a question of what elements do we give you for that and those sorts of things. So again,[Paul DeNigris]: Yeah. Well,

[Paul DeNigris]: 21:07

we're going to get to Fluorescent Beast in a second. I want to kind of wrap up our conversation about Cruel Hearts[Paul Osborne]: Sure sorry, I’m bopping all over. that's, that's totally fine. So it sounds to me, and I think we've kind of covered this. It sounds to me like the process on in the same way that Favor taught you a bunch of stuff that you applied to Cruel Hearts. It sounds like you had some, some takeaways from the process on Cruel Hearts that, that cascaded into the next movie. You know, what's something What's one example that maybe we haven't covered yet of something that we did a certain way on Cruel Hearts that you decided, okay, we need to we need to be better prepared going into Fluorescent Beast.

[Paul Osborne]: 21:44

Well, I honestly it was the it was all the blood stuff. It was really it was really making sure we kind of cover this I know sorry, but it is it's absolutely my biggest takeaway my the one I always think about is capturing practical elements on camera that you can then repurpose later in visual and post visual effects. That really is everything I think it was one effect I forget what it was. We were I think we were trying to get I think it was a head shot in Cruel Hearts we were trying to get right. And I said to you, You said, what do you think? I said, well, it looks like a like a digital visual effect. And you said, this is a digital visual effect. And I said, I know it's a digital visual effect and you know it's a digital visual effect, but we don't want anybody else to know it's a digital visual effect. And so it was, it was at that point, I think we didn't have anything made. I think you ended up stealing something from another scene that was bloody and clothy and whatever and applying it. I could be misremembering that, but you can correct me. But that's really my biggest takeaway. And we had a lot of conversations about the things on the next one Fluorescent Beast. like, this is what I wanna do. This is how I wanna shoot it. What do I gotta shoot for you? That's what it is. And it's a really different way of thinking about how you do things. You don't wanna... just shoot a thing and expect a magic wand to create whatever. There'll be plenty of those. When we get to Flurescent Beast, we can talk about a couple of magic wand moments that you had to pull out of your butt. things we didn't plan, some big ones. There's always something, but whenever possible, and it could be as simple as we need to, for lighting, we have to have this window next to this actor, the blinds are we have to have the window closed and blocked off. Because it's casting a glare right in the lens. But we want what we're what we see out that window downtown LA, we want that visible behind him. Okay, so then you got to shoot plates, you know, that's something you do you shoot the actor, you draw the blinds, you shoot the actor, the actor steps out, you open the blinds, you shoot the exact same angle with the blind open with nothing in it, you know, for 30 seconds or however long. And you know, you get those, you have to get those kinds of clean plates. And sometimes there's multiple elements so that they can be composited later. But it really is understanding and breaking down how you wanna do things. A lot of this goes back to as much preparation as possible. Unfortunately, as of yet, you will attest, I have never done enough prep when it comes to things that need to be visually realized in post in terms of visual effects. But I'm learning and I'm hoping to get better, so.

[Paul DeNigris]: 24:39

No one ever does enough prep, right? It doesn't matter how much prep you do, it's never enough.

[Paul Osborne]: 24:44

There's so many on the day factors, you know, and a larger budget film, that's time to reshoot or time to shoot longer and catch these. And then when you're shooting a feature in three weeks, you don't have that much time. You're constantly moving. You lose a location, that location's gone.

[Paul DeNigris]: 25:01

Right, as they say in the military, no plan meets, no plan survives initial contact with the enemy. And when it comes to independent filmmaking, time and money are always the enemy. And so, planning is invaluable, plans themselves generally are useless. All right, so where can, well, let's just wrap up Cruel Hearts, what was its festival life going to into distribution and then where can people watch it, right now?

[Paul Osborne]: 25:35

Well, it did about 10 festivals, won a few awards. Came out on Valentine's Day, Cruel Hearts, which I thought was an odd choice. It was on the romance page of iTunes, which I thought was weird. Like, who's gonna go to the romance section and wanna watch a film with guns in it? You watch a trailer, you just look at the poster. I think it should have been in the thriller section on Valentine's Day. But Gravitas Ventures put it out. It was our second film out with them. And right now you can get it on, well, I mean, you can buy it on all the pay VOD flavors, iTunes and so forth. But I believe it's streaming on Amazon, if you’re a member, for free. It's on Tubi for free for anyone with commercials. So if you wanna watch it for free, check it out on Tubi. And it might be on FreeVee, I'm not sure. And there's also a Blu-ray edition running around some.

[Paul DeNigris]: 26:29

It's a great movie and[Paul Osborne]: Well, thank you. yeah, I really enjoyed it. I wish we had been able to do even more on it because it was a blast working on it. And the cast you put together was fantastic,

[Paul Osborne]: 26:41

Oh, thanks, man.

