Sci-Fi Action Comedy: Max Reload and the Nether Blasters

Today we're pulling back the curtain on the world of indie filmmaking with our special guests, Scott and Jeremy, the innovative masterminds behind the sci-fi action comedy, Max Reload and the Nether Blasters. Embark with us on a journey that takes us from the spark of an idea for a small indie sci-fi film for Comic-Con, to the successful production of their own short film. Scott and Jeremy's passion and dedication to their craft is palpable throughout our conversation, as they reveal their unique approach to film development, their love for geeky cinema and how they have shaken up the firearms industry with their work.

Scott and Jeremy are not just filmmakers, but dreamers, and their audaciousness is evident as they discuss the ambitious project that is Max Reload. They brought together a skilled team of technicians, craftsmen, artists, and even collaborated with a London-based animator to create breathtaking pixel art sequences for the film. We explore their creative process, including their approach to animation and visual effects, how they've overcome challenges and tackled difficult transitions, and how they drew inspiration from 80s classics like Ghostbusters and Last Starfighter.

Our guests also open up about the invaluable lessons they've learned along their journey and how these experiences have shaped their future endeavors. They share insightful advice for aspiring filmmakers, particularly those interested in visual effects, emphasizing the importance of planning, openness to collaboration, and flexibility. From the development of the nether creature visuals, the creation of a realistic puppet, to the consistent look of the nether possessed characters, Scott and Jeremy have managed to masterfully navigate the challenges of indie filmmaking. Join us for this captivating conversation and let's together discover the inspiring world of indie filmmaking.

Offensive Marketing Group: https://www.offensivegroup.com/

More Max Reload: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk8FNZ40x8GR4bLgAQVRkVEZnVTMmhh9t

Show No Mercy: https://youtu.be/opTYJ6IRitw?si=0GTMKvcgcQVjt8He

Creating a Sci-Fi Action Comedy: Max Reload and the Nether Blasters

Paul DeNigris: A long lost Calico vision cartridge imbued with an ancient evil incantation releases the forces of darkness on an unsuspecting populace, and humanity's only hope is a trio of video game nerds aided by genre legend Greg Grunberg and indie film icon Kevin Smith in Max Reload and the Netherblasters, this week on the VFX for Indies podcast.

With me today are Scott Conditt and Jeremy Trempe, the masterminds between the indie sci fi action comedy Max Reload and The Nether Blasters, which my team and I were privileged to create over 500 visual effects shots for. Welcome to the podcast, guys.

Scott Conditt: Hey, thanks, Paul. Happy to be here, man. Yeah, man.

Jeremy Tremp: Pleasure to be here.

Paul DeNigris: Right on. It's been a while. I haven't seen these guys in person in quite a while because they're busy. I'm busy. They are kicking ass with their new company Offensive Marketing Group, which we will hear about. Why don't you guys give us a quick overview of who you guys are individually and as a partnership.

Tell us a little bit about Cineforge and about your your newest venture, OMG.

Jeremy Tremp: Kick it off, sir.

Scott Conditt: Yeah, I'm Scott Condit 41, 41 year old filmmaker. I like long walks on the beach. I know I'm aging out, man. No, so I'm Scott Condit. One of the creative directors and owners here at offensive marketing group filmmaker creative.

Writer, huge fan of Foxtrot X Ray and Mr. Paul Denigris and yeah, one of the directors from Max Reload and the Nether Blasters, a fun little sci fi action comedy we did a few years back, which is now in worldwide distribution.

Jeremy Tremp: Heck

yeah,

cool. Yeah, I'm Jeremy Trempe little bit of history. I graduated film school in 08 and then just jumped right into the film set.

Thankfully when I graduated film school, Michigan had just passed. I think it was like 45 percent film incentive. It was the highest in the nation, which was absolutely crazy. So tons of independent and like lower Hollywood productions were filming there. And so I gave me the opportunity to get on a lot of pretty big sets as a system camera and then camera operator as well on a few of those.

So I was able to really dive in quickly. And then from there I pivoted and wanted to start my own thing and Ended up directing and shooting hundreds of music videos and doing a lot of photography and then we linked up in about 2015 or so. Yeah, man Started to make some cool stuff and ultimately led to max reload that we started shooting in what 2018, I think it was winter of

Scott Conditt: 2018.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. Yeah. And now I'm also a co founder creative director at offensive marketing group, which is the bread and butter day to day at this point, where we take our, cinematic storytelling background and put that towards marketing the outdoor, sectors and

Scott Conditt: combining that love of cinema, right?

We've had a chance to not only hit the hard. edge of the marketing side of the firearms industry, but we've got a chance to work the cinematic side of our life into it to working with teams like 8711 action design, the John wick stunt team and things like that for higher end commercial spots. So bringing bring that studio quality flair to the firearms industry has really been where OMG has been different from most of the conventional marketing in this space today.

Paul DeNigris: Right on. And you're definitely tying in your love of of geek cinema. I remember a spot that you worked on not too long ago that was very inspired by my favorite Blade Runner. I know you, you've done some recent stuff inspired by Predator. And it's very cool to see you guys work the The geeky cinema lover angle into into the firearm space.

And I'm sure those, I'm sure your clients eat that shit.

Jeremy Tremp: That's a lot of fun. It's cool to see the audience reaction and wanting more asking for longer versions, the full movie length, the video game version, right? Like it's a, it's really cool to service that, which that's us. We are those consumers as well.

So we're just trying to make cool shit for people like us.

Scott Conditt: Yeah. That's the unique thing too, about like our passion. It's. Sci-Fi action. What are those things All inherently have infused Blade Runner. Cool Guns, man. So it's it's an inseparable part of Hollywood that that we've found a way to.

To bring to the forefront of what we do every day here.

Paul DeNigris: Awesome. Before we dive into a max reload give us some highlights. Cause I know it was max reload was built on a series of steps, right? You guys were working towards that with with some of the films that you worked on, some of the shorts and documentaries and things like that.

So just give us the quick highlights of the the formative years of of your partnership leading towards max.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah, man, when we first got together and linked up we just we talked about doing I think it was I think it was like a film competition or something like that for

Scott Conditt: comic con Yeah,

Jeremy Tremp: and we're gonna do some like metroid versus Halo or something silly.

