7 YEARS OF AGONY HD

7 YEARS OF AGONY HD

foreign

[Music]

thank you

[Music]

[Applause] [Music]

[Applause] [Music]

foreign

honestly where to begin Norman it was something that turned out

to be something so different than uh what I initially thought it was going to

be this idea was originally going to be just a short uh a short film and it's

honestly it's been such a long production that I honestly don't really remember

like what it initially was well it was through a friend at work

that I found out about the project hey my buddy Joel's making this film you know you want to be a part of it at the

time I was acting and and like plays and stuff at at school and so I was like yeah that'd be fun and

Joel came down and we talked about it talked about a time suit and you know it'll be a nice fun little project

should be done this summer and it unfolded from there

you ready action

I got involved when Joel gelser and his wife came over to my house one evening

for dinner and Joel wandered off and he was gone for probably 20 minutes before we

realized this and then we see him wandering around the house and then he

comes back into the living room and says this would be a perfect house for a set for the movie I'd been thinking about

so then I became involved in Norman for the next seven years

scene succeed take one

in total I've only known Joel without Norman for about four weeks

oh yeah just make sure he doesn't like speak over yeah yeah you don't even have to say you don't have to worry about

saying anything I got involved with Norman essentially by birth so Joel and

I are brothers uh I mean we grew up doing all sorts of piddly little short

films just fun projects so it kind of was

kind of a natural thing to have happen one that

probably couldn't even choose if I wanted to

I mean Norman was was a very difficult Slow Burn of a

project you know it was always something that I knew was going to be

good but at the same time just with life and having to do other projects to make money it was always this

this kind of heavy weight in the back your mind just knowing like pretty much any time that there's an opening in my

schedule or I have some plausibility to devote a series of weeks or a month or a

couple days each week on it I just knew that well I'm not gonna ever have free

time because when I have free time normally that would be devoted to Norman recording action

I think the first day we showed up got scripts and started doing scenes at the house

and driving a car it was just jumping straight into normal filming and then it started morphing

over time it morphed from hey we have this idea of you playing this girl but also what if

your voice was a different character Annie what just happened the design of the Annie

character Joel had a very particular design in mind I think he did it

but then we had to kind of Bring It Back to Reality with the limitations of 3D printing and the fact that I don't do 3D

printing I do architectural visualization video game artwork I work with polygons

and the weird thing about 3D printing is our work you see in video games is made up of triangles polygons and it's Hollow

if you take a camera in a video game and you clip it through a wall the wall is hollow and empty inside but when you're

printing an actual object it has to have physical form to it so our design for Annie had to be

physically perfect so we couldn't have any kind of weird clipping or issues where things would not print well and

then we still had to leave enough room to add the lighting effects the battery the glass shape all these parts being

printed and designed from different places online all having to come together again with me designing it not

knowing anything about 3D printing before this it was just a completely new

experience the story that I initially wrote

it had like the film retained a lot of what that initial story was but um

Through The Years through additional scenes through rewrites through changes um and because we had a secondary

character in the film Annie that isn't an actual human person we were able to

adapt that and so the story changed quite drastically in in different areas

I'm gonna see how your that position where you're you know when Joel was working on the film pretty early uh he

had shot maybe 20 days or so there's some stuff with Norman in the house and

he was sharing with me some of the scenes and sharing with me the script and we started having conversations

about where the story was going to go some of the dialogue things and it

turned into a discussion of what if you did this what if your character were to

make this decision and it kind of evolved into actually sitting down and helping work

on the script and come up with new ideas and eventually getting fully involved and working on

lines for Annie Annie which is the robot character and also you know some

other stuff like the journal

it was nowhere near the project it is now that than it was at the beginning so

it was it was a shorter script by far and that unfolded into a much larger

script the story The Plot expanded which was fun to be a part of but I had no idea what I was getting into

it just sounded fun honestly and I was looking for practice

um you know as an actor I just want to keep acting and getting better and it seemed like a good way to do that

so I said yeah let's do it being here I can't just keep going back out there

number two exposed it's too vulnerable

can't keep doing it it's just

I can't keep doing this I can't just keep going as it started growing

it it both made me a little nervous to see where it was going to end up because

I'm trying to understand this character and portray this person who is kind of evolving and so it's really hard to wrap

your mind around who this person is as they're growing as a character and so

there was some nervousness in that but it was also exciting to see

and be a part of that evolution of you know the plot thickening and adding

different aspects to make the story more appealing to a broad you know range of

of people who would be interested but I can't say I knew where it was going and that was the challenge

you know trying to see who I'm gonna portray this character as as the characters growing itself I think I'm

going too attach to this place I want you to play that yeah just like that so what happens after that line Joy of

course I can't say I'm sure what exactly you are trying to accomplish

um so literally all the way until I don't

need much just find this in place you know like all the way to me oh yeah honestly until name I'm

trying to think of the next until I actually want you to turn back to Annie yeah oh really you're only going to turn when

you come back to Norman Brandt so literally do the entire thing looking this way okay

this film uh was was a project that I thought was very doable

throughout the whole throughout the whole time um I thought it was going to be something

we could easily do and it was not any of that

the only way this film kind of happened was because it always felt like it was uh like

just months away from being done just literally months I always felt like it was within grasp like okay just a little

bit more and then it'll be done but as we started it you know Norman Norman's house was the central figure of

the movie and that only came down to uh this guy I met where I started working

Jason picor um his house was such a delight it had that knick-knacky feel it

had some like boats and ships and stuff all over had old clocks and things and I

was just like this is such a wild cool looking house I just thought I wonder if I could do this idea I had

um which at the time was was actually about this character who just had this alternate version of himself that he

could see through this mirror it was just it was just a weird little idea I had written down a notebook for years

um and it that's how it all started I've done everything I could do

I don't know what else I could do I tried

okay

nothing even looks like that much so besides trying to understand the character and

really bring him to life my job was also my own wardrobe manager

the dress shirt yeah okay maybe like just rolled up sleeves

cardigan vest

not this sweater I was tasked with finding different props at Point at different points in in

the process and whether that be you know asking around or going to thrift stores to buy

you know the most random things like we need a we need a uh exercise bike try to

go find one okay and so I'm like running around trying to find an exercise bike that you know will work at least for

filming and keeping track of all the costumes okay what did I wear for this scene it can't

be the same for this scene wait is it the same it's weird because time's involved like

what what's happening so it involved more than just acting like I had to do

several different things maintaining my facial hair was kind of a challenge

um because it wasn't all filmed like in one day and and one scene could have been

filmed on two separate days and so going back and looking at you know okay how did I shave and having to plan ahead

for that okay I shaved but there was some stubble so maybe shaved two days before or three days before I don't know

I'll just shave and so it probably changed a little bit hopefully no one notices any of those

uh subtle differences in my facial hair but stuff stuff like that was

stuff I did okay ready go back there and go as fast

as you can to go start shaking it okay so you can start shaking the table P chord

okay and action

are you away walk in I'm like a you know a typical film that

has a substantial budget or a decent budget to a degree those people are getting paid

to work on the film during their work hours they have a very good excuse for

why they're not at home to deal with home life or with kids or whatever the

case is um because they're getting that check every couple weeks but for the core team

around Norman I mean it really was sacrifice that we all had to make we had

to give up our free time our time to hang out with our wives with our kids a

lot of times doing things that you know we all would love to do but

those little moments of available time had to be devoted on Norman otherwise

it would take substantially even more time ready to go most of the filming took

place in my own house so I never really went to set the whole crew sort of came to me where I lived which was on set

so day-to-day life whether we were filming or not was on a movie set where I was finding myself walking around

reflectors and camera equipment and sound equipment on a regular basis so

yeah solid man yeah they did a good job

[Laughter] totally believable

action

are you okay I told you I'm fine

let's go I'll be fine

nice that was really good one time one more time and you got it that's oh that was really good dude

she's like a super I would say you're an average it was a normal person that you

could put a lot of yourself into she wasn't an out there character she's like

kind of the typical from the script anyway you could say like oh it's like the girl next door type character so

you have a lot of space to put your own self into it and your own perspective and how would I react and like this

normal everyday situation when someone's like bleeding from their head

oh you fainted and you felt pretty hard look

why are you still here I appreciate the help but you need to just go

all right I mean I'm just trying to help you but fine if you want to be left alone I'll go

let's go thank you just go foreign

the first prop that we started to build was the backpack for Norman's suit

all the parts for that were built from plumbing and electrical at a local hardware store

we began it shortly after we decided to film Norman but we didn't finish the prop until over

a year later when we actually needed to use it for those scenes

[Music] it wasn't until later we realized that

the helmet that we had chosen for the backpack tended to fog up

[Music] included a hose so we decided to build a

ventilation system into the backpack itself and a small computer fan and a

battery pack which also powered the lighting for both the backpack and the helmet blew

air up the tube into the helmet to keep it from fogging up which worked

marginally well oh

[Laughter]

he's backing up I have known Joel for

13 14 years now over a decade and so we have a long long video relationship I mean that was kind of the

binding agent that we connected with over initially and so as he grew more

into the story side of of uh video production I kind of took more of a

interest in the the magical side with visual effects and Motion Graphics and um and it played out beautifully because

this was a chance that he gave me a call and said hey I got another project coming up and it's going to have a lot

of visual effects work are you interested in doing this and obviously the answer was yes I think I was first promised I was just

