My first short film

[Vital Butinar]

Well my girlfriends sister asked us to produce a short promo video for their sci-fi conference.
Since we were going to shot anyway and they didn't have any money we decided on a compromise they'd pay for the costumes, transportation, food and get us a few people to help out and we'd shoot the thing and get a short film out of it.
Since I've been itching to try and shoot I short film I figured it was the perfect opportunity to gain some experience in this area.

I loved the whole process from start to finish even though we had quite a few problems with lead actors dropping out or not even speaking English. To key cast getting stuck in traffic and delaying the shoot for several hours to having to change key locations because of the locations being accessible. But all in all a great experience from start to finish and I can't wait to do it again on the next film. 

I directed the short film and although the original story was written by my girlfriend's sister it was changed in the edit because I decided that some stuff did not work. The cinematography was done mostly by my girlfriend with a few shots done by myself. The editing and color grading was also done by the both of us with the bulk of editing being done by my girlfriend.

It was shot on the BM Pocket 4K, with a Rokinon 35mm T1.5 Cine lens and Canon 100-400mm tele lens. Sound was captured with a Tascam DR60 and a boom mic.

All in all other the fuel we used to get to where we shot it cost us nothing to make. The costumes were rented at a costume rental house for about $40 and I think that Watson's costume was bought for $10. The props were borrowed to us by friends and except of myself, my girlfriend and her sister nobody else had ever worked on a film set before but all it all it was great and for the most part we had fun.

I know that it could have been done better but the purpose was to get our feet wet to prepare us for further projects.

Best regards
Vital

 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Nice job with overall look, (costumes, lighting, etc.)  but seemed like too many pans and pans are kinda fast. I didn't have time to look at it all, my slow rustbelt internet kept jamming. Send in some more projects.

Good luck!

[Vital Butinar]

Thank you.

Like I said I know it's not perfect the whole point was to get a feel for what it takes to make a film.
The pans are a bit of bad decision result because we were really on a tight schedule. We shot everything in less than a day and a half. Actually a night and a whole day. So we made the decision that everything with the exception of only 3 shots would be shot handheld.
Hats of to my girlfriend who had the camera on her shoulder for 16 hours straight so the fast pans were kind of the result of this.
We should have used a tripod for some stuff but we were already running tight with time.