We just came to the conclusion that's, that was way outside of our of realistic, right? Because you've got to get these costumes and all these different props and whatnot. And I think we scrapped that idea and we decided just to make a short film.

Scott Conditt: Yeah. And dude, Paul, us super well, haven't been in the trenches with us for years and all the work we did on max, what started out like with us going back to the drawing board saying, okay, that's too grand.

Let's go back to zero independent filmmaking mindset. Let's work with what we've got. Let's be more realistic, quickly evolved and spiraled again, out of control into. We've got a loose connection to Martin Cove from Karate Kid. And now Cobra Kai is like his revived fame. And this concept that we had for what was supposed to be a little short.

Indie sci fi film for Comic Con went way too big. Then we went way small, scaled it back, and then spiraled out of control. And we made a little film called Shono Mercy that had a ton of VFX in it, had people getting sucked into video game old school arcade machines, a little

Jeremy Tremp: shootout scene, and

Scott Conditt: flying people in from Hollywood.

And it's still a very small little short, but after that, And doing that the way that we know how, which is still super independent and scrappy and no budget

Jeremy Tremp: Wearing

Scott Conditt: many hats were like, dude, I think we can work together beyond this because we survived this experience. So it evolved from there.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. And then we jumped into game jam, the movie, which was more of an opportunity that we were given to produce for another company. And we turned that into, again, something way bigger than it initially was scoped out as, but that was cool because that was a bit of a passion as, of ours as well, because we were following independent game developers as they did a 48 hour game jam, and the winners of the game jam went on to, out to LA to Indiecade to network with big brands and one of them ended up meeting with oculus and that kind of, it was pretty cool.

So it was cool to tell that story as it evolved in a more documentarian filmmaking style rather than the narrative style

Scott Conditt: and a benefit of that project, the game jam, the movie documentary, one of our producers Ben Riker was a professor at the institution where we filmed the majority of that game jam, which is where and how we met.

So it all came full circle, man. Like every project you end up finding it leads to something bigger and better. At least that's always been our experience.

Paul DeNigris: Absolutely. A big theme with a successful independent filmmakers is finding your tribe, right? Finding the like minded individuals who are going to go on the crazy journey with you to make something that you individually might not have been able to achieve.

So yeah, that's that's very cool. And I remember, yeah, becoming aware of you guys with game jam and being very interested in what you were doing and then seeing show no mercy and being like, all right, these guys, they got it going on. They're leveraging all of this stuff to make some really cool shit.

So yeah, we, at that point we were, my, my team and I, we were all in to work with you guys. So give us a, give us the the back of the Blu-Ray cover synopsis of Max Reload .

Scott Conditt: Yeah. So Max Reload the Blu-ray synopsis small town video game store clerk accidentally unleashes the forces of evil from a cursed.

ColecoVision game.

Trailer: I know it sounds nuts. I've been wanting to play this game since I could hold a controller. I knew he'd be back. He just had no idea there were any game cartridges left. I knew it was only a matter of time before the Harger found his one player. The one man capable, truly unlocking.

But boy chosen one chosen pawn, pa. Chosen Pawn and we're not even sure, maybe.

Scott Conditt: Unless the store's on fire this weekend, I am not to be bothered when I'm jacked in. And this game was an urban legend, much like Polybius or some of these games that if you're really into gaming and nerd culture, Or the things that should not be, or the things that almost like E.

T. The game was something we drift on is like

Jeremy Tremp: so bad. They destroyed every copy. Yeah.

Scott Conditt: We took a lot of inspiration from like actual video game, real world lore. And we said what if we do something like last star fighter meets Tron meets ridiculous like nights of bad ass them kind of absurd comedy and culture and infused it all together and we did against all odds, we did with a lot of help from yourself and your team many others we pulled this little indie film off for a song and a pittance and did it against numerous odds and how many days of shooting?

Jeremy Tremp: 23, I think

Scott Conditt: 23 all overnight shots with the ridiculous and absurd 500 plus VFX shots written in for an indie film had no budget. Yeah, and

Paul DeNigris: that's just the VFX that my team and I touched the result. There's more beyond that, like the game imagery and stuff, which will touch on my next question was going to be what possessed you to make.

Movie this ambitious as your first feature, but you answered that already, it seemed like the inevitable direction that you were going through all the projects that led you there.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. We just, we can't do anything small. We start writing something and then, it's.

Scott Conditt: We have this conversation all the time, dude, like there's something wrong with us and our approach and the funny thing is, man blessing and curse the capability and the naivete mixed with stubbornness. And then. The ability, like you said, to bring together a very skilled and much larger tribe than the two of us to actually have, the technicians and the craftsmen and the artists, for some reason, they jump on board and they see the vision and help us bring it across the finish line, like looking back over what ended up becoming a two year, two and a half year process of our life.

Dude, if you'd shown us that roadmap when we started making the film, I've been like, I'm out, like my wife would have been like, yeah, you're out. But no, she's, she was super supportive the whole time, but it was like, it's insanity when you look at the amount of challenges, hurdles not just technically, but you're dude, you're checking your own sanity.

Like nightly, I remember there's nights that I called Jeremy. I was like, dude, what have we gotten ourselves into? What

Jeremy Tremp: if we show up sick tomorrow?

Scott Conditt: Hey, Paul, you're up. I don't think that answered the question, but Yeah. A lot of No

Paul DeNigris: that, that did answer the question. You guys are obviously very ambitious and have a vision, and I think that's what the people like Martin Cove and and Greg Gruberg and all of the actors that you brought on board and then all of the crew and the behind the scenes talent, the bullet line talent that you brought on board.

We all saw the ambition. We all saw the, the reaching for metaphorically reaching for the stars and doing something that was really unexpected in the indie film space, right? I think there's a lot of

Jeremy Tremp: gusto as well of, I like that word, it's if they can do it, we can do it.

It was, there was a lot of why not? Why shouldn't we be able to do this? Why can't people do this? Let's prove them. There was a lot of that just let's do this and show people that it's a reality. I think we learned a lot that that we were humbled many times, but through that process of refinement, I think that was all a positive experience.

