Vital Butinar

Hi guys! First of all thank you for your responses. I am really grateful whenever I get more input to the question I give myself and in turn input from other people helps me be more informed and then I can decide and be confident that I at least understood multiple aspects of whatever I was deciding on. I agree complacently that if I keep my work to myself it's not doing anybody any good. So I had already decided that I want to share my work with people regardless of the threat that somebody might steal it because of two reasons. First I am hoping that somebody that has the ability to assess if my work has any value might also be able to judge whether I or my skills have any value also. The second is even if my work gets stolen that is also an indicator to myself that it was actually good and again that somebody else failed to realize that good work doesn't just happen by itself but in fact good people are the ones making good work and if my skills are good enough to produce something good and since I've done good things before I'll be able to do good things again. As far as about Amazon Studios I was just inquiring about how things go if it actually is what they claim to be. Mainly because it's literally the only thing that I had found that would accept openly material from third parties. I mean I live in Slovenia and as far as making movies here it's pretty much impossible unless you start by yourself or get extremely lucky in getting a break mainly by knowing people something that I have never had in my life. So I can imagine that entering a community like the ones in Hollywood or similar might be even tougher. But regardless of all the obsolesces and all the things that I've done in my life the only thing that has enabled me to put all my knowledge and experience in different areas to use has been filmmaking and regardless of how tough things are I intend to keep doing this until it stops making me happy in life. And I agree I have limited experience but as it has been my whole life even my limited level of experience has been much higher than a lot of other people it might not work out or it might but I would never know unless I tried. I would of course love to be able to make my movie myself but as I have always done I will compromise I only hope that I will compromise to the extent that I'll still be content with it. As far as production goes I've been lucky because I had been able to be in contact with people from real productions and observe the workings of productions to the extent that even though there is now way to compare big productions to our little productions that we had done the workflow has been the same as on bigger projects that I have observed. Yes there are more procedures to follow and more units but anytime I'm working on something I organize everything to maximize time utilization and minimize any kind of mistakes. Recently I had a producer on set that usually works on big productions and he was really amazed and impressed of what he saw and what we were able to do with very little actually no budget. But as I have said I haven't had the chance to prove my abilities at any bigger jobs. But it's always a paradox people can't have a chance to prove themselves unless somebody gives them a chance. The problem is that those who can give someone a chance must have the experience to be able to judge who has potencial and what doesn't and be willing to take a calculated risk. I am one of those people. I never gamble but I do take calculated risks that always have back ups and fallback situations and this has literally never let me down even when situations went bad. So if by some good will and lots of luck I'll be able to participate in my movie if it does get made that's awesome and if not well I guess somebody didn't take a good enough risk to make it even better. :) Anyway jokes aside thank you guys again for making the situation a little bit clearer helping me decide what I'm going to do. Best regards

Thank you guys! I completely agree with you guys. Currently I literally have noting to offer that's why I started on my own filming stuff to learn about anything I could. I am a little worried about the rights. If you are really surrendering a lot of your rights. But in either case if it stays on my drive isn't doing anybody any good. I know this business is tough but then again so is anything these days. Thanks & best regards

Hi guys! Anyway as I have stated I'm a beginner filmmaker. I had always wanted to make movies but never had the chance to so one time two years ago when I was on a set it reminded me how much I had always wanted to make movies. So in staid of going to film school and working on productions I tried to read, watch, observe as much as I could myself as well as working as an extra on filming sets I got to observe ever how things worked. After that I tried putting my new skills to work and together with my girlfriend we decided to shoot our own dance video to lean how to put theory into practice and since we were both dancers we could do everything ourselves. Long story short after doing a couple of projects and along the way I realized that I really enjoyed doing production work, cinematography, directing, everything and even writing. So after a long time of having an idea for a movie I sat down to write the story and then after a couple of months of outlining the story I started writing the screenplay and after just three weeks I had completed my first draft. Yes it was only a first draft and I do know I have a lot of work to do before the screenplay would be worthy of it being called a movie screenplay. But never the less the idea is solid and original enough that people have advised me to keep working on it and try and make it into a movie. Since I'm not from the industry and I have no idea how a movie gets made in the initial stages so I started learning about this part and came across the amazon studio's web page where they let you submit your work. My question is if anybody has had any experience with this and is it in fact a good thing and if not I haven't actually found any other ways of trying to get my screen play "into the right hands". Anyway any information about this subject will be much appreciated. Thanks for the help and best regards.

