AJA Cion used to shoot film mockumentary

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AJA Cion used to shoot film mockumentary --

Tue, 05 May 2015 10:43

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Upcoming indie feature The Great American Movie Hustle follows filmmaker Michael Anton and actor Michael Monsour as they attempt to create an epic cinematic film about making an epic cinematic film. Along the way, the duo encounters several twists and turns that mirror common production challenges filmmakers face today. Produced by Wonder Lab Films and directed by Michael Anton, the parody is presented in a mockumentary format rife with old-school humour. To achieve a distinct cinematic aesthetic for the film, Anton brought Doug Michaels on board as cinematographer, who shot the film using AJA Cion production cameras.

I wanted to get Cion in the field to see what its really capable of, and our experience was great; its easy to control and manipulate, Michaels said. Cion is one of the most intuitive, easy-to-use cameras Ive ever worked with; it gives you all the functionality you need without the clutter of a million buttons. Its not only a great camera for filmmaking, but I could also see it being an awesome tool for scripted and commercial work too.

Michaels leveraged Cion to capture footage for the film, and as an on-camera prop used by characters Anton and Monsour in behind-the-scenes sequences. Scenes that represent the mockumentary segments with the Cion in frame were captured on Canon C300 HD cameras. Opting for a run-and-gun style, much of the film was shot handheld with Cion. All of the material was captured in ProRes 444 at 4K 24fps, transitioning to ProRes 422 at 4K 60fps for action scenes that called for a slo-mo effect. The Cions were configured for handheld, shoulder mount setups, with a Zacuto Z-Finder viewfinder, MTF lens adapter and Zeiss Nikon mount lenses in 14mm, 24mm, 35mm and 50mm.

Michaels commented on the quality of the images, The footage looks great, especially with our darker and more contrast-y scenes. We threw some clips into Final Cut and did some grading and I couldnt believe what we could pull out of the darks. What we pulled off with the blacks looked amazing!

The camera was also easily setup for Steadicam work, a natural fit given the lightweight construction of Cion, to capture several of the action scenes. Everything was recorded straight to AJAs Pak SSD media and backed up to Raid hard drives after each day of shooting.

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