I was given a 300 dollar piece of equipment and that was my payment and so I got I got this project

I'll give you a slider if you come help me okay sure I think I thought it was a weekend project like a 24-hour Film

Festival little did we know are recording now are you recording yep yeah I guess I turned

it off so it's crazy we're actually filming this thing and this thing hasn't fallen apart yet that's the biggest

straight that's Ben for the science assistant

how's the science Ben science scientific

the central theme of the film that I just been stuck with from the beginning was I wanted to make a time travel film

where the guy who uses this time machine does not use it to go save the world he

doesn't use it to go back and like do some grandiose thing the idea was what if he had a guy who figured out and

created a time machine simply because he wanted to escape his responsibilities he wanted to escape his own problems and he

just thinks somehow life will be better here away from his family away from his troubles

um but they always catch up and he never gets rid of them they're always still

there and they actually get worse because of his time travel so time travel was never really a huge theme in

the sense that I needed him to go back in time and it's all about this science fictiony type thing the story was just I

wanted to use time travel as a way to show that like this amazing adventure he has still does not allow him to escape

his troubles and problems he still has to face with them so essentially Norman has to learn to literally live in the

present and one of those things that made that happen was the secondary

character Annie which was voiced by Melissa I was trying to say Do not ruin

this opportunity to leave if you want to go to her then do it but commit to your choice you can't have

both Norman anytime you're working with somebody on a script collaboration is

fun but there's always the negotiation that goes back and forth you know Joel

being the director the really the author of the story it's very important to him to get it

right um everybody else that's working on the film also wants to get her right and so you have to negotiate you have to

collaborate to come up with the best ideas and we would put something down in the script and move on and something

just didn't feel right about it going back to the script said you know Annie says it this way this time this way

another time let's go back and make sure she's consistently saying the adjective this

way yeah this is actually a pretty long section for you okay um so we might have to split it up a

couple times and it felt like nitpicky at the time but when you're when you're

thinking about your characters when you're being empathetic you have to to just see you have to you put yourself in their shoes if you were that device or

you were Norman writing in this journal uh what would you be saying how would you be saying you can't make it sound like

it can't sound like James it can't sound like Joel it has to sound like that character and so we would nitpick some

of these lines um to to further enrich that character to be consistent I'd recommend shutting

off the faucet before your part sorry yeah

draw that out a little bit yeah yeah that second line do you want me to finish before he says anything trying to

place where we were in the story throughout the process of recording was was something I was trying to constantly

be going over like what just happened before this point so that it doesn't sound totally out of place and how can I

keep like the Streamline of the character in the right context so that it was relatable and so that we could

get a more effective relationship I guess between the lines because nothing was life

just nothing was live you've not once mentioned the injuries you've sustained to your head I also analyzed the basement and

detected a small explosive device it appears to have been forcibly opened

what happened while I was gone in the beginning when it was like less

wow this is going to take forever me and Adam kind of work together on it and during times we didn't have other active

projects we would kind of tag team and like do different scenes and it

eventually got to the place where I kind of took the reins and did quite a bit of it especially with like all the anti-tracking and stuff along that line

which helped because there was like consistency throughout it was never oh

copy any screen from this to the other one and it looks perfect but it was like I was able to go from

and he shot one to Andy shot 147 and like

kind of know in and out what all those are looking like and what they're all doing so making the Annie face we used

the dialogue clips from each shot in the movie so you had the dialogue for the shot in Premiere then rendered out into

waves and P core made this interface which is like just a

website on or just a web page on his website and you just take and you drag audio clip

loading audio file audio file is 200 ready and then once it's once it's 200

percent once it's 200 ready we're able to then start a screen capture a little new

screen recording going and I use QuickTime for this because it's easy and

you just do that start the recording and then I'll just play it

and depending on what shot it is sometimes it's just as small as that and

like it gets cut half yeah halfway and then stop the recording and then save it I did everything like

to try and be as organized as possible because I knew I was gonna have to change the cell so much but then just save it and then once I actually bring

it to After Effects all right I have like just the face and

then I take where the audio actually starts and line that up with the waveforms to try and make it so

that she's actually talking it isn't actually the case but I I felt like I was Annie like I was making her

talk in the way

look just trust me okay what I need you to do is get the machine running but

remember this time to keep the power level as low as possible until I tell you to punch it with props

Joel's philosophy seemed to be it only needed to last maybe 10 minutes but I always took the approach of overbuilding

and over designing everything just in case something went wrong so with the mini time machine I knew the

scene would involve Stephen throwing an Apple at this prop so uh with the

lighted tubes uh horizontally I figured they may get struck in any kind of

delicate electrical connection would be broken during that scene very easily so

I ended up making the tubes magnetic so that the connectors themselves could be

struck over and over again and simply can be reconnected magnetically without destroying the prop

[Laughter]

the table on the top recordable beam very one yep

cool the funny moments for me was when we

were working on the smaller time machine and it was completely ridiculous how we were shooting at someone laying under

the table hitting a light switch and you know moving papers and around stuff when the portal starts working but there's

the moment where we have the Apple that flies through the portal and

Norman throws it one way and you don't see it go from that angle into the portal we had it from the opposite angle

and so I took the apple and I was going to throw it to the portal and my first shot

hit the portal and took out all the lights I was like oh my God I broke the portal on the first shot

luckily it was able to be fixed but the next one went through and that was the one that made it into the movie

[Laughter]

keep rolling so once we had this house and I had this actor Steve

um we started shooting and we decided we're going to shoot the easiest things first and that was just physical

movement him walking over here him drawing over here him journaling in a notebook things that didn't really involve a lot of acting honestly uh to

just kind of get to to know each other to get used to each other how we work uh because Steven did a lot of theater acting but he hadn't really done a lot

of film acting and for me that there is a big difference you know you can have really good actors both ways and but if

you don't understand the difference there is a different language sometimes you got to be more subtle than theater acting and so we started with easy shots

and we worked our way up to more and more complicated uh shots the next day

I got a phone call telling me that both of my parents had died in a car accident

and the worst part is I can't even remember what we were arguing about

and Mom

I didn't even say goodbye

this was really my introduction to working in front of a camera

everything prior to this was on stage [Music] um or something to that extent so being

being in front of the camera was different but I think I adapted okay I don't know we'll see action

[Music]

working with mostly Joel and and P core was it was good because it was an

intimate setting in that there was only most of the time there was just the three of us filming different scenes you know

working it all out sometimes there would be sound on set sometimes they weren't able to be there so most often it was a

very intimate setting and some of the scenes required you know that for more

emotionally driven parts of the plot but it was it was it was fun at the same time because you know Joel would give

great Direction he would oftentimes we would sit down and he would explain the motivations behind you know what's

going on in the scene because it took me some time to to you know figure all that

out like what I want is here I should say your line of

you know you just say all right let's start it up ding

like you have this little bit of like wait you know like we don't say anything like just be looking up and then

wait wait don't do anything but don't turn your head keep still looking at there okay just be like wait

and you're still thinking I want to see I want to see in your eyes you're kind of thinking you know like uh wait should I do this you know I'm gonna do this I

should do this okay and that's when Annie's like Norman like he knows what you're gonna do she knows what's going

on okay and then what are the other line and as time went on I got more and more

comfortable not only in front of the camera but with Joel as a director and with Jason you know helping with either

lighting or reading some of vanities lines whatever it was

I became more and more accustomed to that over time which was very helpful let me ask you a question

sure uh personal question

one of my good friends James came in and he had known about me working on the film for for a while

um and we would chat all the time uh but it right around around Kickstarter time

uh he had really started to help me with a lot of the script we had really started working

on Annie's lines we changed every single piece of line that Annie says from what

I wrote into something really usable I had something there that would just get us close to what I wanted but uh but

James and I we worked together on the new scenes at the kickstarter

um the battle scene the um more shots talking about Norman's parents

um and then every little line of narration that Norman says throughout the the movie I wanted it to just be

beautiful after that everything changed

I became consumed with my work consumed with an idea

I no longer felt like I belonged I shut out the rest of the world I just

I wanted to escape Annie

I won't let my actions hurt these people like they did my parents I knew the film had to rely on narration and I know some

films can be really bad if you just rely on like flashbacks and stuff but since this was this movie was a time travel film and Norman's character literally

was a Hermit inside of a house he would never be talking a lot if

you're by yourself you just don't talk out loud and I didn't want random scenes of him just talking about ideas out loud

to no one so we had an outlet with Annie but the nor the Norman narration had to

be phenomenal had to feel like this is not just a cop-out of the story it legitimately is used in a great way