Scott Conditt: And that's like the indie spirit dude. Sure. Like it was a union film, right? We had

yeah,

Scott Conditt: It was all union actors. We had to go through SAG and all that stuff. Yeah. But it was still in a, it was on the very cusp of what would qualify for a, you will be low budget, ultra low budget Indy.

And we wanted to make a film that didn't feel like that. We wanted to feel like it had gone through a studio of some sort. And If it wasn't for having that mindset, that indie mindset, all those moments were like no, you can't do it that way. For well, for a number of reasons because you got 10 different people looking over your shoulder and no one's willing to do it that way.

That was not the case on max. Everyone's yeah. Okay. We see what you wrote on the page. How can, how could that look? And that was every step of the way.

Paul DeNigris: So what were some of the creative touchstones for the film? I, I always look at it as being a throwback to the movies that we grew up on, the 80s, it's got very much a a Ghostbusters vibe in a way where it's comedy, sci fi, horror, action and it thrives on the characters and their interaction, not just on the effects, but Oh yeah. The effects are also really cool.

Yeah.

Paul DeNigris: And I know you guys had an experience where you you brushed up against Ernest Klein and ready player one.

Can you just talk about that a little bit?

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. Yeah. Like always just reaching as far as possible, right? Like never taking no for an answer and just saying, what if, that's how we reached out to Kevin Smith and we did a very similar thing for Ernest Klein. We sat on a couch and we made a video appealing to his nerd side essentially and saying, Hey, we're doing this thing.

It's very inspired by some of your work and we respect the hell out of you. And if you could help us promote this in any way and or give feedback in any way we would be honored to, just even be considered by your time.

Scott Conditt: Yeah. Yeah. And we'd run into him at a book signing that Arizona state university hosted.

And we were big fans of ready player one. And we went down there and he gave a talk and it was before, he actually had announced at that reading that

Jeremy Tremp: he was doing the

Scott Conditt: film with Spielberg and they were actually through Arizona visiting Spielberg's childhood home. And it hadn't hit mainstream news yet, but they did Little walkthrough, get your book signed at the end.

And everyone's getting ushered through by the handler. They're like, we got 200 people plus here. You gotta keep moving the line along. But we snagged the opportunity for 30 seconds. Said, Hey man, we've got this mockup poster we did for the film. We did this little arcade short film called Show No Mercy, with the guy from Karate Kid.

Martin Cove. I'm sure he's oh yeah. So we're working on this new thing. Is there a chance we could reach out in the future? And he's yeah,

Jeremy Tremp: we sent him that and he loved it.

Scott Conditt: And we reminded him that we met him at the book signing, which helped. And yeah, man, it was a shoot in your shot, so to speak, when you see the opportunity, take it.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. And then, like you mentioned, films from our childhood, we wanted this to feel like an ETA Goonies, a last starfighter Ghostbusters. We shot it on anamorphic lenses. We, obviously we shot on red, but we didn't want it to feel like this super overly sharp, overly, sanitized movie.

We want it to feel like there was character, there might be a shot that's not super stabilized. That show that a human being made this film. And so that, we really wanted it to feel like that. Yeah, you, so you could relate to it more whether that worked or not.

That was the intention.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. The anamorphic lenses that you guys shot on definitely evoked again, those eighties action sci fi movies, you had those beautiful lens flares that we we, my team and I had to replicate in some spots. . Yeah. And it was just like, yeah.

You see those images and I, yeah. It immediately takes me back to being, 14 and watching ghostbusters for the first time. And the, those beautiful lens flares when they fire up the proton

Scott Conditt: packs. , I just saw on a podcast yesterday or on a video yesterday of vlog. They had the echo cruising around New York, the Ghostbusters too.

Oh yeah. That was a NY

Jeremy Tremp: stat video. Yeah. Yeah. Casey,

Scott Conditt: NY Stat. Yep. We we got stoked on that. We actually did a mockup poster. With a concept artist and we referenced the original Ghostbusters poster, I think it's one of the ones where they had their proton packs. It's from the back and they're looking up at the tower, where the gatekeeper is and we're like, dude, do that.

But with the max reload characters, that kind of style, that vibe. Cause if you think about how absurd the films were in the eighties the premises were ridiculous, like monster squad, ridiculous, Ghostbusters, ridiculous. But it's that suspension of disbelief that I think that generation was willing, they're willing to go on those rides.

And that's what we hope for viewers of Max, just come on this ride, man, for two hours. Yeah.

Paul DeNigris: Be absurd with this. How long were the various stages of the film's development production posts? You touched on production. Yeah. Being very short. What'd you say? 23 days?

Scott Conditt: Physical. Yeah. Yeah. Physical production was 23 nights. Yeah. All, all overnight almost. Yeah.

Paul DeNigris: So what was the pre-production cycle Like? How long did you guys spend from when you started writing the script till cameras rolled? And then we'll segue into post.

Scott Conditt: Yeah. So correct me if I'm wrong, cause your memory on timelines is much better than mine typically.

I think overall from writing through pre pro actual turning our office at the time into a production office for max is a dedicated focus. It was about nine months.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah, probably. It was pretty fast.

Scott Conditt: Yeah.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah, no more than that. I think, we, we've obviously been percolating the idea for quite a while and, but as far as starting to sit down and put pen to paper and.

Yeah,

Scott Conditt: I think we wrote the script over about three months multiple drafts, of course. And then we started Raising money and doing that from within our camp and talking to creatives and it came together fat, respectively fast, if you compare it to a studio picture that could take God, 10 years to get during, like during

Jeremy Tremp: the writing process, we were scouting locations and we were talking to, so yeah, I think we were doing a lot at the same time,

Paul DeNigris: And then 23 nights of filming and then we jump into post.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah.

Paul DeNigris: How long was post

Jeremy Tremp: was hard, man. Cause it's like you spend all this time making this thing or, writing, producing pre production, then you kill yourself to make it. And then all of a sudden you've got to edit this thing. Cause we edited it as well.

And you're still trying to make a living. So you're trying to do side jobs here and there. And man, the post, that was a slog. Just like the edit, the rough cuts, the tightening up of all that. I feel like we were, I don't know. I don't remember how long VFX, just the edit mostly, right? Jesse

Scott Conditt: edit took

Jeremy Tremp: because once we were mostly locked, it was VFX.

