Florent Piovesan
“Mom would take me hiking around the many lakes we have here in the Alps, whereas with my dad would take me on family walks with his new family. With dad, most of my time was naturally in a group whereas with my mom, it was very much one on one. It’s funny now to reflect on those different dynamics, and how they profoundly influenced my love of documenting things in film.”
“My taste in things was very much like my father’s taste. Dad would take me to see films like ‘Lord of the Rings’ or buy me books such as Harry Potter. He even bought me my first disposable camera, which was to ultimately change my world. And so those common interests had a huge impact on what I do today for a living.”
“Although his career as an alpine rescuer was incredibly adventurous, my love of adventure and traveling actually came from my mom. While I was living with mom, we were pretty much borderline poor by French standards. In France they have this really interesting form of welfare where poorer people receive benefits from both the government and your employer. And although we were poor, we actually had access to subsidized travel. And so mum and I would head off on adventures to places live Egypt and Greece together.”
“And on those trips abroad I would take my disposable camera that my dad would buy for me. So mom created the opportunities for me to go places, and my dad gave me the means to document and preserve those experiences.”
“I remember being very specific about the things I wanted to document back then. Realizing some years later, that it’s unusual for a nine year old kid to focus on the things that interested me. Looking back on my shots from those early trips, I can see the subjects that caught my interest then, hasn’t really changed from what I shoot now. As a kid, I was framing my shots in a similar way as I would today as a professional.”
“Mom was also into photography, but her style was more about preserving her memories of us together. Somehow she managed to buy a JVC video camera which she took absolutely everywhere. That was the one thing we had, that only rich people had back then. I guess people put their saving into different things. And for mom, it was all about remembering our travels together.”
“I remember when I was very young, constantly thinking about the things we saw together. I’ve always loved history, so I prefered going to places like Egypt and Greece rather than holidaying in the south of France or Spain, like all of my friends did. I was always thinking to myself ‘when you are thirty, you’ll really enjoying seeing all of this again’. Back then, I was mostly shooting things for my older-self.”
“I remember going to Tunisia with my school, which I was super excited about it because of the Star Wars connection. I recall being the only kid on that trip taking photos, and so documenting and recording memories was very important to me. And so I’ve learned to find my happiness in my own creativity.”
“For many years, my travels were always recorded on my disposable cameras. But then as I got older, the quality of my photos and videos became more important to me. This was about the time my grandfather developed Alzheimers and his memory began failing him. I guess seeing his loss of memory put greater emphasis on my efforts to document my life for an older version of myself. Instead of it being for me in my thirties, I was now thinking about me in my sixties and seventies.”
“I’ve always had a love affair with filmmaking. And even today, I watch as many films as my time permits. When I was a kid I was always buying the BTS to movies. Fascinated by the locations and the productions, I would dream constantly about visiting all of the places I had seen on these movies. And so my travels overseas to places like the US, Europe, Iceland and Asia, began with my fascination with those locations from movies. I guess this where my enduring love for New Zealand first started; from simply owning a BTS video of ‘Lord of the Rings.'”
“Still wanting to document my experiences visiting these amazing locations, I spent all of my money on DSLRs which I would use for video making. Because I loved going to music festivals and concerts, I then purchased a small Sony Cybershot that I could sneak in with me. The more I filmed, the more I fell in love with editing and producing my own content. I then saved all of my money from a summer job to buy a Mac with Final Cut Pro 7, which certainly helped shift gears for me.”
“It was around this time that I finished high school and started thinking about university. I do have to say, France back then was not a good place to study filmmaking or media. My experiences were of a very conservative education system where they push you into economics or finance. So as a compromise, I figured on studying marketing as it was the only course related to media I could think of.”
“Sadly nothing in France at that time was very practical, with all of my studies being completely theoretical - which I totally hated. Anything to do with media and creativity was utterly discouraged, so I found that first year studying very difficult. Discouraged by my studies, I decided to go traveling again, but this time to Australia.”
“I had saved $3,000 which I thought would be enough for travelling for a few months! But after only three weeks, all I had left was just $90. I was incredibly lucky to get a casual job with a printing company in Sydney, that allowed me to stay in Australia a bit longer. That extra time working there enablement me to head off to my all-time dream destination of New Zealand.”