Visions memories I don't know what they are I wish I could understand

all I can think about is or I think my favorite aspect of being able to work on the movie was working on

the journal scenes with Joel when you you think of a journal you think of the most personal

thoughts of a character and that's sometimes something you don't always get from a character in a movie

and the Pendulum swinging you can also get too many thoughts and you you don't really see any character development so

we wanted to use this not as a crutch but as a way to show his deteriorate and

condition and to really show that like little piece of glimmer of hope that he started

to have and at the end just being able to give closure to the sacrifice the Annie made the decisions he made to show

that character Arc really coming from start to finish and it meant a lot to me

because everybody that worked on the film put a little piece of themselves into the film you know Joel definitely

is Joel is Norman the character in when you look at the different people that worked on it you know Peak or his house

was in the movie uh but you can see his his own creativity in the the set design and things like that for me the journal

was I can look at that and say this is what I was thinking at that time in my life and I can pinpoint those little

pieces of the script and say that's what I was emotionally thinking at the time and it's just it takes me back to and it

to me it was it was it was a great experience because you know rarely do you get to become

empathetically involved in another character yet still try to put a little bit of yourself into that and you know

it ended up speaking back to you when you finally see it come all together it's just waste in it

it was all just a waste there are moments the film that generally move me like that remind me

where I've been in life for the last seven years what I was thinking like I can hear a certain line and go oh my

gosh I remember where I was in life at that that time and just what we were going through

um money problems or family issues or whatever like I just remember like ah man like that's crazy just the like how

it just can bring you back like a smell but hearing those lines I think are really phenomenal

um and to me they they make the movie without those lines the movie would not like I could care less

all those years everything I put myself through it still happened

okay you can not see me enunciate a little bit more it was all just always Danny

it was all just a waste

all those years everything I put myself through it still happened

yeah that one's really good let's try recording okay Annie please

please don't do this to me

I can't live alone

again with Norman with Joel's situation no money and no human resources that

could fulfill that role we didn't have any choice so we just had to go with the aspect that we're going to re-record all

of it

foreign [Music]

[Music] that was a very

Hefty learning experience just how am I going to go about it

to try to make the dialogue as effective as it possible because so essentially most of the dialogue on

set was recorded with the built-in mic on a Canon 60D so not very high quality

even as a reference I'm running late as it is so save it for

another time okay no please there's not there's not gonna be another time look

I just want to say what you did for me thank you

you didn't have to do that

hey

I just I just wanted to tell you a lot is riding on me just to be

technically proficient and to guide that process but then a lot relies still ultimately at the

core on the talent's ability so Stephen Burgess ability you know like you can

tell a few lines where he's still warming up a little bit where he started to hit his stride more

but that was really difficult because we had to get him back in the mindset he can't just say a line perfectly in sync

he has to have the right like projection level the right energy level the right intonation

hello Annie

hello Annie

hello Annie look Eddie I need you for something

I think less forceful on the Annie okay Annie I need you for something if you're like kind of unsure about it typically

people like exert more energy yeah so all these just nuanced little elements

most people wouldn't think about you have to hit them pretty darn close otherwise it's the

film is just going to fall apart Andy I have wasted three years of my

life in this stupid place

[Music] Andy I have wasted three years of my life in this stupid place

I think we finally have a chance this time

I think I think we finally have a chance this time

this is what I need you to analyze for me

this is what I need you to analyze for me

it's all just a waste any it's all just a waste

all those years everything I put myself through it still happened

one extremely breathy just try it's all just the way he's dead

yeah there were definitely some times where I saw the the script expanding and

the plot getting more involved and thought to myself when is this gonna stop like

you know and this was a couple years in when it had started out as a summer you

know backyard project and I think it was initially meant to be a short film like maybe 15-20 minutes

and it it blew up and at times I was like okay not what I you know thought

this would be everyone on the project was volunteering time and it wasn't really an issue of

all I'm not getting paid for this it was like for me it was who was this character like how am I supposed to realistically

portray this character when he is in development himself I was not on the fence I wanted to

finish it because I'm not one to start a project like this and say okay and this isn't what I you know thought it would

be I enjoyed every step of the process but there were times where I was in

question like when do I need to sit down and Joel and say what are we doing here and then he would show me footage we never had

that conversation but he would show me footage and I would be like wow this looks great like

I can kind of see how that's folding into the broader plot

I'll keep going and then when the kickstarter dropped and around that time there was a lot of

we did a lot of advertising for the film as well Joel did a great job of pushing

it out on social media and getting the word out with at least here in our town you know that we were working on this

and then it turned into something completely different at that point because

what I saw as this smaller film project gathered attention from around the globe

people in different countries were donating to this Kickstarter because they wanted to see the project filmed

and this was from a trailer we had put together and at that point I was like we've got

something different here this is this is good this is going to be really

good let's finish it and that was really the motivation I needed to to finish it

to the end I didn't know it would take another five years but it was

at that point I was like okay I trust Joel I see Joel's Vision I have faith that somewhere in his head this all

makes sense and I'm just gonna go with that look just trust me okay

I need you to do is get the machine running but this time keep the power levels as low as possible

until I tell you to spike it okay

look just trust me okay what I need you to do is get the machine

running but this time keep the power levels as low as possible

until I tell you to spike it even if you would get a line pretty pretty close

I got to look forward to number one going through thousands of takes to find ultimately the best ones cut from

multiple takes to find the best match like pairing overall then use specific software that I had to learn to imprint

characteristics from the crappy onboard audio that it had to denoise so you could somewhat hear what he was saying

from it and then impart that onto the re-recorded

dialogue to to get the sync a little bit better and I would like tweak certain things that way or

then even take like pitch like the inflection of the voice that he did

better maybe from the original take like on set when he was actually performing it there whereas he didn't maybe hit the

inflection as good for the for the re-recorded dialogue and impart some of that so I could basically like alter the

the tonality of what he was saying so he he ends a sentence

on on a downbeat on a you know a more of a pitch down intonation you know so it

doesn't sound like a question and it sounds more definitive and all these little things again nobody will really

think about I had we had to use Reverb modeling software just to add that

slight little bit of room um Acoustics to the voice so it doesn't

sound dry and too perfect you know I would EQ off some of the low end roll

off some of the higher frequencies so it doesn't sound like someone that is just two inches away from a really nice mic

whereas other people other film projects even with modest budgets had

certain just core luxuries we had none of that we had an uphill battle the

entire way with limited resources limited time and Manpower and stuff but

I think that again shows a testament of Joel's ability to persevere and to keep being I

mean he has to be the the biggest cheerleader for the project all those years

everything I put myself through would still happen Annie I'm not going anywhere without you

like yeah breathy but like you're using up all your air to be loud

Annie I'm not going anywhere without you he has to keep pushing like hey do you have time do you have time you know and

and not just getting someone to work on it but working on it and giving it their all

every time like that's a very difficult thing to do so I literally got off the

plane let's go to work here's a sandwich

I know a lot of people now from Norman that are friends because of Norman

because we had this crazy ambitious goal of making this film and because of that

that kind of kept us together and then we just you know we had a it was just

such a weird interesting relationship where it was kind of you know bound

together by this film that seemed you know like we could do and it was going to be great

um and then it just went on for years and years day 127.

morale is high this house is quite charming and comfortable

I saw Norman on Kickstarter and I watched the first trailer and I

was super super impressed so then I emailed Joel I was so excited

to do it that I was like hey I write music and and I I

I said I want to do the music for this film for free if I have to

um and uh there was money involved but but it it I would have done it for free

and it turned it into this like you know three and a half year Journey

[Music]

I remember it when I was pitching for a project a different project um at the beginning of Norman

uh and it was I was still trying to figure out the themes for Norman and this other project that I was pushing

for um I I I wrote a like

like this seven minute long demo and after I wrote it I realized I don't this

isn't for this project this is for Norman so like even when I was on even when I was on other projects

still writing for Norman it was so it was kind of wrong but like it was it was crazy it was it was good

and and it was just that for for years it was that it was it was writing for Norman it was

you know taking a break from it for a month for two months for three months and then coming back and then doing it

again until you know three and a half years later we got a score out of it

one of the interesting hurdles literally was running around in forests

around Virginia with nice shoes on like there were some scenes where I was

wearing a suit and glitches with the portal or whatever

was happening put me in these you know rough situations wearing some nice clothing

and someone's shooting a gun at me and I gotta run and so I have these nice shoes on and I think I went through a couple

pair of nicer shoes sprinting through forests and jumping over logs and

tripping on trees and different things like that

cut that was nice that was actually a really good that was nice and I don't think those ended up making

it into the the final picture but I was literally rock climbing in dress shoes

over some pretty big Cliffs that you know if I slipped it was probably no

more Norman so that was definitely a challenge I had fun and I didn't really think about it at the time but could have died

several times

[Music]

there you go so there are again quite a lot of

challenges on Norman when it came to sound I mean number one from the aspect of just sound designing something that

Joel had in his head try to communicate to me and then I had to somehow make it

happen and again I'm not someone that's been like you know sound designing for 20 years on big

films you know all that kind of stuff it's it's one thing to to have an ear and choose the right you know door open

