Latin America. Blackmagic Design's URSA Mini Pro 12K digital film camera was used by cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh, a member of the American Filmmakers Association (ASC), in the filming of a recent short film for Australian wine company Penfolds.
The film, shot in Blackmagic RAW format and colored with DaVinci Resolve Studio, celebrates the launch of a new wine collection, California Collection, created with Australian and Californian strains.
Dryburgh, whose career includes both television and film productions ("The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", "The Diary of Bridget Jones" and "The Piano", nominated for best cinematography at the Oscars), was in charge of delivering a piece of great quality.
The launch was made as part of a live webcast in which dancers performed against a bright red background. The dance symbolized the journey of the cuttings of the Australian vines transported and planted in California, thus uniting the two hemispheres and the grape varieties in order to create the exclusive California Collection.
"A very specific style had been determined for the film," Dryburgh explained. "It was an impressive dance piece that incorporated a solid red hue, like that of Penfolds wine. Some shots included the silhouettes of the dancers in front of the red background, and it was important that the camera was able to treat these images with a saturated color, something that happened without problems."
According to Dryburgh, working with a deep, highly saturated red color can be a big challenge for digital photography. "We shot a red background with a lot of saturation and high contrast, but the URSA Mini Pro 12K model captured it perfectly," he said.
The fifth-generation Blackmagic colorimetry offered by the camera uses all the information coming from the sensor, so that a better chromatic response and a more optimized rendering of saturated colors in scenes with high contrast is obtained.
Director Eva Midgley said: "Penfolds is a luxury winery, so we had to achieve a high-quality aesthetic, and we wanted its distinctive red colour to be present throughout the film. The truth is that we fulfilled it completely, since we used a bright red background with lighting of the same color and also the costumes of the dancers were red. The URSA Mini Pro 12K model captured color in a beautiful way, producing a rich aesthetic and offering great definition in the engraved material. The film ended up looking fantastic, more than corporate."
"I found inspiration in the winery's 177-year history and the patience it took to prepare the Australian vine grafts to finally reach California. The growth of roots and vines merging with each other became absolute inspiration," Midgley added. "The two hemispheres were united by the language of dance. The high frame rate offered by the URSA Mini Pro 12K camera allowed us to capture fast movements and high jumps at a speed of 120 f/s."
In post-production, colorist Kevin Ratigan relied on DaVinci Resolve Studio and a DaVinci Resolve Micro Panel device for color grading. Because the film was shot in Blackmagic RAW format, Ratigan was able to more accurately control the color during post-production, relying on fifth-generation colorimetry to benefit from the large amount of information coming from the camera's sensor.
Ratigan was also tasked with making the reddish hues as closely resemble Penfolds' corporate colors as possible. "Using the different curves after having made an initial balance and adjusted the aesthetics, I was able to make the red nuances look deeper and more cohesive between the shots, while maintaining the coporative image of Penfolds. The curves Matiz vs. Matiz, Matiz vs. Luminance and Nuance vs. Saturation were essential to the subtle corrections I needed to make in order for all the images to flow," he continued.
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