DEFINITION March 2019

ADVERTI SEMENT FEATURE | CANON

The Canon Cinema EOS C700 FF full-frame camera is the big brother to the C700 and – as DOP Brett Danton shows us – more than lives up to its large title BIG FORMAT, BEAUTIFUL FILM

BRETT DANTON HAS BEEN CAPTURING the stories for some of the world’s most iconic brands for more than 20 years. Artistry and creativity sit at the heart of everything he does, and when he was called on an assignment for Chevrolet – to stir up excitement around the new Corvette Stingray – he knew his Canon EOS C700 FF would help him achieve that. “It was more of a beauty piece on the car,” says Danton. If you’ve not seen the commercial, picture this: the commercial opens with a vista of the Dubai desert, showing its vast emptiness. As the camera glides over its sandy peaks, it finds a road, the Corvette Stingray driving along it. The car is then followed, with interchanging perspectives, on its effortless journey through the desert. ALTERING ANGLES “I used quite an interesting piece of gear to get the different angles,” says Brett. “It’s a crane called the takeaway Russian Arm, which is from Germany, and it will mount on top of pretty much any car.” Brett used his Canon EOS C700 FF, the latest upgrade on the C700, atop the crane. “The C700 FF is a great camera and it shoots 5.9K,” says Brett. “You can shoot 5.9K Raw, or – which is what I did on the shoot – you can downscale the 5.9K to 4K using XF-AVC, which is really nice because you get the full width of the sensor, but as a 4K file. It can handle file sizes really well. I used a 256GB memory card and it gave me 72 minutes of record time.” Brett used his Canon EOS C200 for all the aerial shots. “It was nice mixing the two cameras together. I see them as an A and a B camera. The C200 is small, more compact,

“The cameras a local crewwere using shut down. It was a good job we had Canon”

so it’s great for any drone or gimbal stuff. The C700 FF is much bigger, it’s your bulletproof camera,” he says. The Canon EOS C200 and C700 FF support an easier editing workflow. “I edited all the Raw files, the C200 files and the XF-AVC files, in Adobe Premiere Pro CC,” explains Brett. “I kept it very straightforward, I didn’t bother with the proxy workflow, because the cameras enabled me to do it natively. Both files were taken to Baselight to be graded and the final piece was assembled in Flame. “It was all very simple,” he says. “I shoot a lot with my C700 FF and do my editing in Premiere, and it always reads really well.” HANDLING THE HEAT The commercial was shot in the middle of the desert in 45-degree heat. “It was

pretty full-on, but it was a good test for the gear,” says Brett. “The local crew told us that they were working in the desert on another shoot, just a week before ours, and the cameras they were using shut down straightaway. They said it was a good job we had Canon.” “Timo, a member of my team, was operating the Russian Arm and placed a sensor in the crane. On one of the days, it picked up 55 degrees Celsius. It was actually while we were shooting some four-wheel drive stuff, which never made it into the commercial, because it didn’t fit into the storyline,” explains Brett. “And the sand, I mean, you’ve seen the footage, it was so fine – almost like talcum powder. We’re still trying to get it out of the tripods!” He adds: “If you’re going to test gear, going out into the desert is a good way to do it.”

ABOVE Brett Danton used the Canon Cinema EOS C700 FF to shoot in 5.9K, but it can be downscaled to 4K to help with file sizes

36 DEF I N I T ION | MARCH 20 1 9

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