Vital Butinar

No problem. In fact I just got handed a screenplay for a simple little short we'll probably be shooting soon in a dark room with one light, a poker table and two actors. Anyway good luck with your project. 🙂

My advice would be, don't be afraid to try something and I've seen this on many shoots that haven't been directly in my domain, where directors and DP's take the easy road and just go for a wide angle and then two close ups and that's it. What I usually do is sit down with my DP (thankfully she's my wife) and talk about the screenplay and what I imagined happening in the final film. That's where we usually figure out all the shots we're going to need. I like to shoot with a single camera vs. multi camera because I believe that it makes for a better looking frame than multi camera where one frame may be ok and the rest not so much. Anyway the good thing is I trust her completely and while creating a shot list of the shots I envisioned she usually leaves a side some time for shots that we hadn't thought of and she sees them on location while we're shooting. These are usually things that she sees the actors doing like touching an object or doing something with their hands or something because these shots can be used in different way to cut the dialog. So I usually love these shots because they're the ones that make the whole edit stand out. Some DP's I've worked with sometimes take a lot of time preparing and lighting the scene and then they have a problem with the camera moment, what I love with mine is that she usually tries to find the best location that doesn't need that much tweaking and only adds light where needed making the whole process easier because we can change setups fairly quickly because the scene looks good either way. The last thing I really hate is sound and I've had situations where we got really bad sound and it's a nightmare. So if you get good sound you'll be doing yourself a huge favor. But most important thing that I've done is cast right for the role and then let the actor explore their character. If it doesn't work at any time talk with the actor and ask them what their character would do or what they personally would do in a situation like that. Even if it's not the solution it usually presents with a way of solving the problem. On one of the last projects I did I almost felt useless as the director because there was so little for me to do while shooting with regards to the actors because we cast right and rehearsed like crazy and got a great result almost every time so sometimes we got away with only two to three takes. If you run up agents the wall and something is really not working like you've tried 8 or 10 takes already and it just keeps getting worse then it's time for a little break and the problem usually is because everyone is getting stressed because it's not working. So talk to the talent and find a way for them to relate to the theme. The problem is usually that their own personality is interfering with what the character is supposed to be doing so the acting is not credible. If you can find a way for them personally to understand why they would react the way that their character is supposed to then you'll get the result you want. As you get to the edit I usually throw away the hand book and we try a few thing that shouldn't work but sometimes do and just for the kick of it we then edit the same thing by the book just to see how what I had in my head works better. Also don't forget about reaction shots they're just as important if not more as what the other person is saying. Thankfully my wife is also the editor so we can work together most of the time. In the end you'll have something that works like a good narrative. But don't forget to test the edit a few times with people who don't know what it's about and when you're doing that don't watch the film but watch the persons reaction to the narrative and if you notice that they fall out of the story at one moment as in try's to talk to you or starts looking around the edit isn't working and then try to ask them why at the end. Then you can fix it. Best of luck to you and I know how exciting these types of projects can be! 🙂

Well I have an extensive library of locations and it's located on our local server. I do it really low tech but I've been thinking of upgrading to something a little bit more searchable. But for now I create a folder with a name and inside put a text document that contains the location, contact information and any additional information. Then a couple of folders with photos and/or videos. Sometimes I create another document with shot ideas for that specific location. I also have an excel spreadsheet that contains the basic information about the locations and where additional information is located. I've been thinking of using something like wordpress or something to create a searchable catalog but I'm looking for a way on how to make it a catalog for other things as well like shots and ideas which are cataloged in a similar way as locations for now.

I would abide by the same guideline. Although I'm usually in the roll of the director I do appreciate a hint on things that I might miss. For example a couple of weeks ago we were shooting a pilot episode for a TV series and the crew and cast was very light. Our producer served as our sound guy and our cast helped out. Sufficed to say that most of us knew each other well and honestly I love working with the people that were on set this time because they all love filmmaking and enjoy the process even though we had to squeeze 4 shooting days into 2. But as I said I always appreciate advice or a notification from most people that I've worked with on something that I might have missed and I also allow the talent to explore their character withing the confines of the story. So if they say that they feel that this character would do something differently and it aligns or at least doesn't conflict with the complete picture that I've envisioned in the end I have nothing against it. But sometimes this leads to the inevitable outcome that everyone wants to chip in as it also did at one moment as I and a cast member were trying to figure out a better way for them to say their lines for a particular scene. Of course with everyone trying to chip in it soon became impossible for myself and the talent to even thing what was written in the screenplay much less how it could be altered, so I decided to leave the set with the talent and move to a more privet place where we got the lines turned around in about two minutes. At the same time the producer was smart enough to notice that I had become a little frustrated and wasn't able to do my job (which is their job) so while we were working with the talent he politely asked the crew to pipe down a little and that we needed to stay focused or we wouldn't be able to make the day. Everyone got the message and we finished ahead of schedule even though it was packed anyway and everyone still had a nice time on set. And my point being that I've always tried to keep in not only good relations but great relations with the crew and cast because it's important for us to work as a team who wants the project to succede but at the same time I've always had great producers who have always been tuned to the way I work and have kept the few people that there ever were in check. In essence being a bad guy so that I don't have to be. Literally the only time I've sent people off the set was recently on a music video shoot where we were shooting the talent changing behind a bush and of course the whole band and every guy that was there wanted a sneak peak of her getting undressed. Which of course made her a little uncomfortable, so after the first take which was perfect incidentally since the uncomfortable situation made her more authentic I sent everyone that wasn't essential to the other part of the set but in the end decided to cut the second take short since it was not working and ended up using the first one anyway.

