Voxx Studio uses Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K for synchronisation of voice over projects

Le Conception Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K is being used by audio production company Voxx Studio to synchronise audio recorded for voice-overs with footage of the artists speaking.

In parallel, Voxx Studios has also relied on the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, Pocket Cinema Camera 4K et DaVinci Resolve Studio software to complete the documentary Who I Am Not, led by Tunde Skovran, one of the production company’s owners and produced by Andrei Zinca, the company’s CEO. The film was produced by Double 4 Studios in collaboration with Voxx Studios.

Voxx Studios, led by experienced television producers, is a full-service subtitling, dubbing and localisation studio for the film, television and multimedia industries. It also has state-of-the-art post-production facilities with 11 recording rooms et 4 mixing stations, where over 5000 hours of dubbed content has been developed. The company has the capability to provide services in a wide variety of languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.

The Voxx Studios new synchronisation service has already been used for several anime films with worldwide distribution, allowing animators to achieve “seamless” synchronisation of media to aid in the creation of more realistic animations.

A unique workflow

The Voxx Studios service is based on software created by the production company’s engineering team. The performances of the dubbing artists are recorded at 24 f/s with a Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, at the same time as the audio tracks are created. Linear timecode is captured and sent directly to the camera instantly, and the combined media files are stored on the unit’s SD card. Zinca, CEO, believes that “the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K is a big part of making this service possible. It gives us high quality images of course, but it also lets us send audio timecode directly into the camera from whatever audio software we want to use. That flexibility on top of the images has been great.”

“The size of the camera is also a big advantage for us. We are primarily an audio company and did not build our ATMOS studios with large camera rigs in mind. The Pocket Cinema Camera 4K is small, but still looks and acts like a professional camera. This is very important since we have found that when the voice talent know they are being recorded on a high quality camera, they play up their scenes even more. Which means we get the animators and editors even more to work with,” adds Zinca.

Blackmagic cameras for documentaries

Zinca also uses Blackmagic Design cameras and DaVinci Resolve Studio for his own feature films et documentaries. These include the recent award-winning film Si atunci, ce e libertatea?, a historically inspired political drama that tells the story of love and survival in the context of the 1951 communist-imposed deportation of over 40,000 landowners and people of non-Romanian origin to the Baragan Plain (or Great Romanian Plain). The editing and audio of the footage was carried out in DaVinci Resolve Studio.

On the other hand, Zinca recounts his experience with Blackmagic solutions during the production of Who I Am Not: “With Who I Am Not, we do not want to be seen when getting some of the shots, to maintain the sense of realism a documentary demands. The small design of the cameras let us stay in the background. Even up close to the talent, the Pockets do not intrude like other big cameras. All while getting an amazingly high quality image. And with the high dynamic range we know we can take creative risks shooting in not ideal lighting and still be able to recover the shots in Resolve.”

Zinca also has good words for Resolve, which “makes the entire post process much more efficient”. Tits ability to let me easily send and work with EDLs in any tool I need to use has been a huge advantage,” Zinca concludes.