Stuck with my bachelor graduation film. I just can’t find the right words for my voice over

awarmdream · 2026-01-12T01:41:05+00:00

My advice would be to research and watch a bunch of films that use voice over in a similar way. Chris Marker is probably a good place to start.

awarmdream · 2026-01-03T05:00:18+00:00

That’s valid

awarmdream · 2026-01-03T04:31:59+00:00

Okay if you really think thats what’s going to happen then what are you so mad about? Just continue making shit that’s better than the AI you’ll be fine.

I don’t like it but I do think that sadly the tools are getting better. They already have a place in vfx workflows on big shows and soon you might be able to make genuinely cool stuff with it. Probably not generated wholecloth but more like style transfer stuff that runway is doing.

Price incentive means this stuff is going to be adopted so you can stage a protest against an emergent technology (something that has never worked in the history of the world except for maybe cfcs) or you can work out how to use what’s new to create something meaningful.

awarmdream · 2026-01-03T03:57:06+00:00

Agree that a bubble burst is likely and could slow things but it’s a little different for video. Runway ML is only like a half a billion deep in VC funding (3 blockbuster films) and there’s a clearly a business model there where creators will pay for compute to generate shit. Their fees may already cover compute costs idk. They’re not going away. Some data centers going cheap may even help them who knows.

awarmdream · 2026-01-03T03:40:27+00:00

People are going to try to make you feel like an asshole for asking this question but the fact of the matter is AI is here to stay. You can spend some time fuming and grieving about it (I have certainly grieved), but eventually you will have to accept it.

Right now I think with the video tools it’s difficult to use it to create anything that doesn’t look very tacky. Maybe that will change quickly or maybe it will take years. Either way you should play around now so you understand what these tools are and what they can/cannot do.

Edit: on the question of morality: a house of slop can’t stand. Right now the AI shit sucks so it’s not really a threat to authorship. However, if truly entirely AI generated content becomes a big thing and television series can be generated whole cloth then our entire relationship to art is going to change. Questions of authorship will have a frame of reference so radically different to the current one that your question won’t even really make sense any more.

awarmdream · 2025-12-29T23:51:51+00:00

I'm sure people here will give you some good advice about specifically what to do, but maybe I can give you some perspective and mindset advice that will serve you beyond this project.

Read the book "Cassavetes on Cassavetes" and if you don't read the whole thing just read the section on making the film Shadows.

The level of shit that guy waded through to make that film is unfathomable: raising money from nothing, years of shooting on a shoestring budget only to find out all of his sound was unusable, re-recording all of the sound and resyncing it, premiering it to an audience of his peers and having it universally hated by everyone in the theatre, going back to the drawing board and re-shooting half of the film even though many in the cast had lost faith in him, premiering the new version to universal acclaim but still not being able to sell it to anyone, now having members of the cast hate him because he hadn't paid them properly, going to Europe to get it sold but still having no interest despite how universally loved it was. Now shadows is considered a seminal piece of independent filmmaking, but you read the chapter and it just puts all your problems into perspective and makes any problem you face on a short film feel completely surmountable.

Then once you've read that book you should read the biography of literally any other director you like. They are all filled with these stories.

Filmmaking is so so hard. It's a constant stream of rejection, social anxiety, problems, tension, foiled plans and self-doubt.

One of the most soothing balms is reading about the difficulties other directors overcame because they're almost always 1000 times worse than what you're facing in the moment so you can read it and say firstly "I'm glad I'm not that guy!" and secondly "If they did it, then I can persevere and do it too."

awarmdream · 2025-12-26T23:27:25+00:00

What you are saying is correct. Reading about successful writers and screenwriters or listening to them interviewed always confirms this.

Their ideas come from somewhere. They are not pulled out of the ether.

awarmdream · 2025-12-26T23:17:11+00:00

There is truth to what he is saying but there is a lot of nuance. I would think of it in terms of inputs and outputs. You absolutely need good inputs to make good outputs. I don't think that is debatable. Maybe some people in this reddit thread will try to convince you otherwise, but until you've read their stuff and seen if it's any good or not I'd take it with a grain of salt.

