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Press Release

Blackmagic Design announced that Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cameras were used to capture the first person point of view essential to the new suspense thriller film “Sympathy Said the Shark,” a new film executive produced by Zak Bagans, host and executive producer of the popular hit show “Ghost Adventures.”

Produced by LA production company Chicken Bear Productions, “Sympathy Said the Shark” is a dark thriller set around a love triangle that unravels over a single night, with all three of the main characters placed in deadly danger. The film aims to bring the audience right into the head of each character through point of view (POV) imagery. To capture this, Devin Lawrence, director of the film and long time editor on “Ghost Adventures,” and Mark Lafleur, director of photography and veteran of some of the biggest reality TV shows, including “Ace of Cakes” and “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” worked together to build POV rigs around Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Cameras.

“This movie is all about the characters’ perspectives as they go through extreme circumstances. To get that visually and to get into the heads of the characters, we needed a POV camera that didn’t impede on the actors’ abilities to tell the story, that captured high quality imagery and that could be easily graded so we could build specific feelings and emotions into each POV shot. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera fit perfectly,” said Bagans. With 75 percent of the movie shot from the lead characters’ point of views, Lawrence and Lafleur worked together to develop a new POV rig that would fit over each of the main characters’ heads and that gave a close up and personal view of what each character was going through. Shooting in ProRes HQ, Lawrence and Lafleur were able to easily take the footage acquired and move it to post production to add specific grades and color correction in DaVinci Resolve, and each character was given their own color scheme.

“The POV helmet rig was born out of necessity. My goal was to make the POV shots feel as real as possible, and Mark’s goal was to make them look as cinematic as possible. I wanted to be able to see the arms and legs and wounds of whomever’s POV we were in and allow the actors to interact directly so that their performances weren’t hindered,” said Lawrence.“When searching for the right camera, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera absolutely nailed all of our three main factors: cost, weight and quality. The camera is lighter than any DSLR I know of, which is very important when mounting it to a helmet that someone wears while performing long five minute takes, and the image has a distinctly cinematic quality that makes it feel more like film,” continued Lawrence. “For our prototype POV rig, we bought a motorcycle helmet off the Internet, drilled a hole and then hung the camera from a single Israeli arm. That was enough to know that we were on to something. From there, Mark personally took the rig from toaster to Terminator by attaching all kinds of gadgets and stabilization gear.”

“We wanted to overlap and hear and see things differently with each character. And we wanted a cinematic look that had lots of latitude and had to have a realistic skin tone. To do all of this, we built a rig that included 15mm rods, a remote follow focus, an HD video transmitter, a Bartech remote follow focus, a Paralinx Arrow wireless transmitter and a power source. And the rig also had to be lightweight, balanced and durable enough to survive stunts. All built around a small camera that gave us the highest quality images,” said Lafleur. “The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera gave us this as well as a huge amount of options for how we could build these rigs. We really pushed the latitude of each camera and got great results.”

“When the actors wore the rigs, you felt a visceral connection to what the characters were going through. The actors were acting with you, not just acting in front of a shaky rig held in front of them. We couldn’t have shot this with any other camera,” said Lawrence.

Press Photography

Product photos of Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 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 film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, 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 stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.

Panasonic announced new firmware update for the LUMIX G Interchangable Lens Camera, DMC-GH4. The firmware Ver.2.1 will enhance the performance and controllability with upgraded functions of HDMI output, which will be highly valued in professional video production. With this firmware, time code and recording control signal can be embedded to the HDMI output signal, when connected with the products of ATOMOS Global Pty. Ltd. or the products complying with the extended specifications of ATOMOS. Now both FHD at 30p/25p native or at 60p/50p is selectable to output via HDMI while recording video in FHD at 30p/25p. The Interface Unit DMW-YAGH will also be updated with the new firmware 1.1 to support these functional upgrades of GH4. Plus, 60i/50i (30PsF/25PsF) or 60p/50p is selectable for the output via SDI. The new firmware programs are scheduled to be released in December, 2014.

Blackmagic Design has released a Camera v1.9.9 update. This release contains new features for Blackmagic URSA camera, including:

New RAW 3:1
The first feature is a new compressed RAW format called RAW 3:1. The format will enable to record up to twice as much RAW footage using RAW 3:1 with great quality. This format will also be needed to record high frame rates on URSA. For example, you can record about 7 minutes of RAW on a 128 GB CFast card but 14 minutes if you use RAW 3:1. The great thing is that it is still 12-bit RAW.

