Vital Butinar

Wow. Thank you. This was very informative and interesting.

So my girlfriend got invited to write an article about her connection between sculpting and cinematography, or in other words creatively connecting different types of art. https://www.stage32.com/blog/How-to-Become-a-Dynamic-Film-Creative-with-Different-Art-Mediums She's a really good sculptress that was supposed to have an exhibition in Venice this month but it got postponed due to the current situation and on the other hand she's also a great cinematographer and editor. Hope you enjoy it and best regards, hope you're all safe

That's a really interesting explanation and one I would tend to agree with as well as that most TV shows don't complicate with some shots as much.

Doubtful...

Well so much for 4K. I guess it's time to bring back our old Sony Trinitron. ?

I'm about to shoot a proof of concept TV series pilot episode in a couple of months. It's going to be a full 15 minute episode to show the story but I haven't seen any difference in pre production. I'm also considering shooting a short proof of concept for the feature I wrote that I'm talking to with a producer. But I haven't figured out a way to do it yet. I think that I would do it like if it was a proof of concept for a feature, I would create a short and if it was a short I'd shoot a shorter short. It definitely a dilemma.

I myself do not have any real experience with either feature films or TV series. But I've producer and directed a few short things and I'm just now getting ready for my first pilot episode for a tv series. I actually don't see much of a difference between the cinematography of the shorts that we've shot or the pilote episode. The main difference for me might be for having a budget to work with if we get approved. As far as how much everything might change if we actually get the series I can not tell but I'm guessing it will be somewhat the same except planning will be a little different.

Well basically it doesn't matter what software you use to sync the clips. The only difference between Resolve and Premiere that I can see is that in Resolve you can only automatically sync via audio when you create a timeline (haven't found a way to do it directly on the timeline) and in Premiere you can do exactly that throw it in the timeline and sync up stuff. But if you've got to sync stuff manually anyway it literally doesn't matter what NLE you use as long as you've got the scratch and original audio. I don't know I guess I'm old school or something but whenever we shoot a music video or something where we have something being played over that we're going to put over in post I always edit in some kind of audio marker at the beginning and end. Makes life so much easier and when we've got external audio I always want to use the slate. Hope you don't have too much f a rough time syncing it manually and best of luck.

Waw thank you. This looks amazing. I did a try right now but I wasn't able to figure it out quickly so I guess I need to take my time.

Thank you Bruce. I thought that it was something that I might have to do by myself since when I was researching it I came up with nothing substantial. But in either case I'll have to play around with it myself since it's a personal project. The roto is actually the part that I was afraid of and I did kind of try it that way. Thanks again.

Hi guys. I've got a question for the more experienced people among you. I have some footage that was shot on 8mm stock in black and white and I'm trying to find a way to colorize it. First thing is that it's getting scanned into something digital. But I've got no idea where to start about colorizing it except for masking everything and trying to color it by hand. I'm sure there must be a better way to do it. Anyway so if anyone has had any experience with this your help is much appreciate on what software to use and how. Thank you and best regards

I actually bought the Tascam DR60 M2 and it's a really nice sound recorder and for our small production of short films it's great. I don't see the need to buy too much equipment because if there are bigger project the clients always pay for renting the equipment but for our smaller projects stuff like the Pocket 4K and the Tascam DR60 are great.

