Evan Gütt

Evan Gütt is the best indie filmmaker I know. And by indie I mean he is self taught, not going to a standard film-school, and still is more talented than a lot of film kids I know. Give Evan a homemade dolly, a Canon T2i and After Effects and he can make a movie that takes a lot of my classmates an entire crew and a grip truck to produce.

Evan is a good example of the statement “the most important things I’ve ever learned I didn’t learn in school.” I went to middle school and high school with him and I know for a fact he didn’t learn his film skills from the classes we took. He taught himself, and then I’ve learned a lot from him. The experience I’ve gotten from working with Evan and the products we produce from those collaborations I’ve been more proud of than what I’ve produced at Chapman. Heck, Evan has probably taught me more than a semester long Cinematography class.

Evan knows what looks good intrinsically. He didn’t have to be taught how to use a camera or how to get a good shot. He just did what he felt looked good. And I’ve copied a lot of his style. When I saw that he would get interviews really close up, filling the screen with his subjects face and really focusing on the eyes, I tried that too. When I saw how he arranged his windows in Final Cut Pro in order to get the biggest viewing window possible, I did that too. In fact, there’s a window setup preset on my computer called “The Evan Gütt Spread,” fashioned after how he set up his editing windows. There’s also a preset saved in my clip conversion software called “Evan’s Preset” and it allows me to edit without rendering every couple of seconds.

Every time I go home I usually do a photo shoot with Evan, and every time I go back to school I hear about a recent movie he’s made. His short film “Hatch” won Best Picture at the campus movie festival at Oregon State University and qualified for nationals. (http://www.campusmoviefest.com/movies/6737-hatch). Check out more of his stuff at http://vimeo.com/evangutt