Milan Fashion Week - Kia Motors
“There was no opportunity to do location scouting with this project, so I just had to turn up and shoot what I could, and make it look amazing! Again it was a super small crew. Just me, shooting and pulling my own focus and another guy bouncing light for me. So this was super ‘run and gun’ style of shooting. The location we were at in Milan had these amazing architectural structures, so I knew I would need a wide angle lens to make the most of the locations.”
“At the time, I was doing some camera tests on the new URSA 12K camera from Blackmagic. I had just fallen in love with the way this camera gives you these beautiful punchy blacks and the way it holds the highlights. It really is very impressive. So I figured that this would be the perfect camera for shooting people and architecture with.”
“I was mostly shooting on my Leica Summicron 15mm lens at f3.5, to really make the most of the architecture. The other advantage with this lens is that it gives you beautiful lens flares when shooting into the light. It really is an amazing lens whenever I’ve use it on my BMPCC or URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2. But I think the URSA 12K really makes the most of everything this lens has to give me in terms of image quality. Something special happens with that sensor.”
“This lens has a 36mm image circle, so the slightly larger sensor size of the URSA 12K means the crop factor is much less. And so my 15mm Leica is effectively a 19mm on the URSA 12K and closer to 23.5mm on the 6K version of the Blackmagic Pocket Camera. So I thought the 12K S35 sensor on the URSA 12K was the perfect match for this project.”
“Using super wide lenses is always difficult when working with ND filters, so having internal NDs on the URSA cameras and BMPCC makes life much easier. The other reason I chose to use the 12K version of the URSA, aside from the advantages of the crop factor, was that it has virtually no rolling shutter in my opinion. Which is always a good thing when you are panning and shooting people walking around the place, as I was!”
“On this shoot, we also had the client from Kia on location. So sometimes, the right camera is the one that makes the shoot exciting for the client, as well. I could have shot this project on the BMPCC 6K or course. But when you hang the URSA 12K off an Easyrig Minimax, everything starts to look very serious. Especially to a client!”
“We were shooting this project at the end of April here in Italy, so it was cold, but with super crisp sunny days. Because we were shooting fashion designers wearing interesting fabrics against all of the hard architectural surfaces, the location of the sun became super critical. I started shooting in the morning, but the front lighting to the buildings was all wrong.”
“The other problem was there was a large green parkland to the side of the buildings, so it wasn’t an option to shoot from another angle and adjust for the light. The aim of the project was to only show the hard angles and surfaces of the architecture as contrast to the clothing. And so I really didn’t get to shoot the sorts of shots I was wanting, until 3pm, when the sun was in the perfect location. I really wanted lens flares too, so the direction of the sun was critical to the look I was going for.”
“I shot this project in Blackmagic RAW in 8K so I could get the oversampling benefits when finishing in 4K or HD. Working this way just gives you beautiful film-like images. In my opinion it is the perfect way to shoot. Also this camera gives you crazy roll-off in the high lights when you under expose. By shooting in Blackmagic RAW you can simply recover all of the details in the shadows in DaVinci Resolve. It’s pretty crazy really, what this camera can do.”
“Given I was shooting fabrics in this harsh light, I needed accurate monitoring. What I love about this camera is shooting through the viewfinder. It’s just so amazing, because you can see clearly what you're doing. Even if I had the best external monitor in the industry with me on this shoot, it would still have been tricky to see with the strong sun. So having the viewfinder gave me super accurate focus peaking and false color to work off. And when you are pulling your own focus like I was, you have to be super accurate.”
“Although this project was for Kia’s Instagram feed, I really wanted to bring out the ‘big guns’ on this project. Like shooting in 8K in RAW and then oversampling, to get the best image quality possible. And then having the URSA 12K slung off my Easyrig, just made the shoot so much more exciting for the client as well. It was just a great fun project all-round!
