We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Justin Cutburth a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Justin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.
Something I love about filmmaking is the various mediums I get to work with. I went to school for animation, and did an internship in Houston. Great company, and people; however, sitting in front of a computer as a new animator, and trying to tackle large scale 3D modeling projects was pretty daunting. I would sit in front of a computer snacking all day feeling bored because I was doing one thing, and I wasn’t particularly great at it. With filmmaking, I get to draw, write, play with technology, edit on a computer, and be on location with physical elements and devices.
As such, there are aspects to filmmaking I already had at least SOME practice with. I had some experience in photography, creating storyboards, and I enjoyed creative writing. There was still much to learn, and I turned to YouTube for that. I compared various cameras because a previous camera I had did not have great quality if it wasn’t used in the most ideal lighting. I learned (somewhat) about data compression, and lighting. I watched interviews with seasoned filmmakers, and listened to their advice on being persistent, using cameras to enhance visual storytelling, overcoming issues with their projects, and tips on screenwriting.
After I felt like I had the initial run down I needed to get started, I discovered that the best way to learn is to just go out there, and do it. With each project, no matter how well you pre-plan, you WILL encounter issues, and you have to figure out solutions to those issues with your crew. Each time you resolve one of those issues, you learn, and it makes you that much better for your next project. Had I started creating experimental shorts sooner, I probably would have learned quicker than the path I chose, but I don’t know if learning faster would have been better in my situation. Bringing people into a project, you want them to feel confident in your ability as a director to lead them. Jumping in with a team of people immediately may have caused more issues than taking a little extra time to really dive in, and learn as much as possible before embarking on that creative journey.
Hard to pinpoint exactly which skills were most essential considering how many hats I am wearing during a production. For new directors, it’s important to initially do your own shooting, learn how to properly set up and record audio, and the basics of video editing. I notice people are often hesitant to working with audio, but it is such a crucial piece to filmmaking. You can show an audience a slightly overexposed, or grainy image, and they’ll stick with it. If your audio sounds garbled, or clipping, or you hear wind and road noise over your actors, your audience will quickly lose interest. It’s also crucial to understand how to work with people. How do you foster creativity with your cast and crew, and make them feel comfortable to pitch ideas, and be vulnerable in front of the camera? How do you handle issues with someone on your cast or crew? I can only imagine the initial stress of working with big names in the industry on your first break out movie, so understanding how to be assertive, and communicate with your team at this level is very important so that you don’t one day start a project with an A list actor, and feel your project falling to pieces because of a lack of communication, or being assertive about your vision without disregarding their input.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am a filmmaker who has written, and directed three short films. Two of those short films, Extraction and Repentance, are available on YouTube. My third short film, Desolate, is in the final stages of post-production, and will be released sometime this year on YouTube.
I started out as an animator, and wanted to eventually create an adult animated show. As I did more courses in filmmaking while attending The Art Institute, I realized filmmaking is actually my passion. A friend from work talked to me about some projects he wanted to do, and so we got together with a few other people, and did videography for Houston Press. I became frustrated over time because I wanted to create narrative stories instead of short digital news pieces for Houston Press. I also felt like we were spinning our wheels, but never seemed to go in any direction.
Eventually, I backed out of that group, and decided to do my own thing. I started up the company darkabyss, where my stories are often dark in tone, and explore darker aspects of human nature. I always found dark pieces of literature, movies, TV shows, music, etc more interesting than surface level conflicts that are easily resolved.
It’s hard for me to fully explain what sets me apart from others because I feel like others pick up on my visual style, and ways of storytelling better than I do. I would say that my projects, for the current level I am at as a filmmaker, are all fairly ambitious, but also grounded well enough to where I’m not biting off way more than I can chew. Aside from directing, I am also the primary screenwriter, and video editor for each project. I was the primary cinematographer for my first two films, but handed that off to a friend for my new film, Desolate. We also create almost everything from scratch for each project. All shots, most visual effects, all audio samples, etc are created by the crew of each project. During post-production of Repentance, I spent 5 months capturing the sounds of running and walking until I felt like I had the right sound. In hindsight, a lot of that time could have been reduced had I learned more about audio preamps, and properly understanding how to bring up the audio gain without bringing up the noise floor (wind, room noise, hiss, hum, etc) with it.
Each of my projects takes on average two years to complete. A lot of planning goes into each project. I pre-planned each jogging route for Repentance, and created maps of where those routes would start and end. I spend weeks location scouting, taking pictures during day and night, and try to preplan my shots. My newest film, Desolate, consumed 12TB of data filming in RAW. Video editing that amount of data takes a while to optimize, to cut and place on the timeline, and sync audio with it. I’ve learned that taking the time to name every file, while tedious at first, is a MASSIVE time saver later when you have to go back and find a particular audio file. During Extraction, all my files were default names so finding one particular audio take would require me to listen carefully to a landmark sound in the background (like a door closing, a cough following a certain piece of dialogue, etc), and took an insanely long time to go back and forth with different takes. That being said, this is what I am passionate about, and I put every ounce of energy into each of these projects to make them the absolute best that I can. At the end of the day, I want to ensure when everyone gets together to watch the initial screening, that my cast and crew leave feeling proud of what they spent so many long nights filming, and are proud to have their names stamped on the project.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Repentance was a project all about resilience. From going out 12 different times to capture drone footage of entering and exiting a bridge on a busy street, to spending 9 months or so doing foley sound effects, another example was particularly brutal.
We wrapped filming for 6 hours or so in early January 2020 in The Woodlands, TX. I was losing my voice, and feeling a little out of it. The next day, we set out for Huntsville to film the scene in the woods. We filmed from about 5:00pm until 5:00am. It was in the 40s, the ground was damp. I hadn’t eaten much that day because we were in a groove, and I wanted to keep pushing forward. On my drive home, my head was pulsating. I got home, unloaded a car full of gear, took it into my parents house around 6-6:30am. I did a second count to make sure I had everything, and started offloading footage onto my hard drives since it usually took about 2-4 hours to offload my footage.
I felt extremely sick, and crawled into my bath tub, and ran the water while I just laid in the tub letting the water switch between warm and cool to help balance my temperature which was starting to burn up. After 30 minutes or so, I knew I eventually had to get out. The next morning, I felt the urge to throw up, and got up to rush to my bathroom. I opened the door, and everything stretched like I was in a long tunnel. I felt myself fall back, and slammed my head on my bathroom sink. I eventually made the decision I could not film that day, and called off the shoot planned for Sunday.
To this day, I don’t know if I had covid since I tested negative for the flu. Whatever it was, it took two weeks before I could get any solid food down, and started to actually recover. As soon as my energy felt up for it, I reached out to my cast and crew, and tried to solidify our next dates for filming to get back on track.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding part for me as a filmmaker is when the project is finished, setting up the screening event for cast/crew, and others to attend. I enjoy seeing how people react to the film. It lets me see what worked, and didn’t work effectively in the film. Hearing people pick up on intended subtle nuances, and react to various scenes how I intended for them to be reacted to is extremely rewarding.
I love to write and direct because it gives me freedom in the concepts I come up with, and how the story is told. Screening events, or someone approaching me months later after watching it is always very rewarding because it tells me what to keep doing, and what to improve. Hopefully, one day I can get a project funded by a studio, and turn this into a full-time career.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @darkabyssfilms
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justincutburth
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@darkabyssfilms
- Other: Tik Tok – @darkabyssfilms
