I was browsing through the web recently looking for a decent POV rig for a narrative project I am prepping and came across something really cool. Apparently, earlier in the year, the BMPCC was used in a POV commercial for McDonalds dubbed “SuperGood” shot Joe Murray at Native Sons Films in Los Angeles.
We’ve seen other Blackmagic cameras (the BMCC) used on massive feature films, such as the Expendables 3. The size of the Pocket camera, combined with the robust professional codec and Raw recording on-board makes it a very appealing acquisition option for DP’s looking to get a lot of bang from a small package. Check out the commercial below.
“The idea was to shoot the commercial from the point of view of a person eating, sharing and going throughout their day with McDonalds. Not only did that allow us to show the product and logo in almost every shot, but the first person point of view grabs the audience’s attention and makes them feel part of the experience,” said Joe. “I worked closely with Stern Advertising to ensure the spot had a positive vibe, high energy and constant movement to really engage the viewer.”
Above you can see the 11-16mm f/2.8 Tokina with what appears to be a Metabones Speed booster adapter, which makes a lot of sense, as it’s the only way to get a wide-enough angle on the Pocket camera, due to the 3x crop of the Super 16mm to Full Frame. The camera was mounted to the mouth guard of a motorcycle helmet, as it is light enough not to add a significant strain on the operator.
“We had the camera operator and actors on bicycles, skateboarding, running into a meeting and dancing at a beach party. Movement was essential to the theme, and the Pocket Cinema Camera’s form factor was perfect,” said Joe. “We also cast real people, which provided extra personality and enhanced the natural feel. So at times we had actual skateboarders wearing the helmet and shooting with the camera, and it gave a really authentic feeling. A DSLR would have been too unwieldy and wouldn’t have provided such a natural feeling of movement.
“I also wanted it to look authentic, as if you are looking through a human eye, not a camera, so the footage had to have a sophisticated, cinematic look. Even though it’s a roving, quick point of view, I didn’t want over sharpened, highly compressed images or barreling distortion with a fish eye look. I wanted a naturalistic wide lens look with correct corners and smooth, high quality images, and I couldn’t have done it with any other tool,” he continued.
Even though DSLR’s were used for a few shots as well the additional dynamic range coming from the BMPCC were clearly pronounced in the additional detail in the highlights and shadows of the primarily high-contrasty scenes used in the commercial.
The 13 stops of dynamic range from the CinemaDNG Raw files off of the BMPCC, came in handy in post of course, where Joe and his team used DaVinci Resolve 10 to process and grade the footage.
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