El documental ‘Touch the Water’ rodado con Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K

The independent documentary 'Touch the Water' was shot with a Pocket Cinema Camera 6K film unit, while grading was carried out in DaVinci Resolve Studio. Blackmagic Design.

The film advocates for Native American communities and, along with its theatrical production, is scheduled to tour to more than a hundred venues in the United States and Canada.

Touch the Water tells the moving story of a newbie in a home for the elderly, who accompanies and helps a woman of indigenous origin to fulfill her dream of seeing the sea again and feeling the water. The documentary is written and directed by filmmaker Travis Holt Hamilton and is part of its efforts to tell and give visibility to the stories of the indigenous peoples of the United States.

The feature film was filmed with the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K model in Blackmagic RAW format, in the hot deserts of Arizona and the beaches of California.

Hamilton explains, "We had to deal with extreme weather conditions during filming. A large portion of the film was shot in Arizona during the summer, so the heat was a challenge. Working with an older cast in such high temperatures, time is of the essence. The camera's versatility and ease of use allowed us to get the shots we needed quickly, and the unit never let us down, even in the heat and smoke from wildfires with consecutive days exceeding 46 ºC. Likewise, its performance was wonderful when capturing sea scenes. Whether in the presence of sand, microparticles of dust or humidity in the air, it never stopped working.”

Hamilton served as cinematographer, producer and director, and as such, chose this model because it is intuitive and easy to use. At the same time, he highlighted that the operating system allowed him to be agile in all his roles. However, the latitude and image quality that the camera offers are the qualities that make it indispensable for the film.

"We had a small crew and faced a variety of lighting conditions, from bright midday light, relentless desert sun, and low-light night scenes. The dual native ISO sensitivity was helpful when shooting in low light, and because we shot in Blackmagic RAW and used DaVinci Resolve Studio in post-production, it was easy to retouch images that were under- or overexposed," Hamilton notes.

Post-production

During post-production, Hamilton, colorist James Adam, and editor Thomas Manning turned to DaVinci Resolve Studio, a program that gave them the opportunity to work on the film simultaneously.

"Being able to collaborate in real time in DaVinci Resolve allowed us to work in unison and save time. We migrated the project to DaVinci Resolve after a third of it was done, and once I saw how easily all the files were coordinated, I couldn't believe we hadn't done it sooner," says Hamilton.

"In Touch the Water"My inspiration comes from wanting to tell a simple, comforting and spiritual story that reaches people's hearts," says Hamilton, who has adopted a work dynamic based on Blackmagic Design products for his future projects.

Your production company, Holt Hamilton Films, recently filmed the documentary Break the Mold – The Zach Bates Story with the Blackmagic model Pocket Cinema Camera 6K as a main unit, while the Blackmagic version URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 was used for the interviews. This feature film tells the story of Zach Bates, a 19-year-old autistic boy who aims to run a 160-kilometer ultramarathon before his 20th birthday.

He compact design The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K model gave the technical staff the possibility of filming more improvisedly in extreme weather conditions, on this occasion, at 1950 meters above sea level in the middle of the cold and snow in northern Arizona.

At this moment, the production is working on the next film, titled Finding Hozho, which revolves around members of Native American peoples, deals with the theme of forgiveness and is inspired by an older man and his father, who is on his deathbed. This feature film has numerous flashback scenes and two well-defined aesthetics, one for the present and another set 40 years ago. Hamilton indicated that it will be essential to implement a work dynamic that combines Blackmagic cameras and the DaVinci Resolve Studio program to define the colorimetry of both stories.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmteT6v6dBo