Blackmagic tested against the darkness of the horror film ‘Creeping Death’

Le Magie noire Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro cameras were tasked with working in low-light conditions on the shoot for the independent horror film ‘Creeping Death’, recently premiered at FrightFest.

Creeping Death is presented as a typical teen slasher film but with an added twist. The film, directed and written by Matt Sampere, tells the story of how a group of friends go overboard by pulling a couple of Halloween pranks and disrupt a sacred tradition between humans and afterlife divinities known as Aos Si.

What was arguably Creeping Death’s biggest challenge was the very nature of its script: because much of the film is set on Halloween night, the crew was forced to shoot almost all of the footage at night and on location. This was compounded by the difficulty of finding power supplies for all the lighting equipment, which meant that Sampere and his crew had to shoot with fewer light sources than they would have liked.

The performance of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K and Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro in these types of conditions and the cameras’ dual native ISO settings made it possible to achieve sharp images on most occasions, as Jonathan L. Lee, director of photography on Creeping Death, explains: “Using the second native ISO of 3200, I was able to save a lot of information in the shadows while being able to recover most of the highlight information through Blackmagic RAW settings in DaVinci Resolve Studio. Speaking of Blackmagic RAW, it’s incredibly efficient in utilizing storage.”

“We used the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K for the majority of the shoot, with the ISO set to either 1000 or 1250 for maximum dynamic range in highlights and shadows, occasionally bumping it up to 3200 for better low light exposure. We also used the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro exclusively for gimbal work, since we could keep it light with the built in internal NDs and see the composition better with the tiltable screen,” adds Lee.

Creativity, intuition and movement in Creeping Death

Another challenge on Creeping Death was Sampere’s creative vision, which required fast-moving shots, original camera maneuvers and a handheld style of shooting. The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K was able to accommodate these requirements with its compact design, whether handheld, on a stabilizer, tripod or even on a C-mount.

The footage, shot in Blackmagic RAW, was color-keyed with Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve Studio, an editing, color correction, visual effects and audio mixing program that helped the filmmakers maintain some consistency, regardless of where or what was shot.

Additionally, Sampere and Lee worked closely with visual effects supervisor Shaina Holmes of Flying Turtle Post during pre-production to prepare scenes that required such effects. After cautiously planning which shots would employ special effects or visuals, the team was confident that the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K would capture everything needed for both principal photography and base images.

“The script had a lot of action and supernatural elements that would require VFX, including our monster the Aos Sí. With the film’s tight shooting schedule, we had to balance what we’d shoot practically with how many extra plates we’d need to pull off some of the VFX. We never had to worry about the cameras though, as we knew they’d get whatever we needed to create our Halloween horror,” concludes Sampere.