Back To School: TV & Film Style!

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???

Biagio: This episode. It’s episode 98, our back to school episode. We’re sharing amazing resources to help you learn and grow in your filmmaking career. Sites we use for hands on learning. The tool that inspires our mood boards. The brand new top secret Hollywood newsletter we can’t get enough of. And. I reveal my deepest, most shocking secret. I am a middle aged Middle America housewife. The secret is out. Ladies and gentlemen. Music courtesy Dave Pelman. Music Dave Pearlman. Hey, everybody. She’s joke.

Joke: He’s Biagio.

Biagio: We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.

Biagio: Well, welcome to episode 98, which we are calling Bet school, TV and film Style.

Joke: Back to School. Yes, it’s kind of August. Kids are back in school. Been about a week. Some other friends kids are starting after Labor Day weekend.

Biagio: Our kids are in school, honey, they’re growing up. What’s happening?

Joke: I’m so excited. They’re on the same school schedule. Finally.

Biagio: Oh my gosh. Yeah, they are on the same schedule. It’s so weird. When we started this podcast, well, one of them wasn’t even here yet.

Joke: Yeah.

Biagio: That’s true. Wow. Time flies. Time flies. So do the episode numbers as we inch ever more closely towards episode 100. What are we going to do for that episode? Hopefully surprise you?

Joke: I think we’re still trying to figure it out.

Biagio: There’s a reason we’ve put these back to every four weeks, but we won’t talk about that right now. Anyways, with the whole back to school thing we thought that would be great to do an episode about learning, continuous learning and how we still learn right now, today in 2017. Because especially in this business, any creative industry, any industry really continuing to learn is so important. And yet it’s so hard to do when you get to a point in your career where you’re busy, right? Joke.

Joke: Yeah, you’re busy or, you know, you kind of have an idea of what you want to do, and obviously you should and you should pursue that. But it’s important to keep your eye open, your ears open to just other things, you know, things that can stimulate you, inspire you, challenge you.

Biagio: But I think we wanted to start out with just some big, broad, sweeping, practical advice based kind of on what we do every day. And then we want to share some specific places that we go to ourselves on a regular basis. Some of these resources you might have heard of, I bet at least a few of them you haven’t. So hopefully we can get you looking at a few new resources to inspire and improve your own work. And if nothing else, you’ll know where we spend our time when we’re not, when we’re not spending our time at the office making shows, which is most of the time. So moving on. I also want to say this is not meant to be an exhaustive list. I’m sure we’re going to miss some of your some of your favorite resources out there. If you want, you can follow us on Twitter and tweet us at Joke and Biagio, Joke and Biagio, and let us know if there’s some great resources that you love. And we’ll pick some of the best ones, and we’ll embed them in the show notes for this episode, which you’ll be able to find out. Producing unscripted nine eight.

Earnest Young Man: My mom says TV melts your brain.

Biagio: All right, so let’s start out joke with, I think the biggest, most important statement you’ve made to me in our careers. And I think it’s one that we remember every single day. What is that?

Joke: We are storytellers.

Biagio: Yes we are.

Joke: So I think at the end of the day, yes, you make television or or, you know, whatever. What are the documentary shows? Or it’s more formatted shows or game shows or whatever it is. You know, at the end of the day, you’re you’re still you’re still telling stories and stories require, you know, character and structure and beginning, middle and ends and all those things. And so one of the things that we keep doing is we seek out great stories and, and not just great stories in television, but great stories everywhere, in all mediums. So what are that? You know, a great movie or whatever that is a great book or a great short stories or long form journalism, shorter journalistic kind of articles, you know, stories that are based on character, that are based on the structure. They’re not news blurbs. But, you know, someone, a storyteller who took the time in whatever medium. Podcasts have been great in terms of there’s some great storytellers out there and a podcast medium. So it’s about finding places to hear great stories, to read great stories, to see great stories, and let those inspire you in terms of structure and character and how they told those stories and how they got into and out of different things. And so, yeah, so we are storytellers and as a as a continuous learning, we’re always trying to get inspired by other great stories and storytellers.