“Having just lived in Australia where the air is warm and the sunlight is so bright, it was like a huge relief for me when I stepped off the plane in New Zealand. The seasons there were much colder. The mountains were higher and the alpine air reminded me of home in the French Alps. A few years later on another trip, when I did finally travel down to Queenstown in the South Island, it oddly felt familiar to me. Where I grew up in France is 45 degrees latitude north, and coincidently Queenstown in New Zealand is 45 degrees latitude south. So there is a bit of a similar vibe to the two locations.”
“Although the light is similar, I wouldn’t say that the landscape is the same in New Zealand. Obviously both place have lots of trees, rivers and snow capped mountains. However, in France the mountains are covered in thick forests and they are massively taller. The peaks around my house in France are between 3,500 and 4000m above sea level, whereas the mountains in NZ are a bit smaller — aside from Mt Cook and Mt Aspiring of course!”
“The other major difference are the rivers. New Zealand has these wonderfully wide rivers that just run through the valleys, whereas France has narrow rivers deep down within gorges. And New Zealand still feels like it existed before people. Whereas the French Alps are covered with villages along every road you take. If I was going to choose another place in the world that feels like the South Island of New Zealand, I would probably have to say Iceland.”
“After I finished travelling throughout New Zealand I needed to return home to France. My plan was to return once more to Australia, as soon as I could arrange a visa. Although I fell totally in love with New Zealand, I had an even greater love back in Australia when my future wife was waiting for me. And so I came back to France completed my university studies in marketing and then returned again to Sydney to resume work at the same printing company where my girlfriend (later my wife) was.”
“The student visa I had in Australia capped my work to only 20hrs a week, and so I had plenty of time outside of working and study to be creative. Back then I was only working to enable me to do the things I wanted outside of work, which was my photography and filmmaking. One of my wife’s friends was a photographer based in Sydney. And so for the first time ever in my life, I was suddenly surround by other creative people and possibilities.”
“That was the big difference between France and Australia. In Australia no-one was telling me I couldn’t do something. Instead, I was being told to just go and figure it out, if you really wanted to achieve. Which was liberating for me coming from France.”
“I remember I was out shooting some backstreets and a skatepark in Sydney, when I stopped in at McDonalds carpark to read about a digital film camera online. It had only been a couple of months since I last upgraded my DSLR at considerable expense, and so I couldn’t really afford another camera then. But I found this camera to be utterly intriguing. It really challenged what a digital film camera could be. What I didn’t know at the time, was that my reading about this camera would soon change my career path forever.”
“While I was reading about this new camera, I was beginning to learn more and more about dynamic range, sensor size and base ISO. I had never really worried about these things too much before, focusing mostly on composition, exposure and frame rates. Simply reading this online article, I suddenly understood the difference between my DSLR and a digital film camera. In that one moment, my head switched from understanding videography to cinematography.”
“Because this camera was so new, you could only order the first ‘super-small’ MFT Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera from professional resellers. And because this camera was on backorder, I had plenty of time to chat to the reseller every week and pick his brain on everything I needed to know about using a digital film camera.”
“When the day finally came for me to get my camera, I raced down to Bondi where the reseller was to get it myself. Forget drop shipping, I wanted that thing as soon as it landed in the country. Just ten minutes after getting the camera, I walked outside to start shooting and a seagull shat all over me. Looking back now, it was a good omen as I’ve had nothing but good luck since buying that camera!”
“I started off with a 14mm Panasonic MFT lens, which helped me to focus on my compositions and exposure levels. And because I was going through this incredible learning curve, I began sharing some of my experiences using the camera on Vimeo.”
“Awhile after buying the camera I landed this cool freelance job working on a festival for Toyota. This was the moment when I decided to risk it all and shoot on the BMPCC instead of my expensive DSLR. This was a really big decision to make, as I was going to be shooting with much lower cost MFT lenses on a camera the world was still learning about.”
