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!

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

Paul DeNigris: 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 you see on the poster behind him, cruel hearts and the upcoming fluorescent beast.

Welcome to the podcast, Paul. Oh, thanks Paul. Thanks for having me right on. I appreciate you taking a time out of your busy schedule. Paul lives on the other side of the world in England. He used to be an Angelino, but he moved to England a couple of years ago. And We we connect when we can, when the, when we can time the time zones correctly.

But we recently wrapped up a last little bit of work on Florescent Beast, a film that that you shot, what, three years ago now?

Paul Osborne: Pre pandemic? Yeah, we wrapped it up in May

Paul DeNigris: of 2019. Oh, okay. So almost, so four years ago now. Give us a,

the joys of independent filmmaking, right? Everything takes longer than it's supposed

Paul Osborne: to.

Paul DeNigris: Before we dive into the projects that we've collaborated on, Cruel Hearts and Florissant Beasts, just give our viewers a quick overview of who you are, what you do your position in the industry, where your career is at.

Paul Osborne: My position on the bottom 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. Then I wrote and produced another one 10 till noon that you mentioned earlier.

Yeah, I don't know. I moved two years ago from Los Angeles to London with my my wife and son. And I just, I've been around the block, I've done, I started in production worked in the production department, did props, did camera, did sound went to post production, ton of editing, some feature editing, and then flopped over where I wanted to go, which is the writing side.

And after a lot of time 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: So neither of the films that, 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. we can, 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. Yeah, give us a just give us a quick overview of cruel hearts and and what it was about and how we use visual effects in that film.

Paul Osborne: As you say, like these are not the typical visual effects movies. Cruel Hearts is a character driven, dramatic thriller. It's, when you're making 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.

Trailer: In movies, in the spaceship or the villain's lair, there's always this auto self destruct switch, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, people have those. Every single person has a self destruct switch. Where

were you last night? Excuse me? Don't want to answer the question. You do what you gotta do, and so will I. I'm I've been sleeping with your wife.

Paul Osborne: Write good dialogue, get good actors, and then You have something. So yeah, 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, there's, there are bursts of violence, there's the guisual gunshot, the, the case of sport of blood, those sorts of things.

And. On a limited budget it's 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, but even when you're intending to, when you, the plans, things are going according to plan yeah, a lot of it's still there.

And also there's the second aspect of it as a sort of the things you can clean up in production, things that go wrong in production, the hazel 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, things that would pull the audience out of it.

If you weren't able to fix it. So the yeah, the intentional effects and the unintentional fixes that come to post production.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. That's pretty much the two big categories that we work in pretty much what we call cleanup. And then, yeah, more hero effects. So what problems, and I know this is a while back where we're going back into deep into history.

Not that far, not that long ago. Not that far. But it, everything before the pandemic feels like it was a million years ago. That's true. back in the BC era. Yeah. Yeah. In the before times.

Paul Osborne: So you wanna know

Paul DeNigris: what, what sort of went wrong? Yeah, so there were, I know there were obviously there were some things that, that are in your face, right? The gunshots and things like that, and some of the blood enhancement, but then there are other things where they're, it's 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 because it will cost too much to deal with the cleanup and the turnaround and all of that sort of stuff.

What are some of the things that we helped you that VFX helped you solve?

Paul Osborne: On that film, we had, it's a noir thriller. We've got the gunshots, we've got the double crosses and the bang, bangs, and it happened. And as far as the, 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 the muzzle flashes later. That was always our plan rather than bringing in an armor 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 a, any kind of round it's, it's dangerous.

So that was always planned, but what we did plan to do on set was I'll be. Practically. And, as what happens as this happens, I have another 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 onset visual effects, people handling the blood effects, handling the squibs, handling the spurts, we're not really up to snuff.

Part of that's budgetary in terms of finding people who are experienced, who work on your budget. And part of it's also a budget of time. You don't have, you need to budget in two to three times as long to shoot a scene if you're going to have blood effects. Often they take time to get right. They don't work.

You have to reset, you have to change your 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, there were certain blood hits that weren't working squibs that weren't working. And, in the end we got what we got on set, but it meant coming to our post visual effects people, you, to to hopefully to fix them.