I don't exactly know if it would bother me because all the projects I've worked on as a director were my own and I also wrote the script. But I did have to deal with clients giving their own ides and then writing them into the script and in some cases ended up shooting something I knew was not going to work but in the end some stuff was actually usable and some wasn't. The worst thing is when you have a client set on an idea that you know probably won't work and then when it doesn't giving the client the bad news. But I've always found arguments to support why not to use something versus using something. I guess writers, producers, directors or basically anybody has to deal with this at some point the key is how you use the information or advice. Sometimes it actually helps sometimes it doesn't.

I really like it. I took another look and a look at the website. Really awesome. I can't wait to see the final movie. :D Well I've been using only DSLRs and on the stuff that I've done and a couple of times I've been really happy about the lighting and in turn the quality. But I'll bet that the BMPCC makes an even better image. I always try to find the best already existing lighting and I've used the sun finder app.

The trailer looks awesome! :) I hope I get to see the movie. :) Unfortunately I have no idea what consists as a micro-budget because all of the stuff I've done has been no budge stuff but we did work fairly similarly trying to use piratical lighting and we are usually one person for many different things. I usually write, direct, film and do the editing. Really nice. I hope I'm able to get footage looking that awesome.

Well when I went to collage I fell in love with photography and then got into filmography but after I could do photography but didn't have access to filming equipment. I used to love taking pictures but it's funny because I used to love taking pictures of objects and landscapes but not people but when I'm filming stuff I usually have people in it. Don't know why.

That would actually be pretty cool to see thank you. :) I understand so in the more pro field people usually use avid to edit and when you're used to editing and know what you're doing you don't need that many versions. Sounds logical. I got used to editing with adobe because on every project that I did I've been by myself for production, shooting, directing, editing, the VFX and even sound so I used the whole package to edit because it made it convenient.

Really. So you do everything on one time line? I mean I don't know why but I prefer nesting stuff. Of course not always but a lot of the time it saves me a lot of work when I'm trying something. Why would you recommend using only one timeline?

I've never edited a full movie before but here's something that I figured out about editing since I was in the same predicament as you. When I began I did everything on one timeline and just once sequence but then the first bigger project I did I used nested sequences and I prefer this way better. On the other hand my girlfriend with whom I work also recently wanted to learn editing prefers the one timeline approach. Now here's something interesting I figured out from both approaches. While I understand her when she says that the one timeline is great because you see everything and how it relates to each other and no need for going back and forth when it comes to fixing a problem with footage on the timeline and with fixing problems with more than one clip the nested approach comes really in handy. On the last music video we did we used the nested approach and it came in handy because we wanted the whole thing to mostly look exactly the same but have several different versions with some variations of the scenes. So with the nested approach just duplicated the master timeline and chanced one scene with a variation. Everything even the final color grading stayed the same. Work out fine. On the other hand we could have done something similar with one time line. But in staid of editing only one scene just changed a bunch of footage and then had to watch out not to break something else in the time line while changing the footage and keeping everything aligned with the music would have been much more of a nightmare. So I prefer the nested approach even though I might have 5 or even 6 nested sequences so that the master sequence that is exported is just as it should be. Of course you can always to a sort of mix of both where you nest some stuff but put some footage on top of nested sequences. Because sometimes it's easier to add something on top of something else. But nesting usually makes everything a little cleaner but you have to figure out a game plan from even before starting editing. Nested timeline cleaner easier to fix. Single timeline. Good luck sorting out what's what after a few weeks of not working on it. :) Hope it helps and best of luck.

Me and my partner always pull focus ourselves and doing it on the small DSLR screens is challenging to say at best. What usually helps us is that I usually use a lens that has a longer throw for focusing and my partner she always uses the normal dslr lenses and pulls focus via the lens itself. I've tried to get her to use a follow focus but she says she's more responsive with the lens itself and I guess I can understand that but have never been able to do it myself. What I do is I rehearse the scenes and get used to the movement of the focus and then try to compensate. The problem si if I'm moving around, framing, trying to keep with the background and foreground, not shake the camera too much and then pull focus the result is usually not good so I try to limit the amount of things I have to keep my eye on and then recheck the shots every time I finish. But still sometimes you just go wrong. I'm hoping that now with a new monitor that has peaking it will be easier and bigger project where we can afford the right gear it will get easier. I'm guessing that peaking should be good enough for you to focus. But as I said my experience is limited. Best of luck. :)