“But when I saw the images from the shoot, I was totally blown away by the quality. Instead of being stuck with an MP4 file off my DSLR, I had suddenly entered into another world of quality shooting in ProRes HQ. Although my Mac was incredibly slow when it came to editing these files, it was worth it for the image quality. It was something everyone noticed, including all of my clients. After that shoot, I then invested in a couple more lenses and an eyepiece for the camera, after which I used it on all my agency jobs. Pretty soon, that camera and I were inseparable!”
“Back in 2014, I had also planned a trip travelling to New York and then onto Bali. Because this camera and rig was so small and light, it made the perfect travel camera for me instead of my usual DSLR. And by this time I had a pretty large following on Instagram for my travel photography. But I was also becoming better known for my travel films. So when I uploaded my film from New York, it started to get a lot of traction. Everyone was so interested in what this camera could do, given it was so small and new. The reason I think everyone feel in love with my film of NYC, was because I could move effortless through a big city like that, and no-one seemed to notice I was filming.”
“I was able to get people crossing the road, getting hotdogs, or being on a ferry, or a subway. And I was completely free to shoot anything I wanted and just capture all of these amazing unguarded moments. That camera really changed how you could shoot in big crowds.”
“A little while later, I also purchased one of the very first URSA Mini Pro professional cameras. What I found was that the highlight roll-off on the URSA was amazing. Because of the larger sensor size, the URSA really did set the benchmark for quality. Although the first pocket camera was great quality too, it just wasn’t in the same bracket of image quality as the URSA. The pocket was the perfect size travel camera, but I still wanted something that could shoot more like the URSA Mini Pro.”
“And then out of nowhere, one of the video resellers calls me from Las Vegas telling me he is at the NABshow. He said he had just arrived and saw that Blackmagic Design had a bunch of teaser banners up at the convention center about a new camera. I had no idea what it was or how much it would cost. But I still said to put my name first on the list, for whatever it was. My hope was for a portable 4K camera that could shoot 60p.”
“As soon as the camera was launched, I was so excited at the possibilities of shooting on this camera. I have to say the BMPCC 4K completely exceeded all of expectations. I was promised that when the camera shipped, I would be one of the very first people to get one.”
“When I finally got the call that the camera had landed in Sydney, I raced down to the dealer to pick it up at 4pm that same day. By 4.30pm I was down on the beach at Bondi shooting footage on this brand new camera using my MFT lenses. And then by that evening I had graded, edited and posted some footage on YouTube. This short bit of test footage from Bondi was immediately posted by someone on the Blackmagic Forum. And from there, it suddenly went global. It was at that moment I thought to myself, maybe I should start my own filmmaking channel on YouTube!”
“That bit of Bondi footage, was like the ‘thing’ that seriously kickstarted my freelance career and my YouTube community all at the same time. And because I was the first to shot footage of Sydney in 4K on this camera, I had global magazines like US Shooter wanting to write articles about me and the camera.”
“Before long I was getting messages from all over the world from people wanting to have a chat about my thoughts on cameras. And because there was a delay in this camera shipping in volume to other customers, as I kept posting my footage to YouTube my community just kept getting bigger. There was nothing planned in all of this, it was just something that happened by good luck.”
“And pretty soon I was using the URSA Mini Pro as my A camera with the BMPCC 4K as my B camera on all of my commercial work. Looking back now, it’s funny how my early career is linked so strongly to the pocket cameras. It was the same when the BMPCC 6K came out. I was again one of the very first in the world to order this camera before it was actually launched. And just like the launch of the 4K pocket, I was totally blown away by the quality of the 6K EF pocket camera. After seeing the highlight roll-off and the insane quality of the images I was getting with the 6K sensor, I immediately sold all of my cameras using this one camera for all of my shooting. And as soon as the latest BMPCC 6K Pro was announced, I got that one too!”
“I have taken these camera with me all over the world to some of the most beautiful places on the plant like Antarctica, Tierra del Fuego and Iceland. I am back living in the French Alps with my wife these-days, and so travelling to place like Antarctica and New Zealand are still very special trips for me. I first started travelling to all of these places because I had seen them in other people’s films. Now as I have grown older, I liked to return these places and make my own films about the places I’ve experienced.”
“For me, life has always been about journey and there is nothing more that gives greater happiness than finding the perfect composition along the way.”