During the summer we shot as short film and if I remember correctly there were about 18 or 20 pages. I think there were 11 scenes. Everything from top to bottom was shot in one night where we shot in the narrow streets down town of my home town from about 11 pm when the streets cleared until 6 pm when it was getting light so about 7 hours total. I think these were 2 scenes. We shot 2 master shots, 1 follow gimbal shot that followed the two actors, 4 coverage shots, 1 vfx shot that was used for compositing, a few close up shots like the actor taking their gun or falling down or the third actor watching the other two and then a bunch of B roll from the locations. Then the next day we shot we began to shoot at 8 am and finished at 2 am next day so 17 hours but there were about 5 hours of down time because we had a scene set up but one of the actresses was stuck in traffic 100 miles away. We used that time to shoot some ambient sounds and a few thing we could get away with. The biggest problem was the last scene that we shot because it was the end of a really long day and everyone was getting really tired so I made the last minute decision to just shoot all the shots with one take since it was a sitting conversation, so if anyone made a mistake they'd just repeat that part of the conversation. We shot the same way all the coverage and just a few B roll shots. I wasn't happy with a lot of it but it was the best way to finish before everyone died of exhaustion. I did however neglect to mention that shots except three that were shot on a gimbal were shot hand held to save time. We did it, we shot everything and was able to edit together a whole short film. But I'll be the first one to say that I have no idea how long it takes to shoot something. All I do is estimate how long it takes to shoot something and add it up. Usually I decide to shoot something in one go because two day shoots are usually out of the question because getting the crew back together the next day is harder than pushing it the same day three more hours. But we're a small crew and the projects we do get paid the same if we work two days or one and if we don't finish we don't get paid. So my moto has always been keep it simple and if it doesn't work simplify even further and it has worked. Best of luck.

Yeah it's the same with prices around here too. Everything has gone crazy. Rent has gotten several times higher even though there are a lot of empty places that could be rented out or sold. You can't buy an apartment let alone a house as the prices have gone up so much that a sane person can't imagine the numbers involved. On the other hand people aren't prepared to pay for any kind of services regardless of the quality involved. Like it doesn't matter what you do or how well you do it as long as it's cheap or even better free. Who cares if you survive or not as long as the person finds the someone to help them with whatever they don't know how to do. Just for reference the stuff that I complain about how much it costs is the stuff that I know how to do myself which is a whole lot of things and I rarely have to rely on someone else for some kind of services. On one hand some things are expensive or going up like taxes, when the road tax has gone up so much like I was driving a Bentley and not a 20 year old Jeep that keeps breaking down because of the crappy state of roads. On the other hand some stuff is so dirt cheap that I don't even understand how that can be. Cell phones, electronics and even service stuff like internet or phone bill which is so cheap that I can't even contemplate how these prices come about. So yeah doing something creative as it seems everywhere is loosing it's value. The problem is that if they don't get it from you they get it from someone cheaper regardless of quality. That's why some stuff things seem to be of such low quality or it just looks the same as something else. Unfortunately this is unsustainable because once creative people stop creating and turn to "regular" jobs there will be a deficit of supply and there will be no one left. That's teh worst case scenario but I keep wondering what would happen in a situation like that. A sort of Art type Boston tea party if you will. What would happen if someone would wake up and notice that there are no more graphics on websites, that advertisements in the mail have no more design or photographs and when they switch on Netfilx the only thing they could watch was the weather report or couldn't read anything but the tax law or phone book if that still exists. Not to mention no architecture or product design. I wonder how that would impact peoples lives. And this is not mentioning a lot of other areas like art in the sense of music, paintings, sculptures, etc.

Yeah it's true. Two creatives as a couple can be tough sometimes. I did have a very successful IT business until a few years ago when the economy tanked and my girlfriend used to be a successful makeup artist and supplied makeup for other artists as well. So we are not just "artists" but once upon a time we both had successful businesses. I believe that there are "artists" everywhere and a lot of them may not be as good as they think but as a contrast my girlfriend is a really good sculptress. She's had quite a few exhibitions and gallerists really love her work because she has an new take on some sort of classic theme. In other word's her art doesn't just have some kind of meaning (like shoes on the wall or something) but has an aesthetic to it as well. Besides being a sculptress she's still a makeup artist but in the last couple of years has become a really great director of photography and editor. But is also a really good photographer. On the other hand I have tried to perfect myself as a director and producer. But I'm also well versed in story telling and filming and editing. Actually my girlfriend was the one who encouraged me to get into filmmaking since I realized that this was something I wanted to do after my IT business tanked. So I learned everything from a to z about everything so that at I know something when needed. But I also do work in other areas. I still try to work in IT if there is any and I also do graphic design from time to time. Not to mention that sometimes I do website design and I am also a dance instructor and have been for years. So all in all among the two of us we can do pretty much anything. The problem is that prices are so high that we have to work all the time to pull it off financially. Sometimes I start thinking that it would be easier if we had a regular 8-5 job and wouldn't worry about anything. But on the other hand whenever we have a great film project we're really excited about it and give it our all. The thing is that both of us strive to work in the film industry. For myself to become a film director and my girlfriend as a sculptress and a DP. Anyway all in all it is hard to make it as an artist but I feel that with the right drive and determination I believe that they can make it even in the creative world. Hope I'm not wrong. By the way just to show here's one of my gf's sculptures so you can see what she does since I mentioned it.

