Genesis

A few months ago, a couple of friends and I gathered to start a project. An ambitious project: we would shoot a feature length movie. The story will be placed in Monaco, and it would tell the tale of two "incompatible" characters, Matthieu and Emma, two twenty-somethings who will know, hate, and then love each other.

The story was written, the various technical roles distributed. I, Adrien Le Falher, was asked to be the cameraman, as well as the color artist. In the end, we decided I would also take the charge of post-production manager.

What is a post-production manager? He is the one who will lead the whole post-production team (that's video editing, sound editing, mixing, color grading, etc), who will budget it, schedule it, and so on.

This project is interesting for several reasons, but one is particularly challenging: indeed, I believe this will be the first attempt in the world to shoot a feature-length movie with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera.

The Blackmagic Cinema Camera is a great camera for low-budget but high quality productions: it can record 4:2:2 PRORESS or DNxHD in 1920x1080 (as known as 1080p, or HD), and well as 2,5K Raw Files. This is a major step up from the image quality of a 5DmkII or any DSLR, which were often used before for low budget productions.

However, the camera being new, there is very little documentation on it, and especially on how to handle the workflow with the camera. This blog will describe our trials, errors and successes in creating an effective workflow for this camera. There is a chance that a few things won't be optimum, because of a lack of knowledge or budget, however, I believe we, and so, you, might learn as much from our mistakes as from our successes.