Latin America. The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K model was used during the filming of the documentary The Way I see It to record remote interviews with Pete Souza, protagonist of the same and former official photographer of the White House.
Directed by Dawn Porter, the best-selling documentary is about the life and work of Souza, who served as a photographer during the Reagan and Obama presidencies. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and in theaters in September, while its television debut is scheduled for this month on MSNBC.
Production had to be suspended due to the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, but according to Porter, it had to move forward. Given the documentary's relevance to the U.S. presidential election, it was important to stay the course and meet the planned release date. The only option was to shoot remotely, so Porter and cinematographer Clair Popkin decided to send Souza a Pocket Cinema Camera 6K unit to conduct the remaining interviews.
"Since Pete's photographs are an essential part of the story, it was important to be able to achieve cinematic quality. We had completed 75% of the shoot and needed the footage from the remaining interviews to match the footage perfectly with the footage recorded, although we were going to have to shoot them in a very different way," Porter explained.
With this idea in mind, Porter and Popkin quickly ruled out the option of turning to a webcam or mobile phone to finish interviews. As they had already used Blackmagic Design equipment in other projects, Popkin came up with the idea of using a Pocket Cinema Camera 6K unit, considering its functionality and dynamic range.
"Pete was in charge of the lighting, and consequently, it was critical that the dynamic range and logarithmic curve were decent," Popkin added. "Ease of use was also an important factor, as the camera had to be simple enough that he could set it up himself, but in turn allow us to record cinematic-quality images. The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K model met all the requirements."
Although Souza is an accomplished photographer, he generally does not use digital film cameras, so the production team wanted to ensure that no difficulties arose in relation to use. In this sense, they hired a company to prepare and disinfect the equipment before sending it to Souza, and included laminated cards that showed the dynamics of work and described how everything worked.
According to Popkin, "Using Canon lenses with the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K model was an added advantage, as Pete was already familiar with them, as he regularly uses various Canon systems in his photographic projects. On the other hand, by recording the material directly to SSD drives, the work proved much easier, as this allowed us to optimize the processes and reduce the margin of error. Pete could transfer the files from one disk to another and send us the storage media, which simplified the delivery of the content."
Photo: President Barack Obama walks through the West Wing of the White House with White House Chief Photographer Pete Souza on Feb. 18, 2016 (Official White House photo by Lawrence Jackson).
