Dynamo Scene: "You Wanna Know My Plan?" (Patreon)

I wrote the above scene for Dynamo over five years ago (and filmed it in... 2015? Eeesh Time flies!), mostly as a writing exercise. I'd gotten kind of worried that I was treating CG as a crutch (cause ya knowww), so I wanted a whole scene that was just a guy (the amazing Aaron Moore) talking. I think it turned out alright!

Huge thanks to Aaron for his memorization/acting, and Selena Annis and Nathan Vegdahl for playing the background restaurant goers, Nate Taylor for helping me go nuts and build this crazy set in the car port, and Izzy Corey for being DP!

We built the set in the carport of the house I used to share with 8 people (a fun house, but also the inspiration for me moving out into the woods, haha), with the set just flowing onto the sidewalk, confusing the neighbors. It was great :D

We stuck a screen under the table for various embedded monitors (one big monitor playing 3 separate videos).

It was fun! We hung up a lot of garbage and fake flyers and random beer neon. Just kinda "What can we staple to the walls?"

Actually, I give it a hard time, but with the right camera angle, that set could probably work. 

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For a bit of context, Dynamo is a show I've been working on constantly since 2011 (with ideas that have been percolating since 2007 or so). That said, I really rarely release episodes (ep 5 in May 2014, and ep 6 some time last year). Which is kind of wild. Like, I work on Dynamo for a few hours (minimum) every day, and that's translated to 12 minutes of released stuff in the past half decade.

Which is crazy, and kind of depressing, but I think I also know some of the Whys.  

This is mostly just me writing stuff out to help process; read it if you feel like it :)

1.) I'm giving myself a lot of opportunities to be the bottleneck. I'm writing/editing/VFX'n, coordinating the shoots, all that stuff, and all of those steps take a while. If I could delegate some of that out, I'm sure things would go a lot faster, but anyone taking on that much work should be paid, and I've basically always been broke, so I've never really pursued that (you patrons are opening some new very very exciting doors though, so we'll see! I'm still solidly in the "I gotta do everything myself!" train of thought, but I'm hoping I can start changing that pretty quick here).

2.) Perfectionism. I feel weird even saying that word, because the stuff is so far from perfect (and it's only the past year or so I've started flirting with anything beyond "just good enough to get by"). The pacing can be weird, the line deliveries wonky, the writing heavy handed, the production value all over the place- I'm super aware of that, and that's why I'm always working so hard to compensate in post (where I still cut corners).

Cause there's a thing where I'm looking at a scene, or a shot or whatever, and it's fine, but I know (especially in terms of editing or CG or something) that I could spend some time and improve it:  "But I could make it better" [BICMIB]. And if you know that, eventually it starts to drive you crazy if you don't make it better.  

3.) It's just a ton of work. I've gotten really comfortable with the thought of just shooting a scene on greenscreen, without realizing that that can easily translate to a couple weeks/months of post. Conversely, when we shoot something practically, we usually end up building the entire set from scratch, which isn't exactly the fastest way to do it.  I also drastically underestimate how long stuff takes. Like, I know I could conceivably track/animate a floating robot into a shot in like 45 minutes, but it never actually takes that long. Something always makes it complicated, or... just putting ANY shot through the entire VFX pipeline takes a while to get going "momentum wise". Multiply that by 20 floating robot shots, and instead of a couple days you're maybe looking at a couple weeks. 

Kaitlin was watching 'Friends', and I was so envious. They just have to go into a pre-lit room and act. They're not building sets or finding locations for every scene, or doing weird camera angles or lots of post- just cutting between a few cameras (it feels like 2 takes at most??) It's fun, and it actually wouldn't be improved at all by additional angles or production value; that's not where the enjoyment comes from. 

On that note, I think I have a fear of dialogue scenes- I'll talk about it below*

4.) I keep complicating it. Like- okay, so you shoot a scene, and it's bad or boring or motivations don't make sense. But it's always possible to re-contextualize a scene to make it better.

Say you have a random scene of two people talking, and it's kind of awkward or boring. Then later you film a shot of a secret agent in the room next door eavesdropping at the wall, and edit that into the middle of the scene.. Suddenly there's a bit of intrigue!

