How Stu Maschwitz Can Help You Make Film, TV, Or Anything Else

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke.

Confused Woman: Biagio-WHO???

Biagio: This episode. It’s episode 75 and we’re sharing a rebels guide to making TV. Who was Stu mash wits and how can he make your projects awesome? The book that helped take us from one bedroom apartment to 7000 square foot facility. The free blog that informs every TV show we make. What the heck is A52 and why? We think we’ve found. The wait for it. Magic bullet music courtesy Dave Pelman. Music Dave Pelman.com. Hey everybody! She’s joke. He’s Biagio. We’re married. We make unscripted film and. Television and want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.

Biagio: Well. Welcome to episode 7575, honey. And actually, I think joke will tell you, I’m super excited about this one.

Joke: Oh my goodness. As you notice, we missed the last one. And that’s we were supposed to do one two weeks ago. And well, for numerous reasons, we just couldn’t get our act together. And the reason is because it was number 75 and Biagio would put so much pressure on himself for this big number that he was like, oh, this has to be so good. And I know who I want to do this on, but I’m not prepared. So you know what? We’re just going to skip it.

Biagio: And you know what? And I’m still not prepared. But that’s okay. I might as prepared as I’m going to be because well, first of all, let me say that because.

Joke: I told you you couldn’t skip it again.

Biagio: Well, you couldn’t skip it again. That’s true. But we thought that it would be good for us as working professionals to do some occasional episodes where we tell you where we still go to learn and who we still look to for inspiration. Because we do. All of us do. No matter where you’re at in the industry, you can never stop learning. And you, you go back to those who inspired you most. So. So who.

Joke: Is this person? Because now you’ve really built it up.

Biagio: His name is Stew Mash, which.

Joke: So seriously, you have to spell that for people or they have to find that.

Biagio: You listen. Okay. But trust me, a lot of people know who stew is. But his last name is Mash Wits, which is made as C.H. The Whites. Now stew okay is a legend to many, many of you, but we know we have a lot of listeners who are maybe new to the filmmaking scene, or we didn’t come up with the same way we did. So I want to tell you a little bit about stew, the the incredible influence he’s had on our careers. Let me tell you a little about Stew Stews, a filmmaker. He’s an author, he’s a TV commercial director, he’s a visual effects guru on major Hollywood films. He’s an app developer. I mean, the list just goes on and on. Now, I’m not going to get into his whole backstory here, but I’ll link to a bunch of stew awesomeness in the show notes from today, which you’ll be able to find at producing unscripted A75. Now, I think Joe can attest to the fact that I could go on about to do for a while.

Joke: Well, he’s going on nine years with me. So talking about stew. So yeah, we can’t I don’t even know if we can keep this to nine minutes.

Biagio: But the reason we wanted to do this episode is not just so I can be a fanboy.

Joke: Really, because I kind of feel like.

Biagio: It feels like that a little bit.

Joke: You wanted to geek out a little bit, but no, the truth of the matter is, is that he has very much inspired us on numerous projects, and he continuously that inspiration continuously pushes us to improve on our own projects.

Biagio: Yeah. And so today, again, joke wisely decided instead of me just gushing about how I want to be stew when I grow up. She had us focus on three ways stew can help you make better productions, and along the way, we’re going to give you concrete examples of how we’ve made use of many of these tips and tricks in our own TV shows and films. So without further ado, let’s get into the stew awesomeness. Let’s begin with number. One the book.

Joke: The Z book, the the one book that we always go back to, the book that when we were starting out and we were doing our thing fine. And we kept we kept saying these things and people looked at us like we were crazy. And then the book came out. This book that Stu wrote came out, and we were like, oh, we are not nuts. This man speaks the language.

Biagio: We have found a kindred spirit. So the book, the book is called the DV Rebels Guide in all digital approach to making killer action movies on the cheap. Now, don’t let the title fool you, because this is about so much more than making action movies. When this book came out at the very beginning of 2007, like joke said, we felt like we had finally found a professional who understood where we were trying to come from. You know, for years we’d been making DV projects out of our one bedroom apartment. By the way, DV stands for Digital Video for all you youngsters who missed that filmmaking phase. But if you do know what a canon ZL1 was, props to you.

Joke: For the record, we actually made a video called How to Make Your Video Look Like Film.

Biagio: That’s right. Guerrilla day. Guerrilla. Guerrilla. Yeah.

Joke: So this book really spoke to our belief on, you know, creativity can overcome everything, right? Like, you know, you always will work with tight budgets. You’re you’re in the guerrilla way. You’re dealing with tiny budgets. And if you’re creative, you can really still do something special just because someone tells you you can’t do something, which we’ve been into lots of places, even when we were starting out in 2005, actually two years before this book came out, you know, we would we went into a network and we were like, we know how to do this. And they were like, you’re crazy. And we’re like, but it’s our name, and you’re going to make us responsible for the budget, so let us do it anyway. And they did, and it worked out great. But so he definitely spoke to that fire in us that was like, you know, we’re really we could do it anyway.

