Experience Counts Making Feature Smartphone Films - Darcy Yuille

SBP Podcast Mobile Filmmaking

Darcy Yuille wanted to make a feature and using an iPhone. Because of his professional experience in the industry he discovered it was important to get the story right. To give you an example of his professional experience, Darcy has worked on films like Pitch Black with Vin Diesel. Darcy is in Australia.

He learned making films is not just something you jump into without disregard for the process and that includes research for the story and character development.

The story in One Punch is about growing up with the pressure of the family business. But it has a central plot with something that happens a lot between teen males that has a very tough consequence that includes brain damage. One thing he advises is to do the research because it adds quality to your film and story. Read the article for this pisode 106: https://medium.com/smartphonefilmmaking
Because Darcy had a good feel for the story he wanted to tell, Darcy used a method called, character-based improvisation that helped him to create characters around real people.

Because the story focuses on youth, it brings the filmmakers to a night out on the town, in Australia from the streets to inside a night club. The camera captured lots of moments on the streets that played well with the iPhone and adds to the cinematography in the film. The film begins by establishing the location, the protagonist and more of the important elements of the story for the viewer. It was something Darcy speaks about in detail. Going from location to location, Darcy decided to not block the scenes until they arrived to the locations on the day of the shoot. There was one scene which he devoted an entire day to shooting it and he shares in the podcast why that worked so well.

Darcy used the lens by Moondog Labs which he mentions it gave his film a beautiful look and feel. The lighting inside the night club scene was created quite creatively. If you are having issues trying to figure out how to accomplish lighting tricks, you’ll appreciate this part of our discussion. When it comes to lighting, there is a lot of cheating in filmmaking but there is a delicate balance in knowing when you can cheat, and when cheating is a good idea and when to take the time to set up the shot. You get that from experience.

Darcy’s crew was made up of a makeup artist, a gaffer and a sound recordist who recorded sound externally, and he was the cinematographer. Most of the dialogue in the film was captured on set but about 15% was ADR (automated dialogue replacement).

Darcy talked about how helpful it was to use lighting, of course, but he says there are still issues with contrast and exposure. He used Filmic Pro and used the log mode which helped him a lot in grading the film in post. He mentions that shooting at 24fps as opposed to 25fps “gives it a little softer edge.”

Over all Darcy brings a lot of great tips for filmmakers in this episode of our podcast. However, one thing that he sums up is to be authentic with your story. The story idea came from an incident he experienced a couple years ago in which he thought, “what if?” It’s something we all do but with the camera in your possession, you have the ability to turn your thoughts into stories that you can film.

He also mentioned part of his inspiration came with watching Blue Moon by Stef Harris starring Jed Brophy and Mark Hadlow as the protagonists. One of the things he points out in storytelling with film was an element in which you are watching a film and you think the story is about one thing and then it turns into something else. It was something he accredited Sean Baker’s Tangerine and Stef Harris’ Blue Moon.

Film Synopsis: ONE PUNCH is a gritty, teen drama about Matt Mercado, a young Italian Australian man on the cusp of adulthood, struggling in his final year at high school and trying to hold on to the friendships and innocence of his youth.

Key Cast: Alex Arco, Mirko Grillini, Jessica Osrin, Sergej Arcaba, Jacob Ehlefeldt, Stavros Psoras, Amanda Grillini.

SBP Podcast Mobile Filmmaking: The Voice of Mobile Film™ is for everyone who ever wanted to or is curious about making movies and videos using smartphones. This is a technique that worked very well in the film and he explains in detail in the podcast.

Follow Darcy and Rooftop Film Co. to watch the trailer as soon as it’s ready for viewing.

Find Darcy Yuille and Rooftop Film Co. on social media:

Website: www.rooftopfilmco.com

IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1101189/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/onepunchfilm

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ONEPUNCHFILM1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rooftopfilmco/

Darcy on IG: https://www.instagram.com/dangerdarce

Lights Darcy mentioned in the podcast: https://creamsource.com/product/micro-colour/

One Punch Behind The Scenes Video: https://vimeo.com/460929744

Our Links:

Smartphone Filmmaking Publication on Medium: https://medium.com/smartphonefilmmaking

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SBP Podcast Website: http://sbppodcast.studio

SBP Podcast on IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14682500/reference

Video and Film Streaming Distribution for Smartphone Films: http://mobilefilmstories.com

International Mobile Film Festival Website: http://internationalmobilefilmfestival.com

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