Vital Butinar

Congratulations David!

I don't know if this is still relevant, but some time ago working on a project a producer told me about these guys and they do exactly what you're asking. They license music for films, don't know how much it costs though. https://www.harryfox.com/ There's also an alternative that I learned of recently, that might be a better alternative if it's a lower budget project. https://app.lickd.co/ Hope it helps. Regards Vital

I remember this setup in the second Alien movie. The army guys had a setup like that.

Thank you @Joerg Polzfusz. I'm glad you like it. Yeah I didn't have much to work with at home and it was basically just a test for something I plan to do in the future. I love how graphics on practical displays look because the light just interacts with the environment in a nicer way than if it was CGI and composited. That's what I wanted to try out, because I have nothing against CGI but I preferer it for things like set extensions and not creating the entire thing. The display was my phone, the switch was our charging station extension cord switch and the buttons were my old mixing deck. I used a camera case insides for a background texture and a small rotating emergency light for the red alarm light. The reflections were made by a small projector and I got that idea from a shot from the Kurt Russell movie called Solder from 1998, where some graphics were projected onto a guys head like that. Thank you but I really don't like acting, but this was an experiment and sometimes I do act in things but it's only when there's no other alternative or someone else that I respect wants me to. Although for the love of it I have no idea why.

Hey @Khaled F. Abdullah I took a look at your film and it actually all depends on what you were trying to portray. I've been thinking about these things a lot in the last couple of months and I see a lot of people making really good shots but seldom do they understand the motivation of those shots. Or put in a different way, you always have two choices either find someone who can do something better than you and let them do it or invest the time to get better at something. I think this is at the core of being a filmmaker anyway you look at it. Yes you can never be the best at everything but the truth is that knowing something rarely hurts and often benefits. So having a good grasp on cinematography is great. Let me give you another example. I have never been a good writer, actually I spent a lot of time devoted to not reading or writing because I didn't like it. Turned out that this was due to dyslexia that nobody knew I had. But eventually I got into filmmaking and I figured that I would just find a writer who would write stuff for me and when I couldn't find anyone, I set out to start writing myself. I won't say that I was good at it and I still thing I have a lot to learn but even I have noticed a progression in my work, even though I still relay a lot on feedback from people. I've always strived to learn new stuff and do things just to practice and get better at them. That's the same in every field, even in stuff like parallel parking. ? So if you don't have anyone who can do your cinematography and you think it's not where it should be, just devote some time and effort into it, like you've already done and soon you'll be better off, even if you might not be completely content. Best of luck to you and remember that we never stop learning new stuff, the difference is once you learn to learn stuff it becomes exciting. Regards Vital

Hi guys. A couple of weeks ago I had some more free time and started rewriting some feature screenplays that I had been working on them. Then due to an unfortunate incident I stumbled onto a funny story for a short comedy film that I decided to write and shoot the next week, but at the same time had been wanting to try out a couple of things and since I was shooting anyway, I figured that's make another short. That's how this short sci-fi film happened. I shot it in order to test out a few things that I had been meaning to try out for another project down the line. Stuff like, a different approach to writing dialog, trying out some lighting techniques, playing around with a projector, finding a cheap way (as in stuff that I had at home) to show stuff like props and a couple of things to do with post production. Since it was a simple home test project, unfortunately I acted in it, which means it basically sucks since I'm no where near anything resembling an actor. Hope you enjoy it.

I like it. The aspect ratio and feel kind of reminds me of 8mm film. I especially love one of the shots outside on the sidewalk. Good job.

