PRESS RELEASE
Fremont, CA – June 12, 2014 – Blackmagic Design today announced that Manchester, England based ABF Pictures used the Blackmagic Production Camera 4K to shoot national television commercials for Clevercards (known in the US as ‘Cleverbug,’) one of Europe’s fastest growing greeting card and greeting card application companies, and MandM Direct, one of Europe’s leading online, off price retailers.
ABF is a production company and advertising agency specializing in the creation of TV commercials for broadcast, having handled advertising campaigns for global brands such as Virgin Games and VistaPrint. With the series of Clevercards spots, ABF was tasked with showing how simple it is to use Clevercards’ application by connecting to Facebook to ensure you can create and never miss sending out the perfect greeting card. For the MandM Direct campaign, ABF created commercials showing the fun that families have online shopping in conjunction with highlighting MandM Direct’s sponsorship with the “Britain’s Got Talent” television show.
“We shot both spots in 4K, and the Production Camera 4K worked like a charm. The ability to shoot in 4K and get that Ultra HD look at an incredible price and with an easy to use workflow from production to post is really amazing. The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K is a real game changer for shooting commercials,” said Tim Folin, DP for both commercials.
Both campaigns were shot in ProRes using the camera’s film mode, with footage being sent seamlessly from the camera straight into Final Cut Pro. Throughout the production, ABF used a mix of Nikon, Voightlander and Canon lenses.
“For the Clevercards spots, I wanted to get a flat, filmic look, and the images that the Production Camera 4K gave us were amazing and fit that perfectly,” said Tim. “We also had to plan for post production to add in different greeting card art work and wording, so we shot all of the actors holding blank, black card and added graphics later. All of the data and detail that comes with the 4K images from the camera really made it very easy to work with adding content after the shoot was completed.
“The Blackmagic Production Camera 4K gave us a much sharper picture than with any of the other cameras I have worked with, and the images are just amazing,” finished Tim.