We actually had a problem like this a couple of weeks ago when we were shooting a pilote episode. There was a significant difference in height between the two lead actors which wasn't a huge problem most of the time since they were almost never standing in the shots. But we did have a couple of shots where they were standing and in one shot in particular the height difference stood out a lot so we changed the action a little bit from them holding hands and turning around to him holding her in his arms and it worked out great in this instance. It would definitely help if we used a 16:9 aspect ratio but it was decided before hand that we would use a 21:9.

Cool. That's great! Please keep us up to date how everything is going, because I'm really interested how things work and go. 🙂

Well as far as the lights I honestly don't know. But recently we had a shoot for a tv series pilote episode and we shot on a remote location where we didn't have access to any power for two days. Just the crew, camera, sound and light bounces. Anyway we used the BM Pocket 4K and had it connected to a V mount battery and the damn thing ran for two days straight and the battery drain was only about about 3/4 drained and the camera ran almost all the time. We literally had to change storage cards more and completely forgot about the batter. It was the same with the sound recorder and mic receivers that ran off another V mount battery but that one got only 2/5 drained.

I personally love the Braw and have used the ProRes only on a couple of shoots where we either had to produce ProRes or there was not going to be much post involved. But we used Braw on all of the narrative stuff and even on music videos.

Yesterday's office was a shoot near a small lake side where we were shooting a TV series pilote episode and the photo is of me helping my wife who's the DP secure her shoulder rig taken by the costume designer since we almost never have any photos of us when on set. 🙂 Beautiful locations, great cast who got everything right in the first couple of takes and great crew who remembered all the preproduction notes and made my day a hell of a lot easier even though long. 🙂

Yeah she does. https://en.ples-energij.si/leya Enjoy 🙂

It's really interesting because my girlfriend is foremost a sculptress so we always have a lot of her sculptures where we live. Some are small and some are as big as a person. Along with her being a sculptress her mother is a painter as well and as a result we have a huge amount of paintings hung and I must say that I love it because it's very interesting and colorful, compared to some places where there's literally nothing anywhere. It's really funny when people visit and say how interesting and cosy it is because of all the art. Of course the apartment doubles as her gallery since her studio is for creating stuff but what a better place than to display the art than where it should eventually end up, in a place where someone can look at it. Thanks for sharing. Very interesting reading.

Hi guys! So our government has issued some kind of turist vouchers to every citizen to use at any turist destination in our country and as a result most of the turist accommodations have tried to shift their focus towards domestic tourists. As a result more and more places are trying to show what they have to offer to their potencial clients and we're seen a lot of work from this perspective. Anyway this was a crazy one since the client is a friend and called me up last minute that he actually needed a 10 second TV add that needed to be done in less than a day and a half for his small hotel. My girlfriend and I didn't exactly know if it was possible but we said what the heck and tried it anyway. So we drove down to the coastal town and shot everything we could find that looked pretty for a couple of hours and then drove straight home and edited the footage for another couple of hours. I mostly directed and consulted the shots, but most of them were shot by my girlfriend and she also did the editing and most of the color grading. Where I did the animation, voice and them mastered everything. This was the result after 20 hours of work that we submitted to the TV station. Of course done in our language this just an English version. Of course I realize that it could have been done better and that this was a complete run and gun type of thing but I'm actually really happy with the result and so is the client. The only comment that his significant other had was that she wanted to see a different shot of the food which in my opinion didn't work but we created an alternative version which was sent to the TV station and let them decide. Where they used the original version where I said that the shot was better since there was not a person in the shot and it looked less personal. Anyway I'm happy with it and we've done another few of these in the past two weeks which is great since it brings in some come cash and doesn't take a lot of work, time and energy. But I am however interest a little more form someone who does more commercial shoots and how is it different and if I wanted to expand my business into these type of commercial shoots what to look out for. Stay safe guys!

Oh OK. I find it very interesting but I haven't been able to get around to it. But I have been trying myself with Blender.

Cool! You're working in Blender? Have you Cine Tracer that works on Unreal engine?

Yeah I prefer having less crew as well. Since what we're shooting is a TV series pilot episode for a local streaming service there was always going to be less crew since it's a proof of concept and we're shooting it on our own dime. So light crew and as few locations as possible was in the plan from the get go. But I'm used to that. I've never had the luxury of being able to go to someone and ask them to do something because I've always been the guy to whom people came and asked me to do something. So I've had to do everything myself and now I usually have people who I trust and work in the same sort of way that I do. As for videovillage I don't much care for those. I'm usually there and can see what's going on either directly on camera or on my monitor. Others who just want to lurk and watch don't really have to watch.