HIGH: Virtual Production on an Indie Film Budget

In this episode, we talk with filmmakers Jonathan Mason and Tisha Robinson-Daly about their journey into virtual production and the challenges they faced in filming the teaser for HIGH - an indie film that explores the world of tower climbers.

We cover:
‣ How indie films can use virtual production
‣ Mistakes and challenges in working with VP for the first time
‣ How to maximize time and budget with your Virtual Art Department

And a whole lot more

📧 Be sure to subscribe to the free VP Land newsletter to get the latest news and BTS insights 2-3x a week: https://ntm.link/vp_land


Connect with Tisha and Jonathan @ HIGH - The Film:

HIGH - The Film - https://www.highthefilm.com
HIGH - The Movement - https://highthemovement.com
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@Highthefilm
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/highthemovementandfilm
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thefilmhigh
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/highthefilm
Jonathan @ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-mason-37888217
Tisha @ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tisharobinsondaly 


📝 SHOW NOTES

HIGH - The Film
https://www.highthefilm.com

HIGH - The Movement
https://highthemovement.com

Reaching the Peak: Exploring Virtual Production on an Independent Budget 
https://filmmakermagazine.com/121951-virtual-production-high-tisha-robinson-daly-jonathan-mason/

"HIGH" indie film marks another successful proof-of-concept for disguise-powered VP
https://www.disguise.one/en/insights/news/high-indie-film-marks-another-successful-proof-of-concept-for-disguise-powered-virtual-production/

HIGH Proof-of-Concept Teaser
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FH4eI0SJFM

BTS: How to use VP on an Indie film budget
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyvHP_6UtuA

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⏱ CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction and Background
02:16 HIGH - The Movement
08:45 Discovering Virtual Production
09:15 Tribeca Unreal Engine Program
10:45 Advocacy for Tower Climbers
12:45 Exploring Virtual Production
15:35 Budget and Practical Challenges in Virtual Production
17:59 The Previs Process
22:50 Changing the Proof of Concept
27:50 The Production Process
32:40 Creating a World with Virtual Art Department
35:50 Cutting Shots and Adding Last-Minute Shots
38:48 Discovering New Shots and Happy Accidents
40:35 Lighting Techniques and Capturing Height and Perspective
46:00 Mistakes and Lessons Learned in Virtual Production
51:05 Maximizing Time and Money in Virtual Production
56:00 Virtual Production in Film Schools
59:00 What's next for HIGH?

Transcript

Jonathan Mason: 0:00

Yes, virtual production is great for sci fi. We all know that. But there aren't many indie, straight dramas that are using virtual production.

Joey: 0:07

Welcome to VP Land, the podcast exploring all things virtual production and the future of media creation. I am Joey Daoud, your host. You just heard from Jonathan Mason. He and his co director Tisha Robinson-Daly are the filmmakers behind the indie film High. High explores the world of tower climbers. A job that keeps all of us connected, but whose hazardous work is often not known and overlooked.

Tisha Daly: 0:29

I really didn't have tower climbers on my radar, but they're like many of the men and women who work in commodity fields, who we depend so heavily on what they provide us, but they're unseen, they're like invisible.

Joey: 0:41

After finishing their screenplay for High, Jonathan and Tisha tried to figure out how to shoot the movie, but there was a big challenge. How do you film a movie that takes place on towers over 300 feet high? Different weather and lighting. and with crew and non climbing actors. That's where virtual production came in.

Jonathan Mason: 0:58

How we got to virtual production was somewhat by accident.

Joey: 1:01

In this episode we'll cover misconceptions and mistakes about virtual production.

Jonathan Mason: 1:05

When we heard about virtual production we're like boom it's over like We're gonna push a button and this thing's gonna, like, film itself.

Joey: 1:13

The benefits virtual production brought working with their crew and actors.

Tisha Daly: 1:16

We were actually able to spend quality time with our actors, and they themselves felt like, oh my god, like, I feel like a climber, you know, on a tower.

Joey: 1:27

Lessons learned shooting virtual production on an indie budget.

Tisha Daly: 1:31

As indie filmmakers with You know, a small budget relatively, we were so limited as far as what we actually could do.

Jonathan Mason: 1:38

To have someone who can tell you early on about the technical aspects is so incredibly helpful, so you don't waste time with these pie in

Joey: 1:44

the sky ideas and a whole lot more. All of the links and videos for everything we talk about can be found in the show notes or YouTube description, and be sure to subscribe to the VP Land Newsletter for content like this. And a whole bunch more, sent to you for free, twice a week. Just go to ntm. link slash vpland, or just google VP Land. And now, let's jump into our interview with Tisha and Jonathan. All right. Well, thanks for joining me. Uh, so let's just start kind of big picture. Can you tell me about HIGH?

Tisha Daly: 2:17

Yeah, sure. So, um, back in 2014 when I was still, I was working in telecommunications and a friend of mine, um, who also works in telecom, called me one day out of the blue just to tell me about this really horrific story about, um, of a tower climber who had been in an accident. His name was Joel Metz. He was 28 years old. He had been working with the crew in Kentucky, and they had been there for a week. At that time they were, um, it was the 3G boom. So they were taking down all the old antennas from like LTE and they were putting up new 3G antennas, and they had been there for a week. Things had been going really well. This morning. This particular morning, he had posted photos on Facebook of his view. He was like 200 feet on a monopole tower. He was smiling, he looked happy. And then that afternoon they were lifting up an 1,800-pound antenna and something snapped. They heard a pop and a cable snapped and it decapitated him and cut his arm off. And it was in the middle of July in Kentucky, so really hot. And his body hung in the harness for five hours. They couldn't get him down. And so my father had passed away unexpectedly in 2012, and I was still really, really struggling with the loss of my dad. And so when I heard this story, I don't know, like something, something about like me feeling like it was really unfair that my dad was gone and taken away from me, like resonated. Like, oh my God, this is so unfair. This is a 28-year-old kid just doing his job and he died this horrific death. Um, I started looking like that night and then like the next day I just kept looking like to see if I could find anything about this specific story. And there was nothing. Like, there was no news, there was nothing I could find. A week later I then found like a really small article in the local paper about this accident, and I found out he had four little boys. It was odd that his funeral fell on my birthday. And it was just like this really weird connection that I felt to this person I had never met before. And I really, at that point, even though I had worked in telecom, I really didn't have tower climbers on my radar. Like, I never really thought about them. I never really thought about the job that they did, even though the job that they did kept me employed because really, climbers are who keep all of telecom employed because if they don't climb, there's no service, right? So I, um. decided to go on Facebook and I, like, I found tower climber groups. And I would go on every morning and I would leave a message in the group like, hey, um, tell me about your job. What's life like on the road? What's it like for your family? Is it safe? Like, have you ever witnessed an accident? That sort of stuff. And this went on for a couple years where I just sort of infiltrated this community and I realized that Joel, as tragic as his accident was, wasn't unique. That, you know, there had been other climbers who had died really horrific death. And the sad part was that there was no one doing anything about it. They're not hired by the big telecom companies, like AT&T and Verizon. They work for small contracting companies. So the carriers are detached from liability. So when a climber falls, the carrier's like, oops, sorry, but there's nothing, you know, their families get nothing. Most of them don't have benefits. They don't have life insurance. So their families end up with nothing. And lots of times, not only do they not, they end up with nothing monetarily, but they end up with like very few answers as to what actually happened to their loved one. I started a nonprofit called HIGH THE MOVEMENT, where I advocate for them. Jonathan has become a huge part of even in that and like helping to like really bring awareness to the fact that these men and women are freaking amazing. But they're like many of the men and women who work in commodity fields, who we depend so heavily on what they provide us, but they're unseen, they're like invisible, you know, and they work in bad conditions. They make a little money. And HIGH is really like dedicated to these, like these, these men and women and, and really to bring awareness that, um, they're out there and that they deserve to work in safe conditions. I mean, they deserve to, to make it home to their family at night. And sadly, many of them don't.

