Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF allows you to film scenes from the 'LAID' series in 4K at full frame and 220 fps

The central scene of the streaming service's new and successful comedy series Peacock, 'LAID' is filmed with the first camera Blackmagic Design full frame at 220 fps URSA Cine 12K LF.

LAID, which has become Peacock's most popular series, tells the story of Ruby, played by Stephanie Hsu, who discovers that her former partners are dying in unusual ways and must review all the people she has dated to confront her past and move forward.

The series is directed by Nahnatchka Khan and had the cinematography by Judd Overton. Previously, Overton had worked alongside Khan on several projects, including the hit series Young Rock and the comic horror movie Totally Killer, characterized by a serial killer and time travel. Both in these two collaborations and in the filming of shows such as Ghosts, Killing It, God's Favorite Idiot and No Activity, he used several Blackmagic Design cameras.

In LAID, Overton filmed using a combination of different formats, objectives and styles to capture how the scenes go from romantic comedy to morbid comedy to images of exaggerated violence, as Ruby's exes die in different striking or strange ways, and also as they go from adorable to charming with abrupt jumps to reality with stunt scenes.

In this regard, Overton explains that "every moment was important, whether it was regarding the most adorable images or those of the deaths, and the production was brutally honest. For the truly over-the-top scenes, Natch [the director] wanted me to make sure the audience was present at every moment, but he also wanted the scenes to feel like they were in keeping with the world of the show."

"So we decided to show the deaths through Ruby's eyes so that the audience could see her reaction. Her reactions to what happens, for example, watching a baseball game in a bar and seeing her ex-partner, a professional baseball player, get hit in the head in slow motion, are what really tell the story."

Capturing the untimely death of a baseball player involved performing quality work with slow motion images, since the television that broadcast the game continued to show repetitions of this moment with extreme and bloody thoroughness.

A shoot, in all detail

Overton used an URSA Cine 12K LF camera to capture the image of the moment of impact and the subsequent feeling of nausea. For this, he relied on the camera's large format and 16-stop dynamic range to ensure the post-production team had enough data to add just the right amount of damage touches.

"The URSA Cine 12K model was the ideal camera to film the head-hit sequence. One of the features that really stands out to me is being able to use the full sensor without having to crop the image when shooting at different speeds and resolutions, which allows us to film a scene in 4K taking advantage of the entire sensor area at 220 fps," explains Overton.

Beyond the URSA Cine 12K LF camera, Overton also turned to the cinematic digital model Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K G2 to insert some shots of FaceTime and other calls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4JrUKDRClQ