I was actually doing research on this very thing a couple of months ago. I tested if it made a difference if I uploaded videos in many different resolutions, codecs and compression. But in the end the result was the same the most compressed stuff exported in an h.264 was just as good as an DNxHR. All the footage was captured in raw format. Then it got me thinking and I reached out to some know youtubers and we did a comparison test because I suspected that the more subscribers a channel had the less compressed the videos were. No dice there either. I tried vimeo and actually had less compression there. At the end I actually realized that if the videos were encoded as sRGB when exported they looked better on youtube and it didn't matter if it was uploaded as HD 1080p or 4K.

Well with us two our creative work does pay. My girlfriend got a really good review form an art critic, crediting her with starting a new style, she had gotten an award in NYC last year and more. Anyway her sculptures are really great. The problem is that it takes a lot of work marketing her work and this area is not really the right demographic for sculptures because her sculptures have to be under priced to sell in our country. Internationally is a lot more difficult because you need to know people to get anywhere but art can be sold at a much higher price internationally. As far as film goes getting funding around here means getting a couple 1000 grand for any kind of weird film. So not much in the line of films to do around here unless you do it on your own. Which we do most of the time but it's for our own learning purposes. We do some music videos but the problem is bands around here have no money so you can't really charge them the amount that you'd need to sustain a business for a music video and I don't like doing stuff for cheap because it looks cheap. So usually it comes down to too expensive or working under the price but it means we make almost nothing. Great for the band not so much for us. So we need to shoot other stuff like events which brings additional expenses and again you're not making enough money again or they just decide to go with someone that will do a bad job for really cheap (like $150 for shooting a wedding) and you can't compete again. Basically if we want to work in film or art we need to find a better place meaning we need better connections elsewhere. Anyway I'm not complaining because I've been very fortunate I owned my own IT business for years before it tanked and have always been able to work with my creativity. I only wish the paycheck was a little more consistent but for that time will come too.

Yes being an artist sucks if you're an upcoming artist. My girlfriend how is also my DP most of the time is also a sculptress and with both of us working in the creative fields it's hard sometimes. Right now I prioritized not registering my car because two registrations and a major fix of a car just wasn't in the plan. The thing is we both work all the time either it's shooting or producing something, photography, graphic design, website design, etc. Or my girlfriends sculptures. I mean there's enough stuff to do 24/7 but yet we still struggle with paying the bills sometimes with rent being high. Since my girlfriend is a really good sculptress she asked to be credited as an artist by the state and this would mean that the state would pay her medical insurance and the equivalent of a retirement fund. But of course it was denied because of lack of things that other approved artists didn't have. So it all depends on what who you know in the art world and as far as the creative part goes with film it's basically the same thing. That means being an artist is really hard in this day and age. Not that it was any easier in the past. I think the problem is that with all the new ways to comunicate a lot of good things get lost among all the noise.

No problem. I just hope it helps.

See that's exactly what I'm talking about. When stuff is used moderately it's great but when it becomes a crutch not so much anymore. I like the second one. I love the noir lighting.