Joey: 6:31

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a really powerful story. It's something we, that, um, we definitely are not, it's not, not on my radar, not on a, I imagine a lot of people's radar of just the work that, you know, goes on that, uh, you know, definitely they didn't do it. We would all feel the impact and we just don't think about it. Yeah. Even this conversation right now over the, the wifi hotspots and stuff. Yeah. And then how did the two of you, uh, connect?

Jonathan Mason: 6:55

Tish and I are both, um, primarily writers and directors of traditional narrative fiction. And through that, um, nonprofit HIGH THE MOVEMENT, Tish ended up writing a, uh, first draft of a screenplay that went to the, one of the Sundance Labs, um, in Philadelphia where we both live, um, which is where I met Tish. And then the two of us sort of immediately clicked and, um, became fast friends and we were working on separate projects at first, but then, you know, the more she talked about this world and her involvement in it and sort of the advocacy aspect, the more I got drawn in and the more I got excited about it, the more she got excited about it and vice versa.

Tisha Daly: 7:37

It's just been like an amazing partnership that is very authentic and like organic. It happened like really organically. Like it wasn't supposed to happen this way, It really wasn't, but it did.

Jonathan Mason: 7:49

I think one of the things that happened through this process, you know, other than like this real organic friendship, which obviously like allowed us to build a lot of trust in terms of like the things we were exploring with the story. Well, especially Tisha at first because I think it, the first, the very first draft of the script was very technical and very much about the climbers. But then the more we talked about it, the more, I think Tish started to dig into her personal connection, not just to the climbers industry, but to the idea of family and, and family. What family's willing to sacrifice and sort of that, that I, that irony, right, of people who are sacrificing so much for their family that they end up being disconnected from their family. Um, and these are stories that. Um, resonated with both of us personally and our own family lives growing up, you know, so that that connection just felt like, yeah, just super organic. We're like lost siblings somehow.

Tisha Daly: 8:46

We really are.

Jonathan Mason: 8:47

It's been, it's been a really cool journey. Um, and it's nice because we're motivated by this connection we have, and we're motivated by the advocacy that we both feel passionate about. And we just really started digging into this, to this world and these characters that we were exploring to try and tell this story and still keep sort of the, the mission, um, at its heart. So that's sort of like the genesis of the, of the project. And then, you know, how we got to virtual production was somewhat by accident. Tish and I were invited to, um, the inaugural Tribeca Unreal Engine program called Writing in Unreal. And the idea behind that program was to sort of introduce screenwriters to the concept of, previs-ing an Unreal Engine specifically and then kind of loosely concept of virtual production, but really to introduce the power of that previs, even as early as the writing stage. So the idea was, you know, as we became more fluent with, you know, what we could do in Unreal, we could test ideas out and really see them and make'em come to life. So, you know, and that was a great introduction to that and gave us lots of ideas. But more than anything it, it really introduced us to the world of Engine beyond The Mandalorian, which I know everyone always quotes as like the holy grail. But it made us realize that, wait, there's lots of things we could probably do that, you know, that would be applicable to our straight drama story. There's no sci-fi, there's no, interplanetary worlds that we're, we're playing with. But a third of our film takes place atop these towers, and this might be a great way to shoot the film, but also to shoot a proof of concept. I think, typically, a lot of indie filmmakers will shoot a short film before they shoot the feature to sort of prove out the themes and, and explore some of the, maybe some of the palette or the, you know, camera language that they're gonna use. For us this was a great way to kind of assuage the fears of- most of the people we talked to when they were like, oh, this, the script's great, the story's great, but how are you gonna shoot 300 feet up in the air? This was our way to sort of test it out. Um, so that, that lab really led us into the world of, of virtual production.

Tisha Daly: 10:49

wanna piggyback on what Jonathan's saying, um, that he's right. Like I feel like we had gotten to a point where we were taking meetings and that seemed to be the main roadblock that we kept running up against. People were saying like, wow, this is such a great concept. Never heard of tower climbers. This is, you know, so timely. but how are you gonna put non-actors, non-climbers on towers safely? how are you gonna do that? And I think this not only allowed us to be able to like prove it to other people. but then I think also to ourself because we were I. Really contemplating like, okay, what do? And we had just got a budget done and we were like, okay, like looking at our budget, like what makes the most sense for us? So this really allowed us to at the film beyond this is a really great story, but how are we actually gonna make, make the film? Um, and virtual production definitely is a great tool that we'll be able to utilize.

Jonathan Mason: 11:43

And then we're also motivated by our general curiosity. Like the two of us are like rabid consumers of like, experiences and, and information. And, and that's, that's one of the reasons too, I think we were, um, attracted to testing out this new, like, this new avenue that we knew nothing about. And, and it's been so nice to be able to do that as like a, as like a partnership, you know? because we've, we've messed up a lot of stuff. Like we've we've made lots of mistakes along the way. Like we've had a lot of disappointments. We've had a lot of like, you know, I think, I think like a lot of people, at first when we heard about virtual production were like, boom, it's over. Like, we're gonna push a button and this thing's gonna like film itself.

Joey: 12:26

It's like the hologram in Star Trek or something. You can just jump in and film

Jonathan Mason: 12:30

It's like, it's gonna be so easy and, and, and oh my God, it's gonna save us so much money and it's gonna be so cheap and simple. And you know, and we had, in some ways, we were right. And in some ways we were like grossly mistaken.

Tisha Daly: 12:44

Right. It, it's not a fix for everything. You know, like it doesn't just do everything.

Joey: 12:48

How far down the rabbit hole did you go in before virtual production was, uh, the most viable plan of like- like what was the original idea of like how you would pull this off and also like how did the, the budget compare of like what it would cost to pull it off, like in non-virtual production way?

