Blackmagic Design today announced that Joseph Kahn’s new film
Ick was shot and completed post with a full Blackmagic Design workflow. This included shooting with Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 12K OLPF and Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K digital film cameras and editing and color correction with DaVinci Resolve Studio, Blackmagic Cloud and Blackmagic Cloud Store Mini 8TB network storage solution.
Ick is a mix of over-the-top horror, comedy, alien invasion, and satire. Grammy award-winning Kahn, who wrote and directed the film, is known for amazing visuals and high paced action, having shot some of the most iconic music videos of the past decade.
Premiering at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival, Ick tells the story of the American town of Eastbrook that for 20 years has ignored a creeping vine growth which eventually evolves and attacks. Starring Brandon Routh and Mena Suvari, the film is a mix of practical and visual effects that brings high quality, and often funny, over-the-top grotesque images.
Ick was shot in Houston, TX by cinematographer David Weldon, with post production split between editor Chancler Haynes, working from Houston during principal photography and from Los Angeles after, and assistant editors Edward Schroer and Sam Cook, who worked from different locations in Los Angeles. Color correction was done by Walter Volpatto of Picture Shop.
Remote collaboration and blurring the lines between production and post was essential to the success of the film. To do this, DaVinci Resolve Studio, Blackmagic Cloud, and Blackmagic Cloud Pod network storage solutions were instrumental.
Weldon explained the creative process with Kahn, between production and post, “It was a bit like shooting a music video in terms of a fast paced set and Joseph having a specific vision for every part of the film. It could have been a typical ‘town in trouble and people aren’t listening leading to doom’ monster film. But we made it unique, using the form factor of Blackmagic cameras to find creative shots and placing the cameras in tight spaces, along with utilizing the dual native ISO of the cameras to move quickly on set.”
Ick was Haynes’ first time editing an entire feature film in DaVinci Resolve Studio. He worked directly with Kahn in Houston. “Joseph is a filmmaker that is very far thinking. As an editor, you need to figure out how to get to where he wants to go, and being able to collaborate with him using Resolve and Blackmagic Cloud was a huge creative help,” Haynes noted.
Kahn would often use DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fusion page and its DaVinci Neural Engine AI features to mock up how he envisioned VFX scenes. He then shared these with the editing team using Blackmagic Cloud Pod and Blackmagic Cloud.
Haynes continued, “The collaboration workflow just worked. Simple and helpful and we didn’t need to have an IT person on set. The Cloud Pod let Joseph be hands on with his edits. He could duplicate sequences and easily send them to me.”
“From an assistant editor’s perspective, Resolve and Blackmagic Cloud made it so easy for Chancler to be working and bring Sam and myself in immediately. There was no break in the creativity,” Schroer explained.
One of advantages of the DaVinci Resolve Studio and Blackmagic Cloud workflow was helping Haynes manage the film’s more than 1,000 VFX shots. He explained, “I was tracking a lot of VFX shots, and stepping into these sequences was great with the Cloud Store Minis. I was getting VFX shots from five different vendors and just added them right into Dropbox with the Cloud Store Mini workflow.”
Ick, which was finished in 4K, used URSA Mini Pro 12K OLPF and Pocket Cinema Camera 6K cameras to shoot a wide variety of scenes, including all the film’s high speed shots and various insert and pickup shots to extend scenes that were filmed after production wrapped.
Weldon explained why he loved working with Blackmagic cameras on the film: “The URSA Mini Pro 12K OLPF gave me the ability to do so much. First off, I knew I could shoot with it and meet 4K streaming guidelines, which is very important for an indie film. And even though we were working on a tight budget, the URSA Mini Pro 12K and Pocket 6K cameras gave us flexibility to use them alongside our other cameras, matching perfectly across multiple scenes. You’re always looking for ways to squeeze the budget in an indie film. This was really a single camera show but we needed cameras to be ready to go in the Ronin 2 ‘Fish Tank Cam’ (our small water housing setup), hi-speed mode, etc., so we could just pick up a camera and start shooting.”
“We were shooting in anamorphic for the entire film, so the ability to shoot in 8K also gave us flexibility for punch ins and adjustments if we needed them in VFX. There were many shots that were being built in a 3D environment, taking what we did on greenscreen and giving that to the VFX team in 8K to build off of. This allowed for a lot of detail to go back into those shots,” Weldon finished.