Sound and door shut and a punch sound from a sound effects library but it's something else to like have an intuitive

nature to be able to you know look at something that doesn't exist in the real world and find

something that creates this level of tangibility this real factor to it what does this portal

sound like it could sound like a thousand different things you know you could just do some electrical Arc thing

itself but it's it's not going to be full body you know what I mean like it it has to have all

the elements there that just sell this as being a real thing and so Joel communicate kind of generally what he

what he wanted and then it was up to me to just spend all night spend the next

couple days whatever case it was and go through my sound Library use specific

elements then I would take plugins and mangle it and screw around with it

um and then in a lot of instances um record some live elements as well

some more organic elements um and that's ultimately what played a really key role in kind of the

Sonic Foundation of all three of the portals uh I forget how It ultimately

came about but I I think Joel Joel texted me or or called me on the phone

or something one day and um because as we're we're kind of

thinking of you know what do we want to do for the portal sound right and he saw this really cool Australian wind

instrument uh and I think I remember he sent me like the YouTube video or something I was like oh that's pretty

cool all right just testing it out

and recorded that at like a higher sample rate which just allows me to basically pitch things down or stretch

things and essentially there's just more data in there so I can mangle it but

it's not gonna the sound's not gonna fall apart and degrade that quickly and stuff um so we recorded lots of like slow to

fast fast to slow to constant like just lots of different variations so I had a

lot of material to work with but ultimately that was decided on from Joel I want this to be the core

um so that's that's not the only sound that I use it was it was just he wanted

that to retain like a texture throughout for for all the portals you know to make

up that one sound we're looking at you know like 20 different elements you know that

I would process a certain way and stuff so 20 to 30 elements to make up kind of

One Core kind of sound [Music]

no no no foreign

[Music]

you know we committed to doing this project without fully realizing that the

scope of what we were signing on for and then once we signed on for it it was kind of like well

kind of you guys so we're gonna have to it's gonna have to be you uh and that was that was interesting because there

wasn't really a chance to back out there wasn't a back door or anything it was like great you ready for the assets okay

here they are and we're bringing over a hard drive with like 40 more shots of the same thing it was like

okay all right like we were thinking a one-off visual effect shot or two but it

was more like here's the scene this is a component of the scene that you will digitally create and then here's like

400 shots that have that digital component that you need to track into the shot and it's like oh perfect

our first design for the uh future time machine involved carving a very

elaborate shape out of Styrofoam and then using a

some sort of a surface paint on it and uh it was all very uh

futuristic and failed miserably and after several horrible attempts at

carving this styrofoam ended up taking the whole thing and throwing the dumpster

and but we ended up with a better one with the uh semi-transparent tubes and the LED

lighting

we had the piece of the vertical pieces sliding apart but in order to accomplish that we had thought we would use sliders

on a tube and it would be a soft cloth or something that it would just gently

slide apart nice and neat but it didn't work out that way and they ended up tipping over

almost every time and so we ended up with rollers which look basically like

inline escaped this solved one of the problems in that we could get the thing to slide smoothly apart but

unfortunately it didn't solve the problem of the things tipping over at the end of the opening so

we ended up buying lead ingots uh to place on the top of these things and

you'll see them in the film to weigh these things down so that they would not just flip over every time we operated

The Time Machine I've always enjoyed watching films but never had a film background so uh this

was my first time ever building props and ever since being involved with

the film and building props now whenever I watch a film I'm looking for items to

see especially in science fiction uh what clever ways people have used things from hardware stores and everyday life

to make uh futuristic pieces of spaceships and other technology

uh that I've never did before and I've learned a lot about uh General

filmmaking I don't know if that's better which way where construction do you want to move it towards Joy

I'd say so probably all right is that it might be interesting because

you can get more light from this side and I felt like this film could only be worth it

if the movie really felt special and so I had to work so hard to figure out ways to make the

movie special and feel handcrafted um and that that just took so much

patience because I knew the only way I could get the quality I I would I was

hoping for is by waiting for opportunities to be um to present

themselves whether when it when it came to music I mean music was

um such a highlight of the of the production I think I I went into this thinking I'm going to finish this in a

few months and move on to a different project it's going to be great we are

and and like so you know that's how you that's how I sort of approached it and and

um and that and that was the biggest the biggest challenge for sure because again

you know the budget thing maybe just like have it way far back

you ready it was when Norman uh builds his wooden

time machine and and he's about to go through and he leaves his glasses down like I I couldn't figure that out I I I

think I spent two months on that one scene and it's like what seven minutes or so

and yeah man I just threw everything at that and we again we scrapped and we replaced

and and we we you know I think at some point I just layered as many things as I could

because this was like kind of the climax he finally goes into this into his his

old world to figure out what happened and and how do you know how do you build up this this climax this Arc this story

form into something that can like make people feel like oh my God this is the

craziest thing that I've ever experienced this is the this is gonna be nuts and like what's on the other side

foreign [Music]

were early on like I mentioned previously when my

understanding of Norman was limited it was hard to get on the same level as that character

and so I think it took a lot more coaching from Joel and

the mindset of you know Norman at that specific time it took it took a lot in

his part to convey what was going on

I had more of this like on camera to do this when you look out just slowly drip

the truck behind him and set it down but then as the story progressed as I got more familiar with the characters

um Annie and Norman the scenes were a little more easy to relate to easy to connect with

as we started to like get more into filming and get more involved with the process itself and it started stretching

out over time I started I wanted it to be excellent too like I saw how much

heart and soul was being literally just dumped into this film

that alone I mean even if you guys still need us to come back and film right now I probably would

have been like sure because it's a heart project I can see how much heart honestly was put in by

you guys even if I didn't feel good about like what I did personally like I would want

you guys to be proud of what you've been doing because because of the quality work you're able to produce and how much

heart and soul you've been putting into it that sold me out like all these years

yeah I believe in you guys I believe in the team and action

Joel did a really good job of laying out the project as far as organization as

far as expectation um there was some pretty clear Direction and really organization I think that was

that was a treat to work on it's easy to get lost in a flood of clips and a flood

of um of information and data and even requests but um it was it was easier than it should

have been all things considered the fact that we stretched a project over so many years the fact that

um there was the shooting happened over that duration of time making it look consistent keeping the same effect so

the one portal effect having to use it in multiple different you know multiple different shooting dates and and whole

scenes but making it look consistent so it was the same effect there were definitely some challenges there but

um it was surprisingly not as difficult as as it probably should have been

let's go ahead and returning shot the um

when Joel first uh sent me this shot for the trailer uh you know you mentioned a

time traveling portal and obviously you get kind of like super giddy just the thought of uh doing any sort of a visual

effect like this so I just was like all right what do we need we need lightning bolts we need a wormhole so I just made

this like crazy over the top like very effectsy uh sort of results and I don't

even I don't think it made it in the trailer I think it was just I just kind of want to show like I can do time travel I can do a portal it'll

be super cool and so yeah we and then of course wanting to try to get it to reflect on the mask I thought that would

be a neat a neat little feature that would translate through but you know very little of this actually well none

of this ended up in the final result but at least gave me a sense of like what was to come

um just because it was so key that we make it look realistic like because I I got excited

but I think the the key for this thing with when it comes to the visual effects is like you shouldn't even know that

there was work done to it it should just feel like camera was rolling that was part of the shot

instantly she was like it's the battle scene towards the end of the film uh it took several months to

get people involved to get people to show up to buy like fake guns ammo

camouflage all that kind of stuff and to figure out the logistics of filming in this junkyard at night which I've never

done before but something we I tried to do in Norman is every scene is a little different something's in the rain

something's outside some there's close-up shots here's this time machine I had to work really really hard to

figure out ways to make the movie feel big even though we had no budget no really sets or anything how can I make

Norman feel like it goes places and does things like a bigger movie without actually having any of that and so with

the battle scene I was like we got to make this really impressive just so it's just like it comes out of nowhere and it just feels big and it feels like there's

a much larger world going on and Norm is this tiny person that's a part of some big problem that happened we had picor

on generator he had his truck going we had these lights um and I was we filmed everything in

seven hours but the scariest part was I knew I only had one night to do this just one night to pull it off so none of

it was scripted all I had was essentially we knew Norman gets it starts at this sequence this is what

happens to him and then he escapes here so we had to figure out all the in-betweens as we went because

essentially I had no idea we had people I had scheduled to show up which didn't show up and we had random people that

just randomly showed up that ended up being the people that were in the film everybody ready

action

I really enjoyed the uh junkyard scene just because we had so many people involved in it and it kind of it felt

more like a real scene with crew and uh you know actual craft services and all

that going on it was you know that was a lot of fun

well can you have this homework because I need to have what's his face

it was so Fast Pace we had one night to shoot this entire scene and it was just

it was like a symphony of Joel's moving here I gotta follow along and it just kept going and going going and it was

like 30 degrees outside and neither of us were wearing jackets because we were just so like

moving so fast and so in the the moment so they were essentially laying down

track so as I was filming a scene with Stephen or another person aiming or shooting they were already figuring out

the next Logistics of okay so normally goes from here he gets he shoots this person this over here then the truck