Hi guys again. I can't believe the coincidence that I wrote last on 14th of Jan. and today is the 14th of Feb. :) Anyway the shoot went great! We were on location for 14 hours straight and finished only 5 minutes schedule probably because half of the scenes were shot outside and it was freezing that night. Unfortunately at the end somebody that was in charge of the budget for the band figured that paying an extra couple of hundred bucks for renting a 4K camera was too expensive and as a result I was left with my trusty old DSLR for shooting. But in the end it all worked out because the lighting was done right and as a result the footage coming out of the DSLR looked good too even though there is some compression in the footage that's something I and also they will have to live with since I expressed my concerns ahead of time. But all in all I still think that the HD and compression didn't impact the final result enough to bang my head against the wall. And I also am super proud of my whole team because everybody stayed in good spirit and had fun but also gave their best and helped out beyond what anybody could hope for. Anyway I just wanted to say thank you again and even though I wasn't able to use the information this time I'm sure the knowledge will come in handy on the next project that is just around the corner. Here's the video spot on for Valentin's Day... :)

I did exactly the same thing on a project recently and I did it with normal 24fps footage. In esence it doesn't matter what fps. But I did the clip in Adobe After Effects. I used a combination of a luma track matt and and echo effect and then slowed down everything and layed the clips one on the other. What I got is exactly what you were describing streaks and people duplicates or echos of people walking across a cross walk. Hope it helps. Best regards.

Thank you guys. This calculator comes in handy. Well we're coming closer to the shoot and things are clearing out what we'll be able to do and what not. Ultimately the decisions are going to be made based on what the client will be willing to pay. If nothing else I enhanced my knowledge about how much data there is. I'll keep you posted. Thanks again and best regards.

Landon thank you again for your help. I have the manual and have been looking trough it trying learn all about the camera. I am also familiar with all the settings like ISO, iris, shutter speed, NDs, even filming aids. I will be having a follow focus attached that has the ability to be marked with positions and I will also be receiving the camera one day before the shoot. So had already planed to try some test shots and then review and test edit the footage before getting on set. Like I said I had been shooting with a DSLR in much a similar way except it's not a camera. But I have operated professional cameras before it was just a long time ago in the pre digital era. So thanks again and best regards. Wish me luck. :)

Ok thank you guys for clearing things up for me there. I knew about PAL ad the 25fps and NTSC being 30fps because of the electrical system frequencies and flickering it might cause. Also I think I'm going to be using DNxHR since I'll be doing the editing on a PC. I will be shooting some shots at 60fps I just have some concerns about the FS5 since the specs state that it only goes up to 30fps but then I noticed that there was a slow function but I guess I'll just ask the guy that's renting the equipment about it. I need to make the arrangements this week anyway. So thanks again everybody for enlightening me on this subject. Maybe one more question. Any advice since this will be my first time shooting on a camera and operating it myself either than a DSLR what would I need to watch out for. I've looked up the external recorder so I understand the workings of that and even understand all the filming aids like the histogram, false color, RGB parade and focus peaking. I'm a little bit more concerned with operating the camera. I've looked at the controls witch don't seem to complicated and I consider myself a tech kind of person so I don't anticipate any big issues with using it. But never the less any thing I should really watch out for? Thanks again and best regards

I am in PAL country. But wouldn't that change the look of the footage. I'm trying to achieve a film look because of the story behind the music. Or does it matter. I was under the impression if you shoot 24fps you get a more filmic look and if you shoot 25fps or 30fps you get a more videoish look.