And I think we were still tweaking here and there where we could, but

Scott Conditt: yeah, the edit alone, dude, some limitations, at least six months, right? How much red footage that we're working with on that drive. I think it took about six months. Yeah. Five, six months to get a cut that we're really happy with, of course, with temp score and trying to get it to a place where our composer could actually start scoring it, Jesse.

And that was a great lesson too, is on a feature, especially one with 500 VFX shots. You coached us beautifully. We're real renegade and Oh, let's just try this shot and let's let's try some effects on it. No. You're locking everything before you give it to your effects team because they don't want to go back and do 20 different versions on different plates and everything else.

Yeah, man, it was a process overall. It took over a year and a few months with effects to get a cut, a deliverable cut out of it.

Paul DeNigris: And then as far as the visual effects component, my team and I, we were responsible for things like. Screen comps the energy weapons, the nether creatures the glowing eyes, some miscellaneous cleanup and stuff smoke, fire, red lightning things like that.

Yeah. But there was more beyond that, right? A lot of the movie really was crafted in the In post in a way, it really, truly was the final rewrite. There was a lot of,

Jeremy Tremp: yeah, the entire intro is, there's a few live shots, but most of the intro is CG and the gameplay footage. And then a big flashback is a complete like GI Joe animated sequence.

Scott Conditt: Yeah. And we had the pixel art as well. Overall, we had, I think, six, five or six different animation styles we worked in. And those were all tributes to our childhood, like side scroller video game pixel art, like paper boy and the NES games and Sega games we grew up playing.

And then the GI Joe style that, that era of 2d yeah it was just very flat line drawn animation. Yep. Saturday morning cartoon animation was another. And then we had literal game developers who were working on video games use 3d, unreal engine and different softwares to make

Jeremy Tremp: basically built a, like a world of Warcraft game.

That's

Scott Conditt: using the cameras in the game making software as cameras. And Jeremy sat down with them as the DP and was like, okay, let's try these angles as we fly through this level you've created and they're animating the characters that they made to our specs to look like they're talking. Yeah. But

Jeremy Tremp: it was a challenge though, because you're communicating like film language and then to a video game.

Like language. And so it was, there was a lot of challenge just getting the vision because this isn't what they do. They don't make cut scenes for a living. They make games that are played by people. Not you push a button and it plays a sequence of clips.

Scott Conditt: That's usually a whole separate.

So it was a

Jeremy Tremp: challenge just communicating and getting the right just really getting the right stuff. But at the end they, they nailed it. And it was really cool. To see it all come together. It was just, it's just another challenge. You don't anticipate you're like, Oh, just a, this game scene, it's going to be an easy little, dude, there is

Scott Conditt: anything you write on that page, someone has to bring to life, that intimately Paul and the littlest thing can be, hours and hours in post replacing something in that shot, that composition.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. And that whole sequence where we're first introduced to Max and Lizzie and Reggie, and we're introduced to Eugene, but we don't realize it right upfront. That whole sequence it's happening on all these different levels, right? Cause we're in the game world, we're over their shoulders, looking at their screens we're seeing their first person web camera as they're talking to each other.

We're cutting to their characters as if they're having a conversation and it's all very intricate and crafted. And I know you guys probably had. X number of frames that we possibly could use and one frame longer and the game engine falls apart or doesn't work, and so you're having to cut it all to the bone and make it all work.

And I know there was a lot of experimentation and seeing sequences like that, where it was like. How much do we see the game engine? How much do we spend on Max's face? How do we keep it moving? From from, shot to shot and keep the story moving forward and also not, show our ass when the game imagery doesn't work or yeah, whatever.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. Cause the way the, they had to do it, they didn't make like individual shots. So I would get this file that was like. All the sequences in one file. And the characters go from like their T pose to snap into this thing. And the camera would snap here and then it would begin at sequence.

And then he would snap back into a T pose and the camera would snap. So it was like trying to make sense of what on earth was going on. Real surgery, man. It was it was an interesting, it was fun.

Paul DeNigris: And then the animation side of things who was responsible for the those, the cool 2d animated sequence Eugene's big origin

Scott Conditt: story, if you will.

Yeah, so we had so Dan Fusselman worked with us. He was one of our, one of our good buddies, Dan, who's a friend of yours as well, amazing artist and he helmed. One of the animation teams and they did most of the 2d style animations. And there was about four individuals under Dan on that team were just incredible artists and they all handled certain aspects of that pipeline.

And then we had

Jeremy Tremp: the transitional, you're

Scott Conditt: talking about Alexis. Yeah, Alexis. I believe he's out of somewhere out of the UK. We

Jeremy Tremp: connect with him. So found somewhere

Scott Conditt: I saw on, it wasn't Kickstarter. It was some project that he posted and he had teamed up with the, one of the game designers who did like the original Shinobi games.

And they were doing some kind of a new project together that was pixel art based. And I was like, I've never seen pixel art like that before. That's the beauty of the internet, man. And also independently spirited minded artists as you can reach out to anybody nowadays and find their Instagram handle or even big directors, man.

And just say, Hey dude, I love what you're doing. Here's what we have going on. Can we chat? And you'd be very surprised most of the time. A lot of them will get back to you and say, yeah, man, that sounds cool. Let's talk.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. And the pixel art thing came about that was a late edition, right?

The animated sequence. Yeah. And all the game, the gameplay sequences, those were all baked into the script. You knew that those were going to be necessary right up front.

Yeah. But

Paul DeNigris: the pixel art stuff came about from conversations that you had in post. It was, yeah, there was, yeah, exactly.

Scott Conditt: Because there were we screwed up

Jeremy Tremp: There was a lot of like high, like there was a lot of things that we just couldn't do very easily. A drone shot of a city as a. As the FFS fan yeah, was driving, transitions where he's riding his bike at night, right? We don't have these, a crane with 18 K's to light the street, right?

So how can we keep a cool theme? And save money and

Scott Conditt: Transitions were mostly like max on his bike to a lot of them. They were gonna

Jeremy Tremp: take from scene to scene

Scott Conditt: Yeah yeah, and we were thinking okay, max wears a hoodie We'll just get a double and throw a hoodie on and we'll pick up all this stuff later.