Jonathan Mason: 13:08

That's a great question. So our first budget, um, I mean, without going to specific numbers, I would say our first budget was probably about 30% more than the budget that we came up with for virtual production, which, you know, it's a, it's a big, it's a big chunk. Um, it's a big savings. But I think ultimately- see initially we, we thought about doing this practically and we looked at sort of other films that had been shot. Our DP had just worked on a film about two people stuck on a, on a tower, on a sort of an abandoned tower. And they had shot everything practically. Um, they used, you know, force perspective. They used actual practical sets. They used some sort of green screen combination. Most of it was shot on location, but a lot of their- their whole film took place in one single tower in one location. Whereas our film takes place in different weather conditions, um, different types of towers. You know, we looked at things like doing 2.5D. We looked at things like doing straight up practical, um, shots. When we first thought about doing our proof of concept, we were gonna build, um, a piece of a tower, just the top of the tower, um, and just use kind of like, you know, force perspective or, and, and try to shoot it practically. But we kept coming into the same issue, which is this sort of like daisy chain of, of problems. You know, if we found the solution that would look good, it wasn't safe, If we found a solution that was safe, it didn't look good, uh, we'd be limited in terms of our camera movement or, you know, we'd have to worry about tethering our actors and then when do we use stunt doubles versus our actual actors, you know? None of the solutions we came up with to do it practically, um, really ticked all the boxes. And we, we'd have to sacrifice something pretty major because we didn't have the budget, you know, to have the amount of safety required to do this. The, you know, the amount of training, the amount of like rigging, it was just kind of cost prohibitive. And you know, we were kind of faced early on with the thought of like, well, do we make script changes to intentionally, you know, at one point, like we like we had a water tower instead instead of one of our tower locations, we were gonna use a water tower because it could be more contained and we could be inside the water tower and you would, you know, it would just be like a tall ladder and you wouldn't really see around you. But that kind of, you know, that was unfortunate because we were like forcing the story to lose impact because of these practical considerations. And that really coincided with us learning about virtual production and then thinking, well, let's, let's test it out and see like, because in theory, if we can do this and just build the base of a tower or just build the tip of the tower, we could do the base of the tower on location. We could do the midsections in the top on a stage. We'd have full control over the camera or almost full control over the camera. We'd be able to use our actors because they would never be more than six feet off the ground. We wouldn't need, except for in very rare cases, stunt actors. So we started specking that out. And, it's funny because like if, if you, if you come into it without someone who really knows the game, uh, it's hard to get a grasp of like what the numbers are. You know, what are the components that you need? And it wasn't until we met Ben Baker, uh, with Mesh, who's a virtual production line producer whose bread and butter is putting together these productions that we were able to really put together a budget. So after we met Ben and we went through the whole, you know, um, line item process with someone who's an expert in virtual production, we are, we were able to see that ultimately the total budget wouldn't be hugely different, but it would, we'd be able to move faster. We'd be able to move safer, and we'd have full control over the camera to be able to get shots that we'd never could get on, on a practical set.

Joey: 17:06

And not have to compromise your script or change story to fit practicality.

Jonathan Mason: 17:12

Totally. And to go full circle to the Tribeca thing, it sort of, it sort of ended up inspiring ideas even in terms of what we could do. And, we went, when we went back into the script, we were able to make adjustments knowing full, well, yeah, we can pull this off. This is gonna be like a, an unusual thing that we couldn't do on a practical set that we're gonna be able to do. You know, one of the ideas Tish and I discussed early on was to avoid using too many drone shots of these towers, right, where, where you're detached from the tower and it's got this sort of like objective view circling our characters. We want it to really be with our characters on the tower, clinging to it. Um, and virtual production gave us the ability to, to do that because we could get real close, we could move around,

Joey: 17:59

So, yeah, I wanna jump through, just kind of go deeper into some of the stages. Um, you have a really great writeup of sort of the whole process you went through in Filmmaker Magazine, so I'll have a link to that. Um, but I wanna jump into some parts and stuff. The journey of the, sort of the technical journey you went on. Um, so even before virtual production, you talked a lot about, um, previs and building out the shots inside Unreal, and sort of the importance of that for, especially for independent filmmaking, which I think is not something people think about. Um, and working with Unreal and previs. Um, so yeah, can you tell me a bit more of that about the previs process and what you learned from, uh, going through that?

Jonathan Mason: 18:36

You know, um, Tisha and I don't come from a, a post background, so, you know, I think a lot of the tools that were available, like game design and stuff like that really wasn't on our radar. So our first approach was very traditional. We were literally just storyboarding pen on paper or using- There's this app called Storyboarder that is pretty great and weirdly is similar to Unreal in some way. You create these 3D assets and you can sort of move around and pose your shots and take a picture. But it's very rudimentary. For us that was already like revolutionary, right? Then once, I think like one of the first things that we used, we did tinker with- So, you know, Matt Workman, uh, Cinematography Database has this game called Cine Tracer which basically uses Unreal Engine. He created a game in Unreal Engine that he has on Steam called Cine Tracer where there's these pre-baked locations and assets and you can move lights around and you can pose a camera and change the lenses. So we started tinkering with that a little bit, which was really cool. Obviously so many of the things are, are like pre-baked. It's really meant for like a cinematography, previs kind of thing.

Joey: 19:44

laying out your lights and your track.

Jonathan Mason: 19:45

Yeah. Laying out your lights. Exactly. Trying out lenses.

Joey: 19:48

And now was this, going through this process, was this, were you still just in, was virtual production on the radar yet? Or were you still just like- okay, so you're just like-

Jonathan Mason: 19:59

This was just like, oh wow, this is like, we've reached the end of the frontier. Like this this is it. This is like, it doesn't get better than this. You know, like, how amazing is it that you can, you wanna see this on an 80, or you wanna see this on a 50, or you want to put it on a crane? Like amazing. Um, and then when we went, went to this Unreal thing and we were paired with a, an Unreal fellow, so someone who had gone through the Unreal mentorship program and was someone who's like a certified, you know, Unreal fellow kind of thing. And, and, then he, you know, he was showing us the layout and what we were able to do and how we were able to not just place the camera but change weather elements and change, you know, bring in assets from the marketplace and put on it, put an actual cell tower on there. And we could dress it up and we could be very specific about what type of cell tower it was or how tall it was, or, and then to be able to place the mannequins on the tower and really start thinking more about, not just about composition, but about blocking, which was really interesting. because I think like when you're in the, at the screenwriting stage, even when you're prevising, it's one thing to like sort of sketch out two people interacting in a room on the ground. but on a tower, we, we've never been on a tower. We've never climbed a tower. We've never been 300 feet up in the air on, on this structure. And we were able to actually feel that, right? This like real time physics, you can see in terms of with each lens, we could see how it would compress or stretch perspective at certain heights. We could see what it would look like to have the horizon at a certain distance or bring it closer. We could test it out during different weather elements. Um, so we were able to get much more specific in our previs and our team at the time, uh, Nhan Le, who was our, our VAD artist, he basically created these animations. We just did these short animations of scenes. We specked out a proof of concept script that was two pages long. Relatively simple action. But we really got granular with it. We planned out every shot. We, we tracked the camera movement and we just, we dumped- you know, we output each of these, um, little sequences into Premiere. And then we edited'em together. We slapped on some music and did some sound design, and we had this like mini version of our proof of concepts within like a few weeks. And, you know, we're in Philly, Nhan's in LA, we had someone else on our team in Toronto, someone else in New York. Like we were able to do this remotely from our homes, and end up with like a, a solid previs that had the real feel of what we were going for.

