Peru. Tunche Films is one of the largest production companies in Peru. Its portfolio includes commercials for well-known brands such as Coca Cola, DirecTV, Toyota, Cerveza Cusqueña and others, as well as some short films for the film festival circuit.
With an affinity for design and visual effects, as well as cinematography, it's no wonder that Tunche Films attracts interest from almost every corner of the world.
Director César Zelada began his film career in New York City in the 2000s. Upon returning to Peru in 2004 he teamed up with his brother José Zelada to establish Tunche Films. Since opening its doors 12 years ago, the company has expanded to include five directors and a staff of more than 50 employees. In addition to growing a successful business, the Zelada founded Peru's first film school, EPIC, Peruvian School of the Film Industry.
As an offshoot of Tunche Films, EPIC gives students the real-life experience they need to succeed in this field. The school offers a professional film studio for filming projects, laboratories equipped with the newest software on the market, including Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve for color graduation and editing. And
instead of buying the typical DSLR cameras for students, the team invested in Blackmagic Design's Pocket Cinema Camera and finally, Blackmagic's Cinema Camera, giving students a true digital cinema camera to work with, without needing a large investment. Many of these students have already won awards for films they have shot with Blackmagic's pocket-sized cinema camera, including Christa Mazuelos' February 30 and Daniela Blume's Maternity.
"The Blackmagic cameras we have now for film school exceeded our expectations immediately," says César. "You really feel like you're working with a bigger, more expensive camera, because of the way it works and the image it captures."
Blackmagic's adventure in the Amazon jungle
César and the team at Tunche Films were so delighted with the results of the Blackmagic cameras, that they began to use them for their own production projects. The team began shooting projects exclusively with the pocket camera or with the larger Cinema camera, and sometimes in combination with other cameras. For a recent Coca Cola ad for broadcast in Peru, Tunche Films filmed — on the Ucayali River, in the middle of the Amazon rainforest — with four pocket cinema cameras and Super 16 PL lenses. The idea was to show how Coca-Cola is present to celebrate life in all cultures of the world.
In the commercial, the Tunche Films team documented what happened when a Coca Cola vending machine was brought to the town of Santa Teresita de Cashibococha, a remote place on the banks of the Ucayali, and how its inhabitants reacted to sharing a soft drink with their neighbors. The commercial was shot in ProRes HQ format, but due to the difficulties of the topography, the team had to shoot everything by hand and in an improvised way. They needed lighter-than-usual equipment that could also generate cinematic images, so their Pocket Cinema cameras were the perfect solution.
"Any other piece of equipment would have been too heavy and clumsy to use there," Caesar recalls. "We needed agile cameras that were easy to maneuver. They also needed to work with the PL lenses we already had. We found the Pocket Cinema Camera; it's incredibly agile, with exceptional image quality. We also loved its wide dynamic range for subsequent color adjustment, even when we weren't shooting in RAW. We were so lucky to find a camera with such amazing results."
When filming with a variety of different cameras, as they did during a commercial project for the Cusqueña brewery, César and José discovered that Blackmagic's cameras fit into a flawless workflow, perfect for making their vision a reality. Without the need for excessive color graduation or long hours of editing, they managed to seamlessly combine the material of all the cameras with the same level of professional cinematic quality.
"When you shoot with movie cameras for years, you get used to them," says César. "With Blackmagic cinema cameras, we don't lose any of the quality we've become accustomed to. It's so easy to mix material between different cameras, even when you use a much more expensive film camera. The image is similar and very smooth, and the dynamic range of Blackmagic's Cinema camera is perfect for subsequent color graduation."
Tunche Films does all their color control on a DaVinci Resolve and have recently started teaching EPIC students how to use color grading and editing tools. Cesar likes DaVinci because he thinks it's a strong, solid software with a lot of possibilities to edit, grade color and much more, all in one place.
"We love RAW and its unlimited number of nodes, in particular, is fabulous for teaching our students," Cesar said. "We're even thinking about getting some production 4k camera models from Blackmagic for student learning. We hope to get the same lens compatibility with larger cameras, like we get with our pocket cameras."
The epic future of Tunche Films
Finally, the Tunche Films team also hopes to add Blackmagic's URSA Mini and Fusion program to the production and visual effects workflow.
"I love Blackmagic's cameras and software," concludes César. "They are perfect for our budget and amazing in terms of their capabilities. We are preparing our future projects and hope to do well at film festivals and with EPIC. The future looks bright for us."
