PRE-PRODUCTION - BLACK MAGIC MINI URSA TEST/CLASS

One camera that I have always been interested to use is the Black Magic Mini Ursa. A High quality film camera which I've seen being used of highly professional commercials and films. I first saw this camera through the YouTube channel Film Riot and loved the way it operated, it's excellent for handheld however, it does look like a VERY professional camera and the most complex camera I've used myself would be the Panasonic DVX200. This camera is for very expereinced professionals from what I could tell from the review:

Although Film Riot give a very detailed review and even show the quality of the footage, I wanted to look into this camera myself and luckily Sam Creamer owns this camera and gave me a quick run through of the camera and advice with operating it. 

Sam explained that the camera is amazing for footage, you can film in Video, Film and High end Film which all change the quality. He explained he usually shoots on Film option as Video isn't great and more for BTS footage if anything and the High end Film option is for in you're planning on doing a lot of grading in post-production. Sam's biggest advice to me was NOT to go handheld with the camera, after picking it up I found it's incredibly heavy and not something you could do without a rig. Also, my own rig wouldn't be able to handle this as it's built for DSLR cameras so I could need to rent another rig and possibly even an Easy-Rig to help operating due to the weight. 

Sam went through the different codex the camera offers and options and most of which I hadn't heard off. Sam explained that the camera is complicated to operate and wouldn't advice me using this as it's a camera for experienced DOP's which have been working with high end cameras for many years. He told me "It's very unforgiving if you make a mistake" so if you're not aware of what you're doing with this camera then it can cause serious issues on the shoot and ruin the footage altogether. 

Decision: Not to use this camera