VERTICAL DRAMA BENEATH CRIMSON SAILS
 CREATED WITH BLACKMAGIC DESIGN

  Thunder Child Productions relies on cameras’   high quality and small form factor to shoot pirate adventure.

Manchester, United Kingdom - Wednesday, June 17, 2026 - Blackmagic Design today announced that DP Grace Loeppky and 2nd Unit Cinematographer Rob Hunt shot the vertical pirate micro drama “Beneath Crimson Sails” using Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagic PYXIS 6K digital film cameras. Blackmagic RAW capture gave the production the flexibility to reshoot, reframe and recut across a fast moving indie schedule, and the project was edited and finished using DaVinci Resolve Studio editing, grading, visual effects (VFX) and audio post production software.

Written by Julie Bruns, who also stars as Catherine, “Beneath Crimson Sails” follows a young woman who will stop at nothing to find the missing half of a cursed map and avenge her father’s death. When she meets a pirate captain with secrets of his own, they are pulled toward a hidden past that could destroy them both.

“I first got the idea for this project in June of last year, when vertical series fans were calling for a pirate themed vertical,” said Bruns. “Having loved pirates since I was a kid, I was hooked.”

By the end of August 2025, the production was already shooting. Like many of the crew, showrunners Bruns and Steven Kammerer wore multiple hats: Bruns wrote the script, produced and starred, while Kammerer directed, produced and acted in the role of Silas the Treasure Mage. Rob Hunt, David Titus and Nic Westaway, who also stars as Captain Rob, codirected a number of episodes each, with Hunt also taking on producing and cinematography duties and Titus coediting. The project was produced by Thunder Child Productions in partnership with Executive Producers David Aboussafy of Generativity Productions and Carin Smolinski of WEC Films, both of whom appear in the film.

The visual goal was clear from early on. “We wanted it to be a nostalgic nod to classic films like ‘The Princess Bride,’ with a feeling of a full fantasy world,” said Bruns.

She and Kammerer had both acted in dozens of vertical micro dramas before taking on the production, and that experience sharpened their sense of what the format could do. The film lives roughly 70 percent of its runtime in closeups, with faces filling the frame, then breaks wide to the rugged coastlines of British Columbia for swordfights staged up and down hillsides and landscapes.

“I’ve come to appreciate the portrait shaped frame as an art form unto itself,” said Kammerer.

For Bruns, working as an actor in the format also shaped the approach. “Stillness is key, since you have less space to move in the frame, and blocking is done very intentionally, as movement translates differently,” she said. “The goal was to keep characters feeling grounded and real, with dashes of classic pirate wit and fun.”

For a production shooting across remote wilderness locations, some requiring a 45 minute hike in, the size and speed of the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro mattered. “Being able to pack the camera kit into those remote locations was huge,” said Bruns.

For Loeppky, the camera was already a proven tool. “The Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro paired with my DZO Pictor zoom lenses has been my workhorse camera package for years,” she said. “The internal NDs definitely speed up the process and were a big reason for buying this camera in the first place. The color science is great, and I often discuss with colorists how nicely it renders skin tones.”

“Internal NDs made us much faster on set and Blackmagic RAW gave us a lot of flexibility in post,” Hunt added.

The PYXIS 6K joined the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro on Steadicam setups, where its compact form factor helped with balance during movement. “The size and flexibility of the PYXIS 6K opens up so many options for the future,” said Hunt. “I want to push its use on future vertical productions, particularly where rigging flexibility is a priority.”

Shooting her first vertical project taught Loeppky that composing for the 9:16 frame requires a different instinct entirely. “Framing headroom is very different from landscape and requires much more space,” she said. “I had to forget about 50/50s and work hard to make a two shot look and feel nice. That said, I could lean into movie magic by framing out so much of the world, which was helpful because for the most part we didn’t have the means to dress huge spaces.”

The entire post pipeline ran through DaVinci Resolve Studio. Editor Brian Clement and Coeditor David Titus cut the film and Colorist Phoebe Titus completed the grade. Clement noted that the Blackmagic RAW capture gave the edit real room to move. “Shooting in such high resolution formats gave a lot of flexibility in terms of reframing shots, creating new camera movements in post, zooms, pans, and adding dramatic emphasis with smash cuts and closeups,” said Clement. “Especially for something that often plays on a phone screen, it meant we could radically change in editing what was originally shot if needed.”

Phoebe, a longtime collaborator of Bruns and Kammerer, loved starting with the Blackmagic RAW files. “It allows for so much latitude to work with,” she said. “Blackmagic cameras always pick up magenta and blue in a nice way, which lets me lean into some great cool undertones in the shadows.”

Phoebe relied on DaVinci Resolve Studio’s vertical specific UI. As working vertically was new territory for Phoebe, the shift took some adjustment. “The fact that the viewer, node tree and OFX positions are swapped took a bit to adapt to,” she said. “But after I got used to it, I liked it a lot. It made me realize that I don’t need to look at the node tree so much. I needed to focus on the window, the scopes and the screen, and that’s it.”

Titus comes to color grading from a background in fine art rather than cinematography, and she found the vertical frame a natural fit for that perspective. “I’ve never understood the obsession with widescreen in film,” she said. “Other aspect ratios can be just as gorgeous and effective, and now with digital we don’t have the limitations of film stock.”

Grading for a phone screen also meant pushing the grade harder than usual. “Since viewers were going to mostly be watching on their phones rather than a larger screen, I needed to pop contrast and brightness more than usual. Contrast and brightness need to follow along in more of an S curve in vertical layouts, and often the focus is on the upper third of the frame rather than the right hand third,” Phoebe noted.

She singled out Loeppky’s compositions on the boat and in the water as particular highlights: “Grace has such a great eye. Those compositions aren’t possible in horizontal aspect ratios and they made for some nice bold looks.”

One of Phoebe’s favorite moments in the grade was a transition between a yellow green autumnal forest and a misty blue green one: “Vancouver is great for getting that kind of variety on the day, but it was lots of fun to lean into that contrast in the suite, bringing out the misty cool greens in one and the amber sunlit greens in the other.”

Having the edit already in Resolve made the handoff to color straightforward. “Online was easy,” said Phoebe, who has worked in DaVinci Resolve Studio for over a decade. “One foundational thing I love about Resolve is that it’s relatively stable, and it live saves. It’s easy to forget that because it’s the absence of something frustrating, but I remember it every time I’m in a different program, and it crashes on me.”

“Beneath Crimson Sails” is now available on MuVpix.

PRESS PHOTOGRAPHY

Product photos of Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, Blackmagic PYXIS 6K, DaVinci Resolve Studio and all other Blackmagic Design products are available at www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk/media/images

ABOUT BLACKMAGIC DESIGN

Blackmagic Design creates the world’s highest quality video editing products, digital film cameras, color correctors, video converters, video monitoring, routers, live production switchers, disk recorders, waveform monitors and real time film scanners for the feature film, post production and television broadcast industries. Blackmagic Design’s DeckLink capture cards launched a revolution in quality and affordability in post production, while the company’s Emmy™ award winning DaVinci color correction products have dominated the television and film industry since 1984. Blackmagic Design continues ground breaking innovations including 6G-SDI and 12G-SDI products and stereoscopic 3D and Ultra HD workflows. Founded by world leading post production editors and engineers, Blackmagic Design has offices in the USA, UK, Japan, Singapore and Australia. For more information, please go to www.blackmagicdesign.com/uk