Joey - Shure Mic: 22:51

All right, real quick break. If you are enjoying this type of content, if you like staying up to date on the latest tools and tech and all the things that are changing the way that we are making movies, then you will like VP Land. It is our newsletter that goes out two to three times a week, three times when more stuff is happening. We don't like to fill your inbox with useless junk. So if you want to have the newsletter, which covers stuff like we're talking about here and a whole bunch more, go to ntm.link/vpland and subscribe. All right now, back to the interview.

Joey: 23:18

Yes. And now was this at the point when you figured that you were going to do- maybe walk me through the process because you, at first were gonna do maybe like a section of the script to film that as a proof of concept, but then it became more of a, uh, montage with, uh, with, voiceover.

Jonathan Mason: 23:35

Yeah. Tish can-

Tisha Daly: 23:36

And, and I think that, you know, initially we had, we had written a a short, like a short scene that was not part of the feature script, but just the scene that had really, you know, that encompassed a feeling of the script. Um, but then once we, we had a budget and we had, you know, we had to think about like, okay, how much money do we have to do this? Um, the realization came that it's going to be economically better if we don't record sound on set. Like if we, you know, if we don't record sound, if we, we, we had to really think about financially, like what can we do? So at that point we were like, okay, we're gonna scrap the script that we have and we're gonna come up with another idea. And then we came up with this idea of, okay, well what about if we just have the actors set on the tower, and then we have a voiceover of his wife calling. And then we can still feel like what's happening because of like, through that conversation that she's having with her husband.

HIGH: 24:36

Hey, it's me. Sorry we missed your call. Olive was having trouble falling asleep.

Tisha Daly: 24:44

And so really like, when I said earlier about how it tells you like, you know, virtual production or you know, is a tool, it's really a tool and that, um, even though we were able to, you know, do this, we were still limited. We still had limitations, you know, as indie filmmakers with, you know, a small budget relatively. We were still limited as far as what we actually could do. So at that point, it made, it meant that we had to go back to the drawing board. We had to think of like, okay, what are some other options that we have that we would still be able to tell the story we wanna tell, um, and get the best of what we can get. You know, we didn't want to like rush the actors through, you know, through rehearsing lines. And we wanted to really use virtual production. Like we wanted to focus most of our attention, you know, really with being able to be with the actors, which also was like, just such an amazing thing was that we were actually able to spend quality time with our actors and they themselves felt like, oh my God, like I feel like a climber, you know, on a tower. I remember when we put the harnesses on them and they're heavy and they were climbing, you know, the short distance on this tower structure. And they were exhausted. I mean, they were physically exhausted. And it worked perfectly for the scene because in the scene they're, you know, it's the end of the night. They've climbed all day. They're exhausted. I mean, it just was, we were able to get, I think, way more than what we even, I think, anticipated that we were going to get.

Jonathan Mason: 26:12

I think like the, the in indie ethos, you know, you're forced to be nimble, right? You're supposed to like, you're, to be able to pivot quickly is kind of like built into the- to just the, the, the way it works, right? The idea was that there, there were certain things we knew we wanted to test out in terms of shots. Like, can we make it look like it's at a certain height to test out? How much can we move the camera to test out? How are our actors gonna feel? But we had the second mission for this proof of concept was to show can we as directors capture some sort of emotion? Can we, can we as directors direct our actors? Because it's not just the technical thing. It's not just camera movement. They're, they're humans and we're, we're telling a story about a family and about real people. So can we make a piece that still feels like it just happens to have been shot on with virtual production. But virtual production isn't what we're showcasing. We're showcasing a story. And hopefully, it's somewhat seamless that we happen to use, virtual production. So, you know, I think in some ways it succeeded in some ways it, it, it didn't because this was our first try at it. But I would say generally speaking, we, we managed, we feel like we managed to get both the performance side and the technical side in, in two days, in two short days, you know? Um, and we knew that the voiceover we were going to- we knew that by doing it this way, no matter what we shot, we would be able to write a voiceover to use that narratively, you know, whether we got all the shots on our list or not. We'd, we'd have the safety of being able to do that after the fact.

Joey: 27:48

So yeah, with the, with the production, walk me through how it, came to be and what the, what the production, uh, was like.

Jonathan Mason: 27:54

The, the production for the proof of concept, um, took a, took a long time. The biggest part was figuring out a, how we were gonna build the tower, like what kind of materials we were gonna use. At one point, we had considered actually getting a piece of a real tower and having it shipped, was too complicated. Uh, and Too too far. We weren't gonna use a huge piece. It was gonna be like, you know, like a, a five foot, six foot piece piece of the, of a tower. But, um, and then it was trying to find the space, like what kind of stage are we gonna use? Not only did they have to have like the right size, volume, but the right depth to be able to have, to be able to, you know, change lenses and, and be able to be far back enough from this structure we were gonna place. And then we had the weather elements. So we were trying to find like, okay, who's gonna let us do like rain gag on their stage with their LED volume?

Tisha Daly: 28:48

No one.

