Everyday Astronaut brings rocket launches to viewers with Blackmagic Design cameras

The Blackmagic Studio Camera 4K Pro and URSA Mini Pro 12K cameras from Conception Blackmagic are regularly used by the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel to bring its 1.14 million subscribers closer to the world of space.

Everyday Astronaut has filmed and live-streamed more than 100 rocket launches, including Inspiration4, SpaceX’s recent civilian space mission that orbited Earth. To produce this type of content, Tim Dodd, the channel’s founder, relies not only on Magie noire capture devices, but also on solutions such as the ATEM Mini Pro mixers on location or the ATEM Constellation 8K model for his studio. Thanks to the versatility of these solutions, Dodd is able to generate a wide variety of content, ranging from rocket launches to generating exclusive footage and interviews with key players in the aerospace industry.

Tim Dodd explains why he chose Conception Blackmagic solutions for recording spacecraft launches: “Since I was traveling to Kennedy Space Center for the Inspiration4 launch, we kept it light and easy, setting up a small studio with an ATEM Mini Pro and URSA Mini Pro 12K and URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 cameras. The cameras captured beautiful slow motion shots, especially shooting 8K at 120fps with the URSA Mini Pro 12K.”

Dodd also highlights the “high frame rate” offered by the Conception Blackmagic, as well as the ability to zoom in and reframe the shot: “Some of our past shoots have been very foggy, so we shot at 8K at 600mm and tracked the rocket. By cropping to 4K where we wanted the focal length to be, we had tons of room to stabilize the shot in post to be rock solid, and we were still shooting at 120fps, which was insane.”

Studio equipped with Blackmagic Design

Beyond working with Magie noire on location, Dodd has outfitted a studio in Texas to cover the Espace X launch pad. This consists of an ATEM Constellation 8K mixer, an ATEM 2 M/E Advanced Panel, an ATEM Streaming Bridge converter, Micro-caméra de studio 4K units, and DeckLink 8K Pro et UltraStudio 4K Mini capture and playback devices, as well as other Blackmagic Design products: “Whenever I’ve needed a solution, Blackmagic Design has had an answer. Take the ATEM Constellation 8K for example. I thought we would never need 40 inputs, but we are currently using more than half and still expanding. We’re also using half of the outputs already too,” says Dodd.

Specifically, Dodd highlights the mixer’s SuperSource function, its four mix and effects banks, and the ability to convert sources to benefit their dynamics: “The ATEM Constellation 8K is effectively producing two shows at once, as we have a live clean feed of just the cameras, as well as a separate feed using one M/E and SuperSource. We prebuild boxes in the other M/Es and can bring that to air super quickly. When investing in a switcher, I told my producer Andrew Taylor that I didn’t want to be told that something wasn’t possible, and the ATEM Constellation 8K is as close to that as you can get.”

Everyday Astronaut will continue to bring subscribers closer to the world of aerospace for years to come. It will do so, as Dodd says, with solutions from Blackmagic: “Rocket science can be intimidating for people to learn, so I want to bring them answers and spark their curiosity. I also want people to be able to watch the content in as high quality as possible, which is possible thanks to Blackmagic Design. Viewers come to my channel knowing they will get high quality content that’s fun and easy to understand.”