Hey everybody! James Cullen Bressack here and I am s uperd duper excited to be doing
a Masterclass with FilmCourage on the 22nd of this month (North Hollywood Area). We're gonna be
talking about all things horror movies how to get a horror movie up what little
tricks and things I've learned in making movies and really I'm just gonna be
answering a ton of questions so I'm excited to see you all there hope it's a
good night I think it's gonna be awesome!
You know because in the same shot he's supposed to get sprayed with the blood
James and I wrote both the scripts and the distributors that you didn't end up
selling the film to I approached and said hey if I made a film in the same
genre would you buy it and they said yes and so they pre bought her film alright
guys wardrobe is clear mix up this later quiet breeze lock it
up
better line when they're walking away where he's like move your ass and pushes
him into the room for that wait hold up from them to these guys during that
little exchange then we're going to get a shot of them here well is walked or
thrilled
Claire can you do that help again the biggest challenge in a set I constantly
find myself saying and thinking if I just had like two more days or if I just
had like three more days to film I wouldn't have to sacrifice stuff because
here I'll show you this is my script and if you look in it I mean I have my
entire shot list that I check off everything on whether I do it and
certain things you know you'll see like there's check marks next to a lot of
stuff and then certain stuff I don't end up shooting so yeah Borgo like you you
turn and then it's not like a jump turn and get up to go over okay and actually
I have a lot of prep work I do like all my notes for they're all color-coded so
you know Blue means visuals green means wardrobe pink means effects
so I have literally notes for actors notes for everything throughout the
entire script on every single page pages and pages and pages of notes and I draw
a little overhead pictures of how I want to block everybody stuff like this
usually doesn't make sense to anybody but me but uh it definitely prep work is
is the thing that really really I think solidifies a movie for me so I mean and
it's also on this short of a schedule because we have 14 days to shoot the
movie and it's a 95 page script you're shooting six to ten pages a day which is
pretty intense when I was in Thailand I had a 28 day shooting schedule so I was
shooting like three to four pages a day but if you look like you know if if you
write out a bunch of stuff like in here I have certain things of like this is
how the character feels like she pulls back in saying something childlike anger
and hate behind her voice but it isn't loud it's more subdued stuff like that
it gives you more of a moment that you're a
- just go in on how you already intended for the scene to go you work with the
actors during the blocking and some of some of the actors I'm blessed like to
have people like Zack and Tom Green and Shannen Doherty and and Stephanie s Dez
and everybody who's been involved they've all put in time before the movie
so I was able to talk with them about their characters and really go through
all of this so their scripts matched note wise with my scripts so they
already kind of know what I was going for originally what was layered in each
character and like each character's backstory past the page so we developed
that together and then it's kind of comes into clockwork because with all
the stuff like focus or sound from a plane you don't have as much time to
really work with the actors so you have to go in and and you know work with them
prior and really get them to where you want them before what do you think of
that I just adjusted yes he's gonna look here Erin's here Claire's here and when
she's over here she's over by the stove I know how much time my ad tells me how
much time I have left in the scene and I have to choose between doing another
take or scrapping a shot and I go well what's more important this angle or that
angle and then I go okay I want the other takes so let's scrap this shot or
I go let's just move on so I can get that shot and so it's constantly
deciding like what's the most important thing for the scene what do I need for
the Edit and so if you look at like my shot list if I pull up any scene I have
stuff where it's like what I need and what I want and like a perfect example
is I haven't shot scene three yet and you'll see I scrapped one two three four
shots on it already before I even did it and I know because this is the one
location that we are stealing we're not permitted for where we're shooting we're
running into a cemetery really quick and getting a couple shots there so I know
I'm only gonna have time for like two or three shots and I got to get out when I
originally shot lists it is like 10 so you know it's it's stuff like that you
way things into the balance and then you'll see over here I'm going through
this whole shot list and I start adding things on the side and scratching out
other stuff because when the blocking changes I go well this shot doesn't even
matter so I need that another great thing is you know you'll go through the
shot list and you're shooting something and let's say it's a close-up of
somebody talking and then you also have an insert shot of them picking something
up at the end of the tank I'm just like pan down and show them picking this
thing up so set for that pick it up and I put it at the end of the shot that way
I have two shots in one we don't have to set up for it
so it's it's you know it's just a lot of thinking on your toes and grabbing as
much stuff as you possibly can so you know how your films gonna be cut
prioritize in your scenes what you want versus what you need has always shoot
general coverage of what you need so that if you have to move on you can
because I see a lot of people always getting stuck in a scene and they're
like well I need this for the Edit and I need that for that edit and it's it's a
lot of wants so you choose on your day you know if you have like the
preliminary schedule for the day like this right here