We'll film it all later seasons change time goes on And this is one of those cool instances where It forced our hand in a creative way to go. What's an alternative option for this? What's a cool way to show max

Jeremy Tremp: problem solving.

Scott Conditt: This dude lives in a video game in his head space. The movie's literally about them getting sucked into a game at a point.

So let's show them through the lens of transition cutscenes. Stuff we grew up, when you're playing a video game and they're trying to weave a story together. That's exactly what those scenes are in our film, so let's do it that way.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah, and it dovetails really well with the end where they get sucked into a game but then it's You didn't CG animate that, right?

You just filmed it, art directed it, and dressed them in costumes and filmed it. And so the line between reality and game world and Max's imagination and what he's really experiencing is constantly being blurred, right? Literally, from the first frame that we see him after the ancient Egypt Prologue, which of course, these movies always start in ancient Mesopotamia or, wanted the opening title, when we see that shot of the pyramid to be like ancient Egypt. Duh.

Scott Conditt: We've seen this before.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. And that was a fun sequence transitioning into that amazing pyramid interior set. That was an absolute blast to film on. And then that holographic game table, that game table gave us quite a challenge. It was

Jeremy Tremp: challenging. Yeah.

Scott Conditt: Yeah. Determining the look for that, man. It took a couple of iterations and then you nailed it and it was, yeah, it was so again, so loosely written on the page, like one slug line on a script can be like an astral projection on top of a marble table. Okay, cool. But what does that really look like? That can take a few iterations,

Paul DeNigris: right? Yeah. So we had quite a bit of look dev that we had to do on that.

Because you guys had ideas about what you wanted it to look like. I had ideas and we were trying to meet in the middle and figure out what is. What does quote unquote galactic chess look like? What is, what does it look like that this. Nether creature. The game master featured, what is it that he would play?

It's not chess because that's too much of a cliche, the the seventh seal, Max von Saito, that, that kind of thing, but it's still same sort of concept. They're playing for, they're playing for fate, the fate of the village, the faders, the gamer, but it has to be something that, we can understand without, with no exposition about how the rules work.

It has to be completely visual. It has to obviously be a game that has rules. that are internally consistent, but oh yeah, the actor is just randomly moving this piece around this blank piece of plexiglass and then we have to fill it out. Yeah.

Scott Conditt: It's a scene too. It was MOS. Like there, there's no dialogue.

No one's telling you, yes, we're going to, we're going to duel now and play this game in the universe. No, it was just silent with looks between the actors were stated brilliantly. And then you coming up with that visual. The graphic representation where you can clearly tell. Okay, cool. There are pieces that are overtaking and there's connective tissue between these moves.

And clearly they're playing some form of, like I said, galactic chess. It worked out, man. It was a struggle, but it turned out great.

Paul DeNigris: So that was one that took a lot of look dev the titular nether blasters. I have one of them over here on my shelf that you guys gave me

Scott Conditt: from the set right there on the set.

That's right. One of that's

Paul DeNigris: one of Eugene's actual screen used blasters. It's that's right. There's no replica

Scott Conditt: fall. That's the

Paul DeNigris: OG blaster, indeed screen used and all of that. But took us a while to figure that out, to figure out what that. look and how the blasters moved and all the different little elements of sparks and corkscrew, electrons and all of that sort of stuff.

You want to talk about a little bit about, the inspiration there and what we were after.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. It's like a Ghostbusters esque, I think that was probably the closest. Comp that we were thinking about that would look like, because it's ultraviolet that's my favorite light, lighter, whatever

Scott Conditt: spectral the inside joke was in there.

That was in the dialogue right there. It was like, again, going back to absurdity and, in ghostbusters, they build up those characters to be. Ultra brilliant, particle physicists and paranormal experts and okay. It's plausible. These dudes They've got a nuclear reactor in the basement of the fire station the funny turning on its head thing is we've got this ultra brilliant game designer who we never fully explained like how we became you know an energy weapon expert And even he doesn't really know clearly through his description of shit that doesn't make any sense But we just say Again, go with us on this ride and he's going to give these kids a bunch of these weapons that are somehow able to disrupt the evil nether.

And dude down to the color schemes too, that we had talked about with you. That was another throwback to kind of cartoons of the eighties, like GI Joe transformers, the bad guys. And, even looking at star Wars. Red, they're always shooting red laser beams. The good guys are shooting blue or green.

And so we worked a little bit of that into the approach to tipping our hat to the genres we loved growing up when it came to the nether blasters.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah, because we had then established early on that nether, the nether was going to be red and you guys did a lot of red accent lighting and and stuff on set whenever another energy was involved.

So yeah, we had set that tone right up front, during production you guys use those quasar lights to do, red accents on things whenever like nether creatures were visible, like the nether kraken, which we'll talk about in a second. And when Reggie, when we first see the nether blaster guns in action, Reggie getting zapped and you did all those beautiful green accents with the lighting, and that was a really excellent case of, We thought that out ahead of time.

Jeremy Tremp: Yes.

Paul DeNigris: Dan and I shared Dan Fossum and I shared visual effects supervisor duties. So when I wasn't on set, he was and we talked through that anytime we were doing any sort of energy weapons energy creatures, whatever that the, that you guys were going to help us a lot just by simply flicking on a light, and that really sells the reality of, Yeah there's this green energy thing flying across the room and it's creating shadows and highlights on, all the chrome and stuff, and , all that motivated lighting. Yeah, that's a lot. Our

Jeremy Tremp: gaffer, Jason Seavers with a green two foot quasar on a stick, and he would, he was running by as if that's where the, the light was going simulating the contra or

Scott Conditt: the trail of energy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Dude. Yeah. I'm amazed our science came through huge on this picture for us, man. Yeah, they sent

Jeremy Tremp: out tons of gear for us to use, which was phenomenal. For an indie to hit them up and say, Hey, this is what we're doing, that's amazing. And especially in the film industry, that does not happen.

People do not give you a free sandwich. Ever because they know you're going to buy it. You're going to rent it. You need it. There's no other option. So for them to support us like that,

Scott Conditt: I think it's because they knew we were indie and we were starving and we needed the sandwich, so we're like, all right, you're not a big studio.

