Blackmagic Design has revealed that multiple Blackmagic Micro Cinemas and Video Assists were used to shoot the web movie of the new LEXUS car, LC500.
It was shot by cameraman and founder of Tokyo-based KID Co. Ltd. Kei Takahashi on location on and above the highways of California.
With power and comfort, the LC500 was born as a luxury coupé which symbolizes LEXUS’s next generation.
To bring out the attractiveness of the car, the production shot the car driving along the stunning Angeles Crest Highway in California. Shot using a number of cameras, including six Micro Cinema Cameras, the movie captured the intense nature of California and the LC500 powerfully running through the curvy road from various angles. Along with the Micro cinema cameras, Takahashi used two video assists for monitoring.
Takahashi commeted, “We temporarily blocked about 4 km of the road for the shoot, and let the LC500 run the 4 km. When the car came back to the starting point, we started shooting again. We repeated this several times. It took 15 to 20 minutes for each round, and we only had one day to shoot the entire movie. And since we were at an external location, we had to finish while the sun was out. It was a very tight schedule, so we wanted to capture as many angles as we could.”
The Micro Cinema Cameras were set using a single pipe across the car with grips. Tripod mounts were installed via the grips where three micro cinema cameras were mounted.
Another Micro cinema camera with a suction cup was stuck to the window on the driver’s side, while the last was installed near the driver’s foot. With this setup, Takahashi was able to shoot five angles such as the spedometer, the driver’s hand, gas pedal and a number of other specific features of the car in action. Takahashi used another Micro cinema camera to shoot a vertical size movie.
“The director and I were thinking that it would be interesting if we put the Micro cinema camera rotated in 90 degrees on top of another camera when shooting the LC500 from the camera car. The idea just came up and we decided to shoot the vertical size movie in case we could use the footage for something,” observed the renownedTakahashi.
Also, DaVinci Resolve was used for on-set grading, with the final post production process completed in Japan.
