Vertical Musical Playback Shot with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Large format sensor and DaVinci Resolve workflow used for ambitious mobile musical.
Blackmagic Design today announced that Director Scott Brown shot the vertical musical series “Playback” using the Blackmagic PYXIS 6K digital film camera, with DaVinci Resolve Studio editing, color grading, visual effects (VFX) and audio post production software powering the full post production workflow.
Produced by Brown’s indie company Second Rodeo for HOLYWATER TECH’s My Drama platform, “Playback” is a 17 song original musical following Maddie Bryce (Amber Laird), a struggling songwriter whose rising success is tied to a secret she can’t afford to reveal. As AI reshapes the music industry, Maddie is pulled into a double life that forces her to confront identity and authenticity. The series also stars comedian and internet personality Hannah Stocking and America’s Next Top Model winner Sophie Sumner, alongside Royce Lundquist and Sarah Sampino.
Brown and his creative partner and executive producer Stacy Howard conceived the show as a deliberate step up from their debut vertical series “The Diamond Rose,” which generated 20 million organic views on its first day of release on My Drama. With “Playback,” the goal was to create something unique. “It started to flow organically from that one foundational idea, to do something that had never been done before in verticals,” said Brown. “In a way that gave audiences what they loved, but elevated.”
The PYXIS 6K became a workhorse, particularly during pickup shoots. “Having a full open gate sensor as well as the incredible dynamic range of Blackmagic RAW really allowed us to capture a wide variety of images from a wide variety of environments, and have not only the exposure latitude, but the color space to make sure that all of our shots matched,” said Brown.
Brown shot open gate throughout, a deliberate choice that paid dividends in the vertical edit. “Not only does that give you the advantage of potentially having other distribution options later, it really opens up a whole host of options when you’re doing the vertical edit,” he said. The production also carried a relatively high volume of visual effects for a vertical microdrama, and that sensor flexibility helped keep options open across 12 reels of finishing work.
Post production ran entirely within DaVinci Resolve Studio, a shift Brown made deliberately after completing “The Diamond Rose.” “I really had the lightbulb moment of seeing just what a powerful tool this was,” he said. “I’ve been using other editing programs for over a decade, but with Resolve, especially with its most recent updates, it really has turned me into a huge fan of the program.”
Editor Jim Berkenkamp, who came onto the project during the second half of the editing phase, found the same advantage. “Resolve made it easy to move quickly between editorial, audio, and finishing workflows while keeping everything centralized,” he said. “That flexibility became really valuable as the project evolved.”
For Brown, the ability to move between the edit page and the color page without a round trip was a particular advantage on a project with complex sequences. “You can get into your color workflow, realize that you want to change a couple of shots, and just jump right on over to the edit page, tweak those shots, and boom, you’re right back in the color page continuing where you left off,” he said.
With multiple machines across the office, both Brown and Berkenkamp relied on the Blackmagic Cloud Pod network storage solution to keep media and project files moving efficiently between workstations. “Once we got onto the Cloud Pod and had one master drive connected between both of our primary editing machines, it dramatically improved our workflow,” said Brown.
Berkenkamp echoed that. “It helped streamline collaboration and allowed us to keep media and project updates moving efficiently between different workstations, especially while handling pickups, ADR, graphics, and online revisions simultaneously,” he said.
For Brown, the decision to build the company’s workflow around Blackmagic Design tools was straightforward. “When you utilize those programs and stay within Blackmagic’s ecosystem, the incredible connectivity between different machines really becomes a no brainer,” he said. “Within this vertical workflow, this is absolutely the best ecosystem to be in.”
“Playback” is available on the My Drama app.
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