Blackmagic Design recently made an announcement that a new international commercial for Nokian Tyres was shot using a range of Blackmagic Design cameras, including the Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K digital film camera, to capture the action in, around and even underneath fast moving cars.
Titled “Alive,” the spot focuses on how the tires are meant for extreme and high octane use in almost all environments, with Blackmagic Design cameras attached to vehicles as they sped over sand dunes, through mud and across snowy terrain.
“We shot across the state of Utah, all in vastly different, unique and challenging environments, capturing everything from Swing Arm City, which is a clay playground for off road motorsports, to the Uinta National Forest and Uinta Mountains during a snowstorm, and out near the Bonneville Salt Flats and Knolls Recreation Area for dirt and dune shots,” said DP Sam Sargeant. “These elements all pushed our limits in which ways we could shoot, but we just went for it and relied on the cameras to withstand the elements. They worked in the frigid cold, in extremely dusty and windy environments, in the snow, dirt, mud, on the car, in the car, and even underneath the car.”
To capture the action, Sargeant used an URSA Mini Pro 12K as the A camera primarily attached to the pursuit vehicle, with Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K digital film cameras capturing shots inside the main vehicle, as well as rigged externally on the car from the tires up, and underneath tire level.
The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro’s and Pocket Cinema Camera 4K’s miniaturized designs allowed Sargeant to easily utilize them for tight interior shots, as well as right next to the tires and underneath the vehicle, without having to sacrifice image quality. However, Sargeant credited Blackmagic RAW as being the most paramount to the shoot.
“DaVinci Resolve Studio perfectly integrates color capabilities with editorial and VFX features,” said Director Ashton Sterling Bingham. “In each step of a pipeline, we were able to define a set of parameters and expand our degrees of freedom, such as doing cleanups, conforming and VFX rotoscoping work, all the way to coloring and finishing. Starting from the edit, we were able to online and conform the project easily and recreate the editorial effects, such as burn-ins and flashes, with their proper composite modes.”
“After we started by experimenting with different LUTs, I used warpers, log controls and some Resolve FX to build the look and lock it within a few minutes, so we could all focus on the creative aspects rather than the technical ones. We were live grading this project remotely, and Resolve’s versatility allowed me to dedicate most of our time to grading rather than matching and fixing problems,” Bayegan added.
