With any work that one undertakes, you give something of yourself, but sometimes, you also get something. While working on this launch film, which is a collaborative effort from 12 content creators in the Middle East Africa region, I got to do a little preaching to myself about getting up and going - about chasing the daylight and living offline - because I once again realize the value of time. It’s great to welcome the first APS-C camera to the Sony cinema line series! For any aspiring filmmakers, this is your door into the cinema line world of Sony. And if you already own the big brother - the FX3-  the perfect B-cam just entered the scene with its almost identical build and functionality.  With camera bodies getting smaller, but quality getting increasingly better, this is an exciting time to be in the industry.

When Sony asked us to produce the launch film and other content for this camera, we were excited to create something unique that would showcase the abilities of this camera within the spaces that it would most likely shine the most. We also loved to co-lab with content creators from all over the region, and it is just thrilling to see how diverse styles, settings and concepts can merge into something you envisioned from the start, although there always remains an element of surprise.

From the get-go we knew we wanted to do something young and fresh - something that would appeal to the younger generation of filmmakers, the adventurers and influencers and those who make content for a noble cause.

When you work with diverse content from so many different content creators , you have loads of footage to work with, and story lines can often disappear in the mash up. However, to keep some continuity in the edit,  it's often necessary  to establish some sort of character to try and keep it all together. Apart from the different scenes from the content  creator’s films, we identified three characters in different settings that we would use to try and tell the story of this camera as well as possible in the hero video:  the Indie filmmaker, the Adventurer and a YouTuber.

With so little time in an edit like this, you have to establish a character really fast and we had to come up with identifiable characteristics, props and settings that would tell the viewer who they are and what they are doing in a matter of a second - hence the focus on the wax paper which we all know is a cheap way of diffusing when you have not invested in proper gear yet for our Indie filmmaker scenes.

Some of the most beautiful places are often the hardest to reach - we had to hike up a mountain (and down in the pitch dark) to get some awesome adventure scenes and the aching muscles the next day were worth it!  We also spent a day on the beach close to Cape Town , where our main actor, who is an Instagramer and content creator in real life, took the camera for some underwater shots to see how it would hold up and came out of the water really impressed!

For our Youtuber scenes we shot locally in our studio with a standard lighting setup and a colorful backdrop. The outdoor scenes were filmed in our hometown at a big impressive recycling facility.

To find the right piece of music was something that proved to be a challenge - sometimes you are looking for something specific in a sea of options that just doesn’t cut it. When I heard the song that I eventually chose, I immediately felt something and knew that I was onto something with the vibe and emotion of the song - the problem though, was its structure. Luckily, I have never been afraid to cut up a song and re-arrange the parts in a way that makes sense for my edit -  a skill that I have to thank my music studies for! In the end, we wanted to create something that would inspire - and music is often overlooked as the powerful tool it is to make someone feel something.

I’m excited to see what this camera is going to bring to the industry. We have a powerful medium at hand to make a change in the world we live in, but we have to get up and go. There are often many things that hold us back, but sometimes one step forward is all the momentum you need. There are still a lot of stories to be told, places to see - voices to be heard. Go create!