APPROACHING THE FINAL STAGE OF WORK ON BIOCHEMISTRY OF TREASON

This was the most time consuming doc I’ve had a chance to work on so far. In the duration of past 3 weeks we’ve done quite a lot. Roughly 2 TB of footage logged, transcribed and imported into Premiere CC. 1.05 hrs on the timeline. 54 pages of script. More on that soon.
Some technical advancements need to be mentioned now. We’ve upgraded our tiny Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera to be able to shoot 10 bits RAW. First impressions are terrific. The image is mind blowing when you load it into Davinci. The following frame should give you an impression of what it’s like:

And here’s another innovative discovery.

My assistant Oleg Sergeev is holding a self made Movi replica (cervo controlled stabilization rig) comprised of the Chinese rig and Russian built operating board. It provides a pretty “hollywood look”for your pans and zoom ins when used with a camera like GH3 and a wide lens (12 mm SLRMagic). Once we are done with editing we’re going to get more experience in both directions and share it here.
The world of filmmaking is changing so rapidly the small teams like ours sometimes are getting unexpected advantages over TV and video giants.
Stay tuned!

JUST UPGRADED OUR BMPCC TO RAW

Very exciting. All I can say at this point.

TESTING BLACMAGIC POCKET CINEMA CAMERA

The most exciting news of course is that we miraculously grabbed the BMPCC from Adorama. Many people are still on the wait list and the camera (along with batteries and even SD cards) is nowhere to be found. We just walked in and were lucky to sneak out with it.
There are definitely many ways this camera may be improved, and the battery’s life is indeed very short, but the overall impression so far is absolutely positive. Below I’m attaching a few screenshots from the 1st shoot. One very inspiring addition is that the RAW update to BMCC is said to be released by Blackmagic very soon. Another interesting acquisition for us is the new Sony FS700 super35mm video camera. We’ve been shooting with it for the last two weeks, and I can’t describe how happy I am with the results. Actually at this point I think we reached the perfect production condition gear wise: GH3/GH2/BMPCC (which share the same line of M4/3 lenses) and Nikon D800/FS700 (which also share the same Nikon lenses via the Metabones adaptor). On the final note I need to mention that we are in the 2nd month of work on the new documentary project for TV RUSSIA. It’s topic is too sensitive to be exposed until we’re in the editing stage.