Jonathan Mason: 28:49

It, it turns out there's a very limited list of people who will let you shoot for cheap or free on a stage with their very expensive equipment when you're gonna dump rain or. So it was cool. It was like part of the in indie, uh, ethos too is like ask for the impossible. Like ask for things that, you know, people will say no to. Um, because there's an off chance that someone might say yes. Well, it turned out everyone said no. So like everyone was like, no, you're not, you're not shooting on our stage with water and whatever, which is fair. So, so that was kind of like the most complicated thing. But we ended up- I think a lot of people were excited about the idea of, of, working on a project that was not sci-fi. And that's not to say that we don't love sci-fi or everyone in the space doesn't love sci-fi. It's just, that's kind of already been proven. Um, yes, virtual production is great for sci-fi, like we all know that, but there aren't many indie straight dramas that are using virtual production. And I think a lot of people were excited to team with us to try something out that could show, yeah, there, there are many applications. Like Tisha said, this is just a tool. It's not, it's not a tool for one thing. It's a tool for many things. It's all, it's based on, you know, the context. And our world happened to be perfect for it because of what it could achieve in terms of safety and in terms of camera movement. So we ended up partnering with disguise and ROE. They have a testing stage, this virtual production accelerator in Chatsworth out in LA. And it happened to line up- because we got pushed back and pushed back and pushed back, sometimes it's like this kismet, right? Like it happened to hit right when, um, NAB was, so all the people from ROE and disguise were gonna go to NAB. They were like, yeah, our stage is gonna be empty for a week. You can just use it. And we were like, what? Okay. Yeah. Okay. So then it became kind of like, okay, well whatever we previs has to work for this stage because we're getting this stage for basically at cost, the great thing about virtual production is we were able to get the specs for the stage. We were able to bring it into Unreal Engine and tech viz it and see the exact dimensions of the stage. And we were able to take our previous shot list and go, okay, this shot works. This shot doesn't work anymore. This shot still works. We don't have enough ceiling height for this shot. We could reconfigure our entire shot list. We had a, we were using Airtable, um, to sort of like, it's kind of like a spreadsheet where we, we could have all our, our shot list, We could just do some screenshots in Unreal, put'em back into our storyboard, and we just went through our whole storyboard again. after having tech vis that specific stage. And we knew exactly what we were gonna be able to do on the technical side. You know. That meant that when we got there, um, really our focus was mostly with our actors. And then the VAD team was focused on getting everything from the computer onto the volume, um, making sure that the color profile was right, that the camera was calibrated, the lenses were calibrated. And that technical process could happen while we were working with

Joey: 31:58

mm-Hmm.

Jonathan Mason: 32:00

And It, it kind of like, it worked really seamlessly. The two days that we were on set, it was just like we were down once because of a, of, of a technical glitch. Um, but other than that, we were just constantly shooting. We weren't waiting for re lights, we weren't waiting for sound issues. It was just Super

Tisha Daly: 32:22

Super And even when we were down, we were down for like a, like a good amount of time. Like in the morning, like I think it was like an hour. We like made that up so quickly, like we made it up so quickly and were able to like even get in more shots that afternoon. So, I mean, it really was very efficient, like very efficient.

Joey: 32:40

I was gonna say, this was an interesting point you had, um, highlighted in the article too of, of um, going through the process because this was at the stage like you had already done. Um, a lot of this was like when you had to revamp some of your shots and stuff based on the script, but you already had, uh, some of the virtual art departments sets or some of the, the backdrops already built. And it was an interesting point where you were just like, oh, you know, even though like kind of you were like getting funds and like going step by step, but by having those assets, it's like once you have those assets you can kind of reconfigure them, but it's not like, oh, you lost this money and you have to like shift when you're shifting focus. It was like- you can Just bring it onto your next as you progress stage by stage, you have these assets and these assets are good to go for like the next step.

Jonathan Mason: 33:23

Absolutely. Because you're, you're not creating a shot, you're creating a world. So, you know, you've created, it's a 3D environment. And, you know, we used an actual location in Pennsylvania as inspiration for the topography of it.

Joey: 33:35

Oh yeah. Did you do, uh, photogrammetry or like, did you end up scanning and like doing a

Jonathan Mason: 33:39

Kourosh Pirnazar from PIRCO-ONE, he, he, uh, he did all of that, and which was a really like, really cool process because we found the location exactly where we planned it to shoot, um, you know, our practical location. And he was able to recreate that area. Um, obviously like on our wider shots, there's so much more control. He could bend the river in in the direction we wanted to keep it in frame and like do things that you can't do, you know, without either a good amount of VFX later or, you know, um, that you can't really do in, in normal production. But the cool thing is like when we ha ended up having to adapt to a different stage, not only could we like reconfigure our shots, but we could move the camera, we could move the tower, we could pivot stuff. You know, we ended up building a set instead of doing a a rectangular platform, we ended up doing a triangle so that because the cove was smaller than the stage we had initially hoped to get, um, we knew we would have to move quickly. And the idea was to build the tower on casters, um, and as a triangle. And then to do our rever, because we always wanna be shooting into the cove. We would then to do our reverse shots. We would just turn the platform since it was a triangle and we set dressed it to be a mirror image on each corner, um, we could do our reverse coverage pretty quickly. We didn't end up using casters because of support, like, like engineering issues, but we used steel plates on the ground and we just, we were able to just slide it. It was super easy. So yeah, all of the ways we had to adapt because of this stage were pretty, like, it's not that there were minimal, but they were kind of easy fixes. We, it was very quick. We didn't have to like scratch our heads for too long. It was just like, okay, now the dimensions are this, so the camera needs to be here. We could test it out as we techvis. We didn't really lose much time at all.

Joey: 35:39

And also it might having all, everything, um, your shots planned out.

Jonathan Mason: 35:44

Yeah,

Joey: 35:45

Knew what you wanted, needed to film and that that setback didn't, uh, I mean did you have to cut any shots or you were able to get more than you thought you were gonna get, even with the, uh, the delay?

Jonathan Mason: 35:53

We cut a couple shots, but then we added one shot that like I, you know, we cut a couple shots because of the delay that were kind of extraneous, that we knew were kind of extraneous. But we ended up having extra time at the very end and we added a shot. and t is kinda laughing because it was ridiculous. It was, we added a shot, which our production designer ran, like, ran from the set to a store where she bought tree trunks like these, um, cedar or like, I forget what, what kind of tree it is, but like these tree trunks. She came back with a whole bunch of tree trunks and then we had like Ben Baker and, um, James Yi, our producers on stepladders holding the tree trunks like to the side of the frame so that we could do a push in through the trees. And we didn't have an asset built for this, but we were like, oh, what if we had a shot on the ground where they're like kind of unclipping from the day and we pushed through the trees and then we'll build the background in Unreal later. And our VAD team was like, oh, we'll throw some, like while you're putting up the trees and testing camera, like we will, we'll build something. because they were like there, bu they started building like a background right there on the set with like some, some bushes. And then they tried to match the trees in the foreground, in the deep background. And then they put our tower in the background and it had some lights on it and-

Tisha Daly: 37:16

Everyone was so into it.

Jonathan Mason: 37:17

It up on the screen and everyone was so excited because it was like that, that indie energy of like, let's see what happens, like the clock was running out. We have like an hour-

Joey: 37:26

This sounds like the ultimate martini shot.

Jonathan Mason: 37:29

Yeah. It was, it was, it was the ultimate martini shot. We ended up not being able to use the, the Unreal background they created on the set. And luckily we, we also shot it, you know, just against blue. We just set the, the volume to blue with trackers. And then, um, because we had a, a tilt, we had a push in and a tilt up. Um, and we were able to just key that in like super quickly. We mentioned in the article, but Tish and I, on the flight back from LA, had a rough cut. because we left with a hard drive of our footage. It was all in camera VFX, right, because you're shooting the, the screen. Uh, it had already been pretty much color corrected because the background was calibrated to the foreground and we had already talked about the lut we were gonna use. And, um, so the footage was pretty much graded. So by the time we got home, we had everything except we had a rough cut of everything except for that one, you know, shot we needed to composite later, with the, with our fake trees. So it was like such a fast process compared to what, you know, the in the process

Tisha Daly: 38:39

Right.

