White Lion Shines for Red Christmas Shoot

interview and copy written for VMI 

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Fashion brand SHEIN is lining up a Christmas and New Year campaign shot on the Sony BURANO by director and cinematographer Eduardo Fuica.

Eduardo runs boutique agency White Lion specialising in fashion, commercial and digital media for Vogue, Glamour Magazine, Macmillan Cancer Support, Alexandre McQueen and Vivianne Westwood.

“I’ve been wanting to test the BURANO since it was released and this job just seemed the perfect opportunity especially when paired with ARRI Signature Primes and ARRI Trintiy stabiliser,” he says.

The Seasonal themed production featured a lot of red which proved a challenge for cinematographer and camera.

“There was a lot of red,” he says. “The models wore red, the Christmas packaging was red and reflective too. The velvet backdrop was red. It was a bit of a nightmare to be honest. The only thing that wasn’t red was the floor. The challenge was to render skin tones perfectly

“I thought it would be great to test shooting RAW on the BURANO and to isolate the channels. I am pleased to report that the camera was able to hold separate colour channels extremely well. The skin tones rendered from the Signature Primes were beautiful.”

Another attribute of the camera that Eduardo appreciated was its versatility and lightweight.

“We had to share the shooting space in the studio with a photographer on another job,” he explains. “The compact size of the camera helped a lot. It was so easy to manoeuvre on the ARRI Trinity (operated by Alex Kryszkiewicz), on Steadicam (Operator, Tommaso Colelli) and handheld too. It was really busy on set, everyone was rushing around and there was next to no time to set anything up. I was prepared for this and planned to improvise on the fly. Doing this with the BURANO made the process a lot easier.”

BURANO supports the same Dual Base ISO 800 and 3200 as VENICE 2 which Eduardo also used on the job. This means clear images with low noise whether shooting in a brightly lit environments (ISO 800) or in challenging dimly lit scenarios (ISO 3200).

“Myself and Gaffer Tomás Canelas changed the scenarios and lighting conditions three or four times a day including one scene where the main light came from a chandelier so most of the models had a very strong back light. To create and retain the mood, the BURANO held 3-4 stops between the backlight and the fill light.

“My 1^st AC Ferran Guilén was also able to connect the BURANO with the Sony app so he could access all the menus on his phone when the camera was on flying on Trinity.

“We played with the sensor too. We changed the image scan modes from full frame (8.6K) to Super35 (5.8K) with a simple one button push. It was that easy and very fast.

“I also did some basic editing in 8K RAW. I know that was overkill but I just want to try to see how far we could push the files in DaVinci Resolve. I used no proxies and it ran very smoothly.”

VMI supplied the camera package including BURANO, ARRI Trinity and Signature lenses.

“Barry and VMI are just fantastic,” Eduardo says. “I’ve known them for seven years, ever since I was doing my MA in cinematography in London. They’ve always been very supportive. They always open their door for tests.

“For this project they essentially saved the day. We didn’t have a lot of time. For the entire shoot including pre-production and tests we had just four days. In addition to which the client wanted the flexibility to change the creative brief and make sure we captured enough material for TV, online, digital media and outdoor marketing activations. Barry also offered space for testing the lenses . Without that support it would have been impossible to shoot this project.”