News

Director of Photography Bobby Bukowski (When We Rise, Weeds, The Messenger, Arlington Road) has completed production of the upcoming Netflix series Gypsy, starring Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup. Bukowski shot the 10-episode dramatic series with VariCam 35 4K camera recorders.

Watts leads the series as Jean Holloway, a psychotherapist who begins to develop dangerous, in-timate relationships with the people in her patients’ lives, with Crudup playing her husband. All 10 episodes will be released by Netflix on June 30, 2017.

With Netflix requesting 4K RAW acquisition, Bukowski approached Oliver and Erik Schietinger, principals of TCS (New York, NY). After hearing from him about the shooting style and look he was pursuing, they recommended the VariCam 35 for the shoot and ultimately supported the production with the rental of two VariCam 35s outfitted with Codex high-speed 4K uncompressed RAW re-corders.

“DPs we’ve worked with have been impressed with the VariCam 35, especially its ISO 5000, which sounded ideal for Gypsy: Bobby told us he wanted to light softly, using ambient light, without the use of direct light,” Oliver Schietinger said. “The VariCam opens new possibilities in low-light cir-cumstances, and essentially puts ‘two film stocks in one camera’ at the disposal of the cinematog-rapher.”



Bukowski said he conducted a long test of the VariCam 35, trying out the dual 800/5000 ISOs in in-terior/exterior, in daylight and available light, then took footage to a DI suite to evaluate color grad-ing. “I was pretty astounded at the ISO 5000 performance—there was not nearly as much noise as I’d anticipated,” he said, “and what noise existed was quite pleasant, beautifully random, as with an analog film grain.”

“Beyond light handling, I found the camera’s color space quite pleasing,” Bukowski added.

Gypsy was in production last September through February 2017, with much of the psychological drama being shot in built and practical interiors representing the therapist’s home, office and be-yond. A much smaller portion of the footage was shot in day and night exteriors. The two VariCam 35s, with Cooke S5/i prime lenses, were largely utilized in studio mode, with Bukowski able to take advantage of the camera’s relatively small body for Steadicam and handheld work.

The DP said he predominantly shot at ISOs 800 and 1250, but would occasionally open to ISO 5000 to “exploit existing light.” He also used ISO 5000 when lighting talent. “Obviously, we wanted our star to look soft and beautiful, and we were never lighting directly,” Bukowski recounted. “I would often shoot at ISO 5000 and bounce light multiple times, off one white card then to another, then directing through a diffusion frame. I can’t imagine working that way with another camera—it essentially changed the way I light.”

“That’s the greatest gift of the VariCam: the impetus to drop old habits, reinvent techniques and re-define who you are as an artist,” he continued. “It’s wonderful and exciting to look at your craft through a different prism.”

Gypsy was posted at Harbor Picture Company (New York, NY), under the supervision of colorist Joe Gawler.

Tutorials in the new EDIUS Basics series describe basic functionality of the Grass Valley EDIUS Pro 8 and Workgroup NLE applications. First three videos cover both online and (in the case of EDIUS Workkgroup) offline license activation.

The talented LightWave artist Peter Waldemar from Poland shows his artistic skill and mastery of architectural design and visualization. If you share Peter's passion for architectural visualization and would like to learn more about his creative process, then you are in luck! Peter has created a beautiful architectural scene which he has made available to the entire LightWave community for free! Download it now for a hands on look at this wonderful example of architectural visualization including some very elegant furniture designs all created with LightWave 3D.

Press Release

Blackmagic Design announced that NTT Learning Systems Corporation (NTTLS) has built a 4K recording and streaming system for a large digital art museum in Tokyo using ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K, ATEM 1 M/E Broadcast Panel and Video Assist, as well as a number of Blackmagic Mini Converters.

NTTLS is a company offering educational service for the NTT group, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation and other companies and organizations outside of the NTT group. They offer educational and video production services such as digital signage and video streaming, as well as technical consultation. For their museum client’s system, NTTLS built an entire AV and production system, as well as sourced NTTLS staff as technical support in the facility.



The facility mainly exhibits digital art, and includes both a permanent exhibition and special exhibition spaces. Performance rooms in the museum allow museum staff to hold panel sessions or bring in guest artists, which occur about 20 to 30 times a year. The NTTLS built 4K recording and a streaming system was made to record these performances and events, as well as archive them for streaming or viewing in the facility.

With the museum’s productions, four cameras are used, with their output sent to the ATEM 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K via Mini Converter HDMI to SDI 4K. They record ISO camera outputs as well as switching with a 4K recorder via Mini Converter SDI to HDMI 4K. Computer outputs for presentations are also sent to the ATEM switcher and recorded via SDI to HDMI 4K. Audio feeds from a PA system and audio from computers are converted with Mini Converter SDI to Analog.

“When we first built the system for this museum five years ago, we were looking for an HD switcher and we installed Blackmagic’s ATEM 1 M/E switcher. This time, we needed to upgrade the system to 4K, so we decided to use the new Blackmagic switcher. Our affiliate post production house, NTT MEDIA LAB, has been using many Blackmagic products so it made us comfortable to use the same brand,” said Mitsuhiro Tajima, the system engineer of NTTLS.



NTTLS installed the Blackmagic 2 M/E Broadcast Studio 4K as they needed additional inputs and outputs, as well as the ATEM 1 M/E Broadcast Panel for hardware switching. The compactness of the set up was one of the main advantages of the Blackmagic Design products for NTTLS, with the ATEM Broadcast 1 M/E Broadcast Panel sitting in a system rack that can be pulled out whenever needed. The monitor for multi view output from the ATEM is also mounted on a rack.

“We wanted everything to be rack mounted and compact, and Blackmagic had an advantage in terms of compactness. We chose the 1 M/E Broadcast Panel as we wanted to keep it in the rack system. We used to operate the Blackmagic switcher with their software control panel, but I like the physical switcher’s intuitiveness. ATEM also allows us to easily switch output formats, which is very usable,” said Yuji Ohmameuda of NTTLS, who manages the recording/streaming system at the museum.

Ohmameuda continued: “Most of the recorded material is premised on editing, however, some events are live streamed. We use the Blackmagic Video Assist as an HD recorder to live stream the down converted video via Ustream.”



“Blackmagic has a wide variety of product line ups, so I don’t have to worry about which third party products work well with Blackmagic. I can simply use the same Blackmagic brand so it is very easy to build a system like this,” Tajima concluded.

Press Photography
Product photos of all Blackmagic Design products, are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/images.

About Blackmagic Design
Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Pixologic presents an exclusive live streaming broadcast event Tuesday, June 13th at 12pm PDT on www.ZBrushLIVE.com. Tune in for a chance to chat with the Pixologic team as they give a special demonstration!