Fremont, CA, USA - Blackmagic Design today announced that the Lifetime movie “Dead Girl Summer,” produced by Goodform, was shot with the Blackmagic URSA Cine 12K LF digital film camera by DP John Sweeney. In post production, Colorist Jeff Spott of Umami Color and Finishing used DaVinci Resolve Studio for online editing, color grading and finishing, with Blackmagic Cloud hosting the DRP project files for enhanced collaboration.

In the film, recent college grads Avery and Jade return to their childhood summer town, reconnecting with an old friend, only for Jade to go missing under suspicious circumstances that mirror a past tragedy.

“For these films, it is critical to have a camera master that can be quickly offloaded, proxied, synced, and uploaded to the editor, while still having a robust color depth for VFX and finishing. Finding that balance between file size, resolution and compression level for a clean final product is always top priority, and the URSA Cine 12K LF proved fit for the challenge,” began Post Supervisor Patrick Evans.

“The URSA Cine 12K never had a hiccup and delivered consistent, pleasing results. The side monitor was a hit on set and had multiple people, from the dolly grip to the director, commenting on how useful it was,” said Sweeney. “Additionally, the fact that it’s a large format camera and has open gate provides the most flexibility with lenses and gives you the ability to really separate the subject from the background. One shot that stands out to me is when Avery goes for a jog and ends up standing in front of a barn. The way she pops from the barn was achieved by pairing the full frame sensor with a 40mm lens at T1.4.”

On his favorite part of the film, Sweeney noted how he was able to play with color, fully supported by the URSA Cine 12K LF.

“It’s a five minute sequence where Avery enters the boat repair shop, goes to the bait shop and then sneaks into the sheriff station. Playing with color, it was amazing to see how the URSA Cine handled the saturation of each scene, from the cool blues of the boat shop to the bright teal of the bait shop lights to the warmth of the sheriff station. We shot the boat shop in the middle of the day, blacking out all the windows but leaving the diffused skylights to make it look like night. I adjusted the camera’s color temp to make it seem like moonlight was giving a soft blue top light,” he noted.

Leaning into the feel of present day Arkansas summer with some nostalgia for flashbacks, Spott navigated between two separate storylines, using color to help differentiate them.

“Present day was designed with a cleaner feel, while the past better resembled a faded, warm memory,” he explained. “Resolve's Magic Mask was used heavily during a campfire scene by the water. It was great at grabbing the talent on screen so that we could isolate them from the sky to easily adjust the time of day for the story.”

“When the URSA Cine 12K was released, it immediately became my new main camera. There's something special about the feeling of the image, how it handles color, grain and dynamic range, and its overall ergonomics,” concluded Sweeney. “I’ve used it for high budget commercials and documentaries in extremely varied environments, from shooting in the harsh snowy mountains of Montana to the dusty deserts in California, and loved the reliability and results.”