Jonathan Mason: 38:39

is.

Joey: 38:39

Right. Well, the sort of flipping, I mean the lot of the post and-

Jonathan Mason: 38:44

exactly. Because you're doing so much

Joey: 38:45

yeah.

Jonathan Mason: 38:46

in in pre. Yeah.

Joey: 38:48

While filming, I know you're sort of in a rush, but like, was, were there any moments, because this is sort of one of the things with like virtual production where it's like, oh, it's so pre-planned out. But did you have any moments where you're like, you were able to find new shots or accidents or any like, oh, like the shot could be a little bit better if we, do something

Jonathan Mason: 39:04

Yeah.

Joey: 39:04

aside from the last shot.

Tisha Daly: 39:05

Yeah,

Jonathan Mason: 39:05

Tish

Tisha Daly: 39:06

We, we totally did. And that, and that. That's. You know, like speaks to what we were talking about earlier, which is that, you know, even though there were, you know, we had a couple of hangups, we still had plenty of time to have those, you know, our DP would, you know, he, he was on handheld and he was finding things and we had the time to do that. We had the time to, um, I'm trying to think of like something specific that happened that we found that we weren't expecting to find.

Jonathan Mason: 39:33

All the series that we did at the end. Like we did, we did a midsection of the tower, which was just steel post, a mod press, and speedrail. Like that was just kind of quickly put together. We wanted these shots of like, inserts, these kind of like, there's a, there's a midsection of the, of the proof of concept that's kind of like this ethereal, inserts of people climbing and the, the physicality of it because we like

Joey: 39:54

Hmm.

Jonathan Mason: 39:55

we like the kind of like, uh, modern dance, a almost aspect of, the work of the climbing. So Geoff George, our DP, he was holding a glass prism in front of the lens just using an easy rig holding the camera. And we just had our actors go up and down this little piece of mod press, which was only about six feet tall. Right, Tish? Like, it was barely taller than them. So they would just like climb up and down. We, and we would just talk'em through it. We'd be like, all right, now grab this. Like, and now we would just direct, we would just like take Geoff and like move him over to the side and he would find angles and we could do all these things that we never could do, obviously on the real tower because-

Tisha Daly: 40:35

Right.

Jonathan Mason: 40:36

He's standing on the ground. and we can, we can fake, whatever angle we want and find stuff that, you know, in the angles of the of the truss and the angles of the speed rail and the angles of the bodies, just to be able to like see what we can catch. And then to do that and be like, oh, you know what, let's see if we can do this at sunset instead of daytime. So, and then, you know, just someone on the, at the brain bar would just be like, boop, here you go, push a button. Not push a button, but like push many buttons. don't wanna demean. Like they would be able to very quickly switch to like golden hour. And then we would do the same series in golden hour and then switch it to midday and then move the sun to the other side and-

Tisha Daly: 41:20

I was gonna say there's just, like a different energy because the, because there wasn't like this sort of like, hurry up, hurry up, hurry up, get done, get done, get done. It was just sort of like a, a more relaxed, um, energy on set for, and everyone said that at the end. Like it just felt really, really good and very different than other productions that I know myself and Jonathan. had been on.

Joey: 41:40

What other lights were you bringing in, um, to augment like the LED lighting and like for matching

Jonathan Mason: 41:45

Mm-Hmm?

Joey: 41:46

hour or the overcast

Jonathan Mason: 41:47

Yeah. We had a couple sky panels that were part of the, actually that was one of the things that that was a last minute budget thing. Like the team from the stage ended up taking their sky panels with them to NAB. So we, we replaced those and those were used to basically extend the spill from the wall. on the wider shots, we wanted a more even light, all of that, since they were back lit by the walls. And the cove comes around a little bit. But then to be able to light them in the foreground, we had I think just two sky panels basically. That was basically it. and then, you know, we had, you know, we had some small, uh, like Astera tubes, um, rigged to the bottom just to give some uplight just to hit, give some of that specular light on the bottom rails as they were climbing. you know, I think that was it. I mean, our gaffer and DP would probably know better, but there was nothing much on the floor. So we had, we were moving around really easily on, on the ground, other than some crash pads, from our stunt coordinator, which became kind of a,

Tisha Daly: 42:51

Problem.

Jonathan Mason: 42:52

It became kind of like a joke because this platform was like four feet off the ground and the whole floor was covered in crash pads because you know, this is protocol. Like, you gotta be, you gotta be safe at the same time. We were like, crunching on these pads at one point. I remember our, our DP just was like, just dragged one out of the way. He was like, ah, like, I'm just doing this without it. Like, um, because yeah, it felt like overkill.

Joey: 43:15

Yeah.

Jonathan Mason: 43:16

I

Joey: 43:16

feel like that would just make me wanna jump on the pad.

Jonathan Mason: 43:17

Yeah, it did, it did a little bit. Yeah. Totally.

Joey: 43:20

Shot-wise and stuff. So I, I know you had the, proof of concept, uh, was you just had a bunch of shots, um, from the perspective on the tower. I'm just gonna guess in the vision for the full film that you might have ideas of shots that like capture the height that they're at, like looking down or looking up. Have you thought of like how the- like you would set up or the perspective in doing that with virtual production? Like

Jonathan Mason: 43:44

We had a lot of conversations about that because even for this proof of concept, our initial storyboards had those shots, right? Like you, you obviously that's gonna be such a, an important part of this visual.

Joey: 43:55

It's like, uh, Free Solo kind of that- those shots where you just get that vertigo. Yeah.

Jonathan Mason: 43:59

Solo was a huge influence. Um. and because not a lot of people have done filming at heights, right, where you really feel it viscerally. Um, and again, we didn't want this sort of like crane shot that feels too fluid or, or drone shots that feel too-

Joey: 44:14

Mm-Hmm.

Jonathan Mason: 44:15

Like they just feel too comfortable. Right. Um, so we did explore, one of the stages we were gonna work at had floor, floor panels. But the, you know, the issue there had to was that the, the pixel pitch isn't as good on those as on the back walls. So you're limited in terms of how close you can get to those, um, those panels. And they're still expensive. Like the good ones are, were above our price range for this. Um, the ceiling panel is the same issue. Like it's not easy to shoot directly up into them, uh, from a close, from very close. Um, so for this proof of concept, we decided like, let's not try and tackle too many things. Let's just try and do what we can do within our means. Well, and then, we'll, we have an idea of how to do it. Like we, we know what the process would be and it's gonna be part of, it'll be set extension in post. Part of it might just be straight up green screen. Because that's the other thing that I think we learned is the excitement coming into virtual production is, oh shit, this is a magic wand. Like, this is gonna, we can do anything. And it has to all be virtual production, and it all has to be with like, cool shiny big LED walls. And, but I think the, the work we've seen that has done well with virtual production uses it, like Tish said, as a tool among others. So mixing it with, sometimes it'll make more sense to do 2.5D, sometimes it'll make more sense to just do straight up green screen. Sometimes it'll make more sense to do a practical shot. so for this proof, we decided it was gonna be too much to try and, and like shoehorn those shots given that we didn't have access to the time or money to, to do a good job with them.

