Blackmagic Design today announced that its URSA Mini Pro digital film camera was used by video production company Ice Cream Entertainment LLC to shoot an ad campaign for Big Red soda. DaVinci Resolve Studio was also used to edit, grade and finish the spots by brothers Andrew and Nate Garcia, who own and operate the production company.
Together, Andrew and Nate wrote and directed the entire Big Red ad campaign, which entailed six 15 second web spots and alternate Facebook versions. “The spots were created to boost Big Red brand awareness and to promote its national summer promotion, BBQ Across America,” explained Andrew. “Nate and I are very visual storytellers, and we immediately honed in on the name of the product, ‘Big Red.’ This visual of a giant bottle of soda seemed so strong and memorable. We decided the bottle should be about 18 feet tall and developed a situational comedy approach around that.”
To create the giant soda bottle, Andrew and Nate used a forced perspective technique, placing objects both near and far away from the camera within the same frame to make small objects appear large and vice-versa. Though the effect sounds straightforward, there were certain technical considerations Andrew and Nate had to keep in mind when shooting.
“Depth of field and focus become a dead giveaway if not handled correctly. We’d shoot the background plate at f/2.8 and close down the aperture to f/16 for the close ups. Because the URSA Mini Pro has built-in ND filters, it was a breeze to stop up or down on the lens and maintain consistent exposure,” said Andrew. “Where the small objects intersected with the ground was another tricky area, and we used miniature asphalt, concrete and grass to make the blending seamless. The camera’s relative light weight and compact size made it simple to position wherever we needed for the miniature shots.”
Andrew added, “Being a smaller production company, we were thrilled when Blackmagic Design announced the Ursa Mini Pro. The camera has every feature we’ve been looking for in a workhorse camera. The internal ND filters, swappable mounts, various media slots, etc. all mean we can be more efficient on set. On top of the ergonomics, the URSA Mini Pro’s image rivals many cameras three times the cost. The client was absolutely thrilled with the images we captured for the Big Red campaign.”
Andrew and Nate wanted the spots to pop off the screen with deep, rich colors. “We shot in 4.6K in RAW at 4:1 compression,” noted Andrew. “It was the perfect balance of flexibility in color grading and manageable file sizes. We were going for a stylized, overly-saturated, high-key commercial look, and the camera’s robust RAW codec gave us lots of room to play with color in post. The spots’ concepts were fun, and we wanted every image to reflect that tone.”
According to Andrew, in post, DaVinci Resolve Studio was used for everything except the special effects shots. “This was our first time using DaVinci Resolve Studio pretty much end to end, and the biggest benefit was the ability to move from editing to coloring and finally to delivery in one smooth process,” he said. “The ability to split up the grade into different nodes is a huge advantage over the coloring tools in other NLEs, for example. DaVinci Resolve Studio is not an NLE with some color tools thrown in or a color correction tool with some editing features added. It’s an extremely powerful, full-featured program across the board.”
Product photos of URSA Mini Pro, DaVinci Resolve Studio and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images
About Big Red
Big Red Inc. is one of the top 10 beverage companies in North America with a history dating back to 1937. Along with Big Red®, recognized as the number-one selling red soda, Big Red Inc. also markets beverage brands Big Red Zero®, Big Blue®, Big Peach®, Big Pineapple®, NuGrape®, and Nesbitt’s® products. Distributed widely throughout the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Independent Bottlers and Pepsi Beverages Company, consumers across the country enjoy Big Red Inc.’s beverages. For more information, please visit www.bigred.com.
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