We'll throw you a bone here. It

Jeremy Tremp: seems like those, the people that run that organization are very similar to us. And I think they're, they care and they're. Their heart is where ours is and so it was cool for them to throw us a bone like that. That helped a ton.

Paul DeNigris: Obviously the the nether creatures were another big challenge, right?

And we had to keep them consistent with the game art, right? So we established early on what the nether specters and the nether kraken look like in the game world. And then you wanted them to be in our real world. And you guys made the smart choice that most of the time the nether specters would just manifest as glowing red eyes, right?

So we weren't doing full CG photorealistic characters because that's a budget breaker. That's a something that an indie film is just not going to. Be able to pull off and certainly not the amount of nether possessed people that you wanted on screen. You had three main characters who are nether possessed for really, if you count the man in black, the suited man, as he was called in the in the script.

Yeah. And to have them as, being, motion captured or just, hand animated CG creatures. It just wasn't going to happen at that budget level. So the smart choice was when the nether is in somebody, they manifest as glowing red eyes. We did glowing red eyes.

And that was. Probably the bulk of our comps. I would say maybe more than, probably more than a third of our comps were glowing red eyes. And we spent a lot of time on book dev on that, it's tough because

Jeremy Tremp: the eyes are the window to the soul, and when you're messing with the eyes, it's very easy for it to look weird, uncanny off and yeah.

Once we dialed it in, I think you absolutely nailed it. So it was cool to see that come to life.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. Yeah. And we spent a bunch of iterations on it trying to figure out, what did. Seth and his crew look like as the mini bosses who had to have a little bit more character. We had to get a little more malice and a little more intent of out of their eyes.

Whereas like when Reggie is possessed or when the just, randos walking on the street, I'm one of the randos on there, man. That's right with your team. Or the, like the students at the school when they waged their final assault on the servers at the end of the movie.

They had to be more like the possessed drones with no window into the soul. So there were definitely a couple of different key looks and the suited man definitely had to have his own. His own mojo going on with his eyes. Yeah, it wasn't just a one size fits all solution.

It really, we had to build a system for it. And and I built a, essentially an eye rig for my team. So you could like dial, I want more pupil. I want less pupil. I want more glow, less glow. It needs to be redder. It needs to be pinker. We could finesse that from shot to shot.

And yeah, and that's, that was a lot of the early stages, like the first maybe four weeks of posts of VFX was let's do all this look dev. Blaster's eyes, the galactic chess, figure all that out. And then that's not even counting, all of the different screen art, every time they're looking at a computer, every time they're playing a game, every time they're talking to each other on a webcam, those are generally green screen, green displays on on monitors.

So there was a ton of that work. Yes, there was. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Somebody decided to have a green chair on set for a lot of

those.

Scott Conditt: I don't know. I don't know where our VFX supervisor was on that call. That's wild. Cause green, the green chair must, the green

Paul DeNigris: team must

Scott Conditt: not have been there. You raised like a really cool point too, though.

The cool thing for us was like collaborating with you and your team and you being the point man. Specifically we could share a vision with and say, Hey man, here's kinda what we're going for. Or Hey, we don't exactly know what we want this to look like, but here's some inspiration. What do you think?

And you'd throw back awesome ideas. And I remember you jogged my memory there, the whole thing with the eyes. It was a very interesting. Because at one point I think we'd envisioned after Seth and the mini boss, his trio of bad guys, essentially the mini boss kids who were the antagonist against Max and his crew were like, yeah, after they get possessed, they have red eyes, the whole movie,

like they're like demonically

Scott Conditt: possessed.

But then we had this conversation with you and based on the looks and the process, you don't want to steal the window of the soul. Like you said, from an actor too, because so much performance like Lucas Gage and those guys just gave such good looks. You cover up that with the glowing red eyes the entire time you're stealing something from that performance.

I think we realized, so we're like, all right, this possession is inside them. The manifestation of it visually is a little more transient. And but also Independently minded again, it, at a point we had this discussion and it was like, yeah, it's also going to save time and money. So let's give them that better performance moment.

Let's let them have those eyes.

Jeremy Tremp: And when those eyes come out, it's something, it's the intensity of that scene happens far more. Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Conditt: And that whole process was a treat, man, especially working with you and having you communicate options and being super receptive to everything we brought to the table, it brought better out of some of those possibilities.

Paul DeNigris: I think it was a happy accident. There's one part where Seth is right up in Eugene's face, Eugene is cowed on the ground and the, Seth is leaning over him. And I don't remember if it happened by accident or it was something that we, that my team internally decided to try. But there's one part where he gets really intense and we decided, let's make the eyes even brighter and flare up more and may.

And we were manually painting in light on Eugene's face so that it was as if the light was coming out of Seth's eyes, like beans and hitting hitting Eugene on the face. And we were like let's try and let's hit this. When Lucas hits this word, let's make those eyes just like flare out.

And And I think it was like a, let's try it and see, and we liked it and we pitched to you and you were like, Oh my God, this is the coolest. And so we then selectively found spots for for Seth and for the suited man, where we would do that sort of ramp up to, to accentuate almost as if the actor had control over, over that as part of their body language.

Yeah.

Scott Conditt: That's the best example of effects. Well done for me, man. Is that kind of, of course there's the razzle dazzle. We're all fans of Marvel films and all the wild sci fi stuff we love, but performance enhancing moments like that, where it's like, Oh, that's just a nice little touch, a little enhancement, a little flair.

Yeah.

Paul DeNigris: It's all about performance and story, right? When you're making an Indy, theoretically, when you're making any film, but when you're making an Indy where every dollar has to count, every pixel that you're pushing needs to be for a reason. Every pixel that's being manipulated on screen needs to be for a reason.

And it was always to help you guys tell the story. And it was always to improve the performance, to motivate the drama to, so that when. When Max and crew are reacting something to something that what they're reacting to is legit and it feels tactile and feels like it's in the space. To go back to our nether creatures, the other choice that we made.

