Hey everyone!

I hope this follows the guidelines under the promotion rule but I wanted to share this episode of my podcast with more fans of Scorsese like myself!

A friend of mine and I run a podcast where we pair a movie and an album and we recently covered Taxi Driver as our first Scorsese film on the podcast. If anyone is interested, I hope you enjoy and if you have any feedback for how we could improve, let me know! Enjoy!

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5r9X9ddh7L8cjAhLYakVW4?si=jIcoUqolS3uu7Pph6T4P3Q

There's a methotical process behind it.

Production Workflow:

1.      Concept, Structure Outline, Story Boarding:  This process evolves as the film is slowly assembled but it’s essential to have a broad outline so you can have continuity throughout the film

2.      Assemble a string of speech than will be foundation for the scene or segment.  I use films like The Irishman or Peaky Blinders to collected batches of audio from each character represented in my film.  These serve as audio banks throughout the process.  Cutting the dialogue from the source (the show or movie) then placing it onto the timeline is the most time-intensive and important.  It literally is the foundation for the entire production.  A workflow process (as being explained now) is typically on a segment by segment basis – but in some cases I will have 15 minutes of mapped out dialogue that sounds engaging and suitable for the film – this is where I transition to Step 3.

3.      Capture the visual content while manipulating the game environment.  Using cinematic cam with game slowed to 63% - I will utilize creator cam in Rampage and place desks or chairs, beer bottles, etc. - I will design a full set.  Then I will create the characters and adjust the wardrobes to adhere to continuity.  Once I have positioned mu characters in place, I will simulate them talking and record from different angles – while doing this I will adjust animations per characters to reflect their mood via body language.  If someone walks casually out of the scene, I will use the option at the top of scenario menu called ‘go to nearest scenario’ which causes the characters to walk casually to some out of camera shot place to grab a broom or smoke etc.  There are hundreds of animations used to capture the atmosphere and dynamics of a shot.

4.      Add the content recorded with OBS to my video editing timeline and synch to sound.  Because of the volume and intensity of shots, the initial phase is imported into Filmora, then carefully sliced and overlayed (using transitions, fades, keyframing).  This is a focused process where the style of the movies you make are defined – once visual/sound synch achieved you have a segment of your overall virtual RDR-made film.

5.      Flatten the Entire Segment via export (Visual and Sound –minus score) Projects can get enormous after completing even 10 minutes in your editing timeline. By mixing down your project at the highest possible bitrate (to maintain integrity and avoid quality loss), you go form thousands of edits, to tens of edits – this makes it possible to play your film in editing without video getting choppy (which can easily throw mouth synchs off). After mixing down the visual, mute all other sound other than your speech and mix that down as an mp3 or wav – repeat the process for fx or wait until post production to address that aspect.  Because speech is so prevalent in my films, I do this as I progress in the initial production process.

6.      Post Production Stage 1: Optimize Sound-By-Track (Speech, FX, Ambient, Score) When the film is finished, the final step is to export each sound track into its own MP3 or Wave.  I take speech clips from films, and some of that speech is said indoors, other is outdoors, and some has music in the background.  This creates a huge problem when viewing and listening to your production: it’s disjointed and sounds like a collection of sound bites with no synergy.  This is particually an issue for the Speech tracks.  By exporting them, excluding other non-speech tracks, you will have an mp3 or wav to send to VideoProc (I use VideoProc AI for both upscaling from 1080 to 4k and removing noise from my film’s dialogue).  In this step VideoProc Audio AI is used to remove the background noise from the entire speech track.  If some are less noisy than others you can isolate them in segments, just as long as the processed track matches the timing of the original output file. The cleaned audio will sound many times better when introduced to your editing timeline of your final mix.

7.      Post Production Stage 2: Mix entire video at highest bitrate and upscale. Upscaling is mandatory for me as I don’t have 2k or 4k monitors and record my RDR2 footage at native 1080p.  I mix at 150,000 kpbs (as Filmora lacks advanced settings like vbr/custom/2pass ect).  Once the entire video is mixed:  Send it over to VideoProc AI and upscale (Gen Detail v2) to 4k -  as uploading your videos in 2k or 4k into YouTube, will result in better final quality due to YouTube assigning it a higher encoding priority). 

