Anthony Rose: BTS of blockbuster movies with Blackmagic

A selection of Blackmagic cameras allow freelancer Anthony Rose to create the BTS of major productions shot in Australia, such as ‘Mad Max: Furiosa’ or ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’.

In the days of DVD and Blu-ray, behind-the-scenes were used as value-enhancing bonus material for consumers and focused mainly on outtakes discarded in the credit sequences or as part of the film’s promotional tour. Now, however, they are becoming feature-length documentaries, watched by millions of people to better understand the filmmaking process or get to know the actors playing their favorite characters.

Rose got her start in this field through a classic contact: “My start in BTS films came from one of my fashion clients who had been to college with someone from Marvel, and they needed someone to do behind the scenes. That film was about 110 days on set, and I was there every day. It’s something I’d never really done, but it was fantastic and I absolutely fell in love with it.” The experience was so positive that even Disney decided to trust Rose to shape an original format based on her work: “When I started working on a Marvel film, Shang-Chi, I said I’m going to make you a feature length documentary, whether you like it or not. Not long after that, Disney Plus started a streaming channel called Assembled that has all the behind the scenes of Marvel films. So suddenly this ‘nice to have’ content with a niche audience has serious value for them. Now with every Marvel film that gets made, they’ll have an hour long documentary or so, plus other assets that they can use.”

To tackle this job, Rose uses several Blackmagic Design cameras, including the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera and URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2, and most recently the new Blackmagic PYXIS 6K. In particular, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 model has become one of his most valuable tools, as it allows him to be in the right place, at the right time, without interfering: “I’m forever pre focusing, pre exposing and getting ready to shoot. Because if I’ve got to just switch that camera on and roll, I want to make sure I’m correctly exposed. You’ve always got to be on. The thing I like about this camera, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, is I switch it on, and by the time I’ve got it up to my eye, it’s ready to roll.”

Post-producing BTS with DaVinci Resolve

Rose uses a workflow that includes DaVinci Resolve for the editing and post production of his work. He has extensive experience with Blackmagic Design software: “I’ve edited everything from documentaries to fashion shoots and a lot of commercials, all in DaVinci Resolve and I’m a big advocate for that, because combined with a Blackmagic camera it’s one seamless ecosystem. The Fairlight audio features in particular have been fantastic. In BTS content, its common to have issues on set, whether it’s a lot of noise from a nearby conversation or a truck reversing and I can take it out using the voice isolation AI tool.”

“I absolutely love DaVinci Resolve, it’s both free and I love that they’re updating the software all the time. It’s just been a game changer for me, and I know it has for other industry professionals too. The only downside is I’m often doing tutorials just to catch up with the new features!” concludes Rose.