Joey: 46:04

So you mentioned it sort of towards the beginning, uh, but what were some of the mistakes, lessons learned in virtual production or just making the, the movie In general?

Jonathan Mason: 46:14

Oh man. So many. I feel like we've tried to like repress a lot of the, uh,

Tisha Daly: 46:19

uh,

Jonathan Mason: 46:23

um,

Tisha Daly: 46:24

I think one thing that I think is common is at the very beginning, this feeling of like wanting to do too much. I think that, um, You know, initially we wanted to have, I mean this, the film is set in the dead of winter and we thought like, okay, like we want to use, like, we want it to be snowing. We had a scene where we had, you know, tree branches from a nest we're like spilling down off of a tree. Um, and it would've been visually so beautiful, but like we had to really like bring it in. So I think that, I think one mistake early on, and I don't know that it was a mistake, but I think that we spent, you know, we spent energy and time, you know, drafting a script and drafting, you know, wanting to do something. We previs-ed, know, we storyboarded this nest and this scene and, and then realizing like, okay, we're not gonna do that. And then having to switch gears. So I think, I think one aspect that we found is that when you're working with virtual production, don't approach it thinking like, I can do everything I wanna do. Really think about, you know, what do I need to do and how can I tell my story in, in the best way? And that may mean not. Trying to use every single element of Unreal Engine or every single element of virtual production. I think you get

Jonathan Mason: 47:47

Yeah.

Tisha Daly: 47:48

and wanna do it all. And you have

Jonathan Mason: 47:49

Mm-Hmm.

Tisha Daly: 47:50

had to like bring it in.

Jonathan Mason: 47:51

Totally. I think one of the keys to that aspect is like, at, at first we were planning, we were planning this shoot the way we would plan any shoot, like a traditional, you know, practical shoot location shoot. Um, and I think one of the things we learned is how early you need to bring in your VAD and how early you need a really experienced virtual production producer. Not just a producer, but someone who has experience with a virtual production. So they can tell you, no. So they can, they can tell you what's possible and what's not possible within your timeframe, within your budget. and, and you really, you, you can't start like unearthing those issues until you really get into the, to the VAD process and really, or even like knowing your stage ideal, I mean, or at least temping in a state. You know, in our, our early iterations, we didn't temp in a stage, we didn't temp in a volume. We were kind of just like in the unlimited universe of Unreal engine where we could do whatever the hell we wanted, which is fun.

Joey: 48:49

What issues did that bring later on when you then did have a stage and had to fit stuff into it?

Jonathan Mason: 48:55

We had shots that couldn't work because we, there was no way to get those angles. Um, because the, that's the thing. It's like, okay, you, you tell yourself, okay, I know my wall is gonna be, you know, uh, 10-feet tall and I know it's gonna be 30-feet wide. Cool. So I'm gonna do this shot from here, blah, blah, blah. But if you don't know the depth of your room, you don't know how far back the camera can go with people around the camera. And like, you need to know the physicality of your space before you know what's feasible. You need to know, you know, what kind of lenses are you gonna be using to a certain extent. Um, how close can you get to the wall? Like, what is the resolution of these panels that you're gonna be shooting on? Are you gonna have to be kind of soft on all of these shots? So like, if you're planning for all these deep focus shots right up close with a wider lens closer to your, your actors, you might not be able to do that with these particular panels. So. To have someone who can tell you early on about the technical aspects is so incredibly helpful, so you don't waste time with these pie in the sky ideas. Because then you might learn quickly at the beginning, like virtual production is not the right tool.

Tisha Daly: 50:04

yeah.

Jonathan Mason: 50:05

For what you're, you're

Joey: 50:06

Mm-Hmm.

Tisha Daly: 50:07

And, and more to that is that these individuals, like, you know, um, that we worked with, that work in the space of virtual production, like our VAD team, they're, you know, it's a small group of really talented individuals and their time costs money. So we were very, very fortunate that we have a team that is, was so generous with their time. But if, you know, if you're, if you're working with a team who you may not have built that sort of rapport with, um, it's a ton of money that you are, you know, that you are spending to have these sessions. I mean, we had so many sessions where we were all on a Zoom call, you know, working together. I mean, the money runs out at a certain point, you know. So it's important early on to know what you're doing and be, and it's capable that you can do it versus dragging, you know, this team of people along and using their time and, you know, you don't wanna run out of-

Jonathan Mason: 51:05

Yeah. Respecting your time.

Joey: 51:06

Yeah.

Tisha Daly: 51:07

for people, So.

Joey: 51:09

Going through this process, what would you do differently? If you were doing another production to like maximize the VAD time, like the time that you have with the VAD to, you know, make sure that you're not wasting their time. You're like making the best use of their, time and money.

Jonathan Mason: 51:22

I think that's a super important question. I think Uh, you know, some things we- I would say, generally speaking, any, any director or writer or producer who doesn't have experience in virtual production, who wants to go into that world should do a little bit of homework. And ideally, like teach yourself how to use Unreal on a very basic level. Go on YouTube, Unreal Engine, uh, Epic has a website where they have free videos that you can download, a manual you can download how tos, you know, indie filmmakers are resourceful and they're used to sort of like teaching themselves a lot of things, a lot of techniques. This is no exception. You're not gonna like, you know, crash through the ceiling of you, you becoming like a, a virtuoso overnight, but at least if you understand the basic language, the basic layout. I think that's the other thing we could sense at the beginning, some of the frustration of the VAD team when we'd be like, oh yeah, let's just do this. And they'd be like, like settle down, like like I could see how that would be frustrating and a waste of time. So understanding what's feasible at a basic level, super helpful. And then the other thing I would say is, um, having, having a pen and paper storyboard is very helpful so that the VA team knows kinda what you have in mind, very specifically within a frame, so that they're not creating, creating an entire world that's not even gonna be seen or so that they're not, you know, burning through, you know, trying to put in assets or paint in assets that are gonna be so tiny in the screen that it's a waste of, you know, computing power and resources. Um, and then, like I said earlier, I think temping in a stage, if it's not the one you're gonna end up using to like go online and find stages in your area or where you think you might shoot and like take those dimensions and put it in your pro, in your project. Even if your stage might be a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller, at least you're working with the real constraints of a stage and you know how to dance that dance so that when you do get your real numbers, it's a much easier transition.

