by FIlmInk Staff
Multi Emmy nominated sound designer uses Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K to create audio driven horror.
Patrick Hogan’s new film, Blindsided, tells the story about a blind school teacher, Maria (Crystal Loverro), who struggles to survive through a nightmarish night when an alien spaceship crashes and unleashes a monstrous predator. This film features an all low vision cast and places the audience in the POV of a blind protagonist who is only able to hear what happens around her.
The film takes a unique narrative approach, providing audiences with an immersive glimpse into the harrowing experience of Maria, a blind woman confronting the most terrifying ordeal of her life. The horror remains unseen, both to her and the audience, heightening the suspense and reminding us that sometimes, the most terrifying things are the ones we don’t see coming. To create this, Hogan relied on the Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K and DaVinci Resolve.
Shot with Blackmagic Cinema Camera 6K, with DaVinci Resolve used for editing, colour and VFX. The film from the 10 time Emmy nominated sound designer has already received seven film awards, including “Best Sci-Fi/Horror” at the recent Chicago Horror Film Festival and the prestigious FilmQuest award for “Best Sound.” Hogan completed the film with colorist Alexander Schwab, VFX artist Christopher Vincelette and creature design by Dustin Washburne.
Audio and Visual as Equals
Hogan explained his vision for the film: “When we can’t see what’s out there in the dark, it can scare us a lot more than when we can see it. Then we played up the horror of the situation by hearing what is happening to other people – all the while being unable to see what is happening, just like Maria, our protagonist.
The entire film is composed of just six shots and plays in real time. The longest and most difficult shot included the main character, Crystal, wearing a Snorricam rig and traveling through every room of her apartment. She is legally blind when she isn’t wearing her glasses, so we did lots of rehearsal.
Getting an extreme close up to Maria’s face was critical to the story. And being close to her face like that, you could see in her eyes that recognition of the sounds and the chaos and the people panicking. The detail in the image that the Cinema Camera 6K picked up is what sells the whole film – you can see the fear in her eyes.
The small form factor and full frame sensor was key for the Cinema Camera 6K to work for us. The actress was literally wearing the camera, so it’s small size, light weight and ability to get such a beautiful, rich image was key – as was being able to focus just on her face with a very shallow depth of field, so that the background behind her is out of focus – which again, helps play into giving the audience the experience of being blind.
The only thing in frame that is clearly in focus in her face. So we are paying attention to her expressions and what she is experiencing, and not getting lost or distracted looking in the background. A DSLR hybrid camera would have worked as well for the logistics, but the highlight roll off and general rich “cinema” look of the Cinema Camera 6k, since we were always in such a tight closeup of her, was really important.
At the same time, we used the camera’s 2.4:1 widescreen aspect ratio, which meant even though we were close to her, we could still see a little bit of what is happening behind her. Seeing little snippets like that of something that is scary and horrifying can be a more intense experience. This is why the Cinema Camera 6K was so important in creating the film.
The look and feel would be much different if we had shot on another small camera. You can’t beat that rich, creamy cinema look that you get from the Blackmagic Cinema line.
Creature Reveal
The creature reveal shot, which took 24 takes, was done using Cinema Camera 6K on a gimbal, which allowed Hogan to create a complicated moving shot that had Crystal and the monster moving.
He explained how he was able to nail the important scene using Cinema Camera 6K and Blackmagic RAW: “It only worked because we were able to use the gimbal so that the camera moves were smooth and subtle and didn’t draw attention to itself. So having a small, compact camera like the Cinema Camera again made a big difference.
The smalll, compact nature of the camera was also a big help simply for the logistics of working in a small space as well. There was no space to have a 1st and 2nd AC or a second camera op in there – it was just James Suter, our amazing DP, working the camera and operating the gimbal solo.
This is also a scene where shooting in Blackmagic Raw really helped. We actually shot the scene brighter than we intended it to play, so that James could see clearly the entire image and pull a good focus and make sure everything was properly framed, and then in post we pulled that image down and crushed the blacks a little to make it darker and scarier and match the prior shots. So being able to manipulate that image and dial in exactly what we wanted was very beneficial.
Following production, Hogan used DaVinci Resolve to edit and grade, as well as using Fusion to create three VFX shots.
“Resolve also played a big role – not only did I edit the film in Resolve (as I have my 2 prior short films) but the colorist also used Resolve and some of the new tools in it for rotoscoping with Magic Mask 2 for the VFX shots and some detailed color work to help in several shots where we had very little light and the image was really dark. Blackmagic RAW is a great codec to work with as you can push and pull it so much in post and manipulate it to get the desired look. We also added a little film grain as well, to again give it that cinematic look.”
“One of the big advantages of the Cinema Camera 6K and Davinci Resolve was the price. There is nothing else on the market that has the highly cinematic quality image with that much dynamic range and grading flexibility combined with the small form factor, that is also affordable for low budget indie film work. The amount of post production we were able to accomplish using that one piece of software was amazing. We couldn’t make this film 6-8 years ago at this price and have it look and sound as good as it does,” he finished.
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 real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, 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 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com/au.
