NEW THRILLING DRAMATIC FILM, THE LIVING, USES BLACKMAGIC CINEMA CAMERA AND DAVINCI RESOLVE

Blackmagic Design have announced that “The Living,” a new indie drama, which the Tribeca Film Institute selected to screen during the Tribeca Film Festival and which will premiere at the prestigious Manhattan Film Festival, was shot with the Blackmagic Cinema Camera. DaVinci Resolve was also used for on set and final colour correction.

Directed by New York filmmaker Jack Bryan, “The Living” was developed by New Yorks Shooting Films and was produced by Laura DuBois and John Snyder, with cinematography by Aleksandar Kosutic. “The Living” stars Fran Kranz, star of “Cabin in the Woods” and “Dollhouse,” Jocelin Donahue, star of “Insidious 2” and the critically acclaimed “House of the Devil,” Kenny Wormald star of “Footloose” and “Love & Mercy,” Joelle Carter of “Justified,” and Chris Mulkey of “Grimm,” “Captain Phillips” and “Boardwalk Empire.”

Set in Pennsylvania, “The Living” is a dark thrilling drama focused on redemption. The lead character, Teddy, discovers he has severely beaten his wife, Molly, while he was drinking. As he attempts to redeem himself, she must decide whether to take him back, as her mother continuously expresses her disapproval and her brother hires an ex con to kill Teddy.

Director Jack Bryan and Director of Photography Aleksandar Kosutic set the film in earth tones with a dark and low key look to most scenes. This meant that the film included a number of low light and nighttime shots and also included some dramatic close up shots to convey intense emotion and action. To capture all of this, Aleksandar chose the Blackmagic Cinema Camera EF.

“I wanted a camera with a wide dynamic range, and the Blackmagic Cinema Camera’s 13 stops of dynamic range and ability to shoot in RAW gave me exactly what I needed. I chose it over a number of other cameras we looked at,” said Aleksandar. Footage received a first pass grade on set by both Aleksandar and Jack using DaVinci Resolve on their laptops. Footage was then sent to New York’s theColourSpace for final editing and colour correction by colourist Juan Salvo, who also used DaVinci Resolve. The entire 91 minute film was shot in RAW and was stored on three 240 GB SSD cards.

“The Blackmagic Cinema Camera gave us all we needed in terms of image quality and dynamic range, and its small size was also perfect and let us get all the shots that we needed throughout the film. The form factor really allowed us to shrink the entire rig and use smaller and lighter tools, but the image quality coming from it was the same as I would get from a big camera,” said Aleksandar. “We got the film done faster and on budget with this camera.”

“A lot of the scenes were dramatic, up close and personal. And they were shot in very dark circumstances, so there were times when the light and locations were not perfect for getting the shot we wanted. But we knew we had the range of the Blackmagic Cinema Camera, and we were able to be incredibly creative and flexible. It was amazing how much we could pull out from the RAW images, and the camera’s dynamic range made the film look complete,” noted Aleksandar.

He continued: “One shot that was really tough was shooting the lead in a dark car at night. We were looking at the shots on small external monitors, and we just were not sure that we got it. But when we got the footage to colour correction, it was all there, and the shot looked great. With any other camera I would not expect to get that result.”

“The Living” will be distributed worldwide in 2015 and will continue to be shown on the international film festival circuit throughout 2014.