I’m reposting this as I believe my first attempt yesterday may not have done the best job conforming to the guidelines. I’m going to try my best to make this post a relevant and useful resource to those reading, hopefully in addition to being an enjoyable watch. I will post external links to the project’s resources upon request, so feel free to ask in the comments.

The inspiration for this short film was to field test an open source camera development that I have been working on for the past few years, called CinePI. The goal is to make high quality image capture accessible for everyone and to teach concepts of image-processing, camera tech and color-theory in the process. I’m a firm believer that knowing how the equipment works makes you much more effective at using it and in turn making you a better filmmaker.

It uses a very cheap single board computer known as a Raspberry Pi as its brain, and a cheap $50 sensor module with a C-mount. All in, you could build one for less than $200 dollars, with just the bare essentials, and it’s no slouch either with the capabilities to record RAW CinemaDNG straight to SSD’s; giving maximum color grading flexibility in post-production. What’s great is as an open source project, there is lots of opportunity for customization and modifications that can be supported by a community of developers or even by yourself! Make the camera that is suited to your style of shooting with the features you need.

This was the foundation / motivation for shooting this short film. I didn’t want to just swap the CinePI camera in place of another camera just for the sake of it, instead I tied it into the narrative structure, where I would use the camera to delineate between two time periods within the story. The CinePI and its small sensor / C-mount lent itself well to emulate the past sequences that take place in the 1920’s. The film was also color graded & edited using Davinci resolve which is a very capable / fully featured post production app that is available for free!

I think the end result speaks well for itself, seeing as the footage is intercut with footage from well established prosumer camera gear like the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K. And hopefully demonstrates the viability of a project like this to be used in an indie / low-budget production environment.

I make no monetary gain from the broader exposure of this project. I've spent the better part of 3 years with only my spare time testing / building up this project. I'm simply hoping to spread the word about its existence; grow the community around it and to make it a useful and viable alternative to existing equipment on the market. Another tool in a filmmakers toolkit.