Filming Coffee Communities with Blackmagic PYXIS
Remote travel, fast setups and hard sun shaped this documentary shoot in Ethiopia and China
Filmmaker Konstantin Kovalev, founder of Filmed by Few partnered with specialty coffee brand WatchHouse to produce a series of origin documentaries exploring the farmers and communities behind its global supply chain.
Filmed in Ethiopia’s remote highlands and China’s growing regions, the project demanded a camera package that traveled light and could handle long days with limited access to mains power.
“Our through line was the journey from bean to cup, focusing on the producers, the routines and the families behind the supply chain,” said Kovalev. “While Ethiopia was community driven, China was about sustainability.”
The Ethiopian leg of the trip meant contending with remote terrain, limited roads and unpredictable access to mains power for charging. That pushed Kovalev towards the PYXIS, a box style digital film camera that could be lightly rigged, packed down easily and run on the batteries he could carry. “Everything had to fit into a backpack. The camera needed to be compact, durable and quick to rig,” he said. “In documentary work you don’t get a second take.”
Kovalev added, “I wanted a camera that could be ready when something happened. In smaller communities, large rigs can feel intrusive. The PYXIS is compact enough that it doesn’t intimidate people, which helps you capture more intimate moments.”
With the films destined for both Instagram and YouTube, 3:2 open gate recording, capturing the full sensor area, was central to the storytelling. “It allowed us to frame for the story and extract portrait and landscape deliverables in post later without compromising composition. It’s been a game changer.”
For the China shoot, Kovalev added the Blackmagic PYXIS 12K digital film camera alongside the PYXIS 6K. “I wanted a main camera that covered more bases,” he said. “The PYXIS 12K and its RGBW sensor gave me that flexibility. The cameras cut together cleanly, so mixing it with the 6K was straightforward.”
Thanks to the shared color science, footage from both cameras cut together without additional matching in the grade. “On docs you take the light you can get,” noted Kovalev. “With the RGBW sensor, the dynamic range gave us more room outside, especially at midday. Sometimes you’re filming in harsh sun with no ability to reset, and it helped us hold detail and pull back highlights.”
The production was shot 25fps in Blackmagic RAW 8:1 at multiple resolutions, then edited and graded in DaVinci Resolve Studio. “Every aspect of postproduction happened inside the one software tool, which made everything more straightforward.”
With Blackmagic RAW, embedded metadata followed the footage into DaVinci Resolve Studio, which sped up exposure tweaks in the grade. “On run and gun work like this you don’t always nail every setting, but the Blackmagic RAW workflow made it easy enough to pull things back in the grade.”
Reliability was the PYXIS platform’s defining quality for Kovalev. “The best camera is one you don’t stress about,” he said. “You don’t want to miss moments waiting for a camera to start.”
Kovalev’s journey with Blackmagic Design started about five years ago when he moved into filmmaking fulltime. “I began with the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and have been working my way through the lineup ever since,” he concluded. “The combination of image quality, workflow integration with DaVinci Resolve and the creative control their cameras offer make it an easy choice to stick with the brand.
How I rigged and set up my PYXIS 12K
Base Rig: MID49 baseplate and Rainbow handle, MID49 side plate with integrated audio breakout box and Nitze side handle for handheld control. “The MID49 system kept everything modular. I could strip the camera down to just the body and one handle when I needed maximum mobility, or add the full rig when we had time to set up properly.”
Lenses: Carl Zeiss Jena 20mm F2.8 PL, Carl Zeiss Jena 35mm F2.4 PL, Helios 44 2 58mm F2.0 PL, Carl Zeiss Jena 135mm F3.5 PL. “The Zeiss Jena glass is small, sharp and has character without being difficult. The Helios gave me a softer option for close work. Between the four lenses I could cover most of what I needed without carrying heavy zooms.”
Monitoring: Blackmagic PYXIS Monitor. “Having a native monitor that speaks directly to the camera simplified the setup meant one less compatibility issue to worry about. On location shoots like this, you want fewer points of failure, not more.”
Audio: Audio Technica AT875R shotgun mic fed into the side plate breakout box. “For ambient sound and basic interview work, it gave me usable audio without adding a separate recorder to the workflow.”
Capture Settings: Kovalev shot in Blackmagic RAW 8:1 constant bitrate across 4K and 8K acquisition, with 17:9 at 100fps used for high speed work and 8K Open Gate when maximum resolution was required. “This approach gave us the flexibility to match capture settings to the demands of each scene while keeping the file sizes efficient and storage needs predictable in the field.”
Data Workflow: At the end of each day, footage was transferred from CFexpress cards to two Samsung T5/T7 external SSDs, with the drives kept separate where possible before cards were cleared and formatted for the next day. “It’s simple system, but it works.”
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