Tisha Daly: 53:32

And, and I think another like really basic, but important thing is knowing how much money you have, at the onset. Like knowing like, I have this amount of money to use and this is how much money it's going to take to do it. You know, You asked about mistakes and you know, we were so eager and we were really like, excited, you know, thinking that we were, um, really in the running to get this grant and we sort of like planned and were working under the expectation of getting a grant that we didn't get. And so I think that's another thing is I think like, make sure that you know upfront how much money you really have to spend, um, so that you're able to do what everyone is planning on doing. You know, like we had to sort of alter things based off of like how much money we had versus how much money we had planned to get. And so I think that's an important lesson learned for us. That was a huge lesson learned for us.

Jonathan Mason: 54:30

But the, the upside of that, though, real quick, is that, again, if you, if you're able to teach yourself some very basics and you do your homework and you find a VAD artist, or you find an Unreal artist who, um, who's willing to work with you at whatever amount you have. Let's say you have X number of dollars already, hire them first and spec out your world and start building even a, a basic previs. Again, like we were saying earlier, that's not wasted time because even if you end up having to pause for a year to raise money to shoot the thing, all of that work, it's, it's work that you're gonna have to do anyway. So you, you just, you, you've already started. So even if you have to pause to raise more funds, that portion doesn't cost a ton to get started with. And it's so instrumental, like that initial storyboarding on paper or you know, basic storyboarding and then building your basic assets and your basic stage in Unreal, that doesn't have to cost a gazillion dollars. And if you are good, if you're good with computers, you might be able to do it yourself, yourself, even. Um,

Joey: 55:33

of videos and tutorials there if you have the time.

Jonathan Mason: 55:35

There's so many videos. Yeah. And if, even if it's not your jam, there are people out there who, who are probably excited to, you know, um, people who are trying to get into virtual production themselves, people you can hire for a reasonable price because it's, you know, you, you book'em for a certain number of hours and you can ask'em very clearly, like, how much will we be able to get done? And again, that work, you bank it, you bank it for later when you, you're ready to move to the next stage,

Joey: 56:02

Hmm. I was curious though, Jonathan, because you teach film, like how much is virtual production on your radar? Like what, uh, you're teaching students

Jonathan Mason: 56:11

yeah.

Joey: 56:11

students asking about it?

Jonathan Mason: 56:13

That's, yeah. It's like, it's the topic of the day in film schools, I think. the cost has come down dramatically, even in the last few years. So, like their companies out there, um, who sell like all in one turnkey virtual production systems now where you can buy the wall, the computer, the server, the camera tracking system, all of that stuff in one neat package.. But I think it's still cost prohibitive from most programs, I think because it also requires the computing part and the Unreal Engine part. A lot of film schools aren't teaching students how to do game design or how to use servers, or the whole software component isn't really part of the traditional film school experience. And you kind of need that because it's like a, it's a real marriage of the two. Um, so I, I, I think what it's hopefully gonna do is push film schools to think more about how virtual worlds and sort of the metaverse and like the augmented reality and virtual reality and how all of those are part of filmmaking and not as the separate thing. I think a lot of film schools are still very like, traditional, which its good sides and bad sides. But you're, you're starting to hear obviously like a lot of, you know, SCAD in Savannah and NYU is building a huge stage, you know, UCLA, USC. Like those, that size of school has gotten into it. Like the, the National Film School in London, there's a lot of, like, there are a lot of universities who are pushing-

Joey: 57:52

Yeah. Yeah

Jonathan Mason: 57:52

Into this space.

Joey: 57:53

FSU just opened one.

Jonathan Mason: 57:54

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So I think, you know, a lot of these big legacy film schools are, are gonna be at the, are already at the forefront of that. The students strangely, aren't super aware of it. They know Mandalorian was shot with it, you know, because they've seen marketing materials. Um, but I don't think they realize how, um, useful it can be to them now without any of the gadgets other than Unreal Engine or any gaming engine. You could buy a VIVE tracker controller and just clamp it to your camera and track your camera with that and go to a computer and just use green screen. Like there, are entry points that aren't these huge volumes. I'm hoping certainly where I am, that's like, that's what we're aiming to do now is like, get students in now. Not wait till some donor comes and gives us millions of dollars to build. We don't have Scorsese. But yeah. I think it's gonna be part of the- it has to be.

Joey: 58:56

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it is, like you said, it's all of these different fields that might have been separate five, 10 years ago. It's just, it's all converging and overlapping. Yeah.

Jonathan Mason: 59:05

Totally.

Joey: 59:06

Uh, what is next for HIGH and where can people find out more?

Jonathan Mason: 59:10

Tish, what's next for HIGH?

Tisha Daly: 59:12

what is next for HIGH? Um, I think, you know, Jonathan and I are currently in the midst of, um, you know, just fleshing out some things in our draft. We hope to be taking it out, um, you know, the start of the year. We hope in 2024, we're filming HIGH. I mean, that's the goal. We wanna be, you know, filming this next year. So our hope is that we can really, know, continue with the momentum that we've been building and finally make it happen.

Jonathan Mason: 59:42

Yeah. And, and the, the cool thing about having shot this proof of concept is now it's part of our package. When we, When we, go out to cast, when we go out to producers, uh, or production companies, we can tell'em like, Hey, listen, we've taken the guesswork out. We know the process. You know, we did it on a small budget. Uh, but when we do this with a bigger team and a bigger budget. We can do even more than this, but it's definitely doable. So that can't be a reason to tell us, no, give us another reason to We can work on the script, we can work on everything else, but you can't tell us that virtual production won't work. Uh, so that part is good. But, um, but yeah, uh, we have- HIGH THE MOVEMENT has a website. We can learn more about the actual advocacy, uh, for climbers, highthemovement.org. And then we have highthefilm.com, which is for the film itself. And, you know, Tisha's better than I am at like posting on Instagram, mainly Instagram because- Not Because we have a whole community of climbers on, on Instagram. Um, so that's sort of been our, our hub. But yeah,

Joey: 1:00:50

Nice.

Jonathan Mason: 1:00:50

excited to keep, keep pushing.

Joey: 1:00:51

Yeah. Well, I hope we could do a part 2 once the film's complete and, uh, talk about the whole process of that one.

Tisha Daly: 1:00:58

We'll it. Thank

Joey: 1:01:00

Well, thanks for coming on. I really, I really appreciate it.

Jonathan Mason: 1:01:02

Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

Joey: 1:01:03

And that is it for the episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please either give it a thumbs up on YouTube and let me know your thoughts in the comments. Or if you're listening to this on a podcast app, please give it a five star review that will help get this podcast boosted, get it discovered. And once again, if you have not subscribed to the VP land newsletter, be sure to do that. If you like content like this and you want to get a whole bunch more, stay on top of the latest trends, learn behind the scenes interviews. All that stuff. We send it out at least twice a week, sometimes three times a week. Don't want to stuff your inbox. Get it for free. Just Google VP land. It should show up on the top. Thanks again for watching and I'll catch you in the next episode.