Hat in the hand going please fix them. It was 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 a blood splat against the wall that had to be added. There was a chest that had to be added.

There's one character who is lying on the ground and riddled with blood. 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.

It is a creative process. And. The word is always the last rewrite of the film is always the edit. The last rewrite 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 they 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, that ended up Oh yeah let's try that. We have the, if you wouldn't mind us, 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.

Cause I think we wanted to add a little bit of blood in the carpet. And 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, 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 of it in favor.

It's also happened in the movie favor with a guy being stabbed and the visual effects artist decided to have the blood. I splatted the screen, splat towards camera. And 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 said it to me as a joke, but it was amazing. I'm like, that's a terrific, like almost wink at the audience. And so we kept it in. Sometimes us VFX guys, we have to do stuff just to amuse ourselves. I know there's one vision. There's one moment that also in, in Croix, I don't know if you remember this, but the blood spread, the character is addressing camera, is dressing The character's 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's just slowly, the life is leaving his eyes. It's a very quiet moment. The blood just slows and stops. And he said 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. Okay. What? It stops shit that no, that's you like it. You're buying it. Good. Okay.

Paul DeNigris: That wasn't intentional. 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 that if I remember correctly, you were like let's start it just as it reaches the level of his eyes, right?

So that's. Yeah, that's, that sounds like me, Paul. That's not like me. So it was a happy accident. And then it was a bit of art direction and yeah. Try doing that with a practical blood spread. It was

Paul Osborne: a creative urge from you, an accident from wherever. And then a note from me.

Paul DeNigris: Great. And that's. That's the that's the joy of independent filmmaking at every stage, right? At every stage.

Paul Osborne: In filmmaking, I think, in general, like there were things in we'll get to Fluorescent Beasts in a moment, but there were things in Fluorescent Beasts where you were suggesting we should do this, we should do this, we should try this.

And that's honestly 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, come with ideas. And again, visual effects are often thought about as a last stage. And they really ought not.

Paul DeNigris: 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 what you how you could deploy VFX to fix some of these issues, the, defective squibs and whatnot. Is that the case where, favor really influenced the process on cruel.

I think

Paul Osborne: every film you make is influences the films that come after it. You're always learning. But I think I learned more on cruel hearts from you because the crew, the problems on cruel hearts were more pronounced, and solving those problems, making those, those blood, 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, 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.

But yeah, you learn in every film. Favors certainly taught me some things, but Cruel Hearts was a much more extensive job.

Paul DeNigris: 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. Yep. And then, and so you had us add the cracks in the tile, but then also split his knuckles.

Yeah. So where did that, was that something that you thought of In production or was it only after you saw it in the cut

Paul Osborne: that you Oh, it was after we saw it, it just, it didn't read what we had done on set at all. It didn't read, it was too subtle. And so I'm like, you got to help me sell this Elvis thing.

That, that looks, those knuckles look terrific. We had like blood on them, but it was nothing. So again, learning curve, you go this'll be fine. And then you put it up on a 60 foot screen and you go, no, it's not at all. You need a lot more there. Yeah.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. And 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, Ugh, you cringe.

Like it looks painful.

Paul Osborne: It's great. Because the thing was

Paul DeNigris: just blood smeared on his neck, right? Yeah.

Paul Osborne: This, that was just, little blood situation where we had a location and we couldn't. Go forward to have him actually build a fake wall and have him punch it, have him crack it. That's what it was.

So we had to punch, we had to punch it so he's punching a pillow. That's what he's doing. Yeah. And the whole idea is when you cut back to be looks, he realizes what he's done. You're looking at his face while he's doing the punching and he cut back and you see what he's done to himself.

And that had to read and thankfully, thanks to you, it, it does. But yeah, but it wasn't reading enough and you have to really punch it a lot more. And so what's something else we learned going forward is any day you have anything like that, you have a very salty and experienced visual effects artist a, or a makeup person does makeup effects.