happens and we were trying to figure out that so I'd just be filming as they're laying down track as soon as I was done they go okay we could have this guy do

this and this guy over here and this too so I'm like okay that sounds good and then I would film that and I would just figure it out and then right when I was

do that they would run to the next section going okay now Steve comes back over here we need this actor and this person over here

um and that was just literally oh absolutely wild night I think we pulled off a pretty cool

sequence for having literally no plan other than start middle and an end and somehow it's got to work it was gonna be

much bigger but we realized just lighting it was just crazy hard and we didn't have a whole lighting crew at all

we had no lighting crew we had one person pretty much uh we brought everything closer and intimate and I think it worked pretty well

abandoned battle scene had like a lot of like paying attention to what the actors are doing and some of them I mean it's like

you're sitting them sitting there watching like they're doing this and there's no real cues as to what they're

doing so you're kind of just like paying attention like how many times this person actually shooting and what does

that actually look like and how does that translate back so be like I'm gonna make this person shoot three times because it kind of looks like that but

some of them are like like this and it's like well maybe the gun's not really going to do that but

you kind of figure things out as you go and like I don't know making those things look

realistic and making like it'd be such that if somebody watches it

back who knows about guns it's looking accurate

most people might start the first film and it's just a lot more dialogue based

so visually things are explained um and then it's other things are

communicated just through conversations happening and stuff like that so again in this film right from the bat Joel

chose to dive head first um just

you know assuming that I'll be able to you know essentially you know hold up my end of

the bargain um and again I I felt like I would do a

decent job but just over the process that the film took you know It

ultimately I think was a good thing because through other projects and just

my own growth as a sound professional by the time we got to the Final re-record

Mix you know I had a much better way of thinking of how to approach and combine

all these elements um where they're not all clashing and

we're giving space so the viewer can pick up on all the key things that we

want instead of just barraging them with so many things that they end up just kind of filtering it all out question

any I figured it out no seriously I figured it out get that

light all right

look just trust me okay what I need you to do is get the machine running but

remember this time to keep the power level as low as possible until I tell you to punch it the most

challenging thing Far and Away was like people interacting with the anti-screen when it was sitting on like the little

tray that it would sit on tracking was like pretty easy and pretty consistent but anytime it was like hey let's pick

this up and move it to the other side of the room it's like she's shaking everything all around and

getting that track to actually look consistent and have a motion blur on it and getting the skew right is like

especially in the opening scene where like it passes like that one of the scientists is like passing Annie across

is difficult starting with the shot with like the 80 screen down here and it goes out and

then it goes back down to reveal it as he's like his hands

covering he's like his hands covering it and he like goes down and he goes to grab something and then he bumps the

only thing that we can track onto and he bumps everything and as he's like plugging these things in and actually

like getting like you barely see anything but it's just enough to where you'd have to you have to track it like and like you

need to have the perspective be all the same too because like as you track it here

you need to have it so that it's like the actual image which is the same any screen is like basically down here so as

you're tracking like you have if with the corner pins like these there's nothing to grab onto so these are

potentially just doing crazy things anyway it took forever and just trust me

okay you said it ended up being a pretty good result but you get the machine running this probably was one of the most difficult tracking shots in the

whole movie well Joel and I worked together on conceptualizing what Annie's face would

be on the screen and we wanted something that would both visually show her speech but also give

her a presence which is why there's a pulsing Circle in

the center I would track with mocha just these edges and then create a like a

stabilized pre-comp so that the Annie interface could be consistent throughout every single shot

so once you go in you'd have like just the

any interface just to work with so that could be consistent and copied from

shot to shot and then it would look the same like it was the same interface all the time

I actually use like one one composition for every shot oh my

gosh the Annie online thing just so like and this actually like to save my butt like totally because I use this one

thing which is just a pre-comp of the illustrator file and there was one thing where like let's actually like change

this to be a certain something else different and I had to like re-render like 20 shots and actually all I had to

do was just change out this one thing which was awesome it saved me like so much time

for the Drone scene it was very hard for Joel to uh take his vision that he had in his head

and translate it to what I was working on we would sit there with the timeline for the Drone I remember it's like a

picture stuck in my head now Joel with his iPhone showing me how he wanted the Drone to float through the shot the

amount of times that I I saw that iPhone go by me as I'm sitting at my desk I'm gonna remember that forever when you're

working on stuff like this iteration is is key and Joel has never been afraid to say okay this is good but we can do

better so I had 8K textures for this drone custom hand painted rivets and

decals because again it's hard to sometimes visualize what Joel is visualizing in his head and I had this

Grand drone shot pictured where it was going to have this like hero shot of it coming I don't know attacking the main

character I had no idea what it was going to be so I Was preparing for that and then Joel's like no these go in the background so I just remember for the

Drone shots him going no make it smaller shrink it down smaller smaller and you know I'm glad that we put the

effort in to do it right but it's still hilarious that all that work went into this super detailed drone that uh it was

in the background of a shot for the most part but that's important for a small scale project we didn't try to go crazy

with these you know front and center visual effects we kept it simple and that's why I think those shots worked so

well is we kept it grounded the other part of me is in fear how much

I've altered my own path and the effects that remain unseen

regardless I have work to do and I shouldn't waste time with speculation

okay that was good I don't remember how many times Joel and I talked and like I remember I

remember him walking like taking multiple walks and

and just hearing his Facebook audio messages and and just being like yeah

yeah Daniel this uh so when Norman's when Norman's on on the he's he's like

oh sorry I'm just hiking or like I'm walking right now or I think you were on a run at some point

so he's just trying to you know he's trying to dig into these characters with me and and uh

and yeah everything all of it's a challenge and it's always a challenge and it always turns out you know

fruitful of course um

the last scene is when I figured out what Norman was about the very last thing I and I I did this

in a Serial manner in in sequence right I I started from the beginning you know from from from the vo all the way to the

the journal being burned and I didn't figure out who Jenny was I didn't figure out who Norman was I thought I did I'd

written a theme for them I didn't figure out who what the movie was about until I until we got to the last scene and and

and Norman leaves Annie behind and and Annie's like the greatest like she makes the greatest sacrifice and and

so that is what helped me overcome this challenge of trying to figure out Norman is is to figure out who Annie was to

Norman and and to to Norman Annie's like I don't know she kind of reminds me of Jesus

because she makes the greatest sacrifice for his sin like

you know I don't know if that was intentional but like it's for his you know for his sin of of

wanting to bring his parents back and and and changing maybe the entire world

and like breaking it he broke the world and and Annie saved him from that in a

way and sound design really brought it together when when Annie is is no longer

in Norman's head you know Jonah you you you put Annie in the in The Ether in The

Ether right and and it's like and and I I think I I mean I hope audiences get that all right and if they

don't it's it's like it's still there that if you have this internal sort of you know emotion and feeling in it

I think I think audiences figure that out you're like go to the shop where he's here like after he first walks in hold

that can you hold down a little bit longer just like Connie's like you know I haven't seen this you know three years

how is it still intact like he's trying to process as a true sign of being a 21st century

filmmaking process a lot of the times spent working with Joel was virtual we would get on Skype

and we would talk about the script or we would just discuss ideas not necessarily plugging through a script but just

pitching ideas to each other hey I had this thought today here you go and even when it came to the editing

process I didn't have to necessarily be sitting beside him at all times and he was

sitting beside me coming back and forth we did have these big sessions where he would drive down to where I was living

and I would drive to where he was living and just have these really long editing sessions but there were times throughout

where we would just virtually share over Skype and I would just watch him edit and I would see the floats hey how about

you take just just a cut faster than that it was there is there a different take of that that that didn't seem as

powerful so make it already in the middle of an action okay so you can do the next

action so it's not like action action it's already have in the middle of him doing something

yeah right okay

perfect okay sweet that works

we have the bait like the base what the shot was and it's just Norman looking

off onto some Dunes we got like some like power lines and whatever in the background but then Joel and Ben

created a like a hole set up with like dunes and the wall and

everything like that and then what I did is I tracked these little guys off in the distance which is

a little bit tough but like it's just it's pretty it's a pretty basic shot it doesn't move a ton but it moves a little

bit so I tracked those little guys off in the distance and then put that on on top of it

and then cut out Norman being that the story was constantly

evolving and shifting there was a learning process I'm sure on the back end but then

you needed to almost see the visual effects in there to know that this either will work or won't work so there

was one day in particular that I spent an entire day making this wall of sand a

big Sandstorm coming up over a hill and I was cutting out the edges of the hill and trying to make realistic like dust

particles and all this stuff and I worked all day and I sent Joe lorender and at the end of the day I'm like just

so tired he's like oh yeah we cut that shot and it was just like really like okay you know so like there

were some there was a little bit of a disconnect at times where we would move forward but it's almost like you have to

cross the bridge to know oh I took the wrong Bridge you know you won't know until you're on the other side and so

there was a little bit of that it wasn't enough that I'm gonna [ __ ] and moan about it but but it happened once or