[Paul DeNigris]: 26:42

including Melora Hardin from The Office, who's an absolute sweetheart. I don't know if I ever told you, I reached out to Melora when my nephew, my nephew Joseph turned 18.

[Paul Osborne]: 26:55

No.

[Paul DeNigris]: 26:56

He's the biggest fan of The Office I could possibly find. And so I reached out to Melora. I said, hey Melora, remember me? I did VFX on Paul Osborne's movie, Cruel Hearts. And my nephew is a massive fan of The Office. Could you record him a little video for his birthday? And she sent just the sweetest video

[Paul Osborne]: 27:17

Oh, that's awesome

[Paul DeNigris]: 27:18

yeah, she was just an absolute angel, like sang a song and...

[Paul Osborne]: 27:23

Oh my god.

[Paul DeNigris]: 27:23

and get and made up her own her own custom “That's what she said” joke just for him. Yeah. The kid's face lit up when I played it. I was like, yeah.[Paul Osborne]: I mean, I've never do nothing

[Paul Osborne]: 27:40

paid her. So,

[Paul DeNigris]: 27:42

Hahaha!

[Paul Osborne]: 27:44

no, she's great. Actually, she has a new film coming out called Golden Vanity and it's, I think it's world premiering at the Burbank International Film Festival actually in a few months. And so she'll be touring around that soon. So

[Paul DeNigris]: 27:57

Nice.

[Paul Osborne]: 27:57

it's an all-Melora movie.[Paul DeNigris]: Very cool,

[Paul DeNigris]: 28:00

very cool. Well, I mean, you know, the fact that you were able to attract her among other just wonderful actors just speaks to

[Paul Osborne]: 28:07

Ah, well, thank you.

[Paul DeNigris]: 28:09

your writing. And then the fact that she didn't say, you know, she didn't tell me to beat it when I asked her for a favor

[Paul Osborne]: 28:17

That guy....[Paul DeNigris]: means that you guys must have treated her well on set. I hope so. I've she still she still returns my calls

[Paul DeNigris]: 28:26

That's good.[Paul Osborne]: and texts. So I hope so. All right, so cool. Let's move on to Fluorescent Beast, which is the film that you recently finished.

[Paul Osborne]: 28:38

The new one

[Paul DeNigris]: 28:39

the new one, give us a quick synopsis of this one. It's, to me, it feels very different than previous ones.

[Paul Osborne]: 28:45

It is. Well, it's not a crime thriller for starters. It's black comedy. It's a surreal black comedy. And so I'll tell you the plot and I'll tell you what it's about. There's different things. The plot is basically about this kind of middle management worker guy. He's working for a big corporation, kind of this generic job. It's sort of ill-defined, pushing numbers around. And he gets summoned by a bizarre and shadowy executive who sends him on a secret business trip. And the business trip is so secret, he's not even told what it's about. He's sort of sent there, and he's given cryptic memos periodically that tell him the next step of the thing he needs to do. And these things don't really add up, make a lot of sense. And he's sort of got to kind of put together what these memos are leading him to do and solve the mystery of what is the actual nature of his assignment. And as... the picture begins to emerge, he begins to realize that it may not be... turn out so well for him. That's the plot. What it's about is I like to say that it's, um, you know, all the, it's, if all the pressures of being an adult, all the responsibilities that weigh you down, if all of those, were not a happenstance, but an actual active conscious conspiracy aimed at you personally to crush your soul and ruin your dreams. That's what, that's the premise of the film. I described it to somebody on set and they went, oh, but that's not fiction. That's true.

[Paul DeNigris]: 31:06

Right. The Fluorescent Beast feels a bit to me like, what if the Coen brothers directed Office Space?

[Paul Osborne]: 31:12

Oh, wow. Okay, please. Please. I'm gonna that's gonna go on the on the box art and the poster. What if the Coen brothers directed Office Space? That's a huge compliment. And a huge insult to the Coen brothers and Office Space.

[Paul DeNigris]: 31:26

No, no, no. And I mean, obviously I'm a big fan of Paul Osborne and I think it's just a great piece of filmmaking. My involvement, you know, completely regardless, right? It is a great watch and it is,

[Paul Osborne]: 31:43

Well, thank you.

[Paul DeNigris]: 31:44

I've watched it a couple of times and it asks some really interesting questions. And again, the acting is stellar.

[Paul Osborne]: 31:53

I hope my actors are listening to this right now because they did a great job. I didn't mess them up too much. So I'm glad you like it. I hope some film festivals agree with you. We're out to several right now, so we'll see what happens.

[Paul DeNigris]: 32:09

Great, great. So how did the process of getting visual effects incorporated into your workflow? How is the process on Fluorescent Beast different than Cruel Hearts? Again, taking the lessons from Cruel Hearts forward, what did we do differently in Fluorescent Beast?

