Dana Point
“What we needed to do, was write a script, find some good actors and then shoot a commercial using the Ursa 12K and only one Cooke Anamorphic (we couldn’t afford an entire set). Easy, right? The crew consisted of me, Raffy and a gaffer to bounce fill. But in the end, the URSA gave me so much information in the shadows that he gave up bouncing light for me, and would just do some camera assistance!”
“Raffy and I both love watches, so we figured we would write a spec spot for a watch brand. Raffy has a Tudor Black Bay 58, so we developed a simple script around that watch. If we hadn’t gone to this extra effort of developing a script, you wouldn’t really know what to shoot and in what sequence. Without the structure of shot-list to work off, the whole project would have looked more like a run and gun documentary, which we certainly didn’t want. We wanted this to feel like a properly directed and shot brand commercial.”
“The reason for doing a lifestyle-based watch commercial is that most watch commercials are VFX spots these days. We wanted to show the relationship that people have with their watches. To show how a watch can be more than a timepiece. In this case, the watch can also be an heirloom. You can only show that sort of relationship by showing real people doing real things.”
“Raffy and I figured the best lens for this project was going to be a Cooke 50mm anamorphic T2.3. I usually shoot on vintage Leica R lenses; which are amazing on this camera. But for this commercial we wanted to experiment with a Cooke anamorphic. Because of the weight of the Cooke lens, I planned to shoot using an Easyrig and handheld when I could. I have to be honest, there is a lot going on when you pulling your own focus, especially with this kind of lens. I will admit, it was hard work, but in the end the images are so brilliant it was all worth the extra effort.”
“Talking about exposure, an interesting thing I found out about the URSA Mini Pro 12K when first testing it, is that it keeps way more information in the shadows, whereas my BMPCC6K retains the highlights much better. So these are two very different cameras to shoot with. You do have to protect your highlights with way more ND on the URSA. It’s not a problem or criticism, it’s just something you need to do as this is a completely different sensor to the Pocket Cameras. It will blow the highlights much easier, but it will also retain a lot more shadows. So you just need to expose for the highlights”.
“When it comes to exposure tools, I am totally in love with the False Colors on the URSA, they work great and exactly like on any other Blackmagic camera. I use False Color all the time to make sure I’m not clipping the highlights. I really don’t understand why some people think working with False Color should be difficult, because it’s so easy to use and it really guarantees you to get the right exposure every time.”
“Speaking of codec, I only ever shoot in BRAW with Blackmagic Cameras. If I am shooting something super high quality, I will shoot Constant Bitrate 5:1 or even 3:1. But mostly I shoot 8K at Constant Bitrate 8:1 because you can’t see the difference for most of the stuff I do. If I could I would shoot 12K 100% of the time, but you can’t really do that without a DIT and terabyte of storage! But shooting 8K in Blackmagic RAW Constant Bitrate 8:1 or 5:1 is still incredible in terms of quality. The URSA Mini Pro 12K has virtually no rolling shutter as I already said, and how this 12K sensor renders motion is equal to an Alexa in my opinion.”
“The URSA is such an achievement and I think it’s the most under-rated camera on the market today. When you think about it, I can shoot 23.98, 24, 50, 60, 75, 120, and even 240fps in Super 16 mode. This thing shoots 12K, 8K and 4K with no crop! And although Blackmagic says it has 14 stops of dynamic range, when shooting in BRAW it feels like there is more there.”
“Another thing I really love is that this is just such a ready-to-go camera. All you have to do is put a battery on the back, a lens on the front and you’re good to go. In fact, I didn’t use any filtering other than the internal NDs on the URSA for the whole of this shoot.”
“Being a huge fan of this camera and having a Youtube channel, sometimes it is very hard to show people how good this footage looks. Even if you do side by side with an ARRI or Sony, it will be tricky because you’re never going to see the true quality differences and this is due mainly to Youtube compression and online gamma shift. That’s why I always tell people to rent one and to shoot a real project. Then you will see what this camera is really capable of and why, in my opinion, makes no sense spending $90K on an Alexa.”
“I actually just recently shot a project on an ARRI Alexa Mini, but honestly, after shooting on the URSA Mini Pro 12K for many months, I was like, ok cool, but for some reasons I was actually missing the URSA and its versatility in terms of resolution and frame rate. And when I think of the URSA costing something around $6,000, it’s mind blowing to me. I mean, we were very close with the G2, but with this 12K sensor I think Blackmagic has really not too much to envy from Arri. And honestly, 8K 120p on the URSA is just amazing. Hands down the cleanest slow motion footage I’ve ever seen on any camera (except the Phantom maybe). But again, it’s $6,000!”
“In terms of post-production and ecosystem I think it’s crazy nowadays that you can edit a movie in DaVinci Resolve on a MacBook, and in 12K resolution in RAW. Definitely Blackmagic deserves some credit because with BRAW/DaVinci/Mac optimization they were able to create a very smooth experience. I would have never thought it was possible to edit and grade such a huge files on the go, in a 4K timeline, while maintaining a super smooth playback.”
“Who would have thought that would be possible to do this sort of production with no crew. It’s just so crazy how far these cameras and the workflow have evolved. It truly means you can just go out and try anything. Shoot whatever you want. Even a watch commercial like this one!”