you go through and you see all these scenes now we have a giant scene count
today and a giant amount of pages and you look at that and you go okay like
let's say like this scene is the most important right here so that's where I'm
gonna focus my the most of my time or this one and then the other scenes you
especially when you're fighting against the clock the other scenes you shoot
generally you know you do something cool but style is sometimes a luxury on these
shoots so you don't have to make every single scene in a stylistic masterpiece
you just have to make it competently shot and then you go in and finesse it
later the garnish is what you what you save for later if you if you
at the time one of my favorite things about doing a scene like this especially
in like this location that we have over here is I originally had like 14 shots
shot listed for this scene a bunch of stuff prepped and then when we were
doing the walkthrough I saw this this part of the hospital on this location
and it looked really awesome and I knew it was gonna look good on camera and the
lights but since it's such a tight space I chose this location which totally made
my shot let's go completely out the door because now I can't do any of the things
I originally planned because it's such a tight space and so many people so now
we're kind of like winging it a little so it's a it's kind of fun because it
keeps you on your toes and it's it's very different because you know I'm very
prepared all the time this is one of the first times where I kind of just have to
make make things up as I go which is we'll see how it goes and I talked with
my DP a lot I created a Dropbox I'll pull it up I go like you know lighting
and mood so these are certain like I wanted practical lights throughout the
house so I took pictures of that I'd paintings that had hold on pictures that
have the moon we'll have like shots from other movies so these have like
definitely the same kind of lighting that I wanted for the aesthetic look of
the film and so you go through and you look at how this is lit and you see like
all that stuff and then now I'll pull up a shot from my actual movie and you'll
see how we matched it so and this is what we ended up with this
is still from from monitor on color-corrected so it's all about having
having that dialogue in that conversation and you know for me it's
really important to have everybody on the same page so they all understand the
vision so I always you know that's just my cinematography file I also have you
know an art file effects file a hair file a makeup file a wardrobe file and
all that stuff and everybody all the department heads put their stuff into it
and I put my stuff into it and we combine and work it out and it looks
like Markus is pulling me now
one of the things that I've really played with the most on this film that
I'm really excited about is is my scene to scene transitions like every single
time in the movie there's there's almost every scene we go into a scene to see
the transition so it's like you know I'll have a character pick up a coffee
mug and then they'll go to sip it and we'll cut into a close-up of them
sipping it and when they pull it away from their mouth we pull back and we're
in a different scene so it's just them sipping the same coffee mugs but they're
on a different day and a different scene so finding different moments to have
something that similar art-wise so you're on that focused on it and then
you're somewhere else I like to hide how we got from one place to another and I
think it definitely helps with the fluidity of the movie and also with the
fluidity of the character because a lot of this movie plays as some cerebral
thing within the characters psyche almost as if it's the the lead actresses
psyche so it's almost as if like the entire movie is a quilt woven together
so I don't want stuff to people to ever know when something ended and once
something begins and we go in and out of flashbacks a lot so one of the cool
things about that is instead of having the flashbacks be separate scenes
I'll have the character turn and look and we dolly over there and we have a
dramatic lighting shift and it plays as if it's a little play in front of her
and then they leave the room and so there's these really cool transitions
that that play out and like the world changes lights come on art moves and I
got a lot of that from watching the movie Lone Star if you've seen that so
we've been kind of copying that a little but you know doing my own version of it
but watching it I was like I have to do that kind of thing that was awesome
and so I played it both ways which way you wanted here um I think this side
this side but also at the same time since since your character's supposed to
be it doesn't matter nothing what all right I just wanted to
make yeah for you for you specifically because I can be looking up here yeah
approaching a distributor in advance is something that really helps especially
for this film what I did is I had my movie pernicious which is coming out in
theaters soon that all the distributors saw when I was playing festivals and
they made bids on it and the distributors that we didn't end up
selling the film to I approached and said hey you know they put in an offer
for it and I said hey if I made a film in the same genre would you buy it and
they said yes and so they pre bought the film and so these films were pre-sold
before they were made it was very easy to finance them based off of they were
already sold before they were made so it's like hey one once the film is
delivered you get X amount of dollars from the distributor it's very easy to
say hey can you finance this because I'm literally basically borrowing money from
you for like a little bit of time and then it comes in they basically said as
long as I'm writing and directing which on one and I swung it as a tube film
deal that I would write both with his AK exact with direct one and I would direct
one and then they said that it had to be like ghost house types so like you know
genre films with a supernatural element that's that's what's big right now for
for genre alright