twice

really still

action Q

fire

action fire

so we got like the little Splitters coming out here and went and masked out

this bigger thing

which is actually just oh wow that's cool this picture of this I just found a little Splinter of and

cut a little splitter thing out there so it looked like a bullet hole far

got nice you guys can be firing back up down the hill so what we'll do is we'll I'm gonna do one wide kind of shot

that'll get all of you guys kind of like you know taking a bunch of Civil War reenactors came eight hours away and

they had all their weapons Etc I want to make sure to be able to get some really good gun recordings while we have them

up here foreign

this is the Remington a 1861 Sharps 54 caliber

rifle dry fire

lift up a little bit higher I want to see how far you high you can get out of frame like lift it up

ready action

one of the things that posed a little bit of a continuity problem was this shot right here where Alex is laying on

the ground and he spits up blood um

and he like as he lands he has blood already kind of on his face

from makeup so he's down and then he has blood on his face then he coughs up more

blood but in the previous shot it's such that he's getting shot so you see his face

perfectly clean and then he lands and he has a dirty face so what we need to do is kind of have it be such that there's

like blood hit or splurt that could like get on his face but thinks so fast so

just adding the blood thing that's what we had to do so as you see here

we just kind of did that and had to kind of spray up on his face like he got shot watch out

action wow

you're dying

I think with the the film in general I have to hold up

the other half of the bargain essentially with Joel um Joel he crafted the visual elements

of how the story was told and seen because he does all the camera work

he thinks visually but the other half of the sound and in

some ways I think just a little bit more than half of the movie experience has to

do with sound because I also create off-screen space so as sound people we

have the opportunity to create a larger world than is just within the 16x9 or

cinemascope frame so you know again with a film at this level where there are

some limitations and stuff like that to make it more impactful

um if you really bring your A game with sound you can do that because

you can have images falter and to some degree and people will buy it and not

even think twice about it but if the sound is not up to Snuff

in many ways subconsciously people view it as more of an amateur film and stuff

like that

[Music] hello Norman hello Annie running suit Diagnostics one moment

please you ready of course I am good

so again I always knew that I would be able to do a good job but there was always anxiety like will I be able to do

a great job um you know and every time it's I I finish

one element I finally feel good about that Joel reminds me that there's a thousand

more elements that I've yet to do and there's the element of like oh it's

never gonna end and then the other element of like oh man okay how do I get

the motivation and like try to figure out like what will be good with here okay I hit her a home run here

it's hard to like keep hitting home runs you know what I mean like maybe be one thing again like if you've been doing

this for like decades which is a really long time you know or learned under the tutelage of

the most incredible people but when you're figuring out things a lot of times by yourself you know it's it's a

little bit more daunting yeah there's definitely a lot of anxiety just to live

up to my own standards for myself and to live up to what I know Joel had in his

head

thank you my brother initially was going to do Foley and I don't know what crazy idea

thought we could do that um and that we scrapped all of it and we hired it out from a company that he flew

over to meet and they did an incredible job

[Applause]

foreign

and then Jonah put that in and started doing his own sound effects thinking about now like it's sometimes hard to

think about the years where we somehow thought we were going to get this done in a certain way and it's completely different now going oh my gosh what were

we thinking

tired it was definitely a shift to go from working you know at a desk on the

animation of Norman to then actually starring quote unquote in a couple of small scenes uh I've never been one to

be in front of a camera and to do a whole lot of of acting I didn't do theater or anything like that as a kid

or in college so I just kind of showed up with just enthusiasm and a pretty fun costume and we had torn up stained it

with vinegar and all kinds of stuff to age it and just went for it and then I got to have Joel and the rest of my friends

yell at me to be angrier and to be more enthusiastic and to be more emphatic

do you background don't pull your gun out hey hey take it easy take it easy

when you walk out as soon as you do that

background take it easy they can't put the gun down

put it down Put the gun down Put the gun down

you don't want any trouble yeah

if you fumble really bad just stop to do it again okay and look like you're being four

it was a process but it was a fun shift again to go from working at a desk to being in front of the camera and to can

I see everybody else in action and to to see Joel In Action because you can see when he's got that camera in his hands

he knew exactly what he he wanted out of you and he was going to keep doing additional takes until he got what he

wanted searching

Q background the gun down now put it down Put the gun down put it down like I said

before I enjoyed every aspect of this film being made

and I wish my skill set was broader so that I could have helped in you know

different ways than just acting like I think it's a much more difficult task to

organize your thoughts and you know all these files into a comprehensive you

know sound product or editing all the film in a specific way there's there's so many

different aspects to this that I wish I could be better at and so being able to help with ADR even

though that's you know it's it's acting coming in and seeing how that process worked and understanding the technology

behind it was a lot of fun and it was a whole week of you know re-recording over every single line that

I had said in the movie because a lot of times or most of the time there wasn't

there wasn't someone recording sound on set so we had to go back and do all that over again and it wasn't it wasn't hard

you know initially getting the hang of saying my lines in sync with the picture

I was watching or the video I was watching them myself was It was kind of odd but the software

made it really easy and it was a lot of fun just to see how that works so I'm really excited to see the final version

of that and how it it Blends in now what images

you aren't making any sense the first couple times was just trying

to get timing timing timing how much time do I have to say this and taking in the character at the same time so I felt

like it would take maybe a round to get into what is the actual feel of the

interaction and then after that point After figuring out the tricky stuff I was able to focus more on character and

how how I was because she doesn't have a presence herself it was pretty realistic

in that sense because she's not able to reach out goodbye Coleman

have to be very careful to not cross the line of making the character

too wooden or just too human it has to feel at all times that it is something

that he created and you assume that he created this device with a piece of him

in that maybe the the strength so that he's not something to balance him which is why in the end she was able to make

the sacrifice for him because he was the one who was struggling with selfishness

and so she was that balance to him even though she was really technically connected to him he created her so that

was the best part of him that he struggled to bring forward action

look just trust me all right it was a very good balance I think first

for Stephen Burgess character of Norman where he is just loves the past he loves getting away from his own time his own

presence but Annie's kind of all futuristic she's okay with that but Norman's not like that so they have a

cool little kind of bickering but essentially she's very much uh Norman's conscience throughout the whole film

scene 34. take one

foreign nice to meet you Norman Brandt

Mormon Brandt [Music]

good job Danny I like it but I felt like we found a good balance of giving her a personality that Norman

would connect with and some a device that is is still

powerful enough to change any aspect of his life to a degree where he felt the need to shut her down and that was a

really fun scene for us to write just going through and saying what else

can we add what else can we add how can we make it just seem like this device that knowledge of

any given amount of time between when she was created in the future to the Past was just unlimited power enormous

fingertips and so when we were working on that scene we're like man we really need to give him a reason to to have turned off

that device he can't just turn it off because I need to do this on my own he really needs to say to himself if I have

this device at my disposal something bad can definitely happen you're making a

huge mistake goodbye for now let me help there's things you don't understand about your effects

[Music] prior to this every acting experience I

had was with another individual on stage two three feet maybe maybe more away

from me and you know I could respond to that I could listen to them and React to what they

were saying but when the character that my my character was interacting with was

so many different people at any given point you know it could have been it could have been Jason P core reading

Annie's lines it could have been um one of Joel's Brothers reading the lines whoever it was reading the lines

it wasn't the same character that I had been interacting with before

no the Strand is just veered off course what do you mean by how much

point zero zero zero zero zero any is it holding [Music]

no the strength is still moving very slowly

and so that did present some challenges as far as making that believable at least in my

head you know I can't wait to see how it looks you know as a as a finished

product hold hold the um and action okay put it on

foreign

another role I played was uh in script writing and also in the UI elements was

to make the technobabble more believable and accurate to something

that would be resembling real life so when we have a radio broadcast in the

future we make sure it's something realistic not just made up numbers uh

and some of the more technical aspects like the uh planet alignment during one

scene was an actual alignment and real date

that you can verify with NASA just worked on making some of the more

sciencey elements more believable and less uh amateurish

this is a super unique project and the fact that it was so long term and while

working on it we had normal clients who were ready to actually pay us real money to work for them and so I kept feeling

bad because we get a text from Joel Joel just stopped texting me after a while because I just shut him down I was just like ah I don't have time for this right

now but that's where Sam stepped in and Sam was like okay yeah Adam's busy but yeah yeah come on over I'll I'll help

you out about something So eventually you know Sam kind of took took the the reins but I'm you know trying to run a

run a company and keep normal you know paying jobs coming in um it was it was like the mother back

burner you know it was like just this back burner project that was just constantly lingering like that awkward

uncle that just is always at the family reunion that you know you got to talk to and hug but you're just kind of trying to avoid a little bit So eventually I

just kind of like excuse myself in the bathroom for the duration of the reunion while Sam stepped in and kind of you

know did his job I think one of the challenges was kind of restarting the machine each time because we would literally step away from this thing for

three months and then here's some new updates or we'd have a little window of time where okay hey

things slow down so we can we can work on it again but we'd almost have to like re-engage the gears and what were we

doing there oh yeah Sam you were working on that shot or or oh I already did this you know there's a couple of those where

like I got these tracks done and then Sam's like oh I I did all those like two days ago so like we doubled up on work

because I got it I didn't ask him if he had worked on him so um we got a few of those but certainly unique in the fact that just

