“Yvonne” Talks 4K and Shooting on Samsung’s NX1

June 11, 2015

Once you’ve seen "Yvonne," you will never look at a refrigerator the same way again. The short film was shot entirely in 4K resolution using the Samsung NX1 4K mirrorless camera, which has a $1,499.99 retail price. The NX1 uses the HEVC recording codec to shoot and save UHD and 4K movies directly to an SD card. But you can’t count on specs to tell you what it’s like to shoot in 4K — for that you need to ask the director. So we did — and Andrew Putschoegl was gracious enough to respond.

Videomaker
Why shoot this film in 4K?

Andrew Putschoegl
Even though 4K is still in its infancy and growing, shooting in 4K is future-proof. I look back at a lot of my projects from the early 2000s in SD and they don’t look anywhere near as good — so for me, 4K is where we’re going and so being able to shoot in this format now means that in 5-10 years it’ll still look great; it’s the resolution that’s highlighted.

Videomaker
Were there any surprises when shooting in this format?

Andrew Putschoegl
When we started to move from standard definition to high definition, people started freaking out about details like hair and makeup, because you could see so much more. Now with 4K the resolution is so great that you really do have to pay close attention and be on your game — but as a filmmaker we’re so used to that now — the camera behaves and gives a great image and we had a 50” display showing what was being shot, so we could really look into all the detail that was being captured in real time. I was pleasantly surprised that we could see things in the background that, if we had been shooting in a lower resolution, we wouldn’t have seen it. But here we could see it so all we had to do was, hey move that out of the picture. So it was a real benefit to be able to see that kind of resolution on the set.

Videomaker
Does shooting in 4K give you a more complete “image” as compared to HD?

Andrew Putschoegl
Absolutely. There’s no question as to what you are getting, nothing is being scaled down. Our monitor was 50” which even with traditional filmmaking was bigger than usual, so here we could say hey, that little thing that we would have had to get rid of in post-production that was in the picture, here we would just see it and could just move it out of the way. Being able to see so much detail just gives an immediacy and intimacy to the picture.

Videomaker
What did you find most appealing about using the Samsung NX1?

Andrew Putschoegl
I think the nice thing about it is the size. That you can capture so much in such a small package. We had the camera do all the things you’d expect: we had follow focus, we had the camera up on a slider, on a dolly and a tripod, if there’s enough space that’s great. But then there’s a shot from within the refrigerator and we didn’t have the luxury of removing the back of the appliance, taking its back off, so we just put the camera inside and I was able to get the shot without any problems. So that size and that flexibility just allowed me to realize what I wanted to capture without having to go through a lot of extra steps.

I use the NX1 on all sorts of things, from small projects to bigger projects like this and it’s really my go-to camera. It’s one thing if you have a big crew to handle a big camera, but it’s about not letting the camera get in the way and having the NX1 — it being a phenomenal tool — to tell a story, it’s not going to get in the way of the energy and creativity.

Videomaker
Did the 4K resolution require any special lighting adjustments?

Andrew Putschoegl
We didn’t have to adjust or do anything different from what we normally did — it wasn’t even a consideration, which I think is a positive thing. The camera is great in low light so if anything we needed and could work with less light than would otherwise have been the case. We didn’t have to change the way we were lighting the scenes.

Videomaker
Do you plan to do more 4K shooting moving forward?

Andrew Putschoegl
This was really a test case for me to see that it could be done, and done well. The beauty of it is that I didn't have to change my established work flow; I was able to just take this camera right out of the box and start working with it. It gave me a lot of confidence to know that — I’m talking about a project right now that even if I don’t get a 1/2 million budget for it, I could still do this myself with this camera and not let numbers get in the way of me telling my stories. I think that’s a really strong testament to the abilities of the NX1.