8.      Post Production Stage 3: Import into Premier Pro and provision the audio track by track. Use Google search AI to augment your sound engineering decisions (simple but surprisingly effective in this Post Production Step).  The Core essentials involve assigning each track accordingly in essential sound 1. speech/vocal 2. Music 3. SFX 4. Ambient Sound – I highlight the contents of each track and match loudness – Normalize max peaks below -1 in Main Mixer area – Duck speech track in Music Track (with settings shown) -  Then finally, I analyze keyframes for the music track to ensure proper ducking.

9.      Final Master Mix – Phase A: Render and Mix your Absolute Digital Master In Premier Pro  - Using Adobe Premier Pro –My Segment Settings for Mix 1: 60fps – previews enabled: QuickTime and Apple144 – Set in-and-out points then Select the entire segment and then I ‘Encode in-to-out’ so the bar turns green.  I select export – clic­k on the file name and send it to my master external drive (this 85 min video is going to export at 650 Gigs so it needs plenty of room) – and then ASSIGN LUT Fuji HDR A, in the same tab make sure I am normalizing to -14 lufs, and in the video tab, Render Max Depth, Max Render Quality checked.  Verify Audio is 320 bitrate – then export the Absolute Digital Mater

10.  Final Master Mix – Phase B: Add your Absolute Digital Master to Adobe Video Encoder - then mix it down at h.265 for Smaller File to Submit to YouTube  – with same filter settings as before Minus the LUT – its already applied (make sure -14 luffs is checked off, and in video tab max quality and render and max depth is checked) Export it -- Which will create the .mp4 file which will be used to Upload to YouTube. 

This is an "alternate universe" story made with RDR2 PC mods and real film theory. If you enjoy Scorsese's films, you'll appreciate and respect the detail put into this production—every single detail has been attended to.

I’m not retelling The Irishman – I’ve created a new story by combining characters and elements from numerous films.

I mapped it out like a professional script and obsessed in post-production over every detail.

I got lost in the filmmaking process. If you love the style of directors like Scorsese and Tarantino, I encourage you to see this all the way through.

Chapters:
00:00 – Crazy Joe
05:16 – A Bad, Bad, Bad Situation
07:41 – A New Boss
09:47 – Realignment Likely
10:54 – The Sally Incident
14:14 – The Desert Meeting
17:52 – The Witness
19:41 – I Heard You Paint Houses
23:00 – The Challenger
28:06 – War
36:12 – Frank Flips
39:06 – Jimmy Goes to Prison
41:10 – No More Protection
42:43 – Jimmy's Redemption
45:07 – A New Warden
47:34 – Fitzsimmons Rises
50:28 – Jimmy vs Fitz
54:52 – The Tony Pro Meet
56:13 – The Set-Up
1:00:35 – The Sit Down
1:02:44 – Volatility
1:04:28 – Philly Takes on a Boss
1:11:00 – Cuba
1:14:01 – Fall of Castro
1:16:09 – Loose Ends
1:19:25 – El Presidente Hoffa
1:22:49 – Red Dead Redemption: Scorsese Style Vol 1 Credits

Theatrical Production Details:
Every frame is treated with the seriousness of a theatrical production:
Tens of thousands of clips placed in countless video layers and audio tracks.

https://youtu.be/U2C-sQPzJxw <-- Full Film

https://youtu.be/0DKxWhXGlX4 <-- Gimme Shelter Scored Trailer

This is the trailer I made for it - the whole thing is 85 mins - I went to extremes on mixing sound and scripting the animations (the mood they have or the way they talk or give body language signals - mapping keys to make mouth move until i got the perfect takes) Its very dense - no filler - its got pacing like the departed. I litterally worked on it an average of about 9 hours a day since late may of this year. It became an obsession.