I've never worked on something so long and it's not even my project

[Music]

I never go into a movie or into working with someone

into any collaboration without first being like yeah I'm gonna be a hundred thousand percent invested

what's the point you know like what's the point so yeah I was completely I was completely invested from the very

beginning from before I even emailed to like get on the project where most

people are like yeah whatever everybody wants to write music for us like that's the world of of like

pitching you know in a general sense I'm emailing a filmmaker and say hey I write music let's do this

yeah I mean you were so you were so kind um and how you approached me that

that further cemented my investment like I was gonna do this

no matter what you know it and that happened because I'm also the kind of person that can't

really say no and and like that's bad too uh

[Music] as evidence but I mean yeah yeah I mean like every year

I mean you you've I'm not you know I'm not saying this to be like oh my God you've asked so much

of me but like you have asked so much of me [Music]

thank you except you hold it like really still I could even just like do this this

whole time is just like stuck in your head thinking is this is this gonna work is this gonna be something worthwhile to

anybody's time are people going to see it and then just forget about it and I go man I maybe I didn't have to spend

seven years on it maybe we could have just cut so many corners here there's a lot of opportunities to cut corners but

like to me like I knew I couldn't live with myself if I cut these Corners because we'd already spent so much time

what was another six months to me that's how it got to the point What's it six months is like a freaking week to me now

keep going keep going another uh difficulty in working on the film obviously is of this size is the budget

when you have a very limited budget you have to make decisions based on that and I think it kind of forced everybody to

you know do their best but also to really focus on the story elements of the character we couldn't do you know

the big huge typical sci-fi scenes but being able to really focus on that

core character being able to really dive into what he would be feeling if he were

really this character stuck in time and I think it made the writing better I think it made you know I think

collectively it made everybody have to approach it in such a unique way that I I think it turned out to be a special

story it out don't go back flip it out [Music]

action I think there's a lot of similarities between me and Norman because

I'm Norman like I used everything about me to make that character come to life

so yeah I I think there's a lot he and I have in common um as far as an

appreciation for the analog in life The Not So digital

the the older the older things that require some

tinkering and some patience to to work with I think Norman's a patient person and I

try to be I hope I am but yeah there's there's probably a lot

there's probably a long list I could you know point to different things that he and I have in similar or have in common

what [Music]

let's try it one more time like some that was really good sit one more time but instead of immediately coming down

open the door just stand it for like a half second just have have to have the

hammer just a little smaller not too long because I'm not gonna be like

so it's like this oh okay

the Norman character he's his whole being um is very much rooted in the past

already he's from the future but his identity like what he what he likes what

um fulfills him is is from the past he likes old recordings he likes how he

dresses it's more old-timey um so it would only be befitting of him

to create a device um that reflects his personality and stuff and that's kind of the whole thing

we took from cutting up all these assortments of sounds from the hard drives different error bleeps and boops

and stuff like that cut them together mangle them up to create something

different and new um to essentially be the voice of Annie and that was really difficult because

it's like hey Joel like I just got this new Great Library so I was thinking of going this like no just just use those

hard drive sounds well I I have all these sounds I sound really good and like they're really clean and crisp and

like you know made by some other awesome sound designer or whatever that makes

sound effects no no I just she wants you to use these old hard drive YouTube sounds

Joel's credit you know being obstinent you know paid off well and and I would

see that even too or I might be more um want to instinctually kind of push back

I would constantly have to just like and I think every good creative needs to

get to this point where to a certain degree you have to finally just Divorce Yourself from what you

might like in the particular moment like I like sounds so naturally we're going

to be biased like I I want this cool sound here or I want this sound to sound epic here but a good director is looking

at things more holistically they should be looking at things more holistically so it's like yeah that sound is really

great but if we play this then that other cool sound you made later on is going to have

less of an impact so it's like let's bring some things down here so we can push things up there and again

you know if for a sound person most of the time if you've done your job people don't really notice the sound because

they sure as heck do when it's not up to stuff

[Music]

and then we had DC and uh his friend Trent they both offered to color the

film and they flew me out and they paid for everything and these guys just blew my mind for how much they really

appreciated the film and they just wanted to see it done they were backers from 2014 and to me that was scary that

was really scary to be like I don't know what I'm doing should I be sending this film to these random people like are

they gonna still I don't know what I was doing at the time so it was a huge risk and I remember telling my wife I was

like I'm Gonna Fly there and if it feels does the system feel right I'm gonna tell them thank you and I'll pay him back or whatever and I get out of there

but they ended up just blowing my mind with just how kind they were how much passion they had for the project

uh okay so uh the director would like um these trees to be a little bit more

contrasty without affecting the top of the screen so what we're going to do is

just add a a window that will affect

just these trees we'll make it a little bit bigger so we don't mess with the sky

and uh we'll make this mat a little bit soft

and um if I turn this button on you can see what will actually be affected

so it's mostly the bottom of these trees and then a gradient upwards

and then I'm just gonna add a little more contrast to those

trees just a hair and uh

apply it to uh see if we like it

so so you're already almost there then well we could do that or we could do something like you know like really

stretch it really push it into something um

damnation alley-esque you know if you guys remember that one maybe I'm dating

myself you can really see it here

[Music] see what I'm working on which is amazing mainly like

the either one of two things are true either the a lot of the lighting scenarios happen to have

so this is a good example of of how how small the small small little details

translate well because in this shot you just watch it you kind of accept it as is but if you take out the base footage

you can see we're talking literally one frame moments of the reactive lighting

of seeing our subject going from dark to light as the muzzle flash

appears and so in real life if there was a big illuminated you know muzzle flash

happening in the front it there would it would cast some light and and shoot some light over on the face and so but just

for that moment you know so so this is just on an alpha Channel I can even take off the alpha Channel you can just see

the flash reactions here on on nothing as the bullets appear and then obviously

bring it back into main footage you can see them there it just just adds

a little extra bit of uh realism to to sell it you know if we just had

little muzzle slashes which you've seen a lot of other films they'll just stick a muzzle flash in there they don't think through that extra element of how is it

going to react and then we can jump a little deeper and see just the the individual shell casings kind of

coming out of the gun as the shots are being fired

the bar is here and it's always going to be here if I can't get to here

to me it's not a movie to me it's not I'm not proud of it it has to be here I don't need to be above the bar I just

need I have to hit the bar that to me it's like this is just a waste literally a waste of time unless it hits here it's

about the whole film when it came to visual effects and working with Adam and Sam as they would track things and show

me stuff I was always aware that they were fairly new to some of this because they were new to the sense of not doing

visual effects but they were new to sense of doing stuff that really had to look realistic I had to look at it and

go that looks like a real device or that looks like it's working if it didn't to me it's kind of like well now it just

looks like a I don't know a quick fun video you do on the weekends and just it's fine like because you know we only

spent 10 hours on it but it had to look like something I spent years on Crafting and looking really good so it was always

tough to have to ask them to keep polishing it or dial it back a little bit because I knew it was very

um it was tough on everyone because it was so much extra work no one is getting barely any money for any of this and

everyone knew that but I had to get it done some way

there's this emotional connection when you help someone complete their project

you inherent and adopt some of their passion and some of their their love and their their drive and so though it's not

as groundbreaking for me to see a friend

have a victory and to be a part of that journey is very rewarding um and the fact that

hear a a guy I know I've known for years the fact that I'm able to step in and

and help him accomplish something and be a part of this amazing project that he's really

poured himself into that's that's really neat that's that's on par with like I got to coach your son or I got to like

marry your daughter or something like that I mean like it's it's a real um as I look back at this project that's

what I'm gonna walk away with is just a real a real warm sense of of joy that

came from helping a friend accomplish something that they really had set their mind on doing

it's like the whole adage like good fast cheap pick two kind of thing like if you

want really really high quality and that's what Joel um demanded throughout the whole process

the only way he was going to get that is is through an elongated time because you

know if we're not all getting weekly checks and stuff so it's like we have to make work hard and make money elsewhere

so it will free us up to work really hard on his film that we're not getting

anything tangibly from you know it's sure you know I think hopefully if the film you know has success and people

enjoy it um then you know we'll we'll glean something on the back end there and just

gratification in general but um it really took a large sacrifice for all

the core team involved because we really had to sacrifice a lot and even more so

than just the core team you know our spouses had to sacrifice a lot

um just knowing that when they could you know be spending time with us we had

to be spending time looking at Steven Burge all day every day toward this

direction what flip scene are we talking about is it the one where I'm rolling on the rock or in the woods in the woods Okay so

if you're right

yeah action

[Music]

I grew up watching movies and so you know all these characters I love

growing up I want I want to do mine the right way I want to make a character that people like

