Blackmagic - Photography to Cinematography

Blackmagic Design are doing great things for the film industry.

Not only are they shaking up the market with amazing affordable cameras, but they are helping the transition easier for photographers learning cinematography.

Last time I worked with Blackmagic was in ‘Lake Windermere’ for a similar project.

http://danieljohnpeters.com/2015/03/12/2312/

This time, we were jumping in even deeper teaching photographers to become cinematographers.

We went over lenses, movement, gear, audio, crop factors, lighting and what are the similarities and differences are between photography and cinematography.

Blackmagic wanted the shoot to be tricky… whats more of a daunting task then to film a wedding….No second takes, audio issues to deal with, when to shoot RAW, when and when not to use movement.

The talented ‘Hugo Van Dijke’ & ‘Yael Ovadja’, from the ‘Netherlands’, known for their great work filming weddings, filmed me and ’James Jebson’ discussing the details of transitioning from photography to cinematography. We then turn the camera on Hugo and Yael and their experiences.

View ‘Hugo Van Dijke’ & ‘Yael Ovadja’ work here:

http://www.thedreamers.nl

View ‘James Jebson’s’ work here:

http://www.jamesjebson.com

http://www.jamesjebsonphotography.com

The Actors/Models for the Bride & Groom were great to work with, very talented and easy to get along with.

(Johnny being professional with Jen on set, haha)

Bride was ‘Jen Brook’

http://www.jenbrook.com

Groom was ‘Johnny Escobar’

http://johnnyescobar.com

Our sound guy was ‘Juan Manzed’ …a very professional fun guy to work with

http://manzed.com

Finally, the make sure everyone looked perfect for each role, make-up was done by the talented and up-beat ‘Phoebe Frossoula Caramitsos’ and ‘Amy Leigh Crank’

http://www.flossyandleigh.com

I arrived at the location ‘Mitton Hotel’ too early, had lunch and then noticed a cheesecake on the menu. This cheesecake was amazing, so light and fluffy. You can say I had too many cheesecakes and towards the end….well the whole team was hooked too, haha

I checked into my room and it was very nice, price was pretty much the same price as a ‘Travelodge’ and we all know what those rooms are like, haha.

I'm used to directing and filming so being on the other side of the camera was very different for me. It was also very draining, remembering to hit key points while keeping your personality up and

keeping a good connection with James.

I needed a lot of coffee to function

James and I got on really well during the shoot and you could say we were quite the jokesters on set.

The shoot took place over 4 days and the weather was up and down, like a typical English day

We used the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera, the 2.5K Cinema Camera, the 4K Production Camera and the Ursa.

Paired with great lenses like the Samyang Cine lenses, Zeiss CP.2, Voigtlander lenses, Metabones Speedboosters, and the Sigma Art Lenses.

We also used Edelkrone sliders, Cinevate Sliders, MoVi Gimbals, along with Sachtler tripods, Manfrotto monopods, F&V Lights...

For audio we worked with Zoom Video Mic pro, Tascam and Zoom recorders along with Sennherisers Lav mics.

So while utilizing all this great gear, the most important part was to show how, when and why we used this gear.

The whole team was amazing and we all got along really well, had fun and more importantly were able to get what we needed to get done professionally .

Here are a few frame grabs from the piece:

Daniel Peters, Simon Westland, James Jebson, Jen Brook, Johnny Escobar, Hugo Van Dijke, Juan Manzed, Jake Lawrenson, Yael Ovadja, , Byron Wijayawardena, Phoebe Frossoula Caramitsos