'A Night in Nine Elms' - Shot for BMD European Roadshow

A project commissioned by Blackmagic Design to shoot a film for the 2012 European roadshow tour. The brief was to test the Blackmagic Cinema camera in a real world shoot, with minimal lens, grip and shot over a single night on location at New Covent Garden market. All shot in ProRes FILM to demonstration workflow with FCPX.

Camera: Blackmagic Cinema Camera (EF Version)
Lens: 11-16 Tokina, 17-55 IS Canon, 70-200 IS Canon.
Grip: Kessler Stealth Slider, Miller tripod and Cambo grip.
Post: FCPX & Resolve.

Credits:
James Tonkin - Shoot, edit, grade
Alan Witts - Music
Paul Moss - Trader
Mohan Randhawa - Shopper
BTS - Den Lennie

Very nice.

Like the flowers and fruit shot - the calculator one looks cool too!

It looks nice but what's the point in shooting at the Market? I don't understand? BMD European roadshow showcasing what? An imaginary camera only a few have?

The images are very nice though.

Some very cool shots in there. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks James,
you makes me happy!!

Some very cool shots in there. Thanks for sharing.

It was commissioned. Very nice work.

WOW!!! this looks awesome The Pro Res is really great on this camera. Thanks for sharing!
I can't wait for friday's update

That's why I'm still waiting for this camera! It looks great! Thanks for sharing!

Really nice piece. Love how the camera sees the tonal scale. Especially when super high specular highlights are pitted against deep shadows.

A couple of questions. How much space did it take to shoot it? How much grading?

Also while I personally like the film look there are times when I use super saturation. Any comments there? Have not really seen any footage like that.

Thanks

Hi James & crew: Excellent work! It's great to see well-shot ProRes HQ, which for me is the BMCC's killer feature.

RAW is obviously great, too, but ProRes HQ kills in terms of bang-for-the-buck.

Questions about this shoot: I'm interested in hearing how you set exposure when shooting ProRes HQ. For example, if you used zebras, what were they typically set to, did you use iris/ISO/shutter only or ND/Vari-ND, built-in LCD only, etc.?

Cheers!

A couple of questions. How much space did it take to shoot it? How much grading?

Also while I personally like the film look there are times when I use super saturation. Any comments there? Have not really seen any footage like that.

Thanks

Thank you.

Space wise, I only used one 240GB SSD and didn't fill it. One of the benefits of using ProRes.

As for the grading, I used different techniques within Resolve to bring back contrast and saturation to the LOG FILM image. I also added a slight amount of sharpening and on a few shots noise reduction. I normally favour a filmic looking grade, but the beauty of the ProRes FILM footage is that you still have a lot of latitude within the grade to push it creatively in which ever direction you like.

Questions about this shoot: I'm interested in hearing how you set exposure when shooting ProRes HQ. For example, if you used zebras, what were they typically set to, did you use iris/ISO/shutter only or ND/Vari-ND, built-in LCD only, etc.?

Cheers!

Many thanks Peter!

For exposure, I alway keep zebras on 100% so that I can see if the sensor clips. As this was a night shoot no NDs were required and for most of the shoot ISO was set to 1600. This was a real low light test for the camera in my view, especially on the street scenes. We used no additional lights and aperture was constantly set to f2.8.

For normal daylight shooting I use a Heliopan vari-ND, keeping ISO normally at 800 and adjusting aperture to suit the depth of field I want from each shot.

For exposure, I alway keep zebras on 100% so that I can see if the sensor clips. As this was a night shoot no NDs were required and for most of the shoot ISO was set to 1600. This was a real low light test for the camera in my view, especially on the street scenes. We used no additional lights and aperture was constantly set to f2.8.

Based on that I would think many low light shots at night or late dusk without bright lights from city/stores will work on Raw (default 800 ISO) with a T1.5 lens. And faster lenses such as T0.95 could even be too fast without a ND filter for realistically dark shots, i.e. you don't want a nighttime shot to look like high noon.

Rick Lang
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Really nice piece. Love how the camera sees the tonal scale. Especially when super high specular highlights are pitted against deep shadows.

A couple of questions. How much space did it take to shoot it? How much grading?

Also while I personally like the film look there are times when I use super saturation. Any comments there? Have not really seen any footage like that.

Thanks

I have been saturating the samples with increased shadow saturation and a decreased highlight saturation. Some film seems to respond similarly.

Nice work James.

I got to see this on the big screen in London and it looks great. Nice to see its available to the wider public now.

This really makes me want this camera!

It looks like you did not light anywhere, and it looks quite good for that. The dark street shots look remarkably good, and I imagine you did not have to do much noise reduction there. In reality dark night scenes have much reduced color and detail as seen by the human eye, so shots like that work just fine and seem real. I suppose we could say that you 'lit' it a little in the grade, eh?

Thanks for showing this to us.

thanks for sharing the footage, looks amazing!

i wonder how the 17-55 performed, did IS and apperture work i mean was it controllable with the BMCC?

thanks, Thomas

thanks for sharing the footage, looks amazing!

i wonder how the 17-55 performed, did IS and apperture work i mean was it controllable with the BMCC?

thanks, Thomas

The Canon 17-55mm lens is my favourite zoom for the BMCC. Both aperture and IS work perfectly with it and a majority of the Nine Elms film was shot handheld with just this lens. We'll post a BTS of it soon which will show the lens in action with the camera.

BMCC unrelated, but I really like the editing!

We'll post a BTS of it soon which will show the lens in action with the camera.

Thanks James, looking forward to see the BTS!

Thomas

Questions about this shoot: I'm interested in hearing how you set exposure when shooting ProRes HQ. For example, if you used zebras, what were they typically set to, did you use iris/ISO/shutter only or ND/Vari-ND, built-in LCD only, etc.?

Cheers!

Many thanks Peter!

For exposure, I alway keep zebras on 100% so that I can see if the sensor clips. As this was a night shoot no NDs were required and for most of the shoot ISO was set to 1600. This was a real low light test for the camera in my view, especially on the street scenes. We used no additional lights and aperture was constantly set to f2.8.

For normal daylight shooting I use a Heliopan vari-ND, keeping ISO normally at 800 and adjusting aperture to suit the depth of field I want from each shot.

Thanks for the follow-up information, James. Much appreciated.

On this shoot did you use only the camera's built-in LCD, or also an add-on monitor or EVF?

Cheers.

On this shoot did you use only the camera's built-in LCD, or also an add-on monitor or EVF?

A bit of both, I used an Alphatron EVF a lot, but mostly to be able to shoot from different angles and not just with the screen in front of me. That said, I do love the clarity of the image straight off the back of the screen on the camera.

On this shoot did you use only the camera's built-in LCD, or also an add-on monitor or EVF?

A bit of both, I used an Alphatron EVF a lot, but mostly to be able to shoot from different angles and not just with the screen in front of me. That said, I do love the clarity of the image straight off the back of the screen on the camera.

Great to hear that the built-in LCD is useful. Thanks again for all the info.

Just incase anyone is interested, Den's just posted the BTS of the shoot here:



Also all shot on the BMCC.

Worth a watch. End the 2nd time round.

Hello James,

I'm curious what your audio setup was for the shoot.

Thanks,
Michael