URSA's frame rate is now 80 fps in 4K!
Blackmagic Design has also increased URSA's maximum frame rate to 80 fps in 4K and all existing URSAs will have this enabled when the software is updated. To shoot up to 80 fps, users will need to use ProRes or the new RAW 3:1 codec. Even at 80 fps using RAW 3:1, users can still record to single CFast card!

Variable frame rate settings
URSA now features two new settings: a Project Frame Rate and a Sensor Frame Rate. The Project Frame Rate is the native playback frame rate of the recorded footage and in the standard video frame rates like 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97 and so on. The Sensor Frame Rate sets up how fast the URSA sensor is running and can be selected from 5 to 80 fps in 1 frame increments. This makes it really easy to shoot off-speed in camera now. If you set the Sensor Frame Rate to 48 fps and the Project Frame Rate to 24 fps, you’ll end up with a 2x slow motion clip. The great thing about this is that the clip is tagged as a 24 fps clip so you can immediately play the clip back and view the off-speed effect in camera! It also plays back in the desired speed when you import the clip into Resolve without having to manually change any clip properties.

New Frame Guides and Dashboard
Blackmagic Design has also added the following frame guides that can be enabled on the 10” display as well: 2.40:1, 2.39:1, 2.35:1, 1.85:1, HDTV, 4:3, and Thirds. There is also a new URSA Dashboard view that can be toggled by the DISP button. This will allow you to display options for formatting the CFast card, turning zebras on/off and also the front SDI output overlays on and off. There are also added scrollable menus in URSA. For example, in the Display settings, you can individually adjust the brightness of each display or turn on or off the overlays on each screen or SDI outputs.

In-camera formatting
URSA now supports in-camera media formatting. This allows the user to format the CFast 2.0 cards in URSA. We recommend you to format your media in the cameras as they optimize file system for the best performance.

Press Release

Blackmagic Design has announced that the long standing daytime drama Moving On has returned to BBC One for a new series and was filmed entirely on the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K.

The program, which debuted on British television in 2009, is now in its sixth series and was commissioned by Damien Kavanagh. Featuring cinematography by Andy Clark, each of the five self contained 45 minute dramas has its own cast but shares a central theme, following someone who is going through a big change in their life.

“Moving On has transformed daytime viewing, it was the first drama to be commissioned for daytime in many years leading the way for the current crop of drama in the daytime output. In terms of program ratings, we have always won our slot by a significant margin, and the series has also performed well when being re shown during primetime, which is very significant when you consider the gulf between daytime and primetime production budgets,” said Patrick Hall of LA Productions.

He goes on to add: “Not only did I look after the edit and grade, but I also designed the production workflow from acquisition through to delivery. We were very lucky to have a crew that embraced the opportunity of working with these cameras. They saw the quality of the output and believed that the changes to the production workflow, which had remained largely unchanged in five years, would be well worth it.”

The Liverpool based independent production company shot just over a quarter of the program in 4K, the remainder was captured in ProRes 1080p25 using the log film mode. “Our storage calculations at the time simply didn’t allow us to shoot the whole thing in RAW. However, anything that we knew we wanted to punch in on during post, or that required specific paint and visual effects work, was all shot at 4K resolution. Otherwise, the 10 bit flavor of ProRes gave us plenty of latitude during the grade. I was able to push and pull significantly where required. I must say that we had a superb starting point for the grade. Andy and his team did such a great job at the front end with light and shape that it meant we were tweaking rather fixing in post.“

“Our ultimate aim is always to achieve a high end look on the dramas we produce, irrespective of the budget or project. What the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K gives you is a filmic look that is really organic, and is comparable with far more expensive cameras for, in this particular case, a tight daytime budget,” concludes Hall. “We used the EF version of the camera which meant we could use some nice cine style prime lenses, again rarely affordable on daytime budgets. The combination of glass, the camera’s native look and fantastic skills from our camera team means it’s very difficult to argue with the high end results we’ve achieved, so much so that we’ll be using the same camera packages on the seventh series, which has already been commissioned.”

Press Photography

Product photos of Blackmagic Production Camera 4K 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.

AW-HE130 is a new HD/SD pan/tilt/zoom camera from Panasonic incorporating recently-developed high-sensitivity, low-noise 1/3” 3-MOS imagers that produce stunning pictures, even in low light conditions. Revolutionary new features include Power over Ethernet+ (POE+) for easier integration, and multi-stream transmission of H.264 HD video and audio (up to 1080/60p at 25Mbps.) Available December 2014.