Early on again, to try and avoid doing fully photo real CG creatures was that in our plane the creatures manifest as energy, right? And so we ended up being able to leverage the game engine assets. So your game art designers. Turned over their rigs to us and then we were able to use that to drive a particle sim so they became made out of Ions or whatever that danced around in the shape of the creature and we didn't have to, try and create skin and subsurface scattering and, proper deformations and, try and do Gollum on a ultra low budget film and do that for, multiple creatures throughout the movie.

In particular, the one that I always point to as my biggest point of pride is that reveal of the Nethercragon when Seth comes walking in with it. On a leash. Oh,

Scott Conditt: it's in super slowmo. Yeah. And the lightning's going off in the background. Yeah. Highlighting 'em from behind. Yeah. And yeah, dude, we geeked out too, when you showed us that particle sim look, because a huge Predator fan, . And it was like, okay, cool. So these things are they're breaching their way from the game world into real world. What is that? What are games? It's all data and digital and energy. And so that, that representation of it visually just worked but yeah, that shot in particular of the nether Kragen.

Dude, that was the show style. It was a trailer moment when we saw you putting that together. That's going in the trailer for sure.

Paul DeNigris: That was a fun night on set. That was one of the nights that I was able to hang with you guys through the entire shoot day. And of course I was, geeking out, talking to Greg Grunberg, right?

Here's Lin Shay. Come on, Lin Shay. Yeah, we, I had a blast talking to them and getting to know them. And So that was awesome. That's one of those pinch me moments. Like here's a dude who's in star Trek and star Wars and all this other stuff. And he's just just bullshitting with me on the couch in between takes

He's a good dude, man. Yeah. Pretty awesome. Also a producer on this film. A star and a producer. Yeah. Yeah, it was awesome. And it was great to meet his son played the younger version of his character and yeah, and that was a blast just to see that and see how much he supported the film.

But being on set that night, one of the things we were, we had discussed ahead of time was. Even though the kraken is made out of energy, it needs to feel dangerous. It needs to feel like it can actually influence. our world. We needed to attack Steve. We needed to feel like Max and company are in danger when it's, when it comes into the garage.

We need, Eugene to Eugene is scared witless out of it at a certain point. We need to motivate that, right? It has to feel dangerous and real and we need a reference, like Jeremy needed to know where to point the camera. Where's the thing's head.

So we

Paul DeNigris: made this really ridiculous puppet.

It's just a green ball on a stick with two little led lights for where the eyes are supposed to be. And and the S and M gimp collar on down by a chain.

Scott Conditt: I can't tell you how many people wore that damn thing on set. Seen photos from that night.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah, it was it was a lot of fun. And in that big reveal shot Scott, I think you were the puppeteer.

for that's part of that for the big reveal. So you come walking in the behind the scenes footage, carrying this thing and trying to try to evoke your bad ass self to give us some reference for how the Kragen should move. And then I had to of course, jump in, what's the point of being visual effects supervisor. If you can't be ridiculous

Scott Conditt: on set,

Paul DeNigris: but then the other thing we did was we wanted the Kragen to charge down the hallway. And knock pictures and stuff off the wall. Production designer Jennifer Nesbitt, she put up all these pictures on the wall.

And then you guys just rolled up, just rolled a long time. And I went one by one and knocked things off the wall. And and then we combined all of that so that as it barrels down the hallway, pictures are flying off and, there's a little spark, arcs of energy coming off and all of that stuff again to try and make it feel feel

Scott Conditt: real totally.

Yeah, it sold it, man. And that was Jen's house too, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. God bless her. She let us destroy her house for that couple of days too.

Paul DeNigris: Yeah. And then the last the last bit that I love and it's just a, it's such a simple thing when the when the cracking gets vaporized. By the what did you guys call it again?

The he hits the button. The Vortex. Vortex.

Jeremy Tremp: Something. Vortex. It was a

Scott Conditt: really long name. Yeah. It was some kind of disruptor, some kind of EMP

Paul DeNigris: pulse type In theory. Yeah. Yeah. The EMP vortex. So Max slaps that button and it zaps the mini boss' way. And it vaporizes the kragan. So now the digital kragan is wearing a digital collar that is a replica of the real.

Gimp collar that we had on set. And then I think I, I begged you, I was like, please just gimme a shot of the collar hitting the floor, and you're like, all right, if there's time. And I was like, come on, just put it on the floor and just drop the collar in the shot and you did it.

And it's in the cut. 'cause it like, you see the thing vaporize and you see the digital collar kind of fall through it as it disappears and then you cut to Yeah, the practical collar falling and there's little red wisps coming off of it and the colors. They don't really match. It's one of those if you really investigate, yeah, it goes from this big to this big, but it's, it's, but it makes it feel like that thing was really, there really had a chain around its neck.

It really had this collar on and it all ties together. It's just these stupid, low budget little tricks. Just like 60 seconds. Jeremy, just give me this shot. Please

Scott Conditt: make all of our lives easier. Just trust me. Yeah. And it

Paul DeNigris: did, man it sold it. What's something that you took away from Max Reload from the VFX process in particular that has changed the way you do things or maybe has influenced or informed how you approach future projects or how you might tackle a future film sequel?

Jeremy Tremp: Pre production, planning shots, planning everything. That's become a huge part of it. That's something that we've learned especially when, you're, when you're running a business, time is money. And if you don't put in the time, you will spend more money. Making sure that we're planning more making sure that things are dialed in more, having conversations about how things will look, how they should be shot, how to support the, the CG in camera practical versus CG.

Scott Conditt: Yeah.

Jeremy Tremp: All that stuff is heavily influenced how we've adjusted and changed.

Scott Conditt: Agreed, man. Yeah, convers right? But they can be ve know, it's like having th with yourself and talking exactly what we want thin pulled, taking the time t I think it's an eas Particularly if you have a skilled team to say that phrase that everyone jokes about and everyone hates, oh, we can fix it in post and the greatest wizards in the world, they can at great expense and at great cost in terms of time.

Don't rest on the skill of your team in that way, but leverage that time and pre pro if you've got it. To communicate with your team and make sure you're truly on the same page and do previs man, storyboards, even if it's a napkin sketch all the way up through putting together cool look books and textures.

We do all of that now, which I'm sure it makes you happy to hear when we rope you into the next, feature Paul, those things will be in place where we had some of those things on max, but certainly a lot of them were like, I will figure it out. It will figure it out after we shoot it. We know what we need to shoot so you can have it as a canvas, but.

