USA – Blackmagic Design today announced that Ben Hausdorff and Jonathan Kadin’s “Killer Rental” was shot entirely using Blackmagic Design digital film cameras, including three URSA Mini Pro 12Ks and a variety of Pocket Cinema Camera 4Ks, Pocket Cinema Camera 6Ks and Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pros. The film was also graded using DaVinci Resolve Studio editing, photo editing, color grading, visual effects (VFX) and audio post production software.
“Killer Rental” is a different take on the slasher film genre, mixing extensive hidden camera and found footage with over the top traditional slasher horror. The film follows a group of friends who rent a vacation home in Joshua Tree, unaware that there are hidden cameras watching their every move and a killer known as “The Carpenter” is now hunting them.
The film’s unique use of found footage and hidden cameras to tell the story and capture action has helped the film gain a worldwide audience.
Award winning independent filmmaker Ben Hausdorff, (“Higher Education,” “Fran” and nearly a decade working with Pentatonix) along with Co Writer and Co Director Jonathan Kadin (“Moneyball,” “Cinderella” and the “Jump Street” franchise) created “Killer Rental” as a mix of different horror genres.
Hausdorff relied on a production to post Blackmagic Design workflow. Familiar with Blackmagic Design cameras from years of shooting music videos, short films and social media content for Pentatonix using a variety of Blackmagic Design cameras, he was able to design a large multicamera setup on a very tight budget for “Killer Rental”
Hausdorff explained: “When Jonathan and I were moving from script to ironing out how we would shoot ‘Killer Rental,’ we quickly realized that the story needed to be shot with a large number of cameras. The budget was at the indie budget level, but our vision was definitely not a one camera indie shoot.”
He continued: “The group of friends were being watched anywhere they went in the house, which required at least four to six cameras of different sizes. And then we needed to shoot additional found footage that the group finds the tape of, which required different setups to track their reactions as they watched low resolution footage. Finally, we used the URSA Mini Pro 12Ks to capture the present as The Carpenter took action. The affordability, small design, ease of use and high quality images from the Blackmagic cameras made our vision possible on a limited budget with a small crew.”
For the large number of found footage shots, Hausdorff, Kadin and Taylor Pelletier, the film’s DP, placed cameras around a house, garage and pool area. With the large amount of footage shot, they used Blackmagic RAW to not only capture high quality images but also be as efficient as possible with storage.
“The Pocket Cinema Cameras are perfect for shooting anywhere,” said Hausdorff. “We had them hidden in bushes, ceilings, toolboxes. All over. They allowed us to get as much coverage as we needed to build tension, jump scares and terrifying action.”
Following production, DaVinci Resolve Studio was used for color correction and online editing. Each Blackmagic Design camera provided high resolution images designed to work seamlessly with post production.
“‘Killer Rental’ is a big movie that needed a large production. The audience is going between intense, present day horror and found footage, and the quality that we were able to get with the Blackmagic workflow made sure that there was nothing taking the audience out of the story,” Hausdorff finished.
