Vital Butinar

Hey @Stewart McLain, thank you. I think you might be right about a couple of these. We do need multiple versions of these anyway. As of now, the grade has changed a little anyway, since we're in the last two months of post with the film. (There's so much to do, Foley, music and then final sound mix. Most done by me and my partner. Except the music, hopefully.) I'll try recutting it in the next coupe of days.

Hi guys! Last year around May I asked some advice on how to best mount a camera so that my partner could shoot the feature film that we were making. Well it took a few months to shoot, but by end of October we were done and are now in post-production. But we just created our first trailer or maybe more of a teaser video for the film called Pure Vortex. What do you guys think? 95% of everything was shot on the previously mentioned shoulder rig. Of course the film will have much more of a polished color grade and sound design, but there are only two of us doing the post, there's a lot of work to be done.

Yeah I had something like this happen just recently on our final production day. At the end of the night, when everyone was already tired we had to shoot a couple of more shots. A two shot on an escalator and did two takes and then at the top coverage of both actors. Well for some reason the two takes on the escalator, the sound was not recorded. But the coverage shots were. So I only have missing sound for the escalator part. Thankfully the camera was only about a foot and a half away from the actors in the shot and the camera audio is good enough to maybe be usable when cleaned up or as you said ADR. Or if they mysteriously got recorded somewhere else and I just haven't found them. It didn't help that we were rushing and didn't really have a sound person, having to resort to use some 32 bit float lav mics, that actually worked great. At the same time I'm having to clean a bunch of 32 bit sounds because they clipped, how. Well anyway sound mishaps suck! Good luck.

I don't know if this applies but we recently shot a feature film and one scene took place in a living room where it was supposed to be morning. It's not the best picture but the gaffer put a streak of light on the back wall behind the actors. He used a spotlight and had an tele lens adapter on it where he could add some flags into the adapter. The light reminded me of those theater spotlights they used. What you're describing looks similar to me, maybe you could do something like that.

I agree with Jenna. If I look at myself, I love editing and when we're working on a cool project, I can't wait to get an opportunity to do some editing myself. On the other hand when I'm working on social media BS and I'm forced to do it, I don't like it in any way.

The rig works great. She's used the rig every day since we started shooting and has used it for somewhere from 7 to 14 hours every production day and she says that it's great! Thanks for the help.

Very cool! My office today or should I say yesterday.

Hey guys. I just wanted to get back to you all and thank you for your ideas on the camera rig. In the end we were able to rig the camera on her original shoulder rig but push the camera way back and extend the monitor forward. Which is great because I got to have a video feed because of the monitor. She's super happy with it and shoots really long days with it, but she additionally created a kind of shoulder pad, that she puts on as a sleeve, giving her some added padding and apparently it works great. We've been in production for 3 days now, each of them not shorted than 10 hours and no longer than 14 hours. Because of this rig we've shot over a third of the scenes of the feature. We still have 6 to 7 production days to go, but none of them, except one, will be longer than 10 hours. We've only used sticks for 5 shots and two dolly shots. So the rig is helping us soot very productively. One interesting note, I know this is a cinematography forum, but shooting with 32 bit lav mics that run the entire day and record the audio internally is also a benefit because we can just leave the audio running and monitor it during takes. If there's any sound problems it can be fixed in post with voice isolation. I've already tried it and tested it and it works great! Anyway thanks for all the help!

Well of course in some scenes the camera will be stationary simply because we need that later on for compositing. But the reason why it's handheld is simply because we are trying to make her as agile as possible to make her as fast as possible in finding the shots. The reason is since we have no budget to speak off, all of the locations we got by begging for them and there's no way they will let us use an actual airport for more than a day for free or an airplane, in fact any of the other more high production value locations. So we need to be able to shoot really fast, which means that she needs to find the shot quickly and get on with it. That's why the camera is handheld most of the time. The good news is that I tried to mount the camera right onto her shoulder which worked great as far as weight goes, she's still only about a 100 lbs so the whole thing is still heavy but as long as we pad the shoulder mount and find a wireless or wired follow focus so that she can focus, it should be fine. But the existing shoulder mount is not able to carry everything, so we'll be trying to find a different way to mount it. One of the ways might be that I might design a new shoulder rig thing that goes on both sides of the back and then 3D print it. The problem is I currently don't have the time to design something, let alone 3D print it, because I'm neck deep in actor rehearsals, shortlists, schedules and making 1000 decisions a day to be able to take time and design something well. But in either case thank you guys for suggesting mounting the camera way back. That did the trick, now I just have to figure out all the rest of the stuff. So again many thanks and best wishes to everyone.

