Kazunali Tajima stuns with robotic arms and URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 cameras at Paris Fashion Week

The photographer/DoP Kazunali Tajima shot fashion brand kolor’s Spring Summer 2022 Collection with Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 digital film cameras mounted on robotic arms during a show online at Paris Fashion Week in July 2021.

Kazunali Tajima has long been at the forefront of the world of fashion and advertising photography, TV commercials and music videos. He recently shot a collection movie for the fashion brand kolor, directed by Yusuke Tanaka with music composed by Ichiro Yamaguchi from popular band, Sakanaction. The film was produced for this year’s Paris Fashion Week, which was held online due to quarantine, and was a hard to shoot and visually unique piece showing models walking on treadmills in between moving robotic arms.

Three URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2s were attached to the robot arms to film the models walking on a treadmill, while Tajima filmed the set up from further away with another URSA Mini Pro 4.6K. Through the combination of all of the elements in each scene, Tajima was looking to give a bigger impact to the audience.

Spectacular movements

Tajima explained the use of the robot arms: “The director decided to use the robot arms to get closer to the model to show the details of the clothes. By attaching the cameras to the robot arms, we could move in a way that was not possible with a Steadicam or dolly. The way the robot arms were moving and shooting was also cool, so we decided to use the image of the robot arms themselves for creative purpose. For this reason, the wide shot including the robot arms is used a lot in the movie. I shot the wide shot with the URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 on a dolly using a circler rail.”

Tajima used two URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2s with Angenieux Optimo 12x zoom lens for the wide shots, one as a fixed camera and the other on a dolly, using ARRI Macro 40mm lenses for all the robot arms. “By using older, more tasteful lenses, I avoided making the images look too video like.”

Tajima continued. “We wanted to recreate a fashion show to some extent, but it would be too much work to have the robot follow a walking model. I knew we should let models walk to show the details of the clothes, so we came up the idea of using the treadmill. To keep the audience engaged till the end of the movie, the robot arms’ movement was programmed in two different ways, and I moved my camera on the dolly.”

Tajima had already used Blackmagic cameras in the past for shooting music videos and short films. “We chose the URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 because it’s an affordable camera that offers good quality and can shoot in RAW.”

He continued: “In this movie, we had a black background on the set and a model was softly lit against the background. So it was important to have latitude that could preserve the details in the shadows and highlights. Of course, we adjusted the lighting so that it could be preserved, but the final result would not be what we wanted unless the camera had a good tonal range.”

Colour grading

The film was edited by the director and graded by Tajima using DaVinci Resolve Studio. “I’ve been using DaVinci Resolve for about five years now. Since I aimed to show the details of the clothes, I didn’t do any extreme color adjustments. I added contrast and blue tint in the shadows and brought down the highlights a little bit. I used very light grading, so I finished it very quickly.”

Tajima concluded. “The purpose of the collection movie is to show the buyers, media and the people who will buy the clothes what kind of clothes they are as well as sharing the atmosphere of the collection, as an alternative way of a real fashion show. We were able to show the fine details and textures of the clothes in this movie, so I hope you can see that.”