You have them on set.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. And a lot of the work that we do when it comes to blood or anything like that is. It's a combination of the efforts of us in post and the efforts of folks on set, it's I always, whenever I'm talking about this stuff where it's, we're fixing blood or we're fixing makeup, 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 the limits of their ability based on time and money, right? And 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. I can do that on set. You're burning money. You're burning daylight. You're, 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, so I want people to understand if, as I watch this, what I do, what visual effects artists do is never a replacement. For good, practical special effects makeup. We're an enhancement.

Paul Osborne: Exactly. And that will, that, and honestly, that's the way it should be. If you in the low budget world, it's always, the first thing is to find someone who can work with your budget, who's either experienced, whether it's professionally or professionally.

on their own, but can really deliver what you need. But even then there are limitations. There are time limitations and money limitations. If you, 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, someone's getting machete 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 going to go through them. But also if you do think you're going to need, you're going to go, if you plan ahead and go, we're going to need visual effects to help us with this post production visual effects, help us with this.

It's always important to talk to your visual effects person. person, your post visual effects person, I should say, and say what do you need me to give you to create this? Like we're doing, we're going to do, I got to get in shot in the head. There's something that we just did in the last film.

I got to get in shot in the head. And so we're going to have, we'll have, makeup effects, put a bullet hole in his head and know what we're going to have, we want it to appear when he gets shot in the shot. 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, and shooting the 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, a practical light flash on his face that replicates the gun flash, 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 effects.

Absolutely. From my experience.

Paul DeNigris: 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. The actor has the wound already. We heal it and then reveal it when the gunshot goes. Heal and reveal. Heal and

Paul Osborne: reveal.

But we know there were other things that we had a fire effect on the last film. And, it was a question of how, what elements do we give you for that? And, those sorts of things. Yeah, again,

Paul DeNigris: We're going to get to fluorescent beast in a second. I want to wrap up our conversation.

Sure. Sorry. I'm Bob. That's totally fine. So it sounds to me, and I think we've 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 takeaways from the process of cruel hearts that cascaded into the next movie.

What's something, what's one example that maybe we haven't covered yet of something that you, 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: I honestly, it was the, it was all the blood stuff. It was really making sure we 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. And 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 headshot in curl, which we were trying to get right.

And I said to you he said, what do you think? I said 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 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 at that point, I think we didn't have anything. made. I think you ended up stealing something from the other, another scene that was bloody and clothy and whatever, and applying it. If I'm, I could be misremembering that, but you can correct me, but that's really my biggest takeaway.

And I, we had a lot of conversations about the things on the next one for us. It'd be like, this is what I want to do. This is how I want to shoot it. What do I got to 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 want to just shoot a thing and expect a magic wand.

to create whatever. There will be plenty of those. When we get to the rest of this, we can talk about a couple of magical moments that had yet to pull out of your butt, but 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. That's something you do. You shoot the actor, you draw the blinds, you shoot the actor steps out, Okay. You open the blinds, you shoot the exact same angle with the blind open with nothing in it, for 30 seconds or however long, and 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 want to do things.

A lot of this goes back just to as much preparation as possible. Unfortunately, as of yet, you will attest, I have never done enough prep. When it comes to things 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: no one ever does enough prep, right?

It doesn't matter how much prep you do. It's never,

Paul Osborne: there's so many, there's so many on the day factors. 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 location. That location's gone.

Paul DeNigris: 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 correct. Plans are, planning is invaluable. Plans themselves generally are useless.

All so where can let's just wrap up Cruel Hearts. Sure. What was its festival life going into distribution and then where can people watch it right now?

Paul Osborne: It's it did about 10 festivals, won a few awards. Came out on Valentine's Day, Cruel Arts, which that was an odd choice.

I was on the, it was on the romance page of iTunes, so that was weird. Who's gonna, who's gonna, who's gonna go to the romance section and want to watch a film with You watch trailers, look at the poster. I think it should have been in the thrill and the thriller section on Valentine's day, but Gravitas Ventures put it out with our second film out with them.

And right now you can get it on. You can buy it all the the pay VOD flavors, iTunes and so forth. But I believe it's streaming on on Amazon. If you're a member for free it's on Tubi for free for anyone with commercials. So if you want to watch it for free, Check it out on Tubi.

