Peak Film

Cinema cameras and location sound

We shoot on Blackmagic 4K cinema cameras rather than stills bodies pressed into service. That means sensor size, codec, bit depth and colour handling chosen for the grade the footage will eventually go through, instead of being discovered as a limitation once it is too late to reshoot.

They are also cameras we can look after ourselves. Our engineer services and repairs them in house, which is why a fault on a Friday need not cost a week — and why we can be honest on the engineering page about where their long-term reliability falls short.

It matters most for work whose destination is not settled. Documentary projects change shape over years, and footage shot properly at the outset keeps its options open — a film that finds a distributor in its third year should not be held back by decisions made in its first.

Sound is treated the same way. The camera rigs carry Sennheiser MKH 416 P48 shotguns — the short shotgun that has been standard on film and television booms for decades, chosen because it rejects what is beside it and keeps what is in front of it. Getting that right on location removes problems that no amount of work in post genuinely fixes.

Dolby Atmos and surround mixing

We mix and master in stereo, 5.1, 7.1 and Dolby Atmos, in our own suite. Atmos treats sound as objects placed in a space rather than as channels fed to fixed speakers, so a mix translates properly from a cinema to a living room to a pair of headphones without being remade each time.

Doing it in house matters more than it sounds. A film handed to a facility at the final stage is mixed by people meeting it for the first time; ours is finished by the same team who were on location and know what a scene was meant to feel like.

The suite is built around an RME Fireface UFX+ as its main interface, with an earlier RME unit kept alongside it purely for redundancy. That is an unglamorous detail, but it is the difference between a failed box costing an hour and a failed box costing a session that a contributor travelled to attend.

Mixing is done on a customised Mackie control surface with twenty-four physical channel strips, so the balance is set with faders under both hands rather than a mouse moving one thing at a time.

Monitoring is on THX-certified Mackie monitors alongside Tannoy Dialogue monitors, which run twin bass drivers to a separate high-frequency unit and carry custom-built amplifiers. Working across two dissimilar sets of speakers rather than one is deliberate: a mix that holds up on both is a mix that will hold up in a cinema and on a television, which is the whole point of doing it in object-based Atmos in the first place.

The microphone cupboard is led by a Neumann U 87 Ai — the large-diaphragm condenser that has been the industry standard for voice since the 1960s, and the reason an interview recorded here sounds like an interview recorded anywhere else that takes it seriously. Around it sits a collection of more than fifty, which between them cover effectively any source a documentary produces — interviews in rooms never intended for recording, location atmospheres, and the close, deliberate work that Foley and ADR demand. On location the camera rigs themselves carry Sennheiser MKH 416 P48 shotguns, the short shotgun that has been standard on film and television booms for decades. Choosing the right microphone at the point of capture removes problems that no amount of mixing afterwards genuinely fixes.

We deliver the stems and masters a distributor asks for, in the formats they ask for.

The surround sound page covers the room in full — conversion, monitoring and the microphone collection — why the work is done in house rather than sent to a facility, and what we deliver at the end of it.

More about surround sound and Dolby Atmos →

Dubbing, ADR and Foley

ADR and dubbing are recorded in our own suite, in the same room the mix is finished in: a Neumann U 87 Ai into an RME Fireface UFX+. Nothing is farmed out, so a line re-recorded on Tuesday is in the mix on Tuesday.

Location sound is rarely the whole story: wind, aircraft, a generator two fields away, or a performance that improved on the twelfth take.

We record ADR to picture, so a replaced line sits in the performance rather than on top of it.

Foley is recorded on location rather than on a studio stage. We take mobile high-quality recording equipment to a space that matches the scene, so footsteps are recorded on the floor they are meant to be on, in the acoustic they are meant to be in. There is no gravel board here: if a scene needs footsteps on gravel, we go outside to where the gravel actually is. Nothing is pulled from a library, and nothing has to be processed afterwards into sounding like somewhere it never was: cloth that matches the coat, props handled at the weight they actually are.

