Miles Nxbxdy - Manic Vol. 1 Short Film
Role: Producer, Director, Cinematographer, Post-Producer/Editor
Miles Nxbxdy approached me and our friend Marie Karcher back in 2021 to produce a short film for an upcoming project called Manic Vol. 1. Which would be a visualizer for his album. At that time, Miles hadn’t even recorded the songs yet to begin working on this, he was just planting a seed. The short film would take over 3 years to complete as we all navigated our full-time jobs, finding time on weekends to meet and advance the creative vision for this project. Releasing in June 2025, Manic Vol. 1 was our most ambitious collaboration yet and I am excited to finally see this film out in the world.
For this project, my role included oversight of the video’s creative development and direction as well as producing, coordinating the logistics, scheduling, permitting, budgeting, equipment, shooting and post-production editing.
Pre-Production:
Our pre-production for the short film included extensive prep so that things operated smoothly on shoot days. To help move our project along, I worked with a small team to generate a base for all of our materials in Airtable.
We spent six months on pre-production which included formalizing Miles’ creative into a narrative/shooting script, location scouting, mood-boarding, and the creation of our production bible (which was built primarily in Slides and Airtable).
The core documents we relied on for production included a Shot List and Storyboard hybrid, an in-depth production schedule that featured scenes, locations, time of day, interior/exterior, cast needed, crew needed, and status. Additionally there was also cast and production/crew call sheets that provided integral information for shoot days.
Examples: call sheets and production info sheets for cast and crew
Left: screenshot of @shittyrigs repost of our lighting setup
Right: a snorricam rig used to capture a disorienting shot of Miles walking
Production:
Once we were ready to advance to production, we had roughly 8 shooting days scheduled over three months. Ultimately, we ran into some challenges which resulted in us having to navigate a couple of reshoots, but we still managed to stay within budget by the time we wrapped.
One of the highlights of our DIY production was making it on to the Instagram account @shittyrigs.
For production, we didn’t have a ton of cash to use (as evidenced by our shitty rig) on high end equipment so we ended up utilizing the Canon R5 for the bulk of our production and a DJI Mavic Pro 2 drone, along with an assortment of Canon glass.
Behind the Scenes: frames from a green screen studio shoot and content review
I love Adobe Premiere Pro :)
Post-Production culminated in 100-120 hours of editing time which included archiving footage and generating proxies, organizing media and building the project, creating an assembly edit which grew into several rough cuts, and then refining with color and mastered audio all within Adobe Premiere Pro for our final cut.
Visual effects sequences were built and created in Adobe After Effects utilizing the roundtrip feature within Premiere Pro.
For revisions on this project we generally opted to do in-person editing sessions as opposed to tools like Vimeo Review or Frame.io
Post-Production:
Marketing Roll Out:
Once we locked the film and exported our final cut, we began prepping materials for marketing and the roll out of the album/visualizers. The plan calls for a steady release of four singles over the course of three months coinciding with the full release of the film and a live screening in Brooklyn, NY.
Marketing campaign will include mixed media from photo carousel posts, instagram reels and tiktok content, teasers for the short film, and behind the scenes content to help generate buzz and build up Miles Nxbxdy’s social presence.