And it might be on freebie. I'm not sure. And there's also a Blu ray edition running around somewhere.

Paul DeNigris: It's a great movie. And thank you. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. I wish I wish we had been able to do even more on it. Cause it was a blast working on it. And and the cast you put together was fantastic.

Oh, thanks Ben. Including including Melora Harden from The Office. Who's an absolute sweetheart. I I don't know if I ever told you. I reached out to Malora when my nephew my nephew, Joseph turned 18.

Trailer: No, he's

Paul DeNigris: the biggest fan of the office I could possibly find. And so I reached out to Malora.

I said, Hey, more, remember me? I did VFX on cruel on Paul Osborne's movie, cruel hearts. And my, my nephew is a massive fan of the office. Could you could you record him a little video for For his birthday and she sent just the sweetest video. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. She was just an absolute angel.

Sang a song and and good and kit 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, Oh,

Paul Osborne: that's great. She's, I've learned to do nothing but a sweetheart, but I was a painter. Yeah, 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 Birkbeck International Film Festival actually in a few months. And so she'll be touring around that soon. So it's nice. It's an all Malora movie.

Paul DeNigris: Very

Paul Osborne: cool. Yeah.

Paul DeNigris: Very cool. The fact that you were able to attract her among other just wonderful actors just speaks to your writing.

And then the fact that she didn't say she didn't tell me to beat it when I asked her for a favor. You guys must've treated her well.

Paul Osborne: I hope so. I've she still returns my calls and texts. So I hope so. All

Paul DeNigris: right, so cool. Let's move on to fluorescent beast, which is which is. It's the film that that you recently finished and the new one, give us a quick synopsis of this one. It's to me, it's feels very different than previous ones.

Paul Osborne: It is. 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, like a different thing. So the plot is basically about this kind of middle management. worker guy is working for a big corporation, this generic job, 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 isn't even told what it's about. He's 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 got to put together what these are, 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 turned out so well for him.

Trailer: You wanted to see me? Someone high up has requested a meeting with you. You've been summoned. Nelson Shell? You are Nelson Shell. Yes? I have a task for you to perform, Shell. It may or may not be easy, it may or may not be pleasant, but it must be done. Don't forget to let out the dog. Do you know what you are?

Yeah! Do you think you're a man? Yeah. You are not a man. You. Yeah. Are a cog.

Paul Osborne: I'm sorry I'm a what? A cog. That's the plot. What it's about is I like to say that it's 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,

Paul DeNigris: that's

Paul Osborne: 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: Florescent Bees feels a bit to me like. What if the Coen brothers directed Office Space?

Paul Osborne: Oh, wow. Okay, please. Please, that's going to go 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

Paul DeNigris: brothers and Office Space. No.

Obviously I'm a big fan of Paul Osborne. And I think it's I think it's just a great film. Piece of filmmaking, my involvement, completely regardless, i, it's, It is a great watch, and it is

Paul Osborne: Oh, thank you!

Paul DeNigris: I've watched it a couple of times, and it asks some really interesting questions.

And and again, the acting is stellar.

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

Paul DeNigris: Great. So how did how did the process of getting visual effects? incorporated into your workflow? How is the process on fluorescent bees different than cruel hearts? Again, taking the lessons from cruel hearts forward. What did we do differently? There

Paul Osborne: were a couple of key scenes that we knew we were going to need post visual effects for, and there was some gunshots some some blood, but the.

One big thing was a fire sequence. We have a scene where someone's burning something like something large and they're standing 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 and multiple angles with one camera.

I want to 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 want to poison her child with carbon dioxide. So that, that was a big conversation we had is how to make that look because it's, we weren't going to, 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 you were, you, we ended up going a different way with it. 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, it'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 pressure, invisible pressure plates and it pops open. And the prop guy was making the thing and he's 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 we're going to have in post, we're going to have the seam appear like a crack in a piece of wood.

It's being stressed. So there were things like that, that we had discussed in advance. I had long conversations about how to shoot them and what was needed. And so that was the. 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 certainly what we shot to cover those effects.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah, I would say Cruel Hearts, the balance between creative shots and Fix it shots, clean up shots was probably about 50 50. Yeah, and I think on fluorescent beast It was more like 25 percent clean up 75 percent creative That's just my

Paul Osborne: god We gonna talk about the painting stuff because those are that was we can't I mean we sir.

