Natalie Portman premiered her first full feature-length effort A Tale of Love and Darkness, at the 68th Cannes Film Festival. The film features cinematography by award winning Polish DoP Slawomir Idziak (Black Hawk Down, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Gattaca). Idziak and his onset DIT, Lukasz Baka, about their use of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera on this production.After the use of the camera Slawomir Idziak explains here ''The compact dimensions of the Blackmagic camera allowed us to set up a shot, and position cameras within said shot that were out of sight, giving us access to unique perspectives and angles. There are also several dynamic scenes in the film where the size and weight allowed us to use the camera in a way, which would have otherwise been difficult with traditional cameras.”Due to its size, we were able to mount it in places that a large cinema camera would not fit – near the ceiling or hidden on a bookshelf for example.”His explanation continues here : “I carried out a comparison test of the Pocket Cinema Camera, along with my DIT, against other professional cinema film cameras, and then we showed the footage to few cinematographer friends as a comparison. No one in the room could distinguish what had been shot with the Blackmagic camera, and what hadn’t.”“Most professional cameras look good on display monitors, but all that changes when you blow it up on a big screen, it unveils all the shortcomings. The digital cinema package (DCP) we produced from our initial test with the Pocket Cinema Camera looks great. This is where Blackmagic comes into play; grading the RAW rushes on DaVinci Resolve really shows just what this camera is truly capable of,” explains Lukasz Baka, DIT and colorist.“Color rendering is definitely one of the Pocket Cinema Cameras strengths, particularly when you are working with a DoP that takes advantage of color as a dramaturgy tool. Slawomir’s cinematography has a very distinctive style, in which a vivid color palette determines special visual rules. Creation of these visual worlds required gels on lamps, glass filters in front of the lenses, as well as some creative digital grading steps. Take the progression of Fania’s illness, distinguished by a cyan-green light on her face. Once you start playing with skin tones, it’s a minefield, particularly facial tones – only a gentle touch can turn pale into sick or disease into deceased. This was definitely a challenge for the Blackmagic camera, however I am pleased with the way the CinemaDNG RAW was able to render all of those color nuances.”The Pocket Cinema Camera’s RAW recording capabilities is its true strength. Grading the CinemaDNG RAW material shows just what this camera is capable of, according to Lucasz Baka. “During an early recce, Slawomir shot some documentary footage featuring thousands of cranes in the Hula Valley. It’s a breathtaking scene. we were still in pre-production our ND filters hadn’t arrived yet. And so despite the lens being closed up to stop 16, it wasn’t hard for us to burn out the sky when shooting under the midday sun in Israel. i was upset with the footage he watched back on camera; it looked far too bright and washed out. However, once we ingested the RAW rushes into DaVinci Resolve I was able to recover all the information from the highlights.” i must say Black magic pocket cinema camera is truely a magical cinema camera •( Idziak believes that utilizing modern storytelling techniques in contemporary filmmaking today is essential, particularly if a DoP wants to get the best possible scene coverage, in the fewest possible shots . )Thank you for the read ..