Camera & Lensing Approach - CLT FC Victory
A brief rundown of the camera & lensing approach from Hudson, Unify’s Head of Production, on our fan-experience video for Charlotte FC —
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What’s the reason for you choosing to shoot the Charlotte FC “Victory” piece on the Alexa 35 rather than our FX6? Obviously the FX6 would be “easier,” and you can lean into its autofocus.
Every reason other than that. I think A) Because it can do everything - and the dynamic range, obviously - there’s no scenario that I would be in where I wouldn’t have information. That’s huge - and we were shooting from bright, golden hours scenes and into the night.
The other thing, and I was noticing this, is just the color density. The ability to change any color that I want and make it look awesome - and the Alexa makes it easy. So I can sit there [in post] and tweak and party.
So what I’m hearing is it gives you a ton to work with in post and some wild flexibility.
And not for nothing, Charlotte FC’s color being blue - and I think this is real - every camera struggles with blues. Like if you put a Canon and a FX6 and a Blackmagic, anything - their blues are going to be different next to each other. And with the Alexa you just have infinitely more color information to where blue is money for Charlotte FC purposes.
You all went with the Viltrox Epic anamorphics for lensing. Was that your call, or did you & Ian [of Charlotte FC] kind of decide on an anamorphic look together in the planning of the shoot? & why anamorphic?
For the lenses, Ian and I discussed how we wanted the texture of the piece to look, and we pretty quickly decided on the anamorphics. And the Viltrox Epics are a pretty fun choice being a 1.33x squeeze. The Alexa 35 sensor is taller than a traditional super 35 sensor, so you can de-squeeze to a 16:9 in-camera natively, without having to crop any further in post. So that’s really nice because you know what you’re getting.
And also something about the Viltrox anamorphics, is on a super 35, they don’t always have to be some super aggressive look - they can also just come off textured. Sometimes when you have anamorphics it’s just grabbing you by the pants and saying “Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m anamorphic.” With the Viltrox, you have a little bit more wiggle room to where you can maintain modern sharpness in the center and the sides [of frame], but also get a lot of texture out of the radius of the lenses.
The vast majority of what we shot that day was on the 35mm, some on the 50mm. If I could go back, I would probably do the exact same thing. Now, of course, Viltrox has a 25mm which I’ve never used, but I would love to try it.
Also big shoutout to Taylor Hawkins for being my AC on that day and lugging around extra batteries and whatnot.
But an adjacent thought on the Alexa and the Viltrox lenses - I have decided that with my camera buildouts I’m not going to be scared. I’m going to not worry about the size. I’m going to only worry about the image. I’m not going to worry about battery changes or lens swaps. Jake Colletta - homie DP - has done a good job of kind of being that example for me. Watching this guy lug around massive camera builds on his own all day, every day - has helped me hone in on, and it’s a simple question, “What are your dreams for the image?” And just do it. Only worry about how good the image is.
If you had to have filmed the spot on an iPhone, which model are you choosing?
iPhone 8+. (iPhone 5s is the best iPhone, but we’ll let Hudson slide.)