That's cleanup. I Think that throws your balance back to more to 5050 Yeah, probably. Yeah, probably. It

Paul DeNigris: was, it felt like we put more energy, certainly lots more energy up front. We did creative shots. Yeah. Because you were already thinking along those lines, you already knew. Here's what we're, here's what we're capable of. Or you ask the question, how, Paul, how the hell do we do this?

Paul Osborne: Correct. Yeah. And there were several small visual effect moments. The film, again, it's a surreal black comedy. There are odd things that, that happen and there's a garbage can.

is a memo in the film that keeps being passed around as this important piece of, it's a, it's important memo, it's a red letter. It's a, 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 and discards it as if it's nothing.

And it's never even opened. It's a whole, Joke about his useless paperwork and whatever, blah, 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 like it's a sort of sizzle and then almost explode.

in there. And that was something that again, that was a, a conversation that you and I had how we were going to do it. And it ended up being an odd mixture of things. Basically we had the garbage can sitting there as a shot of the garbage can, just sitting, on the floor, dark nothing visible in it.

The letters 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 the trashcan was full of light. I did a simple dissolve, had it go, had it suddenly flare up. And then you took that. And that had a whole like Vietnam napalm thing, which is hilarious.

A little curl of

Paul DeNigris: smoke. But again, we knew in

Paul Osborne: 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 for what you needed. I, hopefully you weren't left wanting.

There were a few other situations where you follow this as this falls into accidental or this falls into creative, but things that we change when you saw the movie for example, the scene where he goes to a mall and you had, you suggested, why don't we remove. All the names of all the stores, not because they weren't cleared.

We have multiple names of 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 got 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. It doesn't exist. And replaced it with that. So it was all seemed otherworldly, whether does that fall into accidental is that fall into creative? I think it falls into creative, but again, it's not the thing 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 or the occasional wire that you remove, but I think most of it was that stuff until the painting.

Paul DeNigris: 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 fluorescent 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: Yes,

Paul DeNigris: am I remembering correctly and we deposited somebody crossing? Yes, so that you we could hide a cut, right? Yeah, that was an early example And then I think in fluorescent beast if i'm not mistaken, didn't we adjust the timing between?

actors At one point or adjust the, we had actors in different takes.

Paul Osborne: Yes. So we in the same shot we pulled something up. Yeah. No, it was two actors singing in the same shot. We, there were a number of of simple picture and picture effects that were done on the film that you weren't even involved with.

Because we can, like we, we had two characters. We had two characters played by the same actor, for example, in a couple of scenes. And we just, would put the camera down. And shoot one on one side and then one on the other side. And just, as long as the camera doesn't move, it's easy to do a composite.

You just split it. You can do that in the editing tool. There was one situation and there were a few like 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? Is it's the same where lead character and his wife are on the couch.

And the, yeah, I ended up the, I think 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, a pillow shift or something. There was some shift in it and you had to go 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: And then we also had, you decided you wanted one of the characters to never blink.

Paul Osborne: Oh, I forgot about

Paul DeNigris: that. That was a fun challenge.

Paul Osborne: That was a fun challenge. That was one we knew we were going to do. That was the set was in the script stage that she never blinks.

And You never see her eyes closed. That was the idea. And it's funny, I made the mistake of telling her that, which made her try to not blink, and 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, how much, it didn't seem like it was that much, it was no trouble on my end.

I gave it the shots and gave them back totally blinkless. I know that there was the one shot where she turns her head, on a blink. That one caused you problems because 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: Yeah. Yeah. But because we naturally, when we blink or when we turn, we naturally blink to skip the in between to skip the camera move.

Paul Osborne: We add a cut.

Paul DeNigris: We add a cat. Yeah. And and every take where she did it, she went from looking at her husband to looking at her plate and she would blink on the move.

