Fremont, CA - July 27, 2017 - Blackmagic Design today announced that The Flying Kick Asia, a Singapore based boutique production house, has chosen to shoot their upcoming set of short films using the URSA Mini Pro, with color correction done with DaVinci Resolve Studio and the DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel. The second of four films, "Sarah," a Hari Raya themed short film, was shot and completed production in a single day. 

 

The Flying Kick Asia commits to training its employees by investing man-hours and resources into creative storytelling. Dedicating its yearly marketing budget to producing personal "passion project" films to push the technical boundaries of the team's skillsets and equipment, The Flying Kick Asia will be producing four short films before the end of 2017.

 

"Sarah" is a heart wrenching, uniquely Singaporean film of lost intercultural love, written and directed by Don Aravind. The film follows Karthik, a non-Muslim Indian man, through the Hari Raya festivities to an unplanned meeting. Beautifully shot, the audience is unaware of his plight till the very end. Set in an uncommon space between two cultures and over the Muslim Ramadan season, "Sarah" shows that no matter where you come from, who you are, or how far you have fallen, you can always count on family.

 

"'Sarah' was shot on the URSA Mini Pro camera in ISO800 and BMD Film Color Space at different locations and with different lighting conditions, so the built-in ND filters allowed us to stay on the same ISO to have a consistent picture tonality. When the director wanted to shoot with the URSA Mini Pro camera, we were initially concerned about the low-light abilities of the camera but were pleasantly surprised that in ProRes HQ there was virtually no noise in the footage. On top of that, some of our underexposed shots were recovered very well in post on DaVinci Resolve Studio. We even had to add some film grain to give the final picture a little texture," lauds Nicholas Chee, the Lighting Director on the film. He adds, "We had to move really fast on this project as we had five scenes and three different locations to cycle through in a day so we had to use really portable lights that are easy to set up and tear down. Having only used the URSA Mini Pro camera on one project previously, 'Sarah' was a great test space to try new techniques and grow our familiarity with Blackmagic Design's URSA Mini Pro camera."

 

"Call me old-school but I am a firm believer in owning cameras instead of renting because as artisans, we need to get intimate and familiar with our tools and the only way was to have them with us 24/7. With the amazing affordability of the URSA Mini Pro camera, ownership was a no-brainer. With a different director attached to each of the four films, the crew's constant strive to fulfill directorial vision is what will better them," said Nicholas Chee, who is also the founder of The Flying Kick Asia. He continues, "I think the URSA Mini Pro camera is very reliable. We did not face any problems during the shoot even in the middle of a scorching 37 degree Celsius Singapore weather!"

 

"We will definitely be shooting RAW for the next short film instead of ProRes to explore the increased possibilities that are available in post. We now color grade all our projects using the DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel and ball control is the only way to finely and accurately tune color to the desired look," explains the multi-talented creative producer and colorist.

 

"Sarah," a Hari Raya 2017 short film is available now to view on YouTube.

 

Press Photography

Product photos of URSA Mini Pro, DaVinci Resolve Studio, DaVinci Resolve Mini Panel and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/media/images.

 

About Blackmagic Design

Blackmagic Design creates the world's highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design's DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post-production, while the company's Emmyâ„¢ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com.