The microphone goes with the source rather than the other way round. A Formula One engine at full revs is not a job for a studio condenser, so for sources at that pressure we use DPA 4061 and 4062 miniatures — the high-SPL versions of DPA's miniature omni, built to sit close to something extremely loud without the capsule giving up. They run on phantom power circuitry built here rather than bought — another piece of the chain made in house instead of specified from a catalogue. That is what a collection of fifty microphones is actually for.

Dubbing into other languages is handled the same way, with the mix rebuilt around the new dialogue rather than the original simply turned down.

PF Glass — wireless lens control

Pulling focus on cinema glass is unforgiving. The depth of field is shallow, the throw is long, and the difference between a usable take and a wasted one is often a few millimetres of barrel rotation.

PF Glass is a wireless follow-focus handset built around that problem. It was commissioned by Peak Film because the available controllers were either compromised or priced as though film crews were oil companies — and because we would rather solve a problem than work around it for another decade.

It was built for our own crew first and shown to other people second. That order matters: nothing in it exists because it demoed well, and the features that survived are the ones that earned their place over a season of shooting.

It drives Tilta Nucleus motors, so it works with hardware people already own rather than demanding a whole new ecosystem, and it is still being developed against real productions rather than declared finished.

It is not tied to a particular set of glass. Calibration is built into the handset, and it will calibrate to virtually any lens — through a custom-built guitar-tuner-style interface, so setting a lens up is quick and obvious rather than a procedure to be looked up.

The PF Glass page sets out what the handset actually does, why a production company ended up building its own rather than buying one, and an honest account of where the project currently stands.

Read the full account of PF Glass →

Lens Control System

Focus, iris, zoom and an auxiliary channel, each addressed independently, driving Tilta Nucleus motors from a single handset with a bright AMOLED touchscreen.

Marks are set where you want them and the response is immediate. A follow focus that hesitates is one that gets fought rather than used, so the control loop was built to react faster than the eye registers a lag.

Long throws and shallow depth of field were the starting point of the design rather than something accommodated afterwards.

Each channel is addressed independently, so focus and iris can be pulled by one operator without the two fighting each other, and the auxiliary channel is free for whatever a particular rig needs rather than being fixed to one function.

Marks are set on the handset itself and held against the lens rather than against the motor, so a rehearsed pull survives the lens being taken off and put back on.

The PF Glass page goes through the channels and motor support in full, the reasoning behind building it instead of buying, and how far the work has got.

More about PF Glass →

Transport and security

Equipment left on location overnight is a risk that tends to fall between the production and nobody at all. We cover it ourselves: somebody sleeps in on set, and the site is monitored around the clock.

The monitoring is custom built rather than hired — from the same workshop that builds our production equipment — so it is specified for the places we actually work rather than for an office car park.

Transport is ours as well, which means kit travels with the people who are responsible for it and does not change hands on the way.

The workshop that builds it →

Electronics, embedded software, custom hardware

Most production companies hire what they need and make do where nothing quite fits. We have an engineer in house instead, which changes what is possible: a control system that does not exist can be designed and made, and a camera that fails on a Friday need not mean a lost week.

That covers circuit design and prototyping, firmware for the devices themselves, purpose-built hardware, and board-level repair of cinema cameras — with the micro-soldering equipment to do it, rather than accepting a manufacturer's verdict of beyond economical repair.

He is retired and does it in his own time, so production tools that would otherwise be hired or bought at film-industry prices get built here for the cost of the parts — and not only for our own shoots, but for other crews, first-time filmmakers and students who can least afford specialist kit. Our own Blackmagic Design cinema cameras are serviced and repaired in house at no cost, so a fault on a Friday does not become a hire bill and a fortnight without a body.

The engineering page explains why an unpaid engineer makes production kit cheaper, sets out the full range of work — electronics, firmware, custom hardware, board-level repair and reverse engineering — and gives a frank account of Blackmagic camera reliability, spare parts and what their warranty is actually worth.

More about in-house engineering →