Shooting a ship on the URSA Mini Pro 4.6K

After recently acquiring both an URSA Mini Pro 4.6k and a Sony A7Sii, I was eager to put them to the test on a project.

I was recently contacted by Bristol Pilots - a group of maritime pilots who oversee the ships as they approach Bristol - to create a promotional film for them. They wanted to show what they did and raise a little more awareness. I jumped at the chance to get involved and saw it as an opportunity to put my equipment to the test.

Living in Portishead, I see huge ships passing by quite frequently, so the prospect of filming one and learning a little more about it was really interesting to me. I figured it would also be of interest to the local community as well as ship enthusiasts (they do exist - I met a couple!).

I budgeted for two days shooting - one on the ship and one at the docks, and I allowed for some aerial filming by another local company. The first day involved getting up at 2am, driving to Barry in Wales and joining the pilots on a small boat out to a huge oil tanker in the Bristol Channel. When we arrived at the ship, there was a 5m climb up a rope ladder and all the equipment was hauled up in my cases - I also tried to film as much as I could as it was so interesting to see and a big part of what the pilots do.

Most of the night-time footage was shot on the Sony A7Sii - the camera basically sees in pitch black without any noise on the image. It was the first time I'd really used it in such a low light scenario (it was pitch black at sea that time of the morning!) but the footage was incredible. The camera captured more than I could see with my own eyes and allowed me to tell a crucial part of the story that I'd be unable to on any other camera - without resorting to lighting the scene myself (I imagine that's quite difficult at sea!).

As twilight approached, I transitioned from the A7Sii to the URSA Mini Pro 4.6k. Filming a mix of 4K and HD, and mostly at high frame rates (60-120fps), I shot the majority of GVs hand-held to give it more life and to complement all of the movement in the on-screen action.

I was told that there was a small chance - less than 1% - that the ship would not make it to the docks. If this happened we'd be turned around and sent back to Barry where we'd have to descend the ladder, board the small pilot boat, head back to land then drive back to Bristol. As it happened, just as we were approaching Portishead a heavy fog appeared and our progress was ground to a halt. Obviously the ship and it's contents are worth quite a bit, and piloting it through thick fog in shallow waters isn't a risk worth taking - so we ended up turning back to Barry.

The advantage of this was that I ended up filming the ship coming in later that day from dry land in Portishead - when I think about it, this is the best thing that could have happened as it allowed me to show the ship from all angles. There was definitely a bit of luck involved.

The following weekend I spent a day at Avonmouth docks filming another ship coming through the lock. As I was inches away from the huge vessel, it was impossible not to feel the size and power behind it, and that's where I really felt how important the job of the pilot is. Not just to navigate through the waters, but to get through the lock with less than a metre either side of the ship.

The aerial footage really came in handy in showing just how tight the gap was, and helped convey a sense of scale that couldn't be appreciated form the ground.

The video is now signed-off by the client (they were very happy!) and awaiting the launch of their new website - the video will be released at the same time and will hopefully generate some interest in what it is a pilot does.

Both my cameras worked very well together and allowed me to cover everything from low (no) light situations to HFR and 4K, and as a first project to undertake with them it couldn't have gone better.

Finally, the weekend I shot at Avonmouth Docks I also undertook a freebie / charity job to create a small promo video for an upcoming soapbox race in Portishead. I had about half an hour to shoot a small group of people putting their soapbox invention together and then an hour or so to edit it together and add graphics. As I can't share the ship video just yet, I thought I'd leave you with this to see footage from the URSA camera in action... If you're in Portishead, be sure to come along in July!