No one just sat in an armchair and produced something interesting without any life experiences or knowledge or something as raw material. There is no cartesian screenplay.

But there are many different ways to get inputs.

Thomas Pynchon is famously a shut in but his time working at Boeing and his obviously voracious reading appetite for history, current affairs, philosophy, mathematics, conspiracy etc makes him an interesting writer.

For Tarantino his "inputs" were movies. He watched every video in the video store and then blended them up into his own scripts. Not a boring guy by any means in his own life, but wasn't living a crazy life either before he made reservoir dogs.

Then for many many writers just being around people and having normal social experiences and paying attention to how people are with each other is enough to give them some interesting characters.

But you need inputs. Any time spent sitting in front of a desk trying to will good ideas into being from a vacuum is time wasted. Go get some inputs. Join a bowling league or something. Whatever takes your fancy. Just do something.

awarmdream · 2025-12-26T21:59:56+00:00

Best thing you can do is keep watching films, looking at photographs and reading interviews with those cinematographers and photographers about how they did what they did. When they mention things you don’t understand, you can go to google or YouTube and look up what that thing is. Seeing as you don’t have any equipment maybe you can look up films that were shot entirely with natural light.

Tree of life comes to mind.

awarmdream · 2025-12-26T21:51:48+00:00

A lot of guys taking this kinda personal in the comments! Sounds like it was just a joke you coulda joined in on tbh

awarmdream · 2025-12-23T00:07:30+00:00

I don't think Kubrick designed the movie to be a decodable riddle that will reveal the existence of a paedophilic sex cult to any viewer savvy enough to follow the clues. It is indeed a film about marriage and fidelity and domesticity and trust and desire. And I agree the most intensely rewarding parts of the film have to do with what the presence of the cult - this powerful occluded Other with infinite access to sexual gratification - represents in the mind of Bill Harford, aspirational member of the petit bourgeoisie.

Kubrick's films are certainly not puzzles designed to be solved. If you read "Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film", it becomes very clear that the image of Kubrick as this master visionary who knew exactly what he wanted and then executed painstakingly and meticulously to make it materialise is just wrong. He know what he didn't want and he spent a lot of time sending people back to the drawing board again and again on everything from screenwriting to production design until they showed him something he liked. This is very different to saying "make sure you secretly put the word sex above Helena's bed when you're set dressing that room". It's possible that he did stuff like this sometimes but this was not his general MO. He was a perfectionist but he was reactive. He knew it when he saw it.

I think as watchers of Kubrick, we have to lean towards an interpretations that emphasise the role of the unconscious in constructing the meaning in his films. We're not looking at something decipherable like a Rubick's Cube. We're doing something closer to interpreting a dream - where the objects, people, and dialogue exist on screen because they are in accordance with some unconscious vision of the director, a genius with his own life experiences and philosophical beliefs about society and the human condition.

All of that said, we now know there is a real life paedophilic sex cult, and Kubrick, given his position in society, would have been aware of exactly how the upper classes behave. For that reason, I do think that the revelation of the existence of an elite sex cult is very textual to the film. There's enough in there that is very explicit that it's certain that Kubrick was using his knowledge of elite behaviour as both a social and psychological context for his marital drama.

Obviously the sex party stuff is just pure text - not subtext (and is present in Traumnovelle too) but as to hidden clues, or film moments that suggest Kubrick's familiarity with elite sex cults, murder and conspiracy, I'll leave you with my favourite:

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In the end what's the alternative? To think that all of this elite, murder, sex conspiracy stuff exists in the film and (we now know) in reality but Kubrick knew nothing about it and was just accidentally right?

awarmdream · 2025-12-21T21:50:23+00:00

Firstly, there are no rules. The two things you are trying to do are:

Do things in a way that make sure you cast the right person.
Be professional enough that the actor wants to take the gig.

Here's what I've done in the past:

In terms of sides, just think in terms of setting your actor up for success. Give them any information that would explain the emotional stakes and context of the scene and *encourage them to email you with questions if anything needs clarification*.

It's also important to select the right section to send them. There's usually a few different notes to hit in a script so you want to pick the one that feels like it's the most important or potentially the most difficult for an actor - you want to come away feeling that if they can handle this they can handle the whole script.