Biagio: Yeah, it’s a great book. I bet a lot of you who’ve read it, it’s called Steal Like an Artist. And it’s, it’s it’s all about like, finding inspiration, you know, all over the place. And one of the quotes in there, I’m going to paraphrase, I’m going to get it all wrong. I can’t remember who said it, but it was along the lines of if you steal from one source, you’re a thief. If you steal from 100, you’re a genius. Something like that. But was the idea that, you know, basically all work is a remix. Everything is a remix of something that’s inspired you before, and the more places you can draw inspiration from, the more unique your work is going to be. Part and parcel of that is being inspired by great work within your industry, the kind of work you want to make, and watching and learning from work that’s really, really above and beyond what you’re doing. And all of us can find work like that.

Joke: And honestly, this takes us back to episode one where I said, if you want to make television, you should watch television, right? And so I think one of the things is, is that obviously we look for stories in all mediums, but to watch the television, to see what people are really talking about and what’s what are the critics responding to what is doing well in the ratings and enjoying them first from an audience perspective and like, okay, this is this is this was very enjoyable. Or I went on this ride and then also, you know, kind of think about them from a producing perspective and what they did and how they did it. And I think one of the shows that we watched recently that really inspired us was The Defiant Ones, which is a it’s just a four part documentary series on HBO. And to be honest, you know, some of it is a story of Doctor Dre and Jimmy. I’m going to pronounce his last name, Ivy.

Biagio: I think it’s Jimmy Ivy, and it’s felt like it, but I think I just put out Jimmy.

Joke: But so so some of those stories, you know, we already knew and some of their background, we already knew, but how they told it, the the way they shot it, the way they edited it, the pacing, the it was it was so musical in a sense that, yes, obviously it’s a music documentary and there’s a lot of pieces of music in it, but the musicality with which they would play, the soundbites and the pauses date take and the the the quick cuts or the or the long pauses and no cuts, it’s, it’s it was very well executed and it’s, it’s one of those things that, you know, as professional storytellers, you watch and you’re like, wow, that’s amazing. And, you know, not every buyer would let you do that. You know, some audiences aren’t up for that. But obviously at an HBO, they are. But still, you can look at it and it keeps pushing the medium forward. It keeps all of us inspired to, you know, strive for different, strive for more, strive for for new.

Biagio: Yeah. What I loved about The Defiant Ones is it was just such a great example of filmmakers just being creative. Because look, at the end of the day, you’re doing a documentary driven by interviews with some stylized recreate. I mean, that is a format that is so easy to do in a stale way that we’ve all seen a thousand times. Every single thing about this felt fresh, creative, fun. You could feel the filmmakers enjoyed making it, you know? And I think that was really inspired me about it. So if you have HBO or HBO go, whatever, check out The Defiant Ones. I just thought it was it was really well done. So that’s again, that’s an example, I think, of looking, you know, within the industry and letting work inspire us. You know, we all do that. You should do it. It’s important. It’s part of continuing to learn, dissecting it. You know, both joke and I talked a lot about The Defiant Ones, what worked about it, the few moments that maybe didn’t work for us. And it’s something that we we’ve made a part of our thought process, and we do that with a lot of the things that we watch and we love. So to wrap up this little section of the podcast, I mean, I don’t want to sound like duh, but da in, in a general practical sense, seek out great work both from inside and outside the area that you’re trying to work in. But but actually do it. I mean, it’s easy to say, it’s easy to go, oh yeah, of course I do that. You actually have to make time to do it. And it’s not easy, especially if you’re busy. Listen, we run a production company, we make television shows, we have two kids, so we know better than anybody. It’s difficult to carve out time to learn, but you have to if you want to succeed in his business. So now I want to move on to a little bit more practical resources. You can go to and look at some places that we like to hang out. And first up, I want to talk about some hands on resources. These are the places where you’re going to sharpen your filmmaking techniques, where you’re going to pick up little tips and tricks. They’re going to help you in your productions. Some of them you’ve heard of, some of them I bet you haven’t. But I want to start with one that is probably the most popular. And again, the only reason I mention it is because we are working television producers and filmmakers, and I go there all the time and it’s Lynda.com. The classes are taught well. They also have transcripts because you don’t always have time to watch a video. So you can read it. And I will tell you at least 3 or 4 times a week if I’m, especially if I’m doing a development tape and we’re trying to come up with a unique look, or I’m trying to use a tool in After Effects of Cinema 4D or something, I’m not quite sure about an Adobe Premiere. I go straight to Linda. That’s the that’s the first place I look. Another really good resource that I sign up for from time to time is Safari Books Online. What I like about Safari is that all the books are searchable in like this Google like manner. So if I want to say look up, you know, anything like say I want to look up the road brush and after effect search Roto Brush and it’ll bring up every single book and every single part of every book that has anything about the road or brush and After Effects. You can quickly pick the most appropriate one. Read it. If you don’t have time to watch a video and learn from it. So I’m a fan of that. Another one.