Then say you're looking at the edit and decide to do a pick-up shoot of a new scene that takes place before the conversation, where the agent secretly talks to one of them and says, "if they say the word "Incidentally", stab them in face or I'll kill your mother!" Suddenly there's some suspense! Will they be incidentally stabbed?

But then you realize that nobody cares about the mother yet, so you film another scene showing how important she is to her son.

Then another scene showing her hiring the secret agent!!  Oh hot jeez now this is cinema!

But that's the problem. When you can shoot additional scenes at any point, the editing process isn't just a question of, "how do we assemble these assets into their best possible form", it's just another step in the brainstorm process. You look at the edit and it's like  BICMIB.

Which would be fine- just keep iterating- except that footage has a finite shelf-life (as doooo human beings). A bunch of the "two hours of nearly finished Dynamo" I like to talk about was filmed five or six (or seven?) years ago. And we were filming scenes as we could, so we never actually got everything we needed back then. Which, again, was fine, we were just going to shoot it later, but now we'd be cutting 33 year old us with 25 year old us, back to back, which is a pretty hefty time jump. And maybe that's fine (I've been watching Better Call Saul (a prequel to Breaking Bad), which has actors 12 years later playing rolls 5 years younger, and you just go with it.) But it's still weird, and getting worse.

There's also the fact that a lot of actors I started filming with live all over the country now.

There's also a bunch of postwork I'd want to redo. As I was talking about recently, even stuff for the next-to-be-released episode I've started redoing, since the first shots I did over a year and a half ago, and I've learned a lot in that year and a half (NOW I'm looking a a handful of those redone shots thinking, "HUH. Pigeons though?").  ICMIB.

No joke, my current plan for wrapping up Dynamo 1.0 is almost literally a bunch of "agent eavesdropping through the wall" scenes. It'll totally work, and it'll get all the beats across, but it's not how I originally had intended on doing it at all. [And actually, I wrote this post as a draft 6+ months ago. The time difference is getting even wilder. The thought of resurrecting that old footage is seeming a little nuts.]

But yeah, in the meantime I just keep shooting more scenes, which is partly because... 

4.) I'm addicted to the conceptualization stage. Thinking out the sequence/ideas. And a lot of times I'll jump towards trying to start a new scene/sequence/shot. It's throwing something at the wall and seeing what sticks and moving on. But when there's years of post on everything, you end up with a lot of crud stuck to the ol' wall.

SO!

This leads to Dynamo Dream, which is basically Dynamo 2.0- it exists in the same world, it's all going to tie in, but it was designed to be actually film-able. And it worked! Over a few weekends we were able to film like 45 minutes worth of stuff, it was amazing!

But then I kept working backwards, and added an episode with a heist, then an episode planning the heist, then an episode setting up the necessity for the heist, and then that short episode where Kaitlin's character is supposed to sell a few salads turned into 2 years of the most intense set building and CG work I've ever done.

And- to a degree that'll pay off (the Dynamo Dream teaser has been seen, in some form or another... 20-50 million times? I can't find the twitter post that particularly blew up) which hopefully will translate into finding an audience once we do release- and I'm definitely proud of what we've come up with; I think it's going to be pretty darn immersive/enjoyable, and captures the vibe I wanted-

But now I'm looking at the rest of the footage, that stuff we filmed over the course of a couple weeks back in 2018.  These days I spend a weekend on a single VFX shot, and mixing that level of post with an entire scene we shot in 25 minutes feels a little imbalanced. So I'm looking at all that stuff that's already mostly edited and ready to go, and I'm already trying to re-contextualize it. Because effectively my bar for when it's "good enough" has gone up.

We'd be jumping from an episode with a world where everything's been designed from scratch to something like this:

Which- that's fine, but it's just my kitchen. We didn't do anything to it. There's a Kitchen-Aid mixer, a picture of Josh Truax on the fridge, random booze from a previously shot scene.

And all of that is frankly a little bonkers, because in the end what I really want to tell is this story. I'm really stoked about it- I've been planning it for a super long time- and if I only get to tell it in 10 minute bursts every 5 years, I'll never actually be able to get to "the good bits" (everything's setup with no payoff). I'd like to believe it's a story that would work even without a bunch of flashy visuals, even if it were written down or being told verbally.

