Window Zebra Media is a diverse team of directors, producers, creatives, filmmakers, and editors who create content for global brands and artists. Known for handling projects of varying scales and budgets, the team recently showcased this capability in its latest music video production.
“This project was created with an incredibly tight budget and so we used our trusty Sony FS5s – camera that we have used for years,” explains Window Zebra Media co-founder Dominic Howlett. “When it was first released it was an absolute powerhouse, and I believe still holds up to this day. We regularly use the larger form cameras like the FX9 and Venice, but for this project we knew that there would be a fair amount of run and gun filming, so it was important to have a reliable camera that was both small and powerful.”
The video is a for a song called Hero created for FIGs, a three-piece rock group, which tells the story of a small wooden robot called Sunny, as he tries to find his place in this world after a break-up.
Howlett explains how due to the fact that many of the robot scenes were shot with a practical wooden robot, it was important the team had a camera that could be easily mounted onto several small rigs in order to bring the character’s movements to life.
“I worked closely with director Flora Lopategui,, producer James Haslam (the other co-founder of Window Zebra Media) and 1st AC Sam Kemp, to build these innovative rigs that were both cheap and effective,” he adds. “But there is no question that we couldn’t have bought this vision to life, without the help of such an incredible camera.”
SETTING UP
The rig needed to be small and lightweight, so the team used a set of Samyang Primes. These were mounted to the camera with the assistance of a Metabones Speed-booster. Howlett says “the soft nature of these lenses” helped to add to the vintage feeling the company was trying to cultivate and insured that the team was able to keep the whole rig lightweight and mobile.
One of the last sequences in the video featured a band member looking out over the city taking in the sunset. Howlett “was stunned” by how they were able to get such vivid colours out of the camera despite how dark the location was. “We used very few additional lights for this scene, with the majority of the light coming directly from the sunset,” he continues. “In fact, we only used one small LED panel to help shape some of the light on the band member’s face. This one of my favourite scenes in the video and it was only made possible by the low light capabilities that have made Sony famous.”
The footage was captured in 4K 10-bit ProRes HQ, which gave WZM a good amount of room to play with in post.
The grade was designed to emulate a 16mm motion picture film look, with a ton of bloom, gain and halation. “I was so impressed by how we were able to manipulate the colours in post to really emphasise the gold of the sunset while still preserving the detail in the highlights,” Howlett enthuses. “This allowed us to create a lovely, saturated look that played into the fairy-tale nature of the story.”
One of Howlett’s favourite scenes involved mounting the camera to a bike to get a SnorriCam shot a band member riding down the street with the little wooden robot. “Because the camera was so small it was able to take the any shocks or bumps with ease,” he adds. “When watching the final video, you would have no idea just how bad the terrain really was!”
Using an Atomos recorder on location allowed the team to monitor and capture footage with a custom LUT designed for the project. This setup enabled real-time adjustments to ensure the desired vintage look was achieved during filming, providing consistency and control from shoot to post-production.
The video is available here.