Paul Osborne: And it was a wide shot. There was no way to get around it.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. So on that particular one, we ended up using a face tracking tool and rebuilt her face. 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 blanks by painting over and then projected that back on top of the, yeah.

So it was, that was a multi stage effect. There were a couple of them like that, that in particular one was the hardest. The rest of them were, yeah, the rest of them were pretty straightforward. You can pick up the eyes from either side of the blink and do a do a morph

Paul Osborne: a slight.

Yeah, exactly. I'm more of a slight shift. Yeah. And there were times that I would do it. I use a I'm cutting in the other. 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 no blinking, and so there was a lot of not, she wouldn't, she was, I it was very direct, and she wouldn't move a lot, and it was really fairly, it took a few myself, but that one, it was funny, when she turned her head, that weird model of her face she made, the first thing you sent me, It was like you'd done like 18 versions and it still wasn't working.

I was 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 face is floating through the darkness. I sent that to her, by the way, without any explanation. I just wrote you and I sent it to the actress and she just, I may have given her some nightmares.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah, it is. It is nightmare fuel. It's like where somebody is. Somebody's peeled the face off and just has it floating in 3d space. It's pretty uncanny. Yeah, that was that was a fun one to unpack how to do that and also how to just make it look right. Because 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'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. You, there's no, you can't go, Oh, look over here while I pull some shenanigans over here and hide this thing from you, look at this lens flare.

Like it doesn't work. No. And to the.

Paul Osborne: And to the nature of the scene that this takes place in, it's a wide shot and there's no way to, this is a deep baseball into this movie without anybody having seen it, but it's really yet, but the way that nature of that sequence, there's no way, 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, and Yeah, fortunately you were able to find a solve Otherwise we'd still be working Otherwise the whole let her blink just let her blink. No, it's great She's it's funny people watch the movie and they don't unsettles them like there's something really off and it's like Hopefully it's they'll hear this and now they'll put it together.

But hopefully those that don't will, will go, Oh, there's something really off because we are used to, we do look at each other's eyes and we aren't conditioned to, 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.

Someone who doesn't blink when they turn their head, someone doesn't blink ever. That's, we recognize that as not not human. And that was the whole intent of that character.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. And it was, and there were times when her expression would change, like the, so she would be changing the, her the expression on her face during the blink.

Her mouth. Her mouth and her eyebrows are changing. And the blink is happening during that transition. So we're having to remove the blink, but keep the transition. And have her eyes get slightly wider, slightly more narrow, right? 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, after you've watched the movie, I swear to God, that character never blinked. I have to watch it again. Exactly.

Paul Osborne: So 17 more times. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about the painting. The painting. This was where I think it went, 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. This is like something she can do well.

And we wanted her, we needed an original painting for this. It was not key to the story exact. Not key central. But we did have this meeting to be done and the way that it was done was I shared a production designer duties and just everything else I was doing with one of the producers.

And. He's a painter and also a photographer and he's I'll take care of the painting. No problem. I'll take care of it. 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, 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 don't, I, my producer Jay, who is the one who painted it he'll be the, I'm not throwing him under the bus or 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 character is supposed to be doesn't sink the movie, but it was something that was problematic. And as I thought there's something maybe we can live with, but as we went along with new cuts and revisions and working on the film, all of us felt that it was really dragging it down.

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 Denegris laughs replaced his painting in about 40 shots. That was the painting. And again, that's not something that's a fix it.

That's exactly what it is. 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, move it in 3D space to match it, fit whatever angle it was.

And then you had to burn it, which

The burning was planned, but you had to burn. Your digital painting texture layer.

Paul DeNigris: 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: conversation right in front of long

Paul DeNigris: conversation, including lots of hand gestures directly in front of it.

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

Paul Osborne: Oh yeah.

Paul DeNigris: In the texture of whatever's behind them as they're moving. And it wasn't lit

Paul Osborne: to be replaced, so it wasn't like we lit it with a highlight or whatever to separate it. There's no, it's just, there's no separation.

We weren't thinking we were going to need to replace this painting at any point. Yeah. 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: Yeah. So we had a fair bit of edge repair that we had to do on things and actually like rebuilding the fingers and and all of that to get it to work. Yeah. 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 a great.