[Paul Osborne]: 32:27

a couple of key scenes that we knew we were gonna need, you know, post visual effects for. And there was some gunshots, some blood, but one big thing was a fire sequence. We have a scene where someone's burning something, like something large, and they're sitting right next to it while it's burning. And I didn't want to light an actual fire. One, because I wanted to be able to shoot multiple takes. and multiple angles with one camera. I didn’t wanna keep burning stuff. And two, I have an actor standing three feet from the fire who I don't want her to die of smoke inhalation. And she's a new mom and was breastfeeding and I didn’t wanna poison her child with carbon dioxide. So that was a big conversation we had is how to make that look. We weren't gonna, I think originally we were talking about burning, actually burning something, like burning something somewhere else of a similar dimension and shooting that as a plate. And we ended up going a different way with that. I think you had plates that already existed, which was great, not having to burn stuff. But that was one big conversation we had. There was another conversation we had about a prop. In the film, there's a puzzle box. That's like a rectangular black box. And there's no crack on it, no seam, no way to open it. And eventually it gets opened in the film. The guy finds a couple of invisible pressure plates and it pops open. And the prop guy was making the thing and he's like, there's no way to make this the way you want it to open and hide the seam. Like you will see a seam no matter where. It can't be a seamless thing. So we ended up making two, one with and one without a seam. And the decision was, in post, we're gonna have the seam appear like a, like a crack in a piece of wood that's being stressed. So there were things like that we had discussed in advance. You and I had long conversations about how to shoot them and what was needed. And so that was the big thing was putting a lot more planning and a lot more of our conversations dictating the angles we chose, how we covered things, and then certainly what we shot to cover those effects.

[Paul DeNigris]: 34:43

Yeah, I would say I would say Cruel Hearts, the balance between creative shots and fix it shots, cleanup shots was probably about 50 50.

[Paul Osborne]: 34:52

Yeah.

[Paul DeNigris]: 34:53

And I think on Fluorescent Beast, it was more like 25% cleanup 75% creative. If I and that's just my gut

[Paul Osborne]: 35:00

are we going to talk about the painting stuff? Cause those are, that was, that's clean up. I think that throws your balance back to more to 50 50.

[Paul DeNigris]: 35:11

Yeah, probably.[Paul Osborne]: Yeah. But that was. It felt like we put more energy, certainly lots more energy up front, into creative shots. Because you were already thinking along those lines, you already kind of knew, okay, here's what we're capable of. Or you’d ask the question, Paul, how the hell do we do this?

[Paul Osborne]: 35:31

Correct, yeah, and there were several small visual effect moments. I mean, the film, again, it's a surreal black comedy. There are odd things that happen. And there's a garbage can that, there's a memo in the film that he's being passed around as this important piece of, this important memo, you know? It's a red letter, it's so important. And they keep passing it around. And then eventually it reaches this destination and the person goes, great, thank you. And just throws it in the trash, discards it as if it's nothing and it's never even opened. It's a whole joke about this useless paperwork and whatever, blah, blah. It's a running gag that ends into someone throwing away this supposedly very important piece of paper. When the character looks in the garbage can at the discarded letter, we wanted it to sort of sizzle and then almost explode in there. And that was something that, again, that was a... conversation that you and I had how we were going to do it. And ended up being an odd, an odd mixture of things. Basically, we had the garbage can sitting there as a shot of the garbage can just sitting, you know, on the floor. Dark, nothing, you can nothing visible in it. The letter’s allegedly at the bottom, you don't really see it, it's out of the shot. And then we took another same angle, and I put a we put a small handheld light in there. So trash can was full of light. I did a simple dissolve, had to go at it suddenly flare up and then you took that and added a whole like Vietnam napalm thing, which is hilarious.

[Paul DeNigris]: 37:09

A little curl of smoke.

[Paul Osborne]: 37:10

Right. But again, we knew a little curl of smoke. But again, we knew exactly where those things are going to happen. And every single one we had planned pragmatic effects, pragmatic, practical stuff shot on set to supply you with Hopefully enough of what you needed. Hopefully you weren't left wanting. There were a few other situations, whether you follow this as this falls into accidental or this falls into creative, but things that we changed when you saw the movie. For example, the scene where he goes to a mall and you suggested, why don't we remove all the names of all the stores? Not because they weren't clear. We have multiple names and this multiple things. It was no big deal. But it was, why don't we just remove them to make it weird, to make it just really faceless? And that was a creative choice that you had, like, that's a great idea. So you kindly did that. And then there was one store where the store, the name was too, it was too obvious that it was missing. So we had to replace it with something. We made up a whole new store name that doesn't exist and replaced it with that. So it was all, seemed otherworldly. Does that fall into accident or does that fall into creative, I think it falls into creative. But again, it's not that we planned. But yeah, that was when we really tried to anticipate what we needed on set, and give you everything. And again, this is the occasional boom shadow with the occasional wire that you remove. But I think most of it was that stuff until the painting.

