Vital Butinar

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.

Yeah I know. I mean the prices are really crazy. Yes I realize that a lot of the equipment used for filming is really high quality but the prices of any equipment you can name is by my estimate overpriced by a factor of 10 regardless of quality. So when you're starting of like I am and have very very limited budgets either you improvise and find non conventional solutions or spend loads of money you don't have for stuff that's overpriced that you're gambling weather you'll make it back or not. I actually have a couple of really good ideas for lower budget stuff that I haven't been able to figure out how to make. :)

Ok cool that is an option I didn't even consider. It's not cheap but it's a start or at least I can start searching in the right direction. Thank you.

Hi guys! I'm relatively new here and I was wondering if I could ask for a little help with something. I'm planning on doing a project with the unfortunate detail of having a very limited budget. Unfortunately an all too common thing lately. Anyway it would come really in handy if the 1st AC and the director would be able to look at a screen and see what the camera is actually shooting. Now on sets they usually have remote video systems. And I actually don't have any problems hooking up a pc monitor to a the camera or even multiple pc monitors. Since I do have access to a bunch of them. My question since I've seen LCD TVs on set showing the camera image. Is there something witch I have absolutely know idea what to call, some kind of electronic box that would let you see a histogram and focus peaking etc. on the monitor or TV hooked up to the camera. Of course something that isn't so expensive that it would be cheaper to buy field monitors that already contain this functionality. Anyway thank you for your time and ideas witch are very welcome. Best regards

I'm a complete beginner in filming and all that goes with it. But at university I had a course of cinematography and filming that I loved and ever since I can remember I wanted to make movies. Well I became a semi-professional dancer in the last 10 years and when I was in a dance video I remembered how much I wanted to be in film businesses so with my girlfriend we decide to film a dance video of us to learn everything we could about the production process. So we did everything and got a nice dance video out of it and because of the video we got to make 8 more for various other dancers we knew and I must say I learned a lot. Anyway my advice to you is don't use an iphone or any kind of small camera but use a DSLR at least because you can do much more with it (unfortunately you're still limited in some areas) but the image will be much better. Make a shot plan in advance before filming and decide what exactly you're going to shoot before getting to your locations. I even went and scouted the locations in advance and decided what and how I'd do everything. Figure out what to do with lighting and or use onsite lighting decide how to use it and do it constantly because otherwise you shots won't match with each other. Also don't forget to prepare your audio in advance. What I did was I added some beeps to the beginning and end of the audio for the video that I used when filming on locations and it made aligning for editing much easier (even though software can align audio well this was much more reliable). But the most useful advice I can give you and this really depends on the type of dance and theme of the song is to plan your shots according to the choreography. Get the artist to give you a recording of the rehearsal of the choreography so you can prepare and look at the performance as a first person watching the show and then make notes of what you noticed the most (I usually notice either facial expressions and interesting dance styling movements because shows are meant to do that) then when you know what's interesting decide how to shoot the close ups of those elements because they are the once that are going to give your video the dot on top of the i. You have to remember it's that first person experience that makes a show great to watch but if shoot only a wide angle it's like watching a dance show from 400 feet and it loses it's charm and the close up shots of expressions and things like that is what brings a similar experience to the viewer compared to a live watcher. Also if it's a group or even if it's just a pare of dancers you can fake some movements or adjust positions to get a better shot from a different angle but this also depends on how are the performers able to adapt and adjust to your directing. Basically with the wide shots the more coverage you get the better off you because you have more options in editing and the close ups are what make it look really nice. As far as editing goes and again it depends on the style its similar to I guess it reminded me of action films where they cut on action and then you just go by feeling in some places what you want the person watching to see whether you show them something a little before it happens or after depends on the pacing. I think of stuff like this like editing a conversation it has to stay interesting. Sometimes you let the viewer be surprised by close up and sometimes you lead them in with the wide shot. Anyway that's about as much as I can give you in general I hope it helps and that you're able to make an awesome video (hope you show it when it's done) and have great fun making it. I know I did on all of mine. :) Best regards

Hi guys! First let me introduce myself. My name is Vital and I'm from Slovenija. Anyway when I was a kid I wanted to make movies the moment my dad bought the first Hi8 camera. Well since I was a kid we shot a lot and edited very little and finished almost nothing. Then when studied graphic design in college but my favorite curses were of course photography and cinematography. So when I graduated I kept on doing photography since DSLRs were getting available but didn't have a video camera so I didn't shoot anything for a bunch of years. Well one of my other hobbies is also dancing and since I've been a semi-professional dancer for years and last year I got to perform in commercial it reminded me how much I've always wanted to make movies or anything along these lines. So with the money I got from that very video I bought myself a new DSLR that could shoot video and started learning about everything and since my girlfriend had always wanted to also do something along these lines we decided to make our own dance video to see what we could do and learn about stuff. Well soon after our first video a bunch of people from our dance scene contacted us that they thought we made a nice video and wanted to know if we were interested in making a dance video for them. So we got our first gig and a couple of others after that and a little more than half a year later we've made about 7 dance videos and it's looking like we're going to do even more. I joined because I'd love to do more along the lines of producing even more stuff and that means learning at every step of the way. That's why I decided to post a few of the videos and get some feedback. This is our first video: Last Dance It was shot during the summer using only available light sources and at times a reflector on my Nikon D7100. It took us about 60 hours to shoot at all the locations and find the angles and everything. So first project ever. This is the gig we got based on our first video The first one was a group dance video https://vimeo.com/204753155 This one was hard just because the set where we were shooting was just an empty dance studio so we got a little creative with the lighting and used the dividing wall to make it a little more interesting. Well one of the dancers from this group gave us a challenge for when she said she needed a bollywood style video done in just one week. We organized everything from a to z in two days shot it in one day with 11 people that came out and helped and edit it in just two days. So there's a bunch of stuff that could have been done better if we had the time in post. But what I was happy was the shoot because it all went according to plan and we got everything I wanted and on scheduled. Then we got another chance to make another bollywood dance video This was a fantastic location to shoot the only thing I wasn't happy here was the coverage at times we didn't shoot enough footage because the performers weren't constant and kept trying out different stuff but there were only two critical areas and I was able to fix it with some b role. And this is the final video we did it's also a bollywood style video I was very happy with this video even though it was made again on a tight deadline but everything worked out great because I planed everything down to the letter but we got a little screwed with time on one of the locations. That's it from us for now. Like I said I'm learning at every step. The way I see it right now the thing that is hurting me the most is the camera since I'm getting some noise from the compression and if I get the white balance wrong I'm screwed in post. Hoped you guys liked at least some of the videos and I hope I'll be able to learn some more and get even better at this stuff in the future. Best regards and thanks for watchingVital

Wow. Great visuals and I love the film noir look of the venetian blinds. I hope I can once be able to make such nice visuals and even the film grain looks great to me.