Fremont, CA - October 03, 2016 - Blackmagic Design today announced that Micro Cinema Cameras were used by second unit DP Casey Wilson to shoot action, point-of-view (POV) and close-up shots for Mountain Dew’s new off-road Capture the Flag commercial featuring professional race car driver Chase Elliott. Nate Balli, of Utah-based production specialists Moniker Media, directed the spot, which made use of innovative shots in order to highlight an unprecedented game of Capture the Flag thought up by Elliott, who also mapped out the course.
Shot in The Little Sahara sand dunes located in Utah’s Sevier Desert, the high-octane spot follows Elliott and his friends as they face off in an action-packed game of Capture the Flag played by two teams riding in dune buggies and on dirt bikes, racing over towering dunes and going after giant flags.
“I was brought on by main unit DP Jacob Schwarz and was put in charge of getting the POV and action shots with the Micro Cinema Cameras,” said Wilson. “We were able to get mounted shots of the dune buggies, the vehicles’ suspensions, hands shifting gears, as well as ‘Rush’ style eye close-ups through Chase’s helmet, mounted dirt bike shots, huge jumps off the dunes and essentially most of the ‘dangerous’ angles.”
Employing a variety of MFT lenses to get the specific shots they were after, Wilson and his team mounted the Micro Cinema Cameras using different rigging apparatus on the drivers’ helmets, the dune buggies, the dirt bikes and other objects, including an arm attached to the outside of a dune buggy to capture one of the biggest jumps in the spot.
“We really loved the visual quality of the Micro Cinema Cameras, and they were chosen over other options because of their size, the ability to shoot in RAW and the quality interchangeable lenses we were able to use with the camera’s MFT mount,” explained Wilson. “In testing, the RAW up-scaled to 4K extremely well to seamlessly match the rest of the footage, plus the Micro Cinema Camera’s dynamic range is amazing; the image quality is second to none in its class.”
According to Wilson, production went into the shoot knowing it would have to finesse the look in post since they couldn't control the light for every shot. “The Micro Cinema Camera’s 13 stops of dynamic range was a huge factor in choosing the camera for this reason,” he concluded. “The camera gave production plenty of latitude to work with in post. And the fact that the camera shoots RAW as opposed to some variant of H.264, meant going into post, they had the advantage of already working with high quality images.”
Press Photography
Product photos of Blackmagic Micro Cinema Camera and all other 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.