[Paul DeNigris]: 38:38

Yeah.[Paul Osborne]: Yeah. Another thing, before we get to the painting, another thing that you do, and we did it a tiny bit on Cruel Hearts, and I think we did it a few times on Florescent Beast, was using VFX as an editorial tool. Right? So there's a scene in Cruel Hearts where the two characters are at the bar, and you wanted to cut some dialogue out.

[Paul Osborne]: 38:58

Yes,

[Paul DeNigris]: 38:59

Am I remembering correctly? And we

[Paul Osborne]: 39:00

you are

[Paul DeNigris]: 39:01

composited somebody crossing.

[Paul Osborne]: 39:02

Yes.[Paul DeNigris]: so that we could hide a cut,

[Paul DeNigris]: 39:09

not mistaken, didn't we adjust the timing between actors at one point or adjust that we had actors from different takes

[Paul Osborne]: 39:18

yes.

[Paul DeNigris]: 39:19

in the same shot?

[Paul Osborne]: 39:20

we pulled something up. Yeah, no, it was two actors sitting in the same shot. We, there were a number of simple, like, picture-in-picture effects that were done on the film that you weren't even involved with. Because we had two characters, we had two characters played by the same actor, for example, in a couple of scenes. And we just, you know, would put the camera down, you know. and shoot one on one side and then one on the other side. And just, you know, as long as the camera doesn't move, it's easy to do a composite. Just split it, you can do that in the editing tool. There was one situation, and there were a few things like that we would change the timing in a two shot. But this was one, you're talking about one on the couch, right?[Paul DeNigris]: Hmm. It's the same way, lead character and his wife are on the couch. And yeah, I ended up, I think we were, I don't know if we were compositing takes. I think it was an awkward pause. I think that's what it was. But we tried doing it simply, but there was a whole pillow shift or something. There was some shift in it. You had to kind of come in and like carve around. It wasn't a clean cut. It wasn't a clean splice. So it had to be done that way, yeah.

[Paul DeNigris]: 40:33

Yeah. And then we also had, you decided you wanted one of the characters to never blink.

[Paul Osborne]: 40:40

Oh, I forgot about that.

[Paul DeNigris]: 40:41

I remember that was a fun challenge.

[Paul Osborne]: 40:42

That was a fun challenge. That was one we knew we were gonna do. That was in the script stage, that she never blinks. And you never see her eyes closed. That was the idea. And so, it's funny, I made the mistake of telling her that, which made her try to not blink. I'm like, don't, just, we'll fix it. We'll fix it in post. I mentioned it to you, and you're like, okay. And I don't think. I don't how much it didn't seem like it was that much. It was no trouble on my end. I gave you the shots. You gave them back totally blink-less. I know that there was the one shot where she turns her head on a blink. That one caused you problems is there was no clean frame of her eye open to duplicate the eyes on there was no moment where the eyes were open at that exact angle, because her head was turning.

[Paul DeNigris]: 41:36

Right, because we naturally, when we blink or when we turn, we naturally blink to sort of skip the in-between to skip the camera move

[Paul Osborne]: 41:45

We add a cut...

[Paul DeNigris]: 41:47

And, um, and, and every take where she did it, she went from looking at looking at her husband to looking at her plate and she would blink on the move. Yeah, so on that particular one, we ended up using a face tracking tool and rebuilt her face as a CGI mesh a CG mesh and projected her face, basically took the footage that your camera saw, projected it onto that mesh, unwrapped it as a texture, then erased the blinks by painting over and then projected that back on top of the... Yeah, so that was a multi-stage. Uh, uh, effect. There were a couple of them like that, that in particular one was, was the hardest. The rest of them were, yeah, the rest of them were pretty straightforward because she was, you know, you can pick up the eyes from either side of the blink and do a, do like a morph between them. Yeah.

[Paul Osborne]: 42:45

exactly. A morph, a slight shift. And there were times that I would do I use a I'm cutting in the Avid, I would use fluid morph. And I would just cut out the blink and do it that way. She was fairly still. Her character was as written fairly robotic, hence the

[Paul DeNigris]: 43:00

Mm-hmm.[Paul Osborne]: no blinking and just there was

[Paul Osborne]: 43:04

kind of was very direct and she wouldn't move a lot. And so it was really fairly easy to place a few myself but that one is funny when she turned her head that weird model of her face you made the first thing you sent me. It was like, it was like, you've done like 18 versions, it still wasn't working. I'm like, you're like, damn it. And so you sent me the model of the face turning, but with nothing else no shot. It was just in a sea of blackness, this bizarre faces black floating through the darkness. I said that to her, by the way, that any explanation. I just wrote “you” and I sent it to the actress and... might have given her some nightmares.