Joke: I work for the road brush all the time.

Biagio: Joke because cause you want to roto out all the silly things I do, right?

Joke: No. Yeah, sure.

Biagio: Yeah. And save them forever. A couple of other great resources that we hit a lot. Our School of Motion, which we talked to Joey last podcast episode. If you’re interested in learning about graphics for crazy out of the box filmmaking techniques, many of which we’ve used in our crime reenactment shows, we look at Film Riot on on YouTube and also Video Copilot. I can tell you that some of the graphics in both She Made Me Do It and Three Days to Live, both in development and occasionally during series, were inspired by things we found both at Film Riot and Video Copilot. The next thing I want to talk about, and I’m going to let jokes start with this one. Our curated good taste sites, that’s what I’m calling them. Curated good taste.

Joke: Like, did you just make that up?

Biagio: I wish I just made that up. I think someone smarter than me said it at some point, but but basically what these are, these are this is because, listen, the web is full of stuff, right? How if you how are you supposed to know what’s good? I mean, if you just go and you Google TV graphics, you’re going to get so much crazy stuff, you’re not going to know what’s good or bad. Same with like filmmaking or whatever. I mean, it’s just just too much. So what’s happened is, is we’re in an era now where there are sites run by people with really good taste. So if you don’t have that taste in a certain area yet, and there’s no way we can all have great taste in every single area of filmmaking, you have to build it up over time. You can go to these sites, look at really good work and just let it start seeping into your subconscious. You can do it for 30s a day, once or twice a day. Just look at good work, and it’s just going to start affecting you and popping up in your own work. So the first one, and this is a site I used to make fun of all the time.

Joke: All the time.

Biagio: Oh my gosh. And now I am the biggest convert in the world. And that site is Pinterest. Pinterest. Oh my god, I feel like such a dork. But I am the biggest Pinterest convert in the world.

Joke: Not a dork. You’re just like, you know, a middle aged middle America housewife.

Biagio: There you go. I am a middle aged Middle America housewife. The secrets out. Ladies and gentlemen of.

Joke: The thing, here’s the thing about Pinterest. Why, yes, I will go on Pinterest and pin ideas for kids birthday parties. But the thing that Pinterest is also fantastic for is everything else. You literally can pin anything. And in terms of kind of curated good sites, it’s like looking for inspiration on color palettes, even for logos on, you know, different kinds of artwork.

Biagio: Cinematography, photography.

Joke: Cinematography, photography. We had a conversation with our cinematographer, whom we love, Eve Cohen, on a presentation. She last shot for us, and we literally sat around the conference room just looking up things on Pinterest and pinning specific looks and angles and things that we really liked and responded to as inspiration, as kind of mood boards. We we made a mood board on a recent pitch that we took out that really to try and let the network see what we had in our heads because it was, you know, it’s difficult to explain. And as soon as they looked at those pictures, they were like, oh, I get it. I see, I see where you’re taking this. And again, we went on Pinterest and typed in different words and different combinations of words that kind of got to it. And, you know, yes, sometimes you have to go through 20 pictures to find the one that, like, really hits it. But you know, when you then can show someone else that picture, it really makes a big difference in communicating and collaborating and all of that stuff. But but so yeah, so I was joking. It’s not just for middle aged Mid-America housewives.