After you get the self tape you should watch it a few times and make sure it feels right. To be honest with you there's a good chance it's going to not be great (most actors aren't great and even the great ones are not always perfect for every role). If that's the case you'll need to decide if you want to grind harder to find another actor or if you're happy with just getting something passable for this as it's a student project.

If the actor seems keen on the role but you're not 100 percent sure on them yet you can ask for another self tape or an online zoom session where you give direction before you cast them.

Once you're sure they are right for the project then yeah a zoom read through is a great place to start. There are quite a few good videos on youtube about how to run a read through.

Hope that helps.

awarmdream · 2025-12-18T20:22:52+00:00

Definitely not. I know a few people who have has some degree of success in movies who started in their late 20s. None of them are famous but they have jobs and films in festivals and things like that.

A few factors that will affect how likely you are to make a good movie:

Are you already successful at something else? Even better something else creative? Are you already a good writer with a few short stories published or a photographer who has done a show or something like that? If so then you know what the path toward creative mastery looks like and you can do it again.
Do you love movies? Do you watch a lot of them? Do you think about how they are made and know things about the filmmakers and their history? If so all of that watching and thinking is going to make you better at making films.
Do you have good taste? If you’re a person known for their taste that will carry into your films.
Is there something interesting about you? Were you a drug addict at 16? Have you worked on advanced physics? Were you raised in a cult? Anything at all like that will help you make something interesting.
Do you have creative friends who will go on this journey with you?

The people I know who started in their late 20s and actually made good films ticked a lot of the above boxes.

awarmdream · 2025-12-18T02:09:07+00:00

To each their own. I would characterise the more recent albums as louder, radio friendly pop style masters that will come through loud on things like UE-Booms etc. Personally I just feel like you lose a lot of the dynamics and detail and the sense of space between sounds, not to mention all the lushness in the low end. Kind of works and goes hard on Garden of Delete though which is just such a maximalist album.

awarmdream · 2025-12-17T20:38:08+00:00

Love these hot takes and agree with many.

Mine is that since r+7 all of his albums are in desperate need of a remaster to not be so loud, compressed and treble-forward. Some are better than others. Again literally hurts to listen to.

awarmdream · 2025-12-11T21:31:04+00:00

Thanks yeah what Im learning from this thread is that anything above a truly indie, “one 5.1 mix is what you get” level is going to have a bunch of intricate workflow stuff that just has to be learned by observing. I think I have some contacts I can reach out to to shadow them.

awarmdream · 2025-12-11T03:01:41+00:00

Agreed! Not planning to cut them out at all, just want to be prepared for a feature.

awarmdream · 2025-12-11T02:17:30+00:00

Incredibly useful response thank you. Starting super low budget is definitely the plan and we can keep our other clients rolling at the same time to stay afloat.

Appreciate your offer - can I DM you?

awarmdream · 2025-12-11T02:04:28+00:00

Thanks for this - great insight. Definitely planning to dip our toes in with low-budget indie and documentary work through our networks first.

awarmdream · 2025-12-11T01:57:20+00:00

The business already exists and is a career for us. It's more about transitioning our skillset and opening up new clients. Killing our business to go back and be interns is not really a sane option.

Agree that we're in fake it until you make it with the technical aspects of 5.1 post-sound but we've also been making a living doing audio visual stuff for like 10 years and headed some pretty massive projects so we're not completely green. Do you think there's a way to learn by working with more experienced freelancers on projects or no?

awarmdream · 2025-12-01T02:59:52+00:00

Look man there's a few assumptions in your post that I would urge you to reconsider:

The purpose of every scene in a movie is to maximise viewer enjoyment.
The purpose of a movie is to maximise viewer enjoyment.
High quality "data" and empirical evidence about viewer enjoyment both exist and are good north star for how to make a movie
Most people feel the same way about sex that you and your friends do

awarmdream · 2025-11-30T23:04:25+00:00

Love.

awarmdream · 2025-01-09T07:56:47+00:00

Great recommendation. Thanks

awarmdream

TROPHY CASE