Blackmagic Design today announced that a social media campaign for the Mercedes-AMG A-Class was shot with Blackmagic RAW on the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, with editing and grading completed with DaVinci Resolve Studio.
The short film, viewed more than 67,000 times on Mercedes’ official YouTube channel, was directed by the Italian production company, T2 Films, in collaboration with DP Matteo Bertoli, and was shot on location in Frankfurt, Germany.
“The clip needed to convey a dynamic and fluid aesthetic, as it intersperses night time driving shots with studio based scenes where a contemporary dancer, Davide Belotti, performs around the car,” explains Matteo. “As this was content for social channels, our main creative challenge was to create a visually appealing story that could still sit in the glossy world of car commercials, within the resources we had.”
To create drama through deep blacks and shadows, Matteo paired his Pocket Cinema Camera 6K with a Leica R lens against minimal lighting. The majority of footage was shot in 6K 2:40, at 48 and 24 fps.
“The camera’s dual ISO came into its own on this shoot. We were working between 160 and 3200, as we had so many different environments” continues Matteo. “We knew we could only rely on the existing street lighting for the exterior, moving shots of the car, and in the studio, we just used a couple of Astera tubes with some negative fill and bounce to light Davide. Having a camera that is versatile enough to capture stunning shots across this ISO range helped to keep the production incredibly agile.”
As a long time Pocket Cinema Camera user, Matteo had already tested out Blackmagic RAW and knew it would be the perfect codec for the project, shooting at the 5:1 and 3:1 compression rates. “I love simplicity in my acquisition and post workflows and having the power of RAW in such small, efficient files is really something special. I edit and grade all of my projects in DaVinci Resolve Studio, and I haven’t looked back since Blackmagic RAW came out; in my opinion, it’s just the best ecosystem.”
Matteo also handled the grade for the shoot, applying his own BUTTERY Natural Rec709 as a conversion LUT to produce a fresh, clean final look, ready for the content to be uploaded to Mercedes’ social channels.
“We faced a lot of challenges on this shoot, from tracking and lighting a moving car on the streets of Frankfurt, as it moved through the traffic, through to creating a very polished and professional look with a minimal crew,” concluded Matteo. “The camera and Blackmagic RAW workflow were integral to the project; knowing that the footage would be high quality and easy to work with, allowed the production team the latitude to collaborate and explore more creative solutions to get the very best results.”
