Ed Sheeran’s headline performance for virtual music festivals shot with Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K

Ed Sheeran performed 10 songs in a virtual concert recorded at the Electric Light Studio (ELS) agency in London using a RAW workflow through acquisition with Blackmagic Desiign cameras to post.

The performance, which included the debut single Bad Habits from Sheeran’s latest album, headlined the virtual music festivals iHeartRadio Wango Tango そして Pandora Live.

Working to a creative plan set by lighting and production designer Mark Cuniffe and agreed by the US radio platforms with Ed Sheeran, it was left to ELS to get all of the required coverage in a single day.

“We were asked to take care of filming ten performances but with two very distinct looks,“ begins Dan Massie, director, producer and ELS MD and cofounder. “Each track had a different setup, and for some tracks, we didn’t get to see the lighting state until we were shooting it, so there was a lot of flying by the seat of our pants.“

“The challenge with multicam work is always how to get enough great shots without the master camera ruining everyone else’s shot,“ says the Massie. “I wanted to use the jib camera as our A cam and worked the camera plan around this.”

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Massie, with DP Ben Coughlan, subsequently opted for an acquisition package based on four URSA Mini Pro 12Ks variously rigged on Jibs, Steadicam, dollies and tripods, and supplemented that with a URSA Mini Pro 4.6K G2 for handheld work.

“We used a Pocket Cinema Camera 6K as an additional camera rigged to the jib, effectively getting us two different sized shots from the jib,“ explains Massie.

Since multicam is typically shot with spherical lenses, ELS wanted to mix it up slightly and embraced the softer anamorphic look by pairing the URSA Mini Pro 12K with Angenieux Optimo zooms and Cooke anamorphic primes。

The tracks were for different HD outputs, so ELS shot in 4K at 25fps with a 16:9 aspect ratio for one set and 23.97fps and 2:39 for the other.

“I love the image we get from the URSA Mini Pro 12K, and shooting Blackmagic RAW is perfect for our workflow,“ Massie says. “We chose Blackmagic RAW Q5 constant quality as its conservative with the data without compromising on image quality, which for a multicam shoot with ten tracks was very useful.“

“Blackmagic RAW is awesome to work with in post and keeps our DIT, and IT teams happy too, with file sizes that don’t kill loads of hard drives. All the information is there to give us flexibility in the grade.“

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Andy Morgan edited and graded at ELS on DaVinci Resolve. “There was a pre light the evening before, and the shoot day was 8am till 8pm with a crew of 35, but the setup and schedule were intense,“ Massie says. “It was great rising to the challenge of shooting so many tracks in such a short space of time.“