Hey guys! Thanks so much for the information I was reading up on it all day yesterday and this cleared up a bunch of dilemmas for me. The majority of the video will be shot on 24fps just some elements of the story part will be shot at 60fps so that we can get a few slow motion shots in there to make it look better. I think the 250GB will do fine for 2:20h since we have a scheduled break in between the inside shot scenes and the exterior shoots and I can clear the drive and create two backups in the mean time. Even if it's a little less it should be fine since we can do an intermediate break and clear the drive. The Sony will be set in SLog so that should be fine. I just can't seem to decide on weather using DNxHR or ProRes. I'll be the one doing the editing so I should chose whatever is better for me. The only concerns I had was not having enough disk space to edit everything because I got scared by a guy who was telling me stories about how many terabytes I'd need for one video witch I knew was BS but at the same time had no idea how much data it actually way. So I'll have to figure out either DNxHR HQ or ProRes HQ on one hand I'm leaning towards ProRes HQ because researching DNxHR HQ I saw that it was 8bit and HQX was 12bit and since the FS5 outputs a 10bit ProRes HQ sims to be the logical choice regardless of slower performance on PC's since I'll be working with proxy files anyway. As for DSLRs I complacently agree they are not suited for video capture but on the other hand they are really accessible and for starting out I must say it was a fantastic learning experience to be able to try stuff with them since cameras are really inaccessible. I mean I'm currently playing with the idea of buying a camera but at the current prices the logical choices are financially out of reach and the ones that might be are unusable for me and also unless we can get more and more gigs it's a waist of money anyway. So for now playing around with a DSLR and for project like this renting and then when and if things pick up a camera. At the same time I'm finally happy because I'm doing something I've always wanted to be doing and have at least a grasp of what and how I should be doing it. So thank you guys for the information and help it's really appreciated. Plesnet weekend to everybody.

Hi guys! So in a couple of weeks my team and I are starting production on our first music video. The pre production process has been done everything we need to know to shoot the video has been sorted. Usually I used to shoot with my DSLR but a few days ago the idea fell onto the table to rent a camera and try and get a little higher quality. Well I'm happy to e able to raise the quality of the image but I also have a couple of concerns. The camera that may be rented is a Sony FS5 with a Atomos Shotgun Flame recorder. I have never used a more professional camera with an external recorder before but from what I have observed and learned on other shoots I gather that operation should not be that big of a deal and I'm certain that I will be able to operate the camera and figure out everything I need to know in the half a day that I'll have before shooting. My concerns are more with the external recorder and what it shoots. From what I've been able to read it captures 4K up to 60fps to ProRes 422. My question is first how much data will I be capturing. In esence how much disk space will the files take up so that I can ascertain how many drives we'll need. The video is about 4 minutes long and for the shots with music sync we're going to have an estimated about 35 takes. I estimate about 2 and a half hours of footage. Then we have another estimated 35 takes of about half a minute for some story inserts some of them that will be shot in 60fps so I estimate about half an hour to 45 min of footage in total for the story inserts. So I guess there will be around 3 and a half hours of footage. Would this fit on the 250GB drive in the recorder or is it more? If not what would be the most optimal settings to record in? The video final output will be 2K. The second thing is would ProRes that this recorder provides give us ability to color grade well the footage? With DSLR footage I had always had to be very very carefuller how to shoot so that we got te desired look with final grading. Anyway that's about it I'll be really grateful for any advice concerning anything with this. I'm confident about all the aspects of the video we have a great song a wonderful story to show and I'm confident we planed everything well. I just want to show it as best as it could be shown. I really want to make our first music video a good one. Because I think that I and our team has learned a lot in a year and I'd like to further our knowledge and up our work every project we do. Thanks and best regards Vital

That's exactly what I was thinking. If you think of it as a dialog yes it's #3 but her POV is the phone so #2 work for me to.

It's very easy just drop your footage onto a timeline (with audio of course) and drop your audio files on another audio track then select both footage and audio and right click synchronize and select by sync by audio. If your audio contains some of the same audio in the footage it should sync up. Usually works fine unless nothing matches or if one of the audio tracks is really degraded or just bad. Good luck. :)

Hi guys! Well I've just started development on one of my newest projects that I'm really excited on witch is my first music video for a band. A little background the song is a balad talking about how he's sad because he broke up with is girl and now he's feeling alone etc. I've figured out that I want the scenes where he's alone to look more dark and isolated and the flashback scenes where they're together more bright and open. Most of the stuff I've figured out but one scene has me baffled and can't decide how to do it. Anyway it's the opening shot and I want to position him at night in the middle of a straight road in center of frame walking away from the camera with a guitar in his hand. I will light his silhouette from opposite the camera light straight towards the lens and fill light to the side to show a little definition. All the rest I want pitch black so you can't see what or where it is. But my problem is since I can't wait for the weather to just stop raining I'd like to wet the road at least the part where he's walking with water so that it reflects the light. The problem is the road that is dark and straight is currently at a little remote location so bringing large amounts of water or a fire hidrant is out of the question. I was thinking of getting a few extra large cans for water and add some glycerin to it to make it stay reflective longer. Anybody have any experience with this? Thanks for the help and best regards.

