Ryan Gielen
Producer/Director
Ryan Gielen‘s films have won awards in festivals around the country for writing, direction, and vision, and have been featured in The New York Times, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Wholphin, Filmmaker Magazine, The Village Voice, Gawker, The Washington Post, and over 200 local print, radio, and television outlets. His first film, The Graduates, was self-distributed in 2009 and remains one of the most successful DIY indie releases of the last ten years, debuting at #1 on Hulu and remaining in the top ten comedies for the last four years.
His current release, Turtle Hill, Brooklyn, opened in theaters on May 3rd following a successful international festival run, earning international distribution from The Orchard, TLA, Optimale, Matriarch Media, Matriarch Television and others. The film is currently available on iTunes, Hulu, Amazon (DVD), AmazonVOD, Vimeo, Vudu, Roku and various cable on-demand outlets.
His production and distribution company Believe Limited is a two-time WEBBY winner, specializing in creating and building audiences for web content, producers, entreprenuers and brands.
Ryan is a contributor to NoFilmSchool.com, Tribeca Film Fest Blog, and the Sundance Artist Services Blog, open exclusively to festival alumni, writing on the topics of independent producing, audience building and distribution.
Thank Ian- apologies for the delay writing back, just seeing this question now. First, thanks for the kind words! The sound quality was due to the great work of our location sound team of Justin Harrison (JBH Sound) and his assistant Nicole Aleles, the beuatiful score from singer/songwriter Sonia Montez and the excellent mixing from Justin in post. I don't know what gear he used, but you can email him directly for bookings and advice (justin at JBHsound dot com).
The sound was a HUGE prioirity for us for two reasons- 1, it's true what they say, there are no indie movies only movies that sound indie (this is not literally true, but the message is important), and 2, in this tiny space, we did not want to make a tiny film. We wanted to add as many layers as possible through the mix. So we got great location sound and Justin of course did a lengthy and focused mix. Lazy filmmakers like to skimp in this area, and that is a huge mistake. Put the money into good sound.
Hi Kirk, not sure how to do that on here but email me and I'll respond: ryan at believeltd dot com.
Welp, definitely upvoted that. Thanks man, glad it was helpful.
From my DP Andrew "Tank" Rivara, in response to the lighting questions we're receving (must-read!!):
"I mainly used the desk lamps that were in the room because we didn't have the time to move around a fresnel unit, not to mention the space and heat issues. We controlled the desk lamps with lighter diffusion grades and black wrap, and all practicals were hooked up to dimmers. We swapped out bulbs regularly. Notably, we used clear glass bulbs for Noopie driven scenes later in the film to get harsher key lights. Sometimes this came out a touch uglier, but these bulbs felt right. We rewired the top fluorescent fixtures and rigged up a China ball that we jammed into the ceiling panelling, which was then controlled by the switch on the wall that actors could control. This was our main ambient light for the beginning of the film. We grip armed in 10'-18' China balls often, including a red polka dot one from Pier 1 that gave us a heavily saturated red fill light. We used small bounce and neg fill items often. Another interesting lighting issue was keeping out the daylight from our window, but still slow for Noopie to throw the phone out this window. All dorm room scenes were shot during the daytime, so this was a problem. Fortunately, the dorm room was located on the first floor, so we chose to build an 8'x8'x8' duvetyne box outside the window so that Rob could interact with it."
Hi Justen,
I'd love some more details. Can you elaborate?
Thanks,
Ryan