Biagio: Like.

Joke: Me, like you. It really is. Now this completely other great resource, you know, and for some, you know, I used to go solely on Google Images, and now I’ll also go on Pinterest and find stuff there for inspiration.

Biagio: A lot of great designers, you know, build their boards on Pinterest. So I have a quick tip for you. This is something you can do if you go to our Pinterest page, which is called shocker joke and Biagio A and BIA Gio and I will link to it in the show notes. You can follow us. That’s fine. We don’t have. I think we only have like three public boards. What you want to do is you want to follow the people we’re following. I think I’m following 108 people right now in every single one of them is an incredible designer. Some of them do TV titles, some of them do illustrations, some of them do ads. But all those people that I’m following came from serious recommendations from real designers. So if you want to go over and follow 108 really good people on Pinterest or make it 109 and follow us to, you can hit up our Pinterest page and do that. And again, what I like to do is if I’m waiting in line at the grocery store or I got, you know, two minutes to do something, I’ll just pull up Pinterest and just look at great work because it seeps into your subconscious. And you never know when a project that’s going to come along where something might inspire you, or you might discover a great designer you love and be able to hire them on another project. We were recently able to hire The Mill on an upcoming project who’s an incredible graphic design house, and when I geeked out about for years, you know, and you’ll see their work all over the place in these curated sites. So Pinterest, you’ve all you’ve all probably heard about that one. I want to tell you a couple other ones that are fantastic. Now here’s one you might not have heard of. It’s pretty neat. There’s a blog and it’s run by Evan Richards. It’s Evan E Richards. Com and this is a great reference for filmmakers and cinematographers. What this guy dies is he takes entire feature films like Arrival and Logan and big Hollywood films, and he literally puts up a steel frame of every single shot in the movie. So you can literally look at all these still frames right in a row and see how that director envisioned his movie top to bottom, and how the shots cut from one to the other. It’s such a great resource. I mean, it’s such a brilliant idea. It’s simple idea, and it’s again, it’s just really great to look at for inspiration. You always see a whole movie, every single shot you can. You get ideas for color palettes, for framing, for interesting transitions between kinds of shots, all based on what this guy Evan E Richards has put together. So I think that’s a great place to look.

Joke: And you can only imagine how much time that took. So, you know.

Biagio: Not an easy, not an easy job, Evan. We appreciate it.

Joke: So someone. Go give him some clicks already. The guy deserves.

Biagio: This guy deserves it. It’s a really great site, and I think a lot of people in the cinematography area know about it. But like a lot of people listen to our podcast are producers and filmmakers and documentarians. And I want I want to expose you to stuff like this because it’s going to help you.

Joke: Yeah. Again, the main thing is, like Biagio says, is looking at great work, reading great work, listening to great work will just inspire you to do better.

Biagio: Work now, a great place to see a wide variety of work. Again, some of you may have heard of this. Some of you may have not, but is a place called short of the week. I love short of the week. Basically, it’s a curated site. Coming back to our creation idea of all the best short films on the internet in every genre documentary, action, visual effects, animated drama, comedy, you name it, there’s there’s a, there’s a, there’s a category for it at short of the week. And it’s another great place to see. What are the new hot experimental filmmaking techniques people are trying. You know, you’ve got new filmmakers, you know, breaking new ground, trying new cameras, experimenting with new techniques, trying different storytelling structures across Alexandra’s in their shorts. So if you, you know, if you’re on a bus or in a car or on a plane and you know you have internet access, you can watch ten, 15 projects, you know, and again, just let your brain experience all this different material that’s going to inspire you for for other stuff I love short of the week, I think it’s I think it’s a great site. A couple other quickies. If you’re thinking about titles for your television show or your film, art of the title is my personal go to for understanding the breadth, depth. The history of titles.