Yeah. Yeah. The idea is it's supposed to be that she is. Yeah. She's passionate enough and good enough at that's what she should be doing, but she's not doing that's part of the, it's part of the tragedy of the movie. Yeah. Is that she's not pursuing being an artist. Yes, exactly. And if it's a bunch of stick figures, you'd

Paul Osborne: just go no great loss.

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 they're just not very good, but then some, we wanted to be like, no, but. This person actually is really good. We want to create a spectrum, which is all artists that there's a spectrum, especially among non professional artists.

So we had fun creating some bad art, but that was one where it really needed to be like, she's like a little bit of a, like she could do this. And it would mean something if she could do this professionally.

Paul DeNigris: 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.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's What when I say and I would say Yes, it's a cleanup. But really It wasn't a, those weren't cleanup shots like, Hey, there, there's a C stand visible in the window, in the reflection or, that that stuff, take it or leave it, any technician, any good visual effects technician should be able to do that stuff.

It's where we get to help you better art director movie or better sell a story point to better tell

Paul Osborne: the tale. Exactly. We are all filmmakers.

Paul DeNigris: That, yeah that's where I always want to be is I want to spend, I want to spend your VFX budget doing stuff that matters, right?

Paul Osborne: I want to I only want to spend money on VFX doing stuff that matters.

So we're on the same team there, but it's true. And this is true for, with independent film, every, everybody working on your film is a collaborator. Absolutely. You guys are great. And everybody on your film, hopefully is contributing. It's telling the tale. Everybody on, is working as a filmmaker.

And especially people who adding in, who are in, especially your creative key positions, I think everybody, I think down to your PA, down to your craft service, honestly I try to, have everybody on set feeling, feeling that they can contribute. And thus far I've been lucky enough that they feel like they can, and 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, it's important to stress that once shooting wraps, your visual effects people, your sound people, your sound designer, your mixer your color people. These are all, they're all, they're there to help you do the final reroute 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. Absolutely. Stripping out those weird ass making them all look bizarre and soulless and dead. That's contributing to the story.

That says something it didn't say before, that I wouldn't have said, have you not brought that to the table? Exactly. And that's, and thank you for coming on board to doing that, because that makes the film.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. And it's always a pleasure to play on your movies because you are that open, that open collaborator, I can say, Hey, what if we try this and I get to take 20 times when I.

I throw something out and you're like, yeah, no, we're not, I'm not concerned about that or no, that's not going to work. And that's a director's job, right? Yeah. You basically,

Paul Osborne: yeah. It's to take, it's to feel all the ideas and which ones work on this story. You have to know what hangs on the spine.

And I said, I get to take credit for it afterwards. So absolutely. I'm good. I'm good with that. I get to stand there and say, yes, that was my idea. No, I don't at all. But but yeah it's absolutely true. It's you what does hang on the vine? There are things often that I come up with that don't and people go, yeah, that's not going to work.

You can't, you're telling this oh, okay.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. Right on. So we don't know, we don't know when Florissant Beast will be hitting festivals.

Paul Osborne: We do not. It was yeah we're in the whole submission. You want to make some phone calls? When I call some festival directors and send some threatening emails and or bribes, I hear bribes are good.

Yeah, no, it's just a wait and see at this point, see what happens. That's something that unfortunately. is just part of the process. Even when you know, the festival people, you send it into them and they, there's a festival programmers have this cone of silence that they go into when they're programming because they never know what can happen.

And so even if they love your movie, they're and they want to play it right away. You still don't talk to you until it's time to announce.

At least they don't talk to me. I don't know if it maybe you found a different story.

Paul DeNigris: Hey you made a movie and you can do a quick plug on this.

You made a movie about the festival circuit. I did

Paul Osborne: make a movie about the film festival circuit called official rejection, which is was came out in 2009 cause I am a hundred thousand years old now. That's that's also available on prime. I believe free for you for 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 time. I still think it's a fairly good primer on the festival circuit. But I, it's funny, I think the circuits gotten a lot tougher. Lately, I think, it's part of that is Streamers have realized this is a good place to launch films and easy with them for films that they're putting out to get theatrical play that they wouldn't normally get.