[Paul DeNigris]: 43:44

Yeah, it is sort of nightmare fuel. It's sort of like somebody has peeled the face has it floating in 3D space. It's pretty uncanny. Yeah, that was a fun one to unpack how to do that. And also how to just make it look right because

[Paul Osborne]: 44:02

Yeah.

[Paul DeNigris]: 44:03

our eyes are, human eyes are so animated and audiences are conditioned, we are conditioned to look at each other's eyes when we're seeing people. people's faces, right? So it's almost impossible. You can't, when you're doing something to an actor's eyes, there's nothing to distract the audience. There's no, you can't go, oh, look over here while I pull some[Paul Osborne]: Right, shenanigans over here and hide this thing from you.

[Paul Osborne]: 44:28

Right.

[Paul DeNigris]: 44:29

Look at this lens flare. Like it doesn't work. Like

[Paul Osborne]: 44:32

and to the nature of the scene that this takes place in, it's a wide shot and there's no way to, I mean, this is a deep baseball into this movie without anybody having seen it, but it's really, yeah. But the way, the nature of that sequence, there's no way to cut to something else. She has to be on camera for that moment the entire time in this wide shot, you know? And yeah, fortunately, you were able to find a solve.

[Paul DeNigris]: 44:59

Yeah. Otherwise, we'd still be working on it.

[Paul Osborne]: 45:04

Otherwise, the whole let her blink, just let her blink. No, it's great. She just it's funny. People watch the movie and they don't they don't know why it unsettles them. Like, is something really off? And it's like, hopefully it's no one only. Well, they'll hear this and now they'll put together. But hopefully those that don't will go, oh, you know, there's something really up because we are used to we do look into this eyes and we are conditioned to. I mean, we're so innately familiar with what's human as human beings. And when we see something that's not quite. human, we read it quickly, you know. Someone doesn't blink when they turn their head, someone doesn't blink ever. That's, we recognize that as not, not right, not human. And that was the whole intent of that character. So.

[Paul DeNigris]: 45:55

like, so she would be changing the her expression on her face. So

[Paul Osborne]: 45:59

during the blink.[Paul DeNigris]: her mouth, her mouth and her eyebrows

[Paul DeNigris]: 46:04

that transition. So we're having to remove the, the blink, but keep the transition and, and have her eyes get slightly wider.

[Paul Osborne]: 46:14

Right,[Paul DeNigris]: or maybe just slightly as her face... right[Paul DeNigris]: more narrow right

[Paul DeNigris]: 46:17

yeah, so that, and to not trip us into the uncanny valley where you go, oh, what is that? That's weird, right? It should just be a cumulative effect of, you know, after you've watched the movie. I swear to god, that character never blinked. I have to watch it again.

[Paul Osborne]: 46:32

Yeah, exactly. Watch it 17 more times.

[Paul DeNigris]: 46:39

Yeah. Let's talk about the painting.

[Paul Osborne]: 46:40

Right, the painting, this was where I think we went from 25 to 50%. So in the film, there's a painting painted by one of the characters. And she's not a professional painter in the movie, but she is supposed to be talented. Like this is like something she can do well. And we wanted an original painting for this. So it was not key to the story, exactly, well not key, central. But we did have this needing to be done. And the way that it was done was I shared production designer duties and everything else I was doing with one of the producers. And he's a painter, and also a photographer. And he's like, you know, I'll take care of the painting, no problem. I'll take care of it. So but I just... schedule... things running amok. He was falling behind on it. And so he was actually creating the painting downstairs while we were lighting the scene. That's and it came on to set wet, like it was that like, we need that's it right. we got to shoot this thing. So we shot with this painting and it's in several scenes featured and also in the background. So it's just there, it's a presence in the scene. When we shot it, it was something that I think, and I'm not, my producer Jay, who is the one who painted it, he'll be the, I'm not throwing him under the bus, he'll be the first to admit, didn't really quite measure up to what we needed. Wasn't quite good enough. for this where this where this character is supposed to be. Doesn't sink the movie, but it was something that was problematic. And as I thought, well, this is something we can live with. But as we went along with new cuts and revisions and working on the film, all of us felt it was really kind of dragging it down like this is something it should be a better piece of art. So that it became all right, we need to find more money to have the great Paul DeNigris replaced this painting at about 40 shots. So that was the painting. And again, that's not something that's a fix it, exactly what it is. So we commissioned a piece of art that we were happy with, and, but it only existed as a digital piece of art. So you had to not only place it, you had to add a canvas texture to it. So it would look authentically in the space. You had to, you know, move it in 3D space to match it. whatever angle it was. And then you had to burn it. Burning was planned, but you had to burn your digital painting texture layer.