Biagio: Yeah. Now it just so happens I’ve got the book right here and I’m going to read a little excerpt, because I think there’s no better way to sum up what the book is about than these paragraphs from page 14 of the prolog. In own words, there are plenty of books about filmmaking. Some promise that you can make a movie for spare change. Others expect you not only to spend some money, but to actually keep track of it. Most admonish you to aim low, keep your whole film to one location, shoot it in a week, and avoid anything in the script that you might be tempted to type in. All caps. You know, stuff like a thunderstorm hits or the T-Rex runs the paddock or exterior Moscow screw that. You may have already discovered the dirty little secret of this book, which is that it’s not just for aspiring action filmmakers, it’s for anyone whose cinematic ambitions extend beyond the self-imposed restrictions of standard indie fare. If the story about which you are passionate involves exotic locations, visual spectacle, whether kung fu or any other stuff that makes movies better than plays, than welcome to the book that won’t try to talk you off the ledge. Nope. It’ll jump with you. Just like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon.

Joke: I think one of the big things about that, again, it speaks mostly on movies. But when we were starting out, you know, it was kind of the beginning of reality. And people had these grand ideas of, you know, how it should look like scripted. And the truth of the matter was cable budgets at the time were just not even close. They still aren’t close to that. Who are we kidding? So, you know, this idea of making things look better than they really, legally should be for the money you’re spending spoke right to our hearts.

Biagio: It really. And by the way, every project we go into, we still feel that way because we’re always promising the network these big, huge, ambitious things. And that’s kind of our brand is sort of like overpromising and then double over delivering. But I always, I always think about this book on just about every show we start because I’m like the spirit, the can do spirit can carry you through any project, no matter how ambitious. And that’s what I love about this book. The books also got a lot of cool filmmaking tips and tricks in it. One example, by the way, I’m editing it right now. It should be with the show notes by the time this goes up, but still has a whole section on forced perspective, which is a really cool camera technique that directly inspired our interstitials on our Amy TV show. Don’t trust Andrew Main. So again, I’m going to post up a video showing some samples and sort of like how we took his advice. Definitely check it out. The show notes for this episode.

Joke: Now we are obviously acknowledging this book was written in 2007 and we are.

Biagio: Yeah, as.

Joke: While we are 2016 now. So a lot of the tech in the book is outdated. So don’t go to this book to read about the best cameras to shoot on. You know, that changes every six months anyway, so you probably shouldn’t read that in any book. You should just read that online in more current blog posts. But again, the thing that we keep coming back to the book for is this kind of can do philosophy, timeless kind of filmmaking tricks, and really just it helps you see executing visual storytelling in a new way, in a very kind of out of the box nontraditional way, which sometimes, even for us, you can kind of get stuck in a rut. And it’s nice to go back to and just be inspired to think outside the box.

Biagio: One quick, last funny story about the book, and then I’ll move on. When when it came out in 2007, it was very early 2007, which was also very early in our career. Like we had just sort of came to understand and realized that we were going to be successful in the business, but we weren’t exactly making big money yet, but we knew we were headed in the right direction. And the book was $45, which for us at the time was a lot of money. And so I literally kept going to bookstores. Remember those when there was bookstores on every street corner. And I think I read the entire book three times before I finally was like, joke, I really want to buy this book. And she’s like, haven’t you read it like three times? And I’m like, yeah, but I really think, like, this book is going to inspire us for years to come. And where does the book live now?

Joke: Next to the bed.

Biagio: Well, well, that sounds creepy when you say it like that. It’s on my nightside table, along with a few other filmmaking books. You know, Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez Sidney Lumet is making movies in his books on tap because it is my favorite filmmaking book. All right, moving on to the second way, stew mash, which can improve any of your projects. Magic bullet.

Joke: Now, that sounds like something that should be next to bed.

Biagio: Oh, sorry. Sorry.

Joke: Okay, okay. Focus. Joke. Focus. Okay. Magic bullet, for those of you who are not familiar, is a set of color correction and grading tools created by Stu and sold by Red giant. Is it just red giant? I don’t know. Yeah. Okay. What makes them special is Stu’s understanding of needs of low budget indie filmmakers, and what makes them super duper cool is that even people like me who don’t understand the science of grading can go, oh, pick that one. And it looks amazing.

Biagio: That’s true. I mean, first of all, what I love about anything that Stu is associated with is he doesn’t approach plugins or apps so much to me as a software developer trying to make something that could work for filmmakers. He’s a filmmaker who understands what we need. He knows what we’re up against. Crazies, hey, deadlines. He knows we can’t always afford to hire amazing color grading professionals. And so that’s where Magic Bullet has really come in. And I’ve been using the products for years. I love them, but but we also have specific ways we use them. Right. Joke.