Joke: Is not thinking about coming up with titles, it’s about designing titles.

Biagio: Well, sure. What did I say?

Joke: Well, you just said you’re thinking about titles, but it’s like, you know, that to me. Sounds like. Do I call it The Bachelor or Single Man or.

Biagio: Thank you. Thank you, my beautiful wife, for keeping me clear and honest.

Joke: Like, yeah, go there. And it talks about breath. And I was like, what?

Biagio: What is he talking about? All right. Well, so if I just confused anybody I apologize. Let me start again. If you’re thinking about the design of titles and graphics for your project, Art of the title is a great site. Art of the title. Com it’s my personal go to for understanding the breadth, depth and history of titles for film and television. It goes all the way back to the 20s, all the way up to the biggest films from today and television shows. You’ll see a lot of great companies there, like elastic, who does the opening for Game of Thrones, The Mill, who did the opening for our upcoming series? A lot of these big graphic design houses you’ll see featured there, and they talk about how to design the titles. And what’s also interesting is they’ll talk about the process of working with the TV and film producers, and it’s really interesting to see how they like to work with producers and what producers can do to make a graphic designers job easier. And I think that’s where the real gold is in those interviews. Two more quick little curated sites. One is actually a Vimeo channel. It’s called Wine After Coffee, and it’s curated by by like 30 plus moderators who are all great animators or filmmakers. You see a wide range. It tends to lean more towards graphic design and illustration, but there is a lot of great work that includes live action and animation. And again, this is the stuff you want to be looking at to get ideas for your show opens and your graphic packages and your wraparound. And if you’re a documentarian that you want to look at for ideas for how you’re going to present information graphics in lower thirds in titles during the film or project. So I love looking at white after coffee. And I said that there was two more curated ones, but actually that was it. That was the last one on my list. I thought a lie.

Law Student: I like totally feel myself getting smarter right now. Booyah.

Biagio: All right. And and last but not least, I want to tell you about a couple of good places to go for general info. Really important general info. It’s a really specific info, I guess, but the first and this is one that we go to on every single project we’re about to pitch, every meeting we’re about to take, you need to go to the websites of the TV networks you hope to pitch or the film studios, and you need to go to their social media channels. I mean, if you go to oxygen and you check out oxygen site, you can see right now, what are they pushing? They’re pushing crime. Look at their social media. What shows are they pushing? We were lucky to be one of them. With three days live, now they’re pushing their next wave of crime. It’s very, very clear. If you look at oxygen right now, they’re probably not looking for a dating show. You’re going to learn that just by looking at their website and what they’re promoting. Same thing if you’re thinking about doing a pitch tape aimed at a specific network. If we have something that we want to try and pitch over at discovery, you better believe I’m hanging out at Discovery’s website. I’m figuring out what shows they’re pushing, what shows are working for them, and what those shows look like, how those shows work both in show form and promo form. And I cut that pitch tape look like a promo from those websites. So that’s one really important general information. Always go and hit those websites to learn what they’re currently doing right now. Don’t guess, don’t guess it because that you think oxygen is a is a network for women. It’d be a great place to pitch a dating show and then show up without looking at their site and realizing they’ve become all prime. These are the kind of mistakes that newbies often make, and they can be easily avoided if you just go to their website first.

Joke: One of the sites that we have, it’s not even a site. It’s really it’s it’s an email newsletter.

Biagio: It’s a top secret email newsletter.

Joke: Well, I don’t know how.

Biagio: Top I don’t know if it’s top secret, but it’s pretty hard. I mean, not everybody knows about it, but it’s amazing.

