Healing Waters of Istanbul - A Travel Short Film | BMPCC OG

After undergoing surgery in March, I decided to embark on another trip, this time without my gallbladder.

My doctor said I couldn’t do any physically demanding activity, so I packed light and flew to Istanbul, a city I’ve visited before. I spent the entire month in a nice and cozy apartment, and since I was already familiar with most of the attractions, I decided to focus on photography, spending most of my time shooting in 35mm, which I hadn't done in years.

I've recently posted a slideshow on this channel featuring some of the photos I took.

This video was shot again with a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera, the original one. Everything you see here was shot in 1080p and upscaled to 4K using DaVinci Resolve.

Different from my last trip, this time I used a filter from Tiffen called SoftFX. It’s similar to the Schneider Classic Soft (used in some Spielberg movies like “The Terminal” and “War of the Worlds” (some shots)). I used to shoot with the Classic Soft, but unfortunately, mine developed some fungus in the droplets which is impossible to clean. And Schneider no longer makes them in circular size.

SoftFX has a similar effect (though less pronounced blooming in the highlights) and it softens the image a bit, which helps reduce some of the common artifacts with the BMPCC OG.

I also used an IR cut filter, which I learned is really important when shooting with the BMPCC OG. In my last video, in Nepal, my black sweater looked red when I shot it without it.

This time I also used a digital diffusion plugin by a company called Digital Village. The name of the plugin is “Scatter” and it mimics some of the popular diffusion filters like Black Pro-Mist and even the Classic Soft (which I used in the metro station sequence). I really enjoyed it and I think using a physical filter, specially the SoftFX along with their digital ones is a great combination.

The grain you see here is real grain scanned from 35mm negative. But to really see it, I recommend watching it in 4K.



Chapters:

0:00 - Surgery day
1:06 - Seven days after surgery
2:20 - Leaving for Istanbul
4:09 - Landing in Istanbul
6:27 - Ferry ride
8:27 - Istanbul
10:35 - Another day
12:05 - Mosques
14:25 - Couldn't come up with a title for this chapter
17:45 - Watching "Missing" from 1982 for the billionth time
18:28 - Metro station sequence
19:42 - Whirling Dervish show
21:00 - Going back home
23:14 - End credits


Camera ................ BMPCC OG
Lens ...................... Panasonic Leica 12-35mm f2.8
Filters .................. Tiffen SoftFX 2
NiSi True Color ND-VARIO Pro
Hoya UV & IR Cut
Digital Filter ..... Scatter By Digital Village
Audio ................... Zoom H1n Essential
Colour ................. Dehancer 7
Grain ................... Kodak Vision3 200T
(scanned by Cinegrain)

#bmpccog #istanbul #cinematography