Both commercials and music videos are fields with high aesthetic stakes. ARRI France dove a bit deeper into these types of productions and first spotlights cinematographer Kanam Onoyama, a Japanese national who has lived in France for fifteen years. He came to study cinema at the ESRA International Film School in Paris after completing his degree in French literature at the University of Tokyo. Initially confronted with the difficulties of becoming an assistant, Onoyama was able to establish himself as a cinematographer in advertising and music videos, where he has since become very popular in France and abroad. However, his ambitions remained in fiction. In 2019, he authored the photography of Abou Leila, a feature film by Amin Sidi-Boum di ne, selected at La semaine de la Critique in Cannes, shot with the ALEXA Mini. He recently worked on several episodes of the second season of Top Boy, a cult series in the UK, relaunched by Netflix; a project shot with ALEXA Mini LF and ARRI Rental's DNA lenses. Today, Onoyama is busy with international fiction projects, while pursuing a solid career in advertising. Advertising is a very flexible business, always looking for new talent, explains the cinematographer. It was the first field that accepted me and gave me a chance. It's much more difficult with French cinema. That's also why I created the Div + association, which seeks to open up the field to more diversity, to discover new talent from minorities with a mentoring system.
Watch Nike's New Girl : A commercial produced for the Asian market
In advertising, Onoyama has worked on a string of big projects with brands such as Pepsi, Uber, Dior, Mercedes-Benz, and most recently Nike with their campaign New Girl, directed by Caroline Koning (Bwgtbld). Nike wanted to make a feminist film for the Asian market, explains the director of photography. A Spanish creative who works in Japan liked my work, so he thought of me. It's an advertisement that I wanted to treat as fiction. I used the ALEXA Mini LF with Zeiss Supreme Prime, because I wanted a modern, sharp image with nice contrast and detail. I really like working with the ALEXA, especially because it is very reliable in terms of color. Whatever my visual intent, I get exactly what I want. For the past two to three years, I have been developing LUTs that I modify for each film. As I work on a wide variety of projects, scattered in many countries, these LUTs allow me to give my intention to the directors and postproduction teams and not have any surprises in the end. The image is already colored, contrasted, saturated, as I want it to be.
Watch Kanam Onoyama's visualization of Stormzy's mega hit Vossi Bop
In 2017, Onoyama took on an agent in Great Britain, where he has since been shooting projects with some of the best directors. These projects also include high-quality music videos: Stormzy's Vossi Bop, Dua Lipa's Break my Heart, or Justin Bieber's Yummy. I do a lot of advertising, but music videos are visually more free, especially in England, says Onoyama. On the Stormzy Vossi Bop' video (Caviar), director Henry Scholfield and I took a lot of risks. I worked with an ALEXA Mini and shot everything at wide angle with a 14 mm Cooke S4/i. This video changed my life. It got a lot of attention, it got me a lot of offers and kind of started this trend of a very wide-angle camera, with characters very close in the foreground, with transitions.
Watch Dua Lipa's Break My Heart , a blockbuster music video with 500 million views on YouTube
Today, I work a lot with ALEXA Mini LF, Onoyama notes. One of the reasons is the size of the sensor. It's hard to explain, but I have the impression that the character is more present, more real. The image exists, a bit like when I shoot with a medium format Hasselblad. I also really like the viewfinder of the Mini LF. With it, I can check my images at any time, without the need to install an external monitor. I like to keep the camera as light as possible, so that it remains mobile, intuitive.
More of Kanam Onoyama's work can be found on his website or social media account:
https://kanameonoyama.com/
https://www.instagram.com/dive.plus.fr/
Opening image: Maxime Congi
Related Products ALEXA Mini LF Large format, small camera
ALEXA Mini More than just a camera
DNA Personalize your lenses.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
The days are getting longer, the temperatures are rising, and playlists are filling up for the season. With summer around the corner, Spotify's global edito...
29/05/2026
New retro-inspired MPC announced
There are few devices that have gained the status held by Akai Pro's MPC range, and in recent years, the company have s...
29/05/2026
Save up to 30 on acclaimed titles
Following a successful launch at Superbooth 2026, Bjooks have revealed that they will be continuing the Kickstarter campa...
29/05/2026
Binaural monitoring application improved
Genelec have just released an update that brings some powerful new features to their HRTF-based binaural headphone ...
29/05/2026
6 June 2026 at SAE Institute, London, UK
IMSTA FESTA 2026 is almost upon us, with some of the biggest names in pro-audio set to descend upon SAE Institute i...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
May 29 2026, 09:00 (PDT) Dolby and rednote Bring More Immersive Storytelling to...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Youtube exclusive special drops today
Watch now
UKTV today announces another e...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
The Official Trailer of Physical 100 Italy, on Netflix From Se...
29/05/2026
Genelec announces V2.1 for Aural ID binaural headphone monitoring application posted: 29/05/2026
Aural ID 2.1 enhances binaural monitoring for stereo and ...
29/05/2026
At just 20 years old, Sean Melia from Summerhill Co. Meath has been revealed as the winner of Super Garden 2026. Sean is the youngest ever contestant and winner...
Both commercials and music videos are fields with high aesthetic stakes. ARRI France dove a bit deeper into these types of productions and first spotlights cinematographer Kanam Onoyama, a Japanese national who has lived in France for fifteen years. He came to study cinema at the ESRA International Film School in Paris after completing his degree in French literature at the University of Tokyo. Initially confronted with the difficulties of becoming an assistant, Onoyama was able to establish himself as a cinematographer in advertising and music videos, where he has since become very popular in France and abroad. However, his ambitions remained in fiction. In 2019, he authored the photography of Abou Leila, a feature film by Amin Sidi-Boum di ne, selected at La semaine de la Critique in Cannes, shot with the ALEXA Mini. He recently worked on several episodes of the second season of Top Boy, a cult series in the UK, relaunched by Netflix; a project shot with ALEXA Mini LF and ARRI Rental's DNA lenses. Today, Onoyama is busy with international fiction projects, while pursuing a solid career in advertising. Advertising is a very flexible business, always looking for new talent, explains the cinematographer. It was the first field that accepted me and gave me a chance. It's much more difficult with French cinema. That's also why I created the Div + association, which seeks to open up the field to more diversity, to discover new talent from minorities with a mentoring system. 
