Vital Butinar

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. 🙂

Hi everyone. I personally don't have much gear just some basics because we usually rent. But I do have a couple of Rokinon cine lenses that we use for really small or our own stuff. I've had this 35mm Rokinon Cine lens that has had some problems in the past with the focus being too loose which I was able to fix a couple of years ago. But when it turned up again and tried to fix it again wasn't able to and needed it to shoot something. So I just picked up another cine lens and shoved the Rokinon in the corner. Now I've been playing with it and trying to fix it but I guess the guiding channels for the focus are just to warn out to fix and honestly it's not worth fixing. At the same time since I'm a bit of a tinkerer I've been trying to find a way to use the busted lens and find a creative way to use it. Anyone have any idea what to do with it so that it would be still usable for something? 🙂 Best regards to all.

It's really interesting because the little work that I have done has mostly been narrative and I'm lucky to have the DP with whom I love working the most at home in the form of my partner. So it's always a collaborative someone has an idea and then we figure out if it can be used and how. In the end as the director it's either I have an idea how to use it or get persuaded into using it by good arguments. Most of the time it comes out better than something I would do myself. The thing is that lately we've been getting into more and more commercial work lately. Here it really is more defined from the start since when coming up with the idea for a commercial we usually spend more time together with the client, agency, producer and myself as the director developing everything. I actually see and feel the difference in the stuff that eventually gets created, because while it is clean and works great, I often miss the creativity involved in figuring something really different. But then the DP and everyone involved gets brought in once the main idea has gotten rubber stamped.

Exactly my point. I mean I've only had a hand full of chances to work on really big shoots but every single time there was a light technician or someone who was always in a bad mood without exception. I remember even one time when I was on screen where they had this overweight steady cam operator who was really annoying and kept snapping at people because he couldn't do the shot the director wanted and got tired. It's really weird because we started with really small productions and kind of grew from there and these days the productions have gotten a little bigger and on our biggest projects we have between 20 and 40 people working on set. Now all these people are our own team that we built and the funny thing is that there's nobody there in a bad mood, we're all ways in a good mood. I've even had people come up to me and tell me that they really enjoyed it and they're really sad that the project is over because they had so much fun. I get it that people are pissed off because they work long hours and don't get payed enough but that something you have to take up with the producers etc. and not with their coworkers.

I had no problems moving from our own sets which was between ten and thirty people to a lot bigger projects. I worked in a couple different positions without a problem. But I had always done things the same way as if it was a bigger shoot when working on smaller stuff and I think that helped a lot and also when I started out I worked as an background extra so I could observe what was happening behind the scenes. The only thing that kind of put me off on some of these bigger shoots was some people were always grumpy and gave off this really negative vibe. Which is kind of funny because as stuff that we shoot gets gradually bigger and bigger it's getting a lot easier because there are more and more people involved and everyone has really good energy. Sometimes it honestly makes me sad when we wrap up a project. But my biggest jump was when we went from shooting our no budget film to shooting a fully funded commercial. My next goal is to get a fully funded film together. Also one big step up was not so much the crew size or equipment for me but more the ability to work with professional actors which was something really unexpected compared to the other projects.

Thank you and a happy new year.

Hi everyone. Well a friend of mine, who is an actor, asked me and my partner if we could produce for him a scene recreation form a film that he could use as a showreel or something along these lines, but it's also a dedication to his acting mentor who had died a few days prior. It was just a short scene and we only had about an hour to shoot everything, since he was leaving the next day to LA, so I decided I wanted to test the camera a little bit and shot everything with only natural light, using the shades to control the light. I also show how he was dressed and immediately wanted the look to something resembling a 70s look and feel. Anyway hope you enjoy and happy holidays to everyone.

A couple of months ago my partner and I were scouting locations for a feature film and I happened to have an idea for drone shots on both locations. The problem with drone shots that I've noticed is that they quickly get really boring if there's not some action going on. For example the first shot looked really bland without the little red car in it. So when this red car came by I tried the shoot and it looked great. So I made the change to the story of the film just a little to add a red car to the main character and it will compliment a few other shots. A similar thing happened in the second shot where the shot looked really boring without the truck but as soon as I saw the truck and tried the shot it looked a lot better. So I'm all for having a drone shot as a revealing shot or closing shot but I think the key to a shot like that working is to have something that ties into the narrative or the shots around it.

Well I'm from a little different part of the world and things are virtually the same here. Due to the fewer project because of the corona business my girlfriend and I who run our own production company took a side job in March, April and May of 2021. We got a call from this producer that she needed an extra camera operator and a 2nd AD for a game show they were shooting. So without knowing much of anything we showed up there and basically because of the tight schedule we worked full days for almost three months and it actually wasn't that bad. Only a couple of things sucked like the food was always cold because it got delivered early and us being too late. The problem was also the attitude of some of some of the top people, but at one point I got promoted to 1st AD and my girlfriend form camera 6 to camera 2 which was following the host most of the time. Anyway after we're done the producers tells us that the first three days are going to be counted as rehearsals and could only be billed at half price, which is BS since we were there the whole day. Then she goes on to state that since we've never worked with them before that they wanted to pay me and my girlfriend less which is also BS since not only did they call us but we even got promoted form our original positions. Then she surprised me with the information that what we were getting payed contains tax as well which in the end means we were getting payed like a really low wage. Which is also BS since in our country tax needs to be added at the end of the invoice. So after we got finished I talked to the producer and she told me to just write up the invoice and send it to their accountant. Which I did in about a week and got back a replay that there was a discrepancy between what the producer told me and what they have on their records. This went on for weeks which turned into months and a lot of BS that ended up even lowering the wage again. We finally got the invoice done to their specs and the producer agreed to have me work on another project were she'd give me a higher wage to compensate for the lower wage on that project (still waiting for that by the way) and yet the invoice after 3 months still hasn't been payed. I've sent emails to everyone including the CEO and all I get from the accountant is that their client hasn't payed them which is BS since they're obligated to pay in 30 days of the invoice, regardless of their client payment or not. Well we're now engaging in a law suite where I'm suing them for what they owe us and the lawyer says that we should ask for a lot more, since they went back on what they were offering initially and because of all the BS by not paying on time. Hope it goes well and I also hope you get payed soon too.

I do some work in Davinci Fairlight. Maybe I can help.

I think he might be referring to shallow depth of field vs deep depth of field. That's what I meant when I said soft focus when I started with photography.

How cool! Congratulations! 🙂

I agree that it can get depressing. But a friend of mine keeps telling me that you just have to push forward and keep on kicking and then things happen.

My girlfriend who's actually a sculptress, but didn't have a studio for a couple of months decided to create some hand drawn illustrations for a children's book. She sent out a couple of shots to a publisher and a lady publisher got back to her the next day. She said that they were super interested and that my girlfriend should get her the first draft asap. But on the other side in the filmmaking world I was lucky enough to find a producer who started working with me to get my screenplay up to Hollywood specs and then we went forward with finding distribution and financing. But the coronavirus threw a little wrench into the whole situation. As far as commercial work I do agree completely because I've been sending out stuff to agencies for years and almost never get a reply.