Blackmagic Design today announced that the Pocket Cinema Camera was used to shoot the first person point of view footage for McDonalds’ recent “SuperGood” ad campaign produced by Stern Advertising. Joe Murray, of Los Angeles and Woodside, CA based production company Native Sons Films, was the director and cinematographer, and he used DaVinci Resolve 10 to transcode the Pocket Cinema Camera footage and to color correct the director’s version of the edit.
“The idea was to shoot the commercial from the point of view of a person eating, sharing and going throughout their day with McDonalds. Not only did that allow us to show the product and logo in almost every shot, but the first person point of view grabs the audience’s attention and makes them feel part of the experience,” said Joe. “I worked closely with Stern Advertising to ensure the spot had a positive vibe, high energy and constant movement to really engage the viewer.”
Mounted to the mouth guard of a motorcycle helmet, the Pocket Cinema Camera was chosen for its light weight and compact form factor while delivering RAW image quality and 13 stops of dynamic range.
“We had the camera operator and actors on bicycles, skateboarding, running into a meeting and dancing at a beach party. Movement was essential to the theme, and the Pocket Cinema Camera’s form factor was perfect,” said Joe. “We also cast real people, which provided extra personality and enhanced the natural feel. So at times we had actual skateboarders wearing the helmet and shooting with the camera, and it gave a really authentic feeling. A DSLR would have been too unwieldy and wouldn't have provided such a natural feeling of movement.
“I also wanted it to look authentic, as if you are looking through a human eye, not a camera, so the footage had to have a sophisticated, cinematic look. Even though it’s a roving, quick point of view, I didn't want over sharpened, highly compressed images or barreling distortion with a fish eye look. I wanted a naturalistic wide lens look with correct corners and smooth, high quality images, and I couldn't have done it with any other tool,” he continued.
With scenes ranging from bright light streaming through windows, sunshine coming through the trusses of a bridge and a beach campfire at dusk, much of the footage had an extreme contrast range, and Joe noted that the Pocket Cinema Camera’s latitude helped capture all detail. “A few of the images were created using a DSLR, and the quality difference was quite apparent. The DSLR was not able to record the dynamic changes in exposure and latitude that the Pocket Cinema Camera easily captured without clipping. The Pocket Cinema Camera’s extra latitude was what we needed. Even during the campfire scene on the beach, the camera captured everything from the shadows to the detail in the fire,” he said.
With the Pocket Cinema Camera’s 13 stops of dynamic range, the footage had all the information Joe needed to finesse it in post with DaVinci Resolve 10. “Being able to work natively with the RAW codec in DaVinci Resolve is a huge advantage over traditional H.264 DSLR codecs because there is much more latitude in the images as long as you expose the footage correctly. DaVinci Resolve has been my go to color corrector forever, and I wouldn't use anything else, it’s so powerful,” he concluded.
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 film restoration software for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability, 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 stereoscopic 3D and 4K workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Australia. For more information, please check www.blackmagicdesign.com.
