Glendale, Calif.-based production and post house Fisher Film Works recently used Blackmagic’s new Cinema Camera to shoot a spot for Arby’s “King’s Hawaiian Roast Beef Sandwich.” The national television spot, which features an artist painting a picture of the sandwich, was colored using Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve.
Gavin Fisher, founder and owner of Fisher Film Works shot the commercial in less than one week. Shot in 1080HD in compressed Apple ProRes, Fisher was able to capture high quality images and bring them into his editing and color correction workflow without the need for transcoding.
“I knew the quality of the footage would be great, because I’ve used the Blackmagic Cinema Camera before,” Fisher said. “But the resulting footage still impressed me. The skin tones, the colors of the artwork on the wall, all of the images were amazing, and we were able to do a lot creatively with the footage in Resolve.”
The camera’s compact design allowed Gavin to work within a very confined space.
“We filmed in a small studio because we were trying to get the look of a cable access painting show,” said Fisher. “We didn’t even have room for a dolly, but the director wanted some movement in the shots. In the end, we were able to use some sliders, which we wouldn’t have been able to do with a larger camera. The compact size of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera proved to be a big advantage for us.”
The director, Paul Cummings, cut the commercial in Final Cut Pro and handed it off to Fisher who imported it into DaVinci Resolve via XML for final color correction. Once the final commercial was finished in Resolve, it was exported straight to the client for airing.
“The Log workflow in Resolve just goes hand in hand with the camera,” said Fisher. “We were going for a specific look, a super-saturated, high-end cable access look. By shooting in ProRes film mode, which meant the images from the camera were flat, and then grading the commercial in Resolve, it was super easy to get that look. I prefer Resolve over anything else I’ve used, especially when using the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. The workflow between the two is seamless.”