I want this person to be believable and as much as possible I want my friends to watch this film and

even if it's just for a second not remember that that's that's me that's wait was that Stephen Birch or no

that's Norman I confuse them trick him and make them believe this character and

I have a long way to go and making that better I think but it was it was an easy decision for

me to say I want to commit everything I can at this point or I have as an actor

I want to commit everything I have to making this project as best as as good as it can be

as far as it concerns me

oh man so for me the big takeaway was it was

easy to jump in and jump out and whenever needed I was really excited to do it but like I was saying earlier my

big takeaway was you guys and your commitment and as a team how that

changed it from not being like Oh you're you're the actors like we're part of

this team that's trying to put together something special and make it excellent and it's not going to be finished until

it is excellent so my big takeaway is not just putting it together quick over

a couple years even you know like take the time make it make it as good as you

can be proud of it and I think the process has been worth it honestly and

and not stopping growing and learning from where you were action

go into business go into collaborations with people you you love and like you

you trust you know and like I trust all of you

I trust like I trusted all of you throughout all of this as someone working in film just do that always and

I'm pretty sure you'll get somewhere somewhere good you know and you'll be happy [Music]

scene where he's taking his first time trip where he's reminiscing about that

just with all the coloring done all the sound put together it just it was so moving

and Daniel's piece that that's probably my favorite musical piece in the film

I was I was blown away I was blown away that we've made this on this budget and we

made this with just a bunch of friends and it was a labor of love and it was a

labor of love for people who you know donated to the kickstarter it was just like wow we created something special

that that was the moment in the movie where I thought wow we made this wow

[Music]

one small insignificant decision has the possibility to grow an entire

Forest of change I don't think there was any point throughout the seven years where I thought the project would not get done

just because I know Joel it's pretty tenacious once he starts a project he tends to finish

it but this is a pretty daunting project at times it didn't feel like the project

was moving forward at all but I knew things were in the works and you know money issues were always something that

we had to deal with so no I never thought it would not get done but I didn't know when

I started filming with Steve March 2012 it is now August

13th 2014. we are going to finish the scenes today

I can't believe it so we have one last shot for this truck

do you love you just can't stop getting in that thing I hate this suit no I love this too

me and the shooter won don't rip it now

I learned a lot and I think I learned the most from Joel

who displayed an extraordinary amount of

tenacity and willpower and dedication to make this happen he had a lot of help on

the way but it's because he was never derailed from

the Dream from from the ultimate goal of wanting to be

able to say I'm done I did it I finished this project so I learned a lot from Joel

and I learned a lot about myself through the process too I think

you learn a lot when you dedicate this much time to something

how many more days left till the premiere um seven

I guess tomorrow will be 10 days but for us it's we only have like five more days

until we have to be done I'm so exhausted like I don't I don't even want to watch this

anymore when you're dealing with time travel

movies you there are a lot of tropes there are a lot of stories that have done time travel a certain way and I

remember talking to Joel about how we're going to approach it especially when we started talking about the ending of the film and there were several different

endings of the film that came before what would be the final ending and I

remember one night Joel and I like literally like yelling over the phone but that won't work that way and it was

it looking back it's funny but at the time it was like man we're both super passionate about getting this right and

making sure that the story just wasn't ridiculous for the viewer that we really had to say what is the most believable

way to handle time travel and it can be a crutch time to travel can be just let's focus on the Sci-Fi aspect of time

travel but we really wanted to tell a story that when it gets to the end it makes

sense when you're looking back at all the other pieces like every other moment of the film LED to that ending and so it

felt comfortable when we finally decided okay this is how this is going to end this is how time

travel Works in this universe I don't know what's laid out for my future

and that's how it should be so I will not worry about tomorrow

for tomorrow will worry for itself working on Norman

was particularly special because Joel cares so much about the project and

that came about with how much time and effort he's put into it but being able to be a part of that and have

someone who's a client now friend but a client that cares so much about

what he's doing that you can't care more about it than he does so there's not

like I did all this work and the client like doesn't notice and actually like wants

to undercut that by saying like this is too out there I think this was a really neat opportunity for us to to develop

consistent work recreatable work it's easy to do one-off neat shot that is fun

and looks cool for a teaser or trailer but to be able to deliver the same quality in a consistent looking quality

over and over and over again in different scenarios that's something I feel pretty accomplished by that we we

made a consistent look and a consistent looking effect in variable situations

um I'm proud of that for the intro of a film I want to say come come to this you know follow follow

us on this journey because it's gonna be crazy man um and for the for the ending I I'm

always like okay wait just stay a little bit I know you got a life you got you got things to do but but like just just

think about this and and like just stick around you don't have to stick around for the whole thing but just like just

stick around for like at least my name [Laughter]

all right so we finally made the last bit of changes uh this morning um there's only about six things uh so

we're pretty sure there's nothing left um it's feels weird being at the point where you you can rack your brain so

hard and you can't really think of anything more to do so it really does feel done so we're just gonna watch it through the last

time and I think I think it's done so

I can't think of anything else so that's why we're just gonna try to watch it and just watch it as a movie because it's

been it's really hard to watch something when your brain is still going that

needs to be done this needs to be done this needs to be checked this needs to be done so we're gonna try to watch it this time as it is done so we're really

excited so hopefully this is the last time because because we we got to just print it now

we got to just render it out and um this will be the one that we're gonna show so it's been a lot of a lot of effort for

seven years um and it comes down to this we wanted to make sure we put our best and I think we did

by like a thousand percent so here goes

I worked really hard on this film and the only reason in many ways why I did it is because

I knew Joel was holding up his end of the bargain and us being able to see that because he he leads the way you

know allows us to feel more confident to bring our a game because we're not going to feel we're doing it

in vain that's really important one cool thing about the Norman project it's not just a film but it was filmed

at my home so not only is it a it's going to be something really cool to watch but down the road I'll be able to

look back and it's sort of my own little time capsule for seeing my home as it was back in the day

and seeing all of my things they're being used as Norman's things a lot of people think it's really easy

just to say like hey we're just doing a movie and it sounds sounds cool in theory

um and you just expect that you're gonna get all this help and that dies out

really really really fast because it gets old and just most of it just feels

like you're trudging through a lot of mud so yeah personalities and people are

really important um but if everything comes together it can be very gratifying

oh I knew it was gonna hit me [ __ ] oh my gosh oh my God

oh we're finally done foreign

[Music] I can't you can't trick yourself and

thinking it's done until it's done

[Music]

when you have your own wife that is doesn't doesn't think you can do it but knows that you can do it that makes a

huge difference to get a Monumental Beast of a project whether or not people

truly really like it or not this project was a Lord of the Rings Beast to me and

my team and now at this point it's not just the story in the film it's your guy's story to me it's like this full

picture and I can't separate this film from from the heart of it from the heartbeat

I hope they pull away a good story that they enjoy I hope it's something they could go back and watch again but more

so I want people to walk away saying you know if if we really put our minds

to it we can do a lot because we we basically built this film from nothing

it is an independent low budget film and it's good and I want people to take that

as motivation to it doesn't have to be a film you don't have to go make a movie but Against All Odds you can accomplish

things that you know others will tell you is impossible foreign

exciting to just be it was obviously exciting to be part of the crew but it's

exciting to be just in that audience for the first time seeing it in completion and just being like wow this came out

it worked we had many conversations of what if this doesn't work but it worked

don't listen to people that say um that you can't do it or it's got to be done a certain way everything was

created some way someone had to come up with some standard there's so many different people that

could end up watching this I don't even know who I'm talking to but

you can do it finish the project you began and that you want to finish make it

happen this has probably been a very long wait for a lot of people

um I know it's been the longest for me um I'm really excited about this like I

was telling my brother I mean we've worked for the last like two months just like crazy to get it tonight and

um what you're going to see tonight is seven years of tons of work from countless friends and

people have just poured their heart into a really crazy Vision I had called

Norman and um I'm just I'm I'm really proud of it and I'm excited that you guys are all here uh it's a privilege and for me I'm

I've been waiting for this moment for years and there were times it was very hard to believe that it was gonna

actually finish but uh but this this lady here helped me so much

it's not worth achieving if you've beaten everybody to a pulp and you've

created enemies and you've not paid people and everyone hates you by the end this to me it's not worth it Norman was worth it because we ended well the film

um hopefully I think is a really cool unique custom film and a story that speaks from my heart of what I you know

what I like and um and and and everyone's still really is happy

and and enjoyed the process as opposed to being not just a long hard painful project but a painful good one that was

worth people's time and effort

thank you [Music] [Applause]

foreign just keep at it and you you have a

respectful attitude on things and you you go out in a direction of of you put

your whole heart and passion into it you really can get some of these projects done uh whether or not it's gonna be

good or bad but you can still get them done uh one little piece at a time but you gotta stay committed to it you gotta

keep going you got to keep chipping away at it so hope you guys have enjoyed this video and I hope it motivates everyone

to get out there and and work on your own projects don't wait till tomorrow start tonight

um and you'll get it done a peacock do you remember doing this

it was just like yesterday right no if your friend ever asked you to work on

a film it's only going to be a few weekends just like he promises so go ahead and go for it

yes 200 never look guarantee

[Laughter]

[Music]

foreign [Music]

[Applause]