[Paul DeNigris]: 49:21

Absolutely. Yeah. And for the most part, it was relatively simple, right? It's a square canvas, planar track. Where it became a problem was you had your lead characters having a

[Paul Osborne]: 49:35

conversation right in front of the damn thing.[Paul DeNigris]: long conversation, including lots

[Paul DeNigris]: 49:42

hands do this fun thing where they motion blur and they almost disappear.

[Paul Osborne]: 49:47

Oh yeah.

[Paul DeNigris]: 49:48

in the texture of whatever's behind them as they're moving.

[Paul Osborne]: 49:52

And it wasn’t lit to be replaced. So it wasn't like we lit it with like a highlight or whatever to separate it. There's no, it's just, there's no separation. We weren't thinking we were gonna need to replace this painting at any point.

[Paul DeNigris]: 50:02

Yeah.

[Paul Osborne]: 50:02

So yeah, there's a few tricky shots with that with, or it's over the shoulder shots. One character has her hair up and there's wisps of hair dangling in front of that canvas. I'm sure that must've been a fun treat.

[Paul DeNigris]: 50:15

Yeah, so we had we had a fair bit of edge repair that we had to do on things and actually like rebuilding the fingers and all of that to get it to work. Yeah. But but again, it's the kind of thing that Yes, you say it didn't sink the movie, but the movie works so much better with that painting being

[Paul Osborne]: 50:35

Agreed. yeah[Paul DeNigris]: great. Yeah.

[Paul DeNigris]: 50:37

Right. The idea is it's supposed to be that she is... She's passionate enough and good enough at that, that's what she should be doing, but she's not. And that's part of the tragedy of the movie, yeah, is that she's not pursuing being an artist.

[Paul Osborne]: 50:55

Yes, exactly.[Paul DeNigris]: And if it's a bunch of stick That’s right. There are a lot of there are a lot of would be artists in the film and some of them we intentionally created bad art, like they well they're just not very good. But then some we wanted to be like, No, but this person actually is really good when I create kind of a spectrum, you know, which is all artists that there's a spectrum of seeing among non professional artists. So we had fun creating some bad art. And but that was one where it really needed to be like, she's like a little bit of a you know, she could do this. You know, and it would mean something if she could do this professionally, so.

[Paul DeNigris]: 51:27

Yeah,and that's the kind of stuff I love, regardless of how hard it is to fix edges and wispy hair and moving hands and all that stuff, it's my team and I being part of your team made your film visibly, viscerally better. right?[Paul Osborne]: Yeah, absolutely. And it's, when I say, and I would say, Yes, it's a cleanup, but really, it wasn't, it wasn't a, those weren't cleanup shots like, hey, there, you know, there's a C-Stand visible in the, in the, in the window and the reflection or, you know, that,

[Paul Osborne]: 52:05

Right.

[Paul DeNigris]: 52:06

that stuff, take it or leave it, you know, that any technician, any good visual effects technician should be able to do that stuff. It's where we get to help you better art direct your movie or better sell a story point.

[Paul Osborne]: 52:21

to better tell the tale

[Paul DeNigris]: 52:23

Exactly. That’s where I thrive.[Paul Osborne]: You know, we are all filmmakers. That's where I always want to be. I want to spend your VFX budget doing stuff that matters.

[Paul Osborne]: 52:38

I only want to spend money on VFX doing stuff that matters. So we're on the same team there.

[Paul DeNigris]: 52:43

Yeah, absolutely.[Paul Osborne]: But it's true, and this is true

[Paul Osborne]: 52:48

in your film is a collaborator. And everybody on your film, hopefully, is contributing, just telling the tale. Everybody is working as a filmmaker, and especially people who are in, especially your creative key positions. I think everybody I think down to your PA down to your craft service. Honestly, you know, I, I try to, you know, have everybody on set, feeling that they can contribute. And thus far, I've been lucky enough that they feel like they can and you know, they come up with good stuff. I don't care who comes up with the best idea. Let's all make this thing together. But certainly, you know, it's important to stress that once shooting wraps, your visual effects people, your sound people your designer, your mixer, your color people, these are all, they're all, they're there to help you do the final rewrite of the film. They're there to make the film, not just prettier, better, creatively, story-wise. That painting, replacing that painting changes and improves the story, period. Stripping out those weird ass, making the mall look bizarre and soulless and dead, that's contributing to the story. That says something it didn't say before, you know? That it wouldn't have said if you'd not brought that to the table, you know? So, exactly. And that's, you know, and thank you for coming on board to doing that because that makes the film better.

