Tim Buttner - Multi-Media Expert


Tim is a Multi-Media Expert with skills that span various forms of media. Tim began writing screenplays before he was twelve, completing his first feature-length screenplay at sixteen. He began filming in high school and at seventeen gained experience interning at Edgewood Studios on the set of Zombie Town. Tim continued to study film at Drexel University, establishing himself in the Stereoscopic 3D revolution after attending workshops in New York City with Florian Maier on Stereoscopic Film Production. After graduating from Drexel's Film & Video Program with a Bachelor of Science, and with a Screenwriting & Playwriting Minor, Tim worked for Digital Revolution Studios under Craig Tanner and further worked in stereoscopic 3D. While at Drexel Tim co-founded a company (One Forest Films) with high school friends and for several years helped build the company as CTO, and Chief Web Designer. Tim has been a contributing writer for MarketSaw, and as well selected as a Beta Tester for Blackmagic Design on the URSA Mini 4.6K camera.


REELS:

CINEMATOGRAPHY REEL



EDITOR & VXF REEL



view resume

sevices and rates

equipment and post


Tim was also a contributing writer to MarketSaw, a 3D blog. Check it out: www.marketsaw.com




  Filmography


Commercials


Music Videos


Modeling Videos


Short Films


Web Series


Live Events


 



 

 

—Favorite Quotes—

"Cinematography, a military art. Prepare a film like a battle." — Robert Bresson

"'Nobody's perfect' is the line that most sums up my work. There is no comedy, no drama about perfect people." — Billy Wilder

"Structure depends on strategy: strategy is determined according to events." — Cao Cao, from Sun Tzu's The Art of War

"I shall hang my 'lecturing' on the same peg with my other failures and follies. It must be a long peg and a strong peg to hold them all." — George Perkins Marsh

"Will the science of the human heart, around which all contemporary art is based, exhaust so completely the writer's powers of imagination that in future the only novels that are written will be chronicles of various events?" — Giovanni Verga

"Train easy, fight hard… and die.
 Train hard, fight easy… and win." — Unknown

 

—Personal Quotes—

"Movies are not watched. They are an encounter with a life's experience not your own."

"I'm well trained in the art of turning shit to gold."

"'My favorite movies are the ones inside my head."

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Review


Updated on May 2, 2014, 2:43 PM - Written by Tim Buttner

 

Let me start by saying that this movie is an average film overall. Whether you want to look at amongst superhero movies or all of filmmaking history the movie falls into the category of average. This is why I ended up deciding to give the movie a C+ score, and after reading my thoughts you can see the movie for yourself to make up your own mind.


Flat out the story and plot are the main areas where this movie fell flat and was very "BLAAHH!" In the very beginning of the movie my suspension of disbelief is thrown because I can't understand how in the past Peter's father was supposed to have uploaded a video file over an Ethernet port from a private jet to the cloud... Did the cloud exist back then? When is back then? I'd say late 1990's or early 2000's if the movie was taking place in present day, which seems reasonable to assume. So how does he not only upload the file, but get interrupted and start from the same place each time. As some of us know if we start uploading a file to a server via FTP and it gets interrupted you have to start over again. Only sometimes if you're lucky it will continuing from where it got interrupted. That's one of the first things that was hard to swallow.


The movie continues at an uneven pace and often gets to a slow crawl despite the action sequences that pop up. At the center is a love story that is strong and is done well thanks to the great performances from Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, but the rest of the movie fails to take off. The plot revolving around what Peter's father did never really feels like it works, nor does his father's explanation for why Peter would have gotten his abilities while anyone else wouldn't. The movie is an exercise in waste, and as well fails to bring anything truly new to the table. The conclusion of the love story at the end of this movie is the only fitting aspect, and the only thing the audience will have an emotional reaction to. At the same time it makes it difficult to bring Peter's true love interest of the Spiderman universe Mary Jane Watson into the mix.


Another area I had trouble understanding how it could happen, and was not an area my suspension of disbelief would accept the event, was in the creation of Jamie Foxx's Electro. First, Foxx's Max/Electro character is underdeveloped and then there's no clue given as to why he would survive his accident to turn into this villainous character and no one else would. Especially since electric eels are involved and the movie establishes that Oscorp has abandoned animal experimentation after the events of the last film. So why are the eels there? Also, what about the bullies and tormentors of Max from earlier in the film? Why do they disappear never to be heard or seen again? I'm sure Max would have wanted revenge on them. There's a serious failure on the storytelling here.


So next we come to the other villain of the movie: Harry Osborn, AKA The Green Goblin. His character was also underdeveloped, but was also way too sullen. Dane Dehaan did a fine job with what he had to work with, but the emotional range of the character was sullen and really angry. His relationship with Peter wasn't developed enough and additionally the decease that afflicted his father and now consumes him felt rushed. His overall purpose was to setup the next installment's plot.


And, that's the biggest pitfall of this movie: it's all setup for the bigger franchise. It doesn't stand on its own. Paul Giamatti was poorly used as an extremely one-dimensional Aleksei Sytsevich who will end up being The Rhino in the next film. His character is over-animated and over the top and terribly uses the high level of acting Giamatti is capable of delivering. It doesn't seem like he'll work in The Amazing Spiderman 3 as a compelling villain. It's all a setup for the Sinister Six, and Harry Osborne will be at the center as The Green Goblin.


Beyond the story the technical aspects of the film were on par with a big budget movie like this. The stereoscopic 3D was average however because they chose to make it a hybrid instead of a fully native 3D production. I call it hybrid because it was shot in 2D with 35mm film and all the digital VFX were rendered in stereo. This caused a lot of the live action elements shot on 35mm to feel flatter as the 3D wasn't pushed enough for there to be true depth in the shots. A lot of the CGI elements created by the VFX department worked great in stereo and they pushed it as much as they should have, but that didn't help the earlier decision that the rest would be converted to 3D. It was a step back from the last installment. Also, 3D conversion on 2D shot action scenes where it's close shaky camera and quick cutting never works well for me. I saw the movie in MasterImage 3D and Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound.


The sound design wasn't anything innovative, but was technically good. The score by Hans Zimmer felt recycled from his previous scores. The Electro theme and music style worked well and had some creativity in it, but still sounded too similar to what Hans Zimmer has done in The Dark Knight franchise and last year's Man of Steel. It's easy to expect more from this talented composer.


Marc Webb did a fine job making this movie, but in the end failed to go beyond average. It's going to be hard keeping excitement amongst fans with this by the numbers delivery. Let's hope that things are greatly improved with the next installment.

 

comments powered by Disqus