Joke: Yeah, it’s it’s called the anchor a and k l e r. And for those of you who used to be really into the early Deadline Hollywood, the snarky, gossipy version, this is this is back to the good old days. But but it’s less about for me at least it’s less about the snarky and it’s it’s. I always love reading insiders perspectives on the industry. You know, sometimes you you read the press. And most of it oftentimes unfortunately, is is just rehashing of the press releases that the studios put out. So to, to kind of hear more of the insiders perspective or why they think they’re doing a certain thing, like, I don’t know, it was just an interesting thing where apparently Ben Affleck is going possibly to another studio to make his next movie because he’s such been a Warner Brothers guy. And part of the reason they’re like that, they think this might be happening, is Warner Brothers is looking at a really conflicted Academy Award season right now, because Christopher Nolan would Dunkirk would obviously be pushed for best director, but then they also got Patty Jenkins with Wonder Woman already out that, you know, could be in the best director category. So where are they going to put their marketing dollars of who they would want to win the Oscar? And, you know, certain directors or talent get pissy if the studio doesn’t support them over somebody else. And so why would Ben Affleck try and get into anyway? It’s insane. And you’re just like, what? This is high school. And you’re like, yep, yep, it’s high school. Even at Warner Brothers.

Biagio: Yeah. Our whole business, unfortunately, is a little bit like high school. And I will say like the email is hilarious. It’s a little snarky. It can be a tiny bit gossipy, but there’s actually really good information in the root of it. And I think that it’s it’s interesting to see how the politics play out behind the closed doors in Hollywood, and to understand how it affects all of us, even us at an unscripted television level.

Joke: And honestly, what it does a lot is that you’re like, oh, okay. So the stuff that I’m going through, pretty much everyone goes through. Yes. And so it’s not personal. Got it. All right. So when even like, you know, Christopher Nolan and Patty Jenkins might be like, oh man, why is the network supporting me or my campaign or my movie? Oh, it’s because they have this other one to do. So, you know, it’s just it’s just a good perspective, kind of, you know, big worldview thing where you’re like, oh, all right. Like, I get it. This is how the business works across the board. What are your in television or film scripted or unscripted. It doesn’t matter. It’s it’s just show business.

Biagio: And what a great transition into our final little one that I want to mention. You know, when it comes to just sort of understanding that we all are sometimes in the same boat. I want to talk about a hilarious website run by John Collins, who’s a reality TV producer and really, really funny blogger. He has a, a, he has a column called If Famous Movies Got Around of reality TV network notes. Now let me start out by saying not all networks give crazy notes. We’ve been lucky to work with some awesome executives who give great notes, but there sometimes can be a certain strain of reality TV network notes. They can drive you crazy.

Joke: If you’ve never dealt with addressing reality TV network notes, I. I really urge you to go read some of these notes of a movie you’ve seen before, right? So a movie you’ve seen and loved or even liked, but you get it. Then read the notes and it is like really accurate as to as to what we sometimes go through depending on network. Again, not all networks, not all executives. But yeah, it’s quite amazing.

Biagio: There you go. I hope this has been a fun and informative podcast for you. I hope there’s at least 1 or 2 resources you take away you hadn’t heard of before, or you know, or a tip that enlightened you. I feel like a lot of this advice sometimes feel like the advice, but a lot of times it’s the the advice that we forget to take that we forget to carve out time for. So hopefully there’s a few things in here that really help you. Again, I know there’s going to be resources out there that are awesome that we didn’t mention. So if you want to connect with us on Twitter, follow at Joke and Biagio and then tweet to us some resources you like and we’ll put some of the best ones will embed them in the show notes, which you’ll be able to find at producing unscripted. Com slash nine eight. So we’ll be back in four weeks with episode 99. So close to 100.

Unidentified Voice: So close, so close. You can taste it so long as you can taste it.

Biagio: So we’ll see you then. Thank you for your patience. I know that we’ve pulled back from two weeks to four weeks on these podcasts, and eventually we’ll get back to two weeks. Right now, we’ve been really busy, and as we’re figuring out what we’re going to do for this 100th episode and we have some ideas, we need a little bit of extra time to get it done. So that’s why we’ve dropped back to every four weeks right now. We hope you’ll forgive us, but we we are grateful for every single one of you who tunes in and has said kind things to us on Twitter and in emails. And once again, thanks for thanks for listening. So we’ll be back in four weeks.

Joke: See you guys then.

Biagio: Keep learning by.

Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.