[Paul DeNigris]: 54:22

Yeah, and it's always a pleasure to play on your movies because you are that open collaborator. I can say, hey, what if we try this? And there’s plenty of times when I throw something out and you're like, nah, I'm not concerned about that or no, that's not gonna work, right? And that's a director's job, right?[Paul Osborne]: Yeah, you basically, yeah, it's to take, it's to field all the ideas and which ones work on

[Paul Osborne]: 54:45

this story. You have to kind of know what hangs on the spine. Like I said I get to take credit for it afterwards. So, I get to stand there at the Q&A and say, yes, that was my idea. No, I don't at all. But, yeah, it's absolutely true. It's like, you know, what does hang on the vine? There are things often that, that I come up with that don't people go, that's not gonna work. You can't, you're telling this like, okay.

[Paul DeNigris]: 55:16

Yeah. Right on. So we don't know when Fluorescent Beast will be hitting festivals.

[Paul Osborne]: 55:23

We do not. It was, yeah, we're in the whole submission land right now. You wanna make some phone calls? Wanna call some festival directors and send some threatening emails or bribes. I hear bribes are good. Yeah, no, it's just a wait and see at this point, see what happens. I mean, that's something that unfortunately is just part of the process. Um, even when you know the festival people, you send it into them and they, there's a festival, uh, programmers have this cone of silence that they kind of go into when they're programming because

[Paul DeNigris]: 56:00

Mm-hmm.

[Paul Osborne]: 56:01

they never know what can happen. And so even if they love your movie and, and they want to play it right away, they still don't talk to you until it's time to announce. So at least they don't talk to me. I don't know if it maybe, maybe you found a different story.

[Paul DeNigris]: 56:13

Hey, you made a movie, and you can do a quick plug on this, you made a movie about the festival circuit, didn't you?

[Paul Osborne]: 56:19

I did make a movie about the film festival circuit called Official Rejection, which came out in 2009, because I am 100,000 years old now. That's also available on Prime, I believe, free, if you’re a member. And there's a nice DVD with all kinds of special features floating around about that one. But yeah, that one was talking about the festival circuit at the time. I still think it's a fairly good primer on the festival circuit. But I... It's funny, I think the circuit's gotten a lot tougher. Lately, I think, you know, it's part of that is streamers have realized this is a good place to launch films and an easy way for them for films that they're putting out to get theatrical play. That they wouldn't normally get they can say to this film because we're not going to do a theatrical release, but we'll play is at a festival. And so they're, of course, they're going for top tier festivals for the most part, but they're already these sort of awards type studio movies taking those places and a lot of vanity projects from celebrities taking places in those. And now a streamer is putting all of their wares in those festivals and also all of their pilots for shows into those festivals. It's sort of really pushing down and creating fewer and fewer spots. So I've noticed a number of filmmakers that have been, you know, made multiple films on the festival circuit, not being able to get any movies on the circuit now. We're getting very few festival dates. It's become very difficult. So fingers crossed we get in. But not to be a Debbie Downer there, but it has become a much tougher circuit and the politics have changed a little bit as well. So when I watch Official Rejection, yeah, some of this is still true. And some of this, I might've come at a different way or there might be new politics to... place in there, some addendums to things like premiere status that might be more useful. So I think at this point, it's the film festival circuit was like 14 years ago.

[Paul DeNigris]: 58:28

It's hard to believe it's been that long. Paul and I know each other since Ten ‘Til Noon, that film that's behind him played at Phoenix Film Festival in 2006.

[Paul Osborne]: 58:39

2006, my God, dude.[Paul DeNigris]: yeah,

[Paul DeNigris]: 58:42

it's crazy.

[Paul Osborne]: 58:43

That's crazy. Yeah, but Official Rejection is so old that they're sending in VHS screeners to festivals in the mail. Like, I think it's that old. It's shocking.

[Paul DeNigris]: 58:55

Yeah, not only do we not send things by the mail, but who's got a VHS anymore?

[Paul Osborne]: 59:00

It was like, what do I need a doorstop?

[Paul DeNigris]: 59:03

Yeah. All right, so what's the plan, whether it hits festivals or not, what's the distribution plan for Fluorescent Beast?