Dan, I sent you a PM yesterday. Regards Vital

It was an interesting read of the article. I myself haven't done a feature film yet but have done enough shorter projects like short films, music videos and commercial videos to know how things go and you pulled it off really fast. Of curse being your own producer you could craft the story to what you had and that's always great. Last year we shot a 16 min proof of concept short for a TV show (which I can share over PM with you) and having no budget to speak of, we had to put together what we had. Instead of four production days we only had three and in the end only two because a location fell trough. But after four months of preproduction and location scouting, shafeling a couple of scenes around wasn't that much of a problem. Postproduction took another eight months. We're actually thinking of doing a feature in the next year but I'd need some funding to be able to pull it off. I'm really happy when a feature film gets made and especially one that finds success, especially if it's a self funded indie film. Regards Vital

Hey Dan. I read the article and checked out the trailer and first of congratulations on creating a feature film. Any kind of film is no small task, let alone a feature. How long did it take you to prep and actually shoot everything and how long did your post production take? What influenced your visual style? Regards Vital

Thank you very much. We enjoyed making it because after a long time it was a fun project of our own that we could do our way. You know how it is, there's always stuff in retrospect that you wish you could have done differently. ?

Hi guys. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled onto a youtube video for a short film contest and since I have been working on commercial videos for the major part of the year, I've been hoping for an opportunity to do as many narrative projects as possible, just to have some fun. I literally had no idea what to do and consulted a friend of mine, who's a screenwriter and he literally had an idea half an hour that we loved and could get shooting the same day. So my girlfriend and I decided to shoot the same evening and got everything ready and since it was only the two of us, we needed to figure out a way how to shoot and perform in it at the same time. We also needed to wrangle our cat Misty to perform and he did a really great job, also got a bunch of treats in the process. Everything was shot in about three hours, including a short ride to the river near our home that had a rocky surface. I'm actually really happy with this one, because it was simple enough to shoot in a short time and got a nice result in the end. The only thing that bothers me a little is that we didn't pay enough attention to the small LED that I held in my hand, like it was a cell phone and in a couple of shots the LEDs can be seen. I would have loved to use shots where this wasn't visible but we didn't have them, so they just stayed in. We wanted to shoot in as little time as possible so that we had enough time for postproduction. What do you guys think? What else could have we done to get any better shots or have done anything better in the time span and changed anything. Thanks for taking the time.

Hi guys. So in the summer an actor buddy of mine asked if we could shoot and recreate a dialog scene for him to use as a kind of showreel. Of course I was up for it but it was a tough order because he wanted to do the coin toss scene from the film No Country for Old Men. Naturally we couldn't find a gas station around these parts that would work so we changed the setting to a service garage which worked well enough. One big problem I had was that my buddy and his friend wanted to shoot with two cameras so that they could improvise, to which I was strongly opposed to since, since we didn't have any budget and couldn't really afford to light everything the way it should be. I also knew we would have to cheat a bunch of things to get everything shot in a span of just three hours. So I gave in to shooting with multiple cameras, which turned out to be a mistake anyway since one camera was malfunctioning (kept screwing up the image, which we notice in post) and we had to cross cut between different takes anyway. But in either case I decided that I wanted to shoot a couple of other things along with the dialog just in case we wanted to turn the dialog alone into a kind of short. I'm not entirely happy with the dialog scene, since if we shot everything with our Pocket 4K we would have gotten some better coverage, but on the other hand I'm really happy with the additional shots that we got, because I was able to play around and create a beginning and an end. Also the sound guy that was supposed to help out wasn't able to make it, so we had someone else do the sound who had less experience. Anyway what do you guys think? I'm interested in what you would have done differently and then we can try and I can try to figure out if I missed something or did the best that could have been done under the circumstances. Thanks for taking the time and watching.

I actually remember watching this one on youtube a couple of years ago. Really great video and congratulations @David Mullen ASC for all the great work!

Thanks Daniel. The problem is that I took the lens apart and some of the parts are really busted. So there's not much left of the focus and aperture system. I'm planing to fool around with it anyway, I'm just trying to figure out if there's something that can be done without having to experiment what can be done. ? The original problem was that there are plastic guide channels inside and some even more plastic guide cylinders stuck together with really cheap screws and with time all of them get degraded by time. I was able to fix it to a degree the first time and the second time but the last time it was way too degraded and I needed the lens so I got another lens. But I'm trying to figure out a way to use the optics since the might still be usable. ?