I was tired at looking for something affordable so I made my own. This first one is a test one for a larger one but I still use it on small stuff. The design was done one day on the idea I got of a youtube video and then bought all the stuff and hacked it together. The wooden base plates were cut by laser by a friend of mine and it worked out great. The next one is going to be a bit beefier and bigger to support a heavier camera system. I really don't see the reason why I should pay $1000 for something I don't know if I'm going to be able to pay off and make myself. Best regards.

Hi guys! Ok so I'm not an experienced editor or anything like that. I had cinematography at university and when we were editing video we unfortunately never used anything as advanced as Premiere Pro so I had to learn everything myself. Like everything else. Anyway I haven't had much problems with it just twice but the two times are the most troublesome of all making me thing either something really wrong with my workflow or the PC isn't up to the job or something is really wrong with the software. So here's my usual work flow. 1st. organize footage on drive and setup the directory structure of the project (usually the same for all) and then I sort the footage into folders. 2nd. I then make a project file and import the footage (that's when the proxy files get generated) and organize it further in Premiere. 3rd. start creating a timeline or multiple depending on the complexity of the project. Usually I edit parts of the project on separate timelines and then bring stuff together in another timeline and then add everything onto another timeline to add stuff like titles or different kinds of stuff. Sometimes I need to replace some footage with sequences from After Effects or do audio in Audition. Both of these links work fine. 4th I go back into the different timelines and color correct the footage between each other so that it sort of matches with each other. Then go into the timeline where they come together and match them together so that it matches or if needed color grade the sequences as needed each. Then if needed I color grade the whole thing. 5th the I check everything turn of the effects do maybe some reediting and add the ending splash footage and I'm ready for exporting 6th kick on the last timeline containing just the finished sequence and queue it in media encoder and render it out. Most of the time everything works great . But on one of the projects I had a problem with rendering because it kept failing in because of the Lumetri Color Plugin that kept crashing either Premiere or Encoder while rendering using the GPU. Fixed that by not rendering with GPU. Rendered for hours a 7 minute project. But never found an explanation what was wring accept maybe drivers (witch were updated) and or maybe a bug in Adobe. But the last project was the biggest problem and I actually used more time trying to export the thing than editing it. Witch is really screwed up. Anyway the problem was that project rendered previews fine in Premiere. But the moment I tried to render it out it got stuck and cycled forever until killing the process. Same thing if I queued it into Encoder it would run and then even before encoding the audio just stand still. No logs found or errors or anything. Didn't help if I tried with or without the GPU. Finally I got it working somehow by clearing cashes and then resetting all plugins and interfaces and deleting all the previews and anything else I could find. Granted I had an additional problem that Encoder now showed that Media Offline but fixed that by killing Encoder and starting it back again and somehow worked. Anyway before this problem I exported something similar in length just a day or two before and it worked fine. Now here's my question to anybody who might be an expert. Might the problem lie somewhere between the nested sequences since when we do dance videos I usually put the footage on a timeline and treat it as a multi-camera sequence (usually around 10-12 layers) and then nest it with other sequences on another timeline. But most of the time this works fine but there are a lot of nested sequences but I don't know I don't think this could be the problem and not even the color correction or grading since all the footage is proxy files half the size of HD. The only time I switch to full everything is to check if the sharpens and colors are ok and I always do this on stills without even playing. Besides on the latest project it rendered inside Premiere just fine. The footage is almost always MOV files from a Nikon DSLR or maybe a Canon DSLR. Unfortunately I've only worked with 1080p and never above 60fps and always use proxy files. Granted the PC I use isn't a top model for editing but I guess it should suffice for 1080p and besides the only one I have access to at the moment. It's an all in HP with 8GB of ram and an Intel i5 3 GHz processor and a Nvidia GeForce 710A graphics card. The disk drive is unfortunately not an SSD. But like I said I only work in HD and don't have access to any other PC or software. Anyway thank you for your input any thoughts are welcome. Best regards

This thing is really cool the A810 and I actually found something even cheaper called DC-10H Monitor HDMI Extra Editor Scope does the same thing. Very interesting.