Here is another intriguing BMPCC 6K setup. This time the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K was paired with a microscope to film protists in BRAW. All that beauty was graded on Resolve. Add some music to it, and you’ll get a micro-scientific thriller.
Manipulating the BMPCC 6K
It seems that BMPCC (Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera) shooters are the most creative. For instance, we’ve shown two case-studies where the BMPCC was utilized in unconventional way. Capturing the moon (telescope pairing), and micro filmmaking with attached microscope lenses. This time, a production company called Protist Lab Films has used the BMPCC 6K to shoot protists, to bring the fascinating world of the Protists to the awareness of the general public through engaging films and documentaries.
6K camera setup
Protist Lab Films built an innovative 6K camera setup mounted to a microscope using a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K digital film camera to shoot microscopic single-celled protists, some of the Earth’s smallest creatures. The videos are edited and graded using DaVinci Resolve editing, color grading, visual effects (VFX) and audio post production software. Protist Lab Films is run by former water lab technician and sound engineer Fabian Weston, who started Protist Lab Films a few years ago with only a microscope and his phone camera. He was familiar with Blackmagic Design from his years in the music and entertainment industry.
Most of the BMPCC shooters are indie filmmakers who own maximum creativity, vision, and innovative spirit. And that leads to unconventional projects like those in the article.
Telling the story of the protist kingdom
The end goal of Protist Lab Films is to generate awareness of the protist kingdom, protists being single-celled eukaryotic organisms that are not animals, plants, fungus, bacteria, or viruses. Most people know them as algae and protozoa. “I was familiar with Blackmagic Design from when I was working on live stream audio mixing at the Sydney jazz club The Basement some years back. We used to do live streams of shows from the production studio one floor above the venue straight to YouTube. It was all run with Blackmagic, the cameras in the venue and switchers upstairs, and via a MADI connection for a separate live audio mix in the studio,” Weston said.
BMPCC 6K paired with a microscope
Since the beginning of 2022, Weston has been using the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K to capture the amazing world of these tiny creatures. Relying on the camera’s ability to work with a number of different high-quality microscope objective lens types and its ease to build onto the design, Weston created a unique custom setup to connect his microscope directly to the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K. After capturing the images in Blackmagic RAW, the footage was edited and then graded using DaVinci Resolve. For the final touch, drawing on his talent as a musician and music producer, he adds a custom-built soundtrack to some of the films before publishing the videos on the Protist Lab Films YouTube channel. “It’s an unbroken end-to-end process, and it’s just great to work within the single domain. Plus, the tech support is lightning fast. Blackmagic Design has definitely made the whole workflow very easy and smooth,” Weston said.
Filming bacteria on BRAW Q3 6K at 50FPS
Check out Weston’s video below. The main settings are:
- Camera: Blackmagic Design Pocket 6K
- Monitor: Atomos Shinobi 5” 1080p HDMI
- Codec: BRAW Q3 in 6Kp50
- Media: Angelbird CFast 2.0 256GB 560MB/s
Wrapping up
From filming the moon with the help of a microscope to capturing the small details of insects, to shooting bacteria via microscope lenses, the Blackmagic Cinema cameras seem like the ideal solution for scientific curiosity. However, it’s not the camera alone, but the artists behind it. Most of the BMPCC shooters are indie filmmakers who own maximum creativity, vision, and innovative spirit. And that leads to unconventional projects like those in the article. Now, let’s wait for some ARRIRAW footage of viruses 🙂
Product List
Here’re the products mentioned in the article, and the links to purchase them from authorized dealers.
- Blackmagic Design DaVinci Resolve 17 Studio with Speed Editor
- Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Cameras
- Y.M.CINEMA 65 – A Gift for Filmmakers
Thanks for the awesome write-up. It was interesting to see this applied to viruses, as we did something similar to capture the inside of gemstones using a RED Helium & Microscope: https://www.lambdafilms.co.uk/macro-photography/
Viruses next!