Musical Duo Creates Classical Rock Covers with Blackmagic Design

Italian music duo, Golden Salt, have used a Blackmagic Design workflow for both acquisition and post to produce viral rock covers for their YouTube Channel. 

Founded by violinist Arianna Mazzarese and electric guitarist Eleonora Loi, Golden Salt aims to provide a bridge between the classical and rock genres through covers, acoustic medleys and instrumental soundtracks.

Iron Maiden is the latest band to get the Golden Salt treatment, with a cover of Fear of the Dark. That comes on the back of the duo’s highly successful cover of Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters, which has attracted in excess of five and half million views. Both videos were shot on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, and used Blackmagic RAW at 5:1 constant bitrate for acquisition.

“Typically, we would hire in a freelance DP and post professionals to create the visuals that accompany our music,” explains Eleonora. “One day, a filmmaker we’d hired was using an URSA Mini Pro with DaVinci Resolve. We loved the cinematic quality of the image, and were surprised at how easy the workflow could be.”

The idea that they could retain even greater control over their creative expression is something that appealed, explains Arianna. “While we had worked with some very talented creatives, we never felt fully represented by the finished videos. There was a disconnect between the content and our music, and audiences felt it.”

The only way forward was to own that process from inception to delivery, and so the duo took all aspects of video production in hand. “For us, our music and the accompanying video are two sides of the same coin,” reveals Eleonora.

“Over the past 18 months, we have been teaching ourselves to direct, shoot, and post produce using the Blackmagic workflow. Now, when we get an idea that appeals to us, we storyboard the concept and plan out how we’ll approach the filming.”

“The results, both in terms of audience views and engagement, have surpassed all our expectations. With the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K and Ronin S, we now have an easy to use, lightweight camera package that we can adapt to suit us,” adds Arianna.

After production is done, Eleonora and Arianna head into post. They normally begin by organizing their media into various bins, using the storyboard to help group rushes. Next, they optimize their media and then create a multicamera clip using the audio to synchronize everything.

“This tool is simply fantastic. It’s easy to use and saves us a huge amount of time, which makes my job that much simpler,” explains Arianna. “While I typically look after the edit, Eleonora will then take on all aspects of the grade and finishing. 

Our passion and commitment to making great content, combined with the efficiencies DaVinci Resolve and Blackmagic RAW offers means our channel is now growing faster than ever before.”