URSA Run and Gun
The Ursa Mini Pro G2 is thought of as more of a cinema camera than a ‘run and gun’ kind of setup. One look at the marketing material for the G2 from Blackmagic and its pretty apparent where they see this camera being used.
However because of its relatively cheap price it was only a matter of time before small production teams like us got our grubby little hands on one and started using it for projects that Blackmagic didn’t really invisage when they designed it.
The size and weight of the camera is pretty crazy after you have added a top handle, side grip, external monitor, V lock battery and any other bits and pieces to the body but if you are ok with lugging round a bit of a unit for the day then you can get some amazing results.
This week we filmed a project for the Bristol based dance company Move It Mean it where we visited a few spots around the city before heading to a dance studio. The weather was pretty wet and we were shooting handheld, alone with (no assistant) so had to be mobile and get things done quickly when the bad weather momentarily brightened up.
The video and images below have been colour graded and grain has been added in post production to give a gritty feeling to the project.
We shot in Blackmagic Raw 12:1 to make the most of the frame rates and resolution without filling up a whole hard drive. Even though the light was pretty gloomy the G2 turned out some really clean images.
Shooting handheld is also just really fun with a bigger camera and can achieve a level of energy that a gimbal shot can’t match. Gimbal’s are great but are perhaps shouldn’t be a default approach to every project. We definetely over shot on gimbals for a while, but now that is our system we have started shooting a lot more handheld content and clients are loving it as a look.
Getting 15 stops of dynamic range, 4.6K, a raw codec and high frame rates means you have a lot at your disposal when shooting run and gun projects on a tight timeline. It allows for a variety of looks the G2 didn’t miss a beat. The quick start up time for this camera was also really handy when you are fighting bad weather and fading winter light, this is not always the case with cine cameras.
We told MAMI’s story through it’s founder Keanu and interviewed him just before shooting the studio scenes. To make him feel at ease and open up we didn’t record any video of the interview, just a microphone to record the audio. This approach worked well and can be a good tactic to keep your subject cool and calm without pointing lights and cameras at them, especially if you don’t plan to use any sit down interview footage in the finished video. We didn’t want any sit down interview footage in this project so we could keep the energy high and the corporate interview look to a low. The G2 has really nice microphone preamps built in so no need to carry around an external recorded, just the trusty Sennheiser Lav microphone and some creative sound deadening on site.
Post shoot mirror selfie with Barney and Keanu
So there you have it. The G2 is a heavy unit to carry round for the day but in our opinion is really worth it. We feel we can bring studio production to the streetz with this camera and our creative know howz!
If you are an artist or creative and like what we have done hear with MAMI then it would be great to hear from you.