They can say to these filmmakers we're not going to do a theatrical release, but we'll play you at a festival. And so they, of course, are going for top tier festivals for the most part, but there were 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 it's streamers putting. all of their wares in those festivals and also all of their pilots for shows into those festivals. It's it's really pushing down and creating fewer and fewer spots. So I've noticed a number of filmmakers that have been, made multiple films on the festival circuit, not being able to get any movies on the circuit now.

We're very, getting very few festival dates. It's become very difficult. 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, I think, 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. I think at this point, it's more of a, it's more of a museum piece of what the film festival circuit was like 14 years ago.

Paul DeNigris: It's hard to believe it's been that long. Paul and I know each other since since 10 till noon, that film that's behind him played at Phoenix film festival in 2006, 2006, my God, dude, It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah,

Paul Osborne: 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: Yeah. Not only do we not send things by the mail, but who's got a VHS? It was like, what do I do? Do I stop? Yeah. Yeah. All so what's the plan if whether it hits festivals or not, what's the distribution plan for

Paul Osborne: I we'll see again, it's, I this is an uneventful answer.

We're seeing, wait and see what happens with the festival circuit because the festival circuit can change the way your home 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, Googleable things, reviews, articles, press, playdates leverage that attention for for distributors.

And so if that doesn't happen, we have to come at distributors a different way. But there are ways to do it. And 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 of the town.

And that are half their screens are dedicated to larger films or to current releases, half dedicated to older releases and independent films. And so it is possible potentially to mount some sort of release. in London, 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 Upcountry and he, which this'll blow your mind. He shot it in 2000. He just, finished it. So I'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 him and in the main papers and banger and all the other main, the main cities. And so he's done that. And he sold out the screening and now he's, because of that other theaters are contacting him and he's mounting a very strategized main theatrical distribution for this movie he's, 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 and Blu ray sales and create promotion for VOD. And this is how he's doing it. So there's, there are 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 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 and getting your film out there to the world.

Paul DeNigris: That's a great way to look at it. And also really awesome advice for any independent filmmakers who who may be watching this.

Paul Osborne: Oh, good. Yeah.

Paul DeNigris: And on that topic, 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, I really need the effects to tell this story. What's one piece of advice you would share with them as they embark on?

Oh my

Paul Osborne: 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 want to 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, but 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 artist. ahead of time, working with them before you get into set. One, they're gonna, you're gonna, 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 going to, they're going to give you more, people who are motivated, people like visual effects are actually creative people. If you engage them creatively, you're going to get more out of them.

That's simply what it is.

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

Paul Osborne: I am currently developing a new project. Film that will be shot in the UK with a combination of UK and US actors, and we're just still figuring it out, but leaning towards 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 elements keep presenting themselves. I'm like, Oh, how do I incorporate that into the stew?

Paul DeNigris: It's

Paul Osborne: like trying to try to strike inspiration from the things around you and going, okay 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 are, that I have an authentic reaction to and 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, fluorescent pieces is odd in terms of elements, but my, my frustrations are in there. And that's where I do my best work. So honestly it's figuring out. Figuring out the stew right now.

Paul DeNigris: Gotcha. I'm looking forward to whatever the, whatever shape the stew takes and whatever ingredients I can help contribute.

Paul Osborne: Me too.

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

Paul Osborne: You can follow me on all the socials Twitter Facebook and Instagram. I'm at paulmakesmovies. com. All of those. That's it. Find me on the socials. You'll find me. Awesome.

Paul DeNigris: Thanks so much for taking the time, Paul.

It's always a pleasure to talk to you and 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 enjoyed it. Got got a lot out of this.

I think that all independent filmmakers out there could learn a lot from Paul Osborne. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for Oh,

Paul Osborne: Thank you for having me. And thank you for all the love. And thank you for looking exactly like me and having my same name, . It's all your guests should look like this and be named Paul.

Yes, it's a special filter that we apply

Paul DeNigris: 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, VFX for indies. 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 FoxtrotX-Ray.

I'm chief pixel pusher, Paul DeNigris, and we all thank you so much for your support of the show.