And

Jeremy Tremp: devil's advocate, we wouldn't have made this movie if we didn't have that spirit, we would not have, because it's, it takes a lot of work, it's very daunting and you start to quickly realize that you cannot actually do what you was set up to do. But when you just throw yourself in, you will figure a way out,

Scott Conditt: dude.

If you had the devil advocate

Jeremy Tremp: is the naivety of going into this that the world's our oyster is the only reason. We made this film

Scott Conditt: indie film spirit, man. If you let the lawyers and accountants approve everything before they let you do anything, you'll never make anything.

Yeah.

Scott Conditt: But if you go into it like a knucklehead, like we did with a willing team of badasses, something cool can come out of it.

And that was the case with max.

Paul DeNigris: So planning, planning and pre production, but not so much that you paralyze yourself with planning. I think that's, I think that's the thing. A lot of the other thing you said was. When it's a business, you're burning money, right? A lot of independent filmmakers don't necessarily when they're first getting started, they don't necessarily treat it like a business.

They treat it as art first and business second. And it's really their hand in hand. One doesn't happen without the other. Everything moves on time and money is always the enemy. And you have to respect that. And the only way to do that is to approach it as a business.

We may not all be making money on it, right? It's an independent film. It's ultra low budget. Sure. He's getting rich at that budget level, but at the same time, money's a finite resource,

Scott Conditt: right? Absolutely. Yeah. People aren't going to show up when that money runs dry for, even with the most ambitious artistic crew, and when you're working with OPM, man, other people's money, you better damn well have good justification for how you're spending it.

And that time

Paul DeNigris: right on. A young independent filmmaker comes to you and says, I have this idea. I watched max reload and I was inspired and I want to make a movie that relies heavily on VFX, but I have no idea where to start. What do you tell them? We just give them your card and then we tell them to not

Jeremy Tremp: don't do it.

Scott Conditt: No, it's a healthy conversation. It's had.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. The thing is we had both of us, a decade of experience before we even, it's like you get out of film school and you're like, I'm the director. I want to be the director. I want to make movies. I want to make another star Trek movie.

And it's yeah, dude, no. Like how about make a narrative film that has zero VFX and learn how to tell a story. Oh

Scott Conditt: dude. If I could go back and have this conversation with us five years ago, I'd be like, look, Let's do our reservoir dogs first before we go do, ghostbusters on our dime.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah, it's, it's I always looked at it when I went to film school as, okay, what can I, what do I absolutely know that I can do?

Good or well, there's a lot of ideas that I have that I'm way more passionate about, but I could not pull them off. It's going to be bad. So if I just continue to stick with the things that I can do well, I will learn enough and over time I'll get to the thing that I actually wanted to do in the first place.

Midget

porn,

Jeremy Tremp: obviously. Paul, I don't know why you had this guy in your podcast. We're hitting that mark. But no

Paul DeNigris: It just got me demonetized.

Jeremy Tremp: It's a it's baby steps, man. Everyone wants to make their best idea first. And that's oftentimes not going to pan out, it's just, that's just the reality because of skilled time, money many factors start small And just perfect your craft until you are at the point to where you can really do that thing.

You're extremely passionate. Dude, it

Scott Conditt: sounds trite. We talk about this all the time. We talk about it with our team who, a lot of them are very, they're all very talented, but they're all younger. For the most part on the content creation side, it's You got one of these in your pocket. You got a studio that we didn't grow up.

None of us did having and it's not about the gear. It's not about having star power. Show me what you can do with that. And if you can't show me something with that, who's going to give you money to make that big thing that's inside of your head? Why should they? That's a good question for every up and coming content creator, right?

Particularly aspiring filmmakers. It's great advice. Great

Paul DeNigris: advice. So where can people find Max Reload to watch? I know it's out in distribution and lots of places, but where can they easily find it?

Scott Conditt: Yeah, man. It's on Amazon. If you go through any of the Amazon channels or if you have a subscription to prime, it's on there.

You can get it through to be to be peacock red box still has it on the red box digital. It was in their machines for a while, which was a trip. Who's using physical media anymore, but some people were And it's on a number of other streaming platforms. The only one that we didn't sign a deal with was Netflix and pretty much everywhere else.

It's available, man.

Paul DeNigris: And is it available outside the U S

Scott Conditt: yeah. It's

Jeremy Tremp: Distributed physically in Japan, Spain,

Scott Conditt: Germany is coming up

Jeremy Tremp: and then Europe somewhere, Europe, Taiwan.

Scott Conditt: Yeah. The UK,

Jeremy Tremp: we have a Japanese version and a UK version is pretty cool.

Paul DeNigris: Dude. Those

Scott Conditt: posters

Paul DeNigris: are

Jeremy Tremp: rad.

Yeah.

Paul DeNigris: Where can people find out more about what you guys are up to?

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. WW dot offensive group. com. That's our website. That's the handle for most of our Instagram stuff and

Scott Conditt: offensive group. Yeah.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah. Yeah, we've got some, we've got some cool stuff coming up. We're trying to bring more of the narrative storytelling to marketing in a really unique way.

So that's, we've got some stuff in the works. We've done some really cool things some more narrative things, some more action oriented things. We're just trying to ramp that side up heavy

Scott Conditt: on the sci fi tactical action. Shorter format content lets us experiment more. So we're doing a lot of that.

Jeremy Tremp: Yeah.

Scott Conditt: And then there's Jeremy's only fans.

Jeremy Tremp: Yep. It's only feet though. Yeah. So

it's actually I'm working on only crayons. There's a lot of grandmas out there.

Scott Conditt: Only grams. They make

Jeremy Tremp: cookies. Come on, dude. Like it's how to, it's like a cooking thing.

Scott Conditt: I'm sorry, Paul.

Dude, I, we haven't seen you in long enough.

Paul DeNigris: All right. With that, I don't know, I, there's no way to follow that up. So I'm going to thank Scott and Jeremy for being part of this episode. Love you guys, love working on Max Reload. Can't wait to do it again. Let's let's do that Max Reloaded sequel one of these days.

Absolutely. 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 rate, review, comment on either YouTube or your favorite podcast. 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.