Yeah, I've never used the ENG cameras before and the image was terrible compared to anything now days even used for music videos. But I did love the ergonomics, I loved the battery life and how quickly it switched on. Also the damn thing is a tank, I could put it down anywhere, light rain didn't bother it and it looked pretty much bullet proof. Yes modern small factor cinema cameras are great for rigging, but the user friendliness is much much lower with them than with the old ENG ones. I'll try rigging the Pocket 4K pretty much exactly on the shoulder. Hope that Leya will be able to focus, we discussed maybe changing the follow focus to her right hand. We'll see how things go. Like I've said, I love her shots when she has the ability to do them her way and thus it takes half of the burden off of me, because I don't have to warry about explaining to the DP what I want and she knows what kind of shots I want and what we need. That's the benefit of both of us usually also doing the edits and grades, that we know what we need. As a result we can work really efficiently, but whenever we've tried something new and different we ended up just doing what we usually did and it worked. But I also do like seeing what's going on in front of the camera with my monitor, before we had the wireless system I used to hover behind her back and watch the camera monitor, try not to talk too laud and stand too close while directing the actors. This is much easier now. But that's life on the lower budget place of filmmaking.

Yeah. That's exactly what I did. I tried to put the battery on the back on a plate. But I used a NPF battery because it integrates better with all the other equipment. The original batteries are really bad as far as how long they last. But also usable in some cases, we did use them for years. I'll also try to connect the monitor with a cable to the battery plate, that should work and try to put the camera as far back as I can. I'd really like her to enable her to be able to do the same shots that she's always tried to do, because I love the way they look. At the same time I've also grown accustom to having a monitor in my hand to see what's happening in the shot, so there's a bunch of stuff that's been added on the camera. You're right that these small cameras are really short and it will rest really far back. I hope she'll be able to focus. A couple of years ago I spent a weekend using one of those Sony ENG shoulder cameras and to my amazement it was really ergonomic. Thanks.

Thanks Brian. I'll definitely check out the wooden camera stuff and try mounting the camera as far back on the should as possible. Unfortunately I don't think it will be possible to buy much new gear, but we might get lucky with the local rental company. They've been really kind to us before and maybe they'll be willing to work with us on this project. Otherwise we're forced to make due with what we've got. Thanks again.

Thanks Albion. Well we tried the easyrig and she said it restricted her too much and she couldn't move the way that she wanted to. We did use it a couple of times and the shots were ok but she kept contorting into really weird positions to maneuver the camera into position. We're planning on shooting most of the film handheld due to time restrains. Ok, so I'll try to mount the camera as far back as possible onto the shoulder, like the ENG style Sony cameras and then extend the monitor in front of her. The only concern is the follow focus wheel being really back. Maybe we'll have to mount an electronic follow focus or use a focus puller. But I'd like to avoid that since she's very well versed in pulling her own focus and I'm afraid that having a focus puller might slow us down. Also we don't have a dedicated focus puller in the team so someone would have to do it and the learning curve might slow us down. Thanks, I'll try rigging something up tomorrow and see how it goes. Can't believe I didn't think of mounting the camera that way.

Hi Guys! So in a couple of months I'm getting ready to potentially shoot my first feature film called Pure Vortex. Unfortunately we were unable to get any financing (that old catch 22) so we're trying to shoot the thing without a budget and sheer willpower. Hope we're successful. But that's not what I need help with, the DP is my wife a very petite woman (about 110 lbs) and she also operates her own camera and most of the time she prefers doing handheld shots. Until now we've always used a cheap plastic shoulder rig (one of those that go over the shoulder and rest on the rib cage) since our small DSLR days and then migrated to the Blackmagic Pocket 4K. When needed we've always used kind of small form cameras like the Pocket 4K, 6K, Komodo, Alexa Mini, etc. (except for the 4K or 6K, they were always on sticks, dollies or other stuff) She also prefers to pull her own focus. Last week we tried a new shoulder rig while shooting a music video and she almost died because the camera was too front heavy now with matte boxes, follow focus, monitors, batteries, transmitters, etc. She said that she prefers the older shoulder rig since she can transition from shoulder to fully handheld very quickly. We also tries an easyrig multiple times and she's also not ok with it, since she says it restricts her movement too much and that she's not able to follow the action freely enough. The problem is there's no way to mount the new setup on the old shoulder rig without making it really front heavy. I tried mounting a bunch of stuff on the back, extending the rods and mounting the transmitter, battery and even a counter weight. But it just made the whole thing really heavy and unstable. Unfortunately we're locked into using the Pocket 4K since this is the only camera that we have access to that we own. Anyone have any ideas on how to mount this camera on her shoulder and not make it too front heavy, while at the same time not making it too heavy anyway? Previously the accessories on the Pocket 4K had been really light weight and more or less useless. Also the addition of better lenses and monitors, bigger batteries just made it heavier. She's been trying to work out and get her strength up but the music video shoot had shown us that it wouldn't help anyway. Thanks for the help and best wishes to everyone.

Congratulations David!