So basically the bull of the stuff that I have done consists of music videos and since I'm getting ready to shoot another one I was looking at music videos not to try and find something I like but rather what is being used and what I didn't like. Well after looking at a lot of music videos got me thinking. The sad thing is that I found a profound lack of story in music videos. I won't say that there are no videos with stories but for a lot of them just didn't have any story that I could determine. My personal view is that behind pictures there should always be motivation like a story or a concept or something. Then I noticed that a lot of music videos relied a lot on super flashy transitions like people use in vlogs and youtube videos. I tried to determine if these transitions and effects were there to help show a story or were motivated in some way but in a lot of cases I never figured it out. It doesn't look bad and it's flashy but it looks like it's there just to look cool. My personal opinion is that I love a cut where a viewer doesn't even notice a transition or an effect. I also love invisible cuts but they need to be done well. As far as cuts and effects just so that it looks cool I'm not a fan of that. However I do realize that sometimes something is needed when all else fails. But the last thing that I noticed that is used all the time was slow motion. It's used all the time. And I get it slow motion looks good but using it just because it looks cool. I'm sorry but I don't get it. I do like to use slow motion where it's needed and where I'd like to make an effect but in my opinion using slow motion all the time is like bringing roses home to your wife every day and then when Valentin's day comes what do you do then. I'm not saying it's not good once in a while and even on an odd occasion but other than that it just looses all meaning. I think the latter two are a result of the first one. If there is no story behind the music video it's just a song with a bunch of visuals. I've always said that a music video is intended to bring in a viewer to listen to some the music and not to just give the listener something to look at. Whenever I'm working on a music video I always want to know the story of how the song was created and that then gives us an idea how to show a story that compliments the music. Anyway what are your opinions on this? Does story matter or is it enough to be flashy and cool? Do you like modern music videos? Thoughts on this subject are welcome. The point of this discussion is to talk about different takes on music videos and to see if I'm weird for always wanting a story or some motivation behind the something that's shot. Best regards

OK I get it. That would be a problem. But what I would have done is just edited the the XML in a text editor and changed the paths to the Arriraw files and Resolve would have been non the wiser. I've seen a bunch of editors do all kinds of weird stuff but what I usually do is just use the raw files whatever they may be Arriraw, RED, BRAW whatever into Resolve. Then select everything and click on "Create Optimized Media" then Resolve goes into creating optimized media which can take hours but if you set your setting correctly and have enough space it will create some kind of proxy files that are small enough and good enough to work with. You can always switch between the raw and the optimized media in the menu and whenever you export it automatically uses raw files unless you set the output to optimized media. Basically it's the same as proxy files in Premiere but works better and doesn't slow down the workstation. I haven't had much experience working with proxy files in Avid. But Resolve creates it's own media and it works great. I had a huge project recently there were terabytes and terabytes of raw footage so I plugged in each external drive with the raw footage created optimized media and then repeated with the next drive. It created about 600 GB of optimized media and edited the whole project with that and in the end just connected all the external drives and exported as normal. Worked like a charm. But I did have to manually delete the optimized media from my drive when I was done but that's a simple thing. All in all I was really happy with this.

The workstation that I work on is connected to 5 outputs. First 3 are monitors for the work station and the 4th is a TV mounted just above the workstation most of the time to preview the color grades and edits. But for the final result I have a cable running to the big screen in the living room to preview the entire project with sound system and everything. Works well enough.

Granted I have not had much experience with grading scanned film stock. But I asked a friend who was working on a project where they did film for some scanned footage and some of the B cam digital footage that they had and tried to grade it in Resolve. At first I wasn't happy with matching stuff but then I learned how to use Aces color space and I was able to get a pretty good match. In fact I even tried mixing in some footage from a drone and some of my Pocket 4K footage and everything looked pretty consistent or should I say consistent enough for myself not being a colorist or anything.

Usually what I do is just export an XML and then re-import it back into Resolve but in staid of linking to the proxy ProRes files just relink to the Arriraw files. If I didn't have the Arriraw in the first place where I'd just create the optimized media and use that. This didn't work for you?