Joke: Right. I mean, listen, the whole suite is amazing, but it’s $800. So, you know, again, as you know, when we started out, $45 for a book was a big deal. So I understand that $800 for a whole suite is not what everybody is ready to spend. And frankly, you may not need the whole suite. We use the tools within the set for very specific ways. So I think that maybe we should just talk about certain parts of the suite that we use mostly for our unscripted projects.

Biagio: Well, yeah. Listen for unscripted, I will tell you probably if you could only pick one part, believe it or not, I would pick a plugin called Cosmo. Cosmo is part of the suite. It’s a plugin that helps hide skin blemishes and improve skin. And this comes in. Yeah.

Joke: It’s amazing. It’s amazing for interviews with real people, especially in cases where like, you may not have makeup in your budget, which most obviously we don’t in unscripted or lighting, you know, I mean, unless you’re doing Real Housewives Of or, you know, Kardashians, like you’re kind of working with, you know, no makeup and very limited lighting. So, so this really kind of helps make everybody look better. I mean, to the point where in the morning I’m like, I could use a little Cosmo.

Biagio: That’s true. You never need Cosmo. I need, you know, you don’t even Cosmo and video. You don’t eat in real life. She looks amazing without makeup. So in unscripted TV, if you could only afford one thing from Stuart, I’d say get Cosmo. It’s $99, and it’s awesome now.

Joke: One one caveat, though, too. It’s like, obviously if you’re doing Deadliest Catch, you don’t need Cosmo.

Biagio: No, I mean, yeah, it’s got to fit your show.

Joke: We’re talking about if you’re doing like a sizzle reel for kind of like a glossy, you know, young hit model or Bravo high end type of show, and your interviews just need that extra little glam look. Then. Then you go, Cosmo. Obviously, if you’re doing like The Last Alaskans, you. Need Cosmo. They don’t need Cosmo.

Biagio: No. You want to see every crack on their face. Now, I will say that my go to part of the suite is colorist for cinematic color correction and real control. I love colorist. It works right inside of Adobe Premiere and other editing programs, and it’s powerful. Especially like if you’re doing cinematic reenactments like we do on some of our crime shows or when we’re pitching crime shows in the early stages. We want to give the networks an idea of what they look like. I go straight to colorist and now yes. Listen, you can just use Adobe’s built in color tools, which are pretty good, and I do use those as well. Just for me, I find colorist to be superior, to be the fastest way to get really good results inside of an editing bay. And by itself, I think it’s $199. And honestly, the best part of colorist is Stu does these freaking incredible tutorials on how to use it. And I’ll actually link to some of those from today’s Today’s show notes.

Joke: And then I think I talked about my magic wonder is the is the magic bullet looks right. Is that the one? Is that what it’s called?

Biagio: Yeah. Well, yeah. We can just go shopping for looks. So look, when you’re in a hurry. And honestly, when aren’t you? Magic bullet looks is as close to one click color grading as you’ll ever get. You basically choose a look, and your footage looks cool. Now listen, you should never just leave it at that. You should always tweak those one click wonders. But a lot of times if you really just want the wait for it magic bullet looks really does the trick. It’s the most expensive part of the suite to get by itself. It’s like 400 bucks and the full suite has other cool stuff in it too. But those are the three that we use the most.

Joke: We use them also in our Da Vinci resolve, right where.

Biagio: We yeah, we use them on our current TV show. So She Made Me Do It, which is airing right now on oxygen. It just so happened that magic bullet was just updated to actually work inside of Da Vinci Resolve. And that’s kind of like the industry standard color grading suite. So we were using looks in Cosmo right alongside Da Vinci toolset to get some really cool looks quickly. And it also made our colorist happy.

Joke: Yeah, I mean, here’s the thing, though, that that specifically works for kind of crime show because we, you know, kind of like narrative or trying to create moods, you know, not just with the music and the editing and the and the visuals, but obviously degrading of that footage really helps in that. If you’re doing your regular docu verité documentary or unscripted television and there’s there’s probably less need for grading and your, you know, your color correcting people are more just making it broadcast safe. But I think where we’ve really found that some of these looks and some of this grading comes in helpful is in, in pitching pitch tapes. You know, pitching the look of a show goes a long way because it’s like, oh, what does this show going to look like? Take some raw footage and you can play with different looks and different, you know, magic bullet looks or colorist and create different things and say to the network like, look, this is how we’re planning to make our show look different.