BICMIB. And I really want the experience of the world to be immersive, and I think trying really hard to create that experience has been a good thing (Actually, I think most of you being here is an indirect byproduct of that goal!)

Because I'm at a bit of a crossroads. I'm almost done with the first episode (if I stop redoing old CG and actually figure out some tricky parts in the edit (seriously somebody just lock me in this room and I can't leave till I finalize the edit. I've been poking at this one scene in particular for two years now)), at which point I get to decide if I want to jump straight into polishing the stuff I filmed 4 years ago (I've got a good 45 minutes of content substantially completed. Like- it's watchable), OR try to optimize reshoots using the things I've learned and resources I've acquired in the years since? Or both! Keep the old stuff, but let myself feel free to supplement it with little reshoots and such.


I think my goal moving forwards should be this:  
1.) Set up everything for an Actual Shoot, where we take a week and just film the entire episode. There's actual pre-production/production/post-production times, instead of the mishmash I've been doing. The patreon is bringing in enough money that if I get everything optimized, I think I can do a proper shoot, instead of just scrounging for my friend's free days like I've done for the past 20 years (thank you SO MUCH for that, all of you!!! By being here you're helping make so many of my long-term dreams come true. I'm going to continue to work hard to try to keep it worth your while!)
2.) Try to get an Actual Editor. I don't particularly enjoy editing, but it's so integral to the creative process that I'm reluctant to give up control. Gotta find someone on the same creative wavelength that I trust!
And 3.) ...I think trying to shoot with more practical sets is a good goal. I still want to go all-out with the CG, but I think I'd rather focus that effort into better/fewer shots, instead of, like, 200 random shots throughout the entire episode (that said, I know me, and I always end up adding a bunch of extras, regardless)

Yeah- those seem like good goals for now. 

Since episode 1 is close to done, I'm currently working hard on re-writing episode 2. I have some ideas I'm really excited to try pulling off, and some practical locations that I think will work really well (that Satsop power plant, for one).

Also- I have a bunch of scenes like the video above. At the very least, I might end up uploading some of them here every once in a while? It'd be fun to have somewhere to put them.

Ian



*Dialogue scenes! Most of the stuff I've been working on for the past few years tends to show each camera angle only once. We're traveling through a world letting the environment do most of the talking, and just like you wouldn't have an actor keep delivering the same line for no reason, I like letting each shot say it's bit then leaving it behind. I love nonverbal scenes- I get to figure stuff out visually, I don't have to go nuts in the writing stage, or feel awkward directing actor line deliveries. 

But one of my biggest aversions to dialogue scenes is I just seem to shoot them completely differently. Instead of letting each angle tell a story, I just gather coverage, with maybe a few cutaways for "emphasis" or whatever. I don't like it- it feels like a habit I got into 20 years ago that I'm just sticking with. So I try to keep scenes as short as possible, end up shooting a ton of random footage, then take forever to edit it. It isn't a great system. 

I think it's because normally I'm shooting "for the edit". I know how the scene will look as I'm shooting it, and making an edit in my head so I just have to film each bit I need, then stick all those bits together and BAM I have a scene. With a dialogue scene I don't really know what I'm shooting- it's not the "language of cinema" doing the talking, it's the actors- so I'm just getting assets I can use later for the edit room, which is when I'm really making the scene (I did warn you guys I was processing stuff out loud :P Trying to figure this out in real time!) 

The biggest thing- the lesson I realized a few years ago and which I always forget- is that as director my biggest question should always be how should the scene FEEL? More than anything else, audiences respond to vibe/emotion/whatever the scene makes them feel, but it's totally possible to get together actors/scripts/sets/cameras and film a whole thing without ever intentionally putting emotion into it (or, focusing on the characters emotional experience, instead of the audiences. It isn't always a given that they're the same thing). It's so easy for me to forget this; a lot of times when I'm floundering I realize it's because I never answered that question, and once I do everything comes into focus, and scenes I didn't like before suddenly come to life. 

And with all that in mind, I'm gonna get back to some writing!