Blackmagic Cloud Used for Feature Film Awesomest Christmas Ever
Independent holiday film created with Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and DaVinci Resolve Studio.
Blackmagic Design today announced that independent film “Awesomest Christmas Ever” was shot using a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K digital film camera and edited with DaVinci Resolve Studio editing, color grading, visual effects (VFX) and audio post production software. Relying on Blackmagic Cloud, the post team was able to remotely collaborate while editing and grading the holiday film.
Directed by independent filmmaker Matthew Wilson, “Awesomest Christmas Ever” tells the story of how a young boy tries to use the Christmas spirit, and a talking Christmas tree, to stop his parents from getting divorced during the holidays.
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Also working as the film’s DP, Wilson credited the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K’s compact design as a crucial element when working in tight spaces, as well as an asset in keeping him on budget and on time as it allowed him to easily shift between using a tripod and a shoulder rig as he transitioned between different shots. “We were often shooting in houses, so it helped to have a compact camera, especially for the scenes that took place in the kids’ bedrooms. There was sometimes barely enough room to fit me, the sound operator and the two main child actors, so it helped to have a small setup,” he explained.
Wilson added, “I was inspired to make a children’s movie set around the holidays, so I wrote a story that would star kids and was fortunate enough to cast some amazing child actors. Once we started shooting, it helped having a smaller rig so there wasn’t any big equipment for these energetic kids to accidentally bump into.”
Continuing his Blackmagic RAW workflow, Wilson used the Blackmagic Proxy Generator App and Blackmagic Cloud throughout post. “I edited the entire movie, picture and sound, within one project file in DaVinci Resolve. I kept things organized by using separate timelines with a few scenes on each, and then brought them all together into a final timeline for the full movie. I used the Blackmagic Proxy Generator App, which was convenient as all I had to do was run it once and the Blackmagic RAW files automatically synced up in Resolve. Once I had the edit finalized, I used Blackmagic Cloud to remotely collaborate with Ryan Graves, our colorist, as he worked his magic in Portland, while I was in Seattle.”
While editing, Wilson heavily relied on DaVinci Resolve Studio’s audio tools. “I used the dialogue isolation feature on pretty much every piece of dialogue in ‘Awesomest Christmas Ever,” he noted. “On previous films, I had a lot of issues with background noise in the sound, and I was never able to successfully remove it. Now, with DaVinci Resolve Studio’s dialogue isolation feature, I could very quickly and easily reduce the background noise to the point where it is imperceptible throughout the whole movie. It was a game changer.”
“As an independent filmmaker, I wear a lot of different hats during filming and I’m moving really fast, doing all the camera work myself. By shooting in Blackmagic RAW and bringing things into Resolve, I’m able to adjust things later on if needed,” concluded Wilson. “For example, one day I accidentally changed the frame rate for our last setup of the day and didn’t notice it until after I got home that night and reviewed the footage. It caused a drift between picture and sound, so that the longer the take went on the more the sound was off. I was able to fix it by changing the speed of the clips in Resolve, but this created an additional issue where the Christmas lights in the shot now had a slight flicker. Fortunately, Resolve’s deflicker effect was able to easily remove it, so the scene still worked well.”
“Awesomest Christmas Ever” is now available on Prime Video, The Roku Channel and YouTube.
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