Biagio: Yeah, actually, that’s exactly what we did when we were doing season one. If she made me do it. And that was kind of what drove our colorist crazy last season because I literally went in, I took all of our raw, and I went to town with colorist and looks and just designed a whole lot of just really awesome, cool looking, I mean, looks that the network was like, wow, none of our shows, you know, none of our shows look like that. We we love it, make the whole show like that. And so for us, it was a great tool to get the network excited, not just about the kind of show, but the way the show was going to look on their air. By the way, Stu was associated with all kinds of cool apps and plug ins, even a screenwriting program called Slug Line. I’ll put it all in the show notes.

Joke: Like an iPhone photo apps that he just updated.

Biagio: Yeah, plastic Bullet noir. He just makes all kinds of cool stuff. And so honestly, like, anytime I can give Stu money, I do sounds crazy, but his stuff is just that good. All right, so moving on to the third way, Stu mash wits can help you make better stuff at five. Two. What is five to you, you may ask?

Joke: I did.

Biagio: Ask you. Well, well, it’s his Twitter handle, and I assume it’s because five to you looks like Stu. So it’s a clever handle, by the way, and it’s going to sound soccer. But if you actually go to at Stu, like, whoever took at Stu took it way after Stu. So Stu didn’t take five to you because Stu was taken. He was being he was being clever. Anyways, the point is, he’s super active on Twitter. He answers.

Joke: I love Stu, but. But was he being clever? Was this like.

Biagio: Yeah, I think so. I love I’m making it all up. Maybe it means something totally different. I have no idea.

Joke: Or is he just like drunk one night go. Like, I think it’d be funny if I picked.

Biagio: Up five.

Joke: Instead of an S, and then I was like, oh, shoot, now I gotta go with this.

Biagio: I don’t know, but as far as I can tell, he chose it because he wanted to and not because he had to.

Joke: Well, it kind of does remind me of like a, a BB eight and C3po, like it’s kind of like five to you at five.

Biagio: For you. You know what? That’s really good. I bet you there’s some droid connection that I’ve never caught. That’s really smart, honey. Who knows maybe maybe maybe stool answer maybe, maybe stool put out a tweet about it. But anyways, the reason we bring up his Twitter is because he’s super active. He answers questions about color correction, his apps. He he talks about cameras, and he also tweets his new blog posts from Pro com, which is through his blog. And by the way, Stu says the blog is his living, breathing follow up to his book, and I completely agree with that.

Joke: And it doesn’t cost $45.

Biagio: No, it doesn’t cost $45, I still think I still think it’s money we’re spending, but but I, I go to Stu site all the time when we’re getting ready to do a new season of television. One of the first things I do is go to Pro Lost to look and see what studios been writing about, and that’s influenced a lot of our cameras and our purchase choices because he knows what he’s doing. So that’s it. So follow Stu on Twitter at five to you. And while you’re there, follow us too. We’re at Joke and Biagio, and that is it for today. Stu, if you’re listening, next time you’re in LA, we’d love to buy you lunch or dinner or just find some other excuse so that you can autograph my copy of the Rebels Guide. I feel like such, like a little kid. I’m like, I want him to autograph my book. She’s just looking at me now.

Joke: Those are crying.

Biagio: Now I’m crying. Crying. I’m just, like.

Joke: All emotional.

Biagio: No, I’m just like, you know, listen, it’s pretty funny because the book has has made the journey with us. From one bedroom apartment to 7000 square foot facility and from a, you know, from hoping that one day we’d be able to make a TV show to now, having made more than 100 hours of television and worked with just about every network out there, and that no small part of that is, is this book. This book was was something we always came back to for inspiration. So. So that’s it for all kinds of Stu awesomeness, check out the show notes, which again will be at producing com slash 075. Now as many of you know, we make unscripted TV shows, reality TV and crime shows, documentary series for a living. And we started this podcast to help people learn how to create and pitch unscripted television. So for those of you who would like to learn how to pitch shows to our company, Joe Productions, just head over to producing Us with accom. Sign up for the newsletter and follow the directions. It couldn’t be easier. Also remember our new TV show She Made Me Do It airs Saturday nights on oxygen and then repeats about a million times all week long, so check it out if you get a chance. It was graded using some of Stu’s own tools so.

Joke: You feel better now getting this off your chest. This love letter to Stu Mash.

Biagio: I’ve like Stu, you’ve helped us so much, you know, I hope I hope there’s a lot of other people out there whose careers have been, you know, have been inspired and have used the invites in his book to go from dreamer to, you know, actually working for a living, because that’s kind of how I see the journey we’ve taken with the book. You know.

Joke: It was just a validation of everything that we had been like preaching and we were to nobodies. And so then it was like, oh, look.

Biagio: And I, I, I think honestly like where it was when we made the leap from just working on other people’s TV shows to 100% launching our company and saying, no, we’re betting on ourselves. We’re launching our company. This is it. You know, just gamble, gamble, gamble. I think I felt a lot of rebel spirit when we did that.

Joke: Definitely.

Biagio: All right. Thanks, everyone for listening. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks. See you later. Bye bye.

Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.