The Vampire Next Door Created with Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and DaVinci Resolve
Brie Clayton May 20, 2024
0 Comments
Blackmagic Design today announced that New Zealand Son Films used Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K digital film camera to shoot The Vampire Next Door horror film. The film, which was also graded using DaVinci Resolve and Blackmagic Cloud, is the latest in a string of popular horror and comedy films from the prolific filmmakers, who have made 16 feature films since 2015 that have been viewed by millions of people around the world.
Starring Alex Matthews, Jessica Ferguson and Bella Chadwick, The Vampire Next Door is a coming of age horror film that follows 20 year old Cameron as he discovers he has a female vampire, Victoria, living next door who enlists him to help her avenge the murder of a former lover. Cameron, who is also desperately in love with his high school crush Diane, reluctantly agrees and goes along on the adventure, until he discovers all is not what it seems.
The film from Sean and Taylor King, the father and son founders of New Zealand Son Films, is now available around the world on a number of global streaming services. Together they have written, directed and produced all of the company's films, which can be seen in 160 countries on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Tubi, Flix, Plex, and 16 other platforms.
Both filmmakers take pride in creating films with blockbuster quality visuals at independent film budgets, mixing physical and digital effects and using different visual styles, such as shooting their recent film noir Devil in a Dress in black and white.
Sean described their process for creating the look of the film: For The Vampire Next Door,' we wanted to create our own lore. Without spoiling anything, our goal was to have Victoria and Diane be variations of past vampires in film, with subtle differences in features between the two.
We started playing with a look for the film in Resolve months before production and would pull in stills from films we liked in these genres to see how they looked on the scopes. Then we did some lighting tests and using that footage, created a LUT in Resolve to load into our Pocket Cinema Camera 6K.
Shot almost entirely with the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K paired with vintage Nikon manual lenses, the majority of The Vampire Next Door was shot at night or in low light situations. The film also includes a large number of moving car shots, fight scenes and has a mix of practical and VFX work. It was shot in 6K 5:1 compression and delivered in 4K and 2:35 formats. The versatility of the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K was an important reason why the filmmakers used it on The Vampire Next Door.
The Vampire Next Door' was shot with the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K using a variety of rigging. Steadicam, car mounted, a crane, sliders and a monopod were used a lot for small camera moves. The size of the camera allowed us to move it quickly and get it in tight places, Sean said.
For the car shots, we used a 60W LED mounted to the hood for a face fill light. For the basement shots, we used small tube lights mounted to the ceiling with some flickering and others for color. And during a big flight scene, we had the Pocket 6K on a gimbal and monopod. Taylor could push in or pull back to create more action in the frame. The scene was lit with candles, practicals in the lamps and one soft box, he added.
The workflow between Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and DaVinci Resolve gave the filmmakers a lot of options for creating scenes, especially with shooting at night or in low light situations. This was especially important since any vampire film needs to embrace the art of working in the near dark.
We found that even in scenes where the actor was moving from dark to light, by overexposing the actor's face by one stop, the dark areas would have very little noise. In Resolve during post production, any noise that was left was easily removed with the combination of noise reduction tools that Resolve has built in. And with the Pocket's large image, we could reframe and push in shots during post.
For drone shots that were done with a different camera, the Kings also relied on DaVinci Resolve to make sure the footage perfectly matched the look of the film shot on Blackmagic Design cameras. By using DaVinci Resolve's color management features and creating a node tree, they could quickly apply a set look to all drone footage, saving time better used for creative editing instead of repetitive matching of each shot.
Taylor explained: We stared using Blackmagic cameras in 2017 because of price, and they gave us the most value for the money. We've stuck with the cameras because of the look and reliability. Over the last seven years, we've shot in South America, Europe and all over the US. From the Mojave Desert in summer to below freezing temperatures, the cameras have never failed to perform.
The Vampire Next Door' is our 16th film using Blackmagic cameras. The skin tones look great and the workflow from camera to Resolve is seamless. Over the years, Blackmagic keeps improving the color science, and now with Blackmagic RAW combined with cloud proxies, our workflow is more streamlined than ever, he concluded.
May 22, 2024Creating a Particle Man Resolve FusionA simple but effective use of particles driven by an animated 3D
May 22, 2024J SPORTS Installs Blackmagic Design Workflow for On Demand StreamingBlackmagic Design today announced that J SPORTS Corporation has adopted a Blackmagic Design
Enjoying the news? Sign up for the Creative COW Newsletter! Sign up for the Creative COW newsletter and get weekly updates on industry news, forum highlights, jobs, inspirational tutorials, tips, burning questions, and more! Receive bulletins from the largest, longest-running community dedicated to supporti
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
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
01/06/2026
Designed to solve a common problem in broadcasting, the automated workflow detects, identifies, removes, and documents copyrighted music
AudioShake has introdu...
01/06/2026
The sports-analytics company combines its data with proprietary AI to help leagu...
01/06/2026
Category line-up & sponsors announced
Photo: Paul Clarke
The Production Music Awards (PMA) have announced that submissions are now officially open ahead of...
01/06/2026
New hybrid sample/synthesis instrument revealed
Excite Audio have just released the latest instalment in their Evolve series, which has been developed in co...
01/06/2026
Latest TONEX expansion captures three rare vintage amps
The newest addition to IK Multimedia's ever-growing TONEX line-up introduces a set of three incr...
01/06/2026
Musically intelligent soft synth gets upgraded
Scaler Music will be probably be best known to many for their music theory tools, but their product range al...
01/06/2026
SBS confirms its broadcast sponsors for FIFA World Cup 2026
1 June, 2026
Media releases
SBS has secured Hyundai, Hisense, Macca's, Rexona, bet365, Com...
01/06/2026
Rohde & Schwarz Satellite Industry Days 2026 guided by the motto From Earth to ...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Marshall Electronics is showcasing a comprehensive lineup of next-generation POV cameras, purpose-built to power today's connected AV environments, at InfoC...
01/06/2026
Adobe Announces Concept to Vector
Deepa Subramaniam June 1, 2026
0 Comments
One of the biggest frustrations we hear from designers is how difficult it...
01/06/2026
Vampire Feature Night Patrol Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton June 1, 2026
0 Comments
Colorist shapes dark, gritty tone for horror thri...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/06/2026
Mardi 2 juin 14h00
FilmLight (ARRI), 10 rue Ren Boulanger, 75010 Paris
Rejoignez-nous pour d couvrir comment FLAPI (l'API FilmLight) peut transformer e...
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...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
31/05/2026
Back to All News
Netflix Wins 15 Awards at the Canadian Screen Awards - See Pho...
31/05/2026
Taiwan is home to more than 500 NVIDIA ecosystem partners. More than 1 million N...
31/05/2026
As factories move from isolated automation to plant-wide intelligence, manufacturers need AI systems that can connect live machine signals, quality systems, wor...
31/05/2026
The NVIDIA AI Cloud ecosystem is accelerating the global buildout of AI factory infrastructure. Partners are expanding capacity to meet growing demand from ente...
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...
The Vampire Next Door Created with Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and DaVinci Resolve 