[Paul Osborne]: 59:14

Well, well, we'll see again, it's sort of an uneventful answer. We're seeing wait and see what happens with the festival circuit because the festival circuit can change the way your film is perceived. And that changes how we pursue distribution. What I like to do is while we're playing the festival circuit, while we're generating, you know, Googleable things, reviews, articles, press, play dates, which sort of leverage that attention for distribution for distributors. And so if that doesn't happen, we have to come out distributors a different way. But there are ways to do it. And you know, now that I'm living in the UK, there are a lot of here, specifically, there's a rash of neighborhood independent theaters all over the city, all in all the different boroughs town and that are half their screens are dedicated to larger films or large to current releases, half dedicated to older releases in independent films. And so it is possible potentially to mount some sort of release in London, you know, and use that to leverage. So there's all kinds of different, we'll have to see, there's a couple, there's some plans forming, but a friend of mine, Lucas McNally, he has a film called Up Country. And he, which this'll blow your mind. He shot it in 2010. He just finished it. So that'll show you how long it goes. He finished it last year. He submitted it to festivals. I don't think it got into really any that he wanted to get into. So he pulled it. And what he did was he just he's in Maine. He's a local Maine guy. And there's no independent film infrastructure in Maine, at least that he's aware of. Because of that, when he four walls his film in a local theater in Maine. he can get into the big newspapers and not just in his hometown, he can get into them in the Maine papers and Bangor and all the other Maine cities. And so he's done that and he sold out the screening and now because of that other theaters are contacting him and he's mounting a very strategized Maine theatrical distribution for this movie. And from the one screening is already in the black on the film. So he's now mounting this and he's using that to now drive DVD sales, Blu-ray sales and create promotion for VOD. And this is sort of, you know, how he's doing it. So there's there always more than one way to skin the cat and always a different way to come at it. But him watching him leverage that to me is very inspiring to come at it a different way. And to use the uniqueness of his situation to drive the film, because ultimately, that's what separates you from the deluge of independent films is how are you separate? What's your what's your... What's your currency? Because whatever makes you unique is your currency. And that's how, there's a way to find out what that is and thread the needle on getting your film out there to the world.

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:02:22

That's a great way to look at it. And also really awesome advice for any independent filmmakers who, uh, who may be watching this. Yeah. And on that topic,[Paul Osborne]: And on that topic. what is one piece of advice that you would give to independent filmmakers or any filmmaker at any budget level who maybe isn't experienced with visual effects, but thinks, you know, I really need VFX to tell this story. What's, what's one piece of advice you would, you would share with them as they embark on that.

[Paul Osborne]: 1:02:52

Oh my God, plan, and don't plan alone. Plan with your visual effects artist, right? It's plan with them. Don't dictate, don't, just plan. Here's what I wanna do. That's it, and come up with a game plan with as much time as you have, as much advanced time as you have, and as much, and as detailed, and as thoroughly as you can plan. Plans will always come asunder. Things will always change. The more you plan, the more completely you plan, the better you can change those plans when things happen. And working with your visual effects artists ahead of time, working with them before you get into set. One, they're gonna be better prepared to give you what you need, and you're gonna be better prepared to give them what they need to give you what you need. But also, you're investing them in the process. Things do go awry, they feel that they're a valued contributor to this, they're gonna give you more. People who are motivated, people like... visual effects artists are creative people. If you engage them creatively, you're going to get more out of them. That's simply what it is.

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:04:12

Great answer. So what's next for you, Paul? What projects do you have in the pipeline?

[Paul Osborne]: 1:04:19

Well, I am currently developing a new film that will be shot in the UK, with a combination of UK and US actors. And we're just sort of still figuring it out, but leaning towards sort of quirky murder mystery. We'll see where that goes. But it's still honestly, it's still in the germinal stages of figuring it out. It's sort of like elements keep presenting themselves. I'm like, oh, how do I incorporate that into the stew? You know? trying to strike inspiration from the things around you and going, okay, well, how does that work in? I have found something I've learned as a writer is that when I find things that interest me at the moment or interest me at the time, or things that are worrying their way into my life that I have an authentic reaction to, in finding ways to weave those into the story, I get a much more authentic feeling tale out of it. That's what it seems to me. Like, you know, Fluorescent Beast is an odd series of elements, but my frustrations are in there. And that's sort of where I do my best work. So honestly, it's figuring out the stew right now.

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:05:31

Well, I'm looking forward to whatever shape the stew takes and whatever ingredients I can help contribute.

[Paul Osborne]: 1:05:38

Well, me too.

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:05:42

Where can people find out more about what Paul Osborne is up to?

[Paul Osborne]: 1:05:46

Ah, well, you can follow me on all the socials, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I'm @PaulMakesMovies on all of those. That's it, find me on the socials, you'll find me.

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:05:58

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for taking the time, Paul. It's always a pleasure to talk to you and you are incredibly knowledgeable about independent film because you've been at this for so long. And I hope that that's not an old joke. I've also been at this for so long. But anyway, I hope that our audience got a lot out of this. I think that all independent filmmakers out there could learn a lot from Paul Osborne. So thank you, thank you, thank you

[Paul Osborne]: 1:06:27

Thank youy for having me, and thank you for[Paul DeNigris]: for being part of this for all the love. And thank you for looking exactly like me and having my same name. I think that all your guests should look like this and be named Paul.

[Paul DeNigris]: 1:06:37

Yes, it's a special filter that we apply in post. Thanks so much for joining us on today's episode of the VFX for Indies podcast. You can find transcripts, images and other cool stuff at our website. VFXforIndies.com. If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe, follow like rate review comment on either YouTube or your favorite podcast app. On behalf of everyone at Foxtrot X-Ray, I'm chief pixel pusher Paul DeNigris and we all thank you so much for your support of the show. See you next time.