How These Filmmakers Used the Blackmagic PYXIS to Shoot Their DIY Indie Zombie Flick

While the overarching mainstream film industry continues to ebb, flow, and shift in unexpected and unprecedented new directions, for the vast majority of indie filmmakers and small commercial production crews, the recipe is very much the same.

Have a dream and a story to tell, write a script, find whatever camera you can, and make it happen. What has changed though is the camera part of the equation as there are more highly-capable and highly-affordable digital cinema cameras available to indie filmmakers than ever before.

A new contender for one of the best indie-friendly cinema cameras for filmmakers of all types is the Blackmagic PYXIS, which is proving to be a compact and modular option that can work on film projects both big and small.

To explore how the Blackmagic PYXIS could be an interesting option for aspiring filmmakers dreaming the indie dream, Sean & Taylor King, a father-son filmmaking team from New Zealand Sons Films, explore their thoughts on using the PYXIS on their most recent horror feature Zombie Repellant—a fun and DIY-minded zombie film that is a perfect indie film test project.

NFS: Tell us a bit about your background and what got you into filmmaking.

Sean King: I grew up in Redondo Beach, a small southern California town, and graduated from high school in the mid-1980s. From a young age, I’ve always been passionate about the entertainment industry. I spent my pre-teen years shooting 8mm films. Neither of my parents had careers in the entertainment field, but instead of going to a traditional college, I decided to apply and was accepted to the London Film School.

When I returned home from film school, it was at a time that Kevin Smith, Spike Lee, and Robert Rodriguez were all making 16mm indie films that were getting theatrical releases, and I was inspired to write my first feature called “Highways”.

After completing my first feature film two years later, we went through several Los Angeles distributors, who kept all the profits until a third distribution company finally licensed “Highways” to HBO in 1990.

In 2015, my son Taylor wanted to go into the film business. Instead of sending him to film school, we decided to do a 6 1/2-hour limited series that he would write, direct, and also act in. I knew that the six-month adventure would either make him love filmmaking or not want to be part of it at all.

We finished “Private Sales” in early 2016. At about that same time, Amazon Prime opened its platform to indie producers. We sent them “Private Sales”, they accepted it, and over the next year, the series made back its budget and allowed us to start our first feature together, “Coffee with Ana” in 2017.

From 2016 to 2025, we’ve done 22 projects together, both features and limited series, that are now seen on Amazon Prime and another 50 streaming channels around the world.

NFS: What cameras did you use when first starting out? How have your camera needs changed over the years?

Taylor King: We shot our first two projects, Private Sales and Coffee with Ana, on a Canon 5DII with the Magic Lantern RAW hack, mainly because we already owned the camera. But shooting raw on a DSLR at the time had many limitations, including resolution, the ability to playback on location, and a multi-layered post-process.

In 2017, we started looking at options that could shoot 4K. Even though Amazon wasn’t accepting 4K yet, we knew it was coming. We also needed a camera that could shoot raw and had a post-production workflow that would be compatible with the editing software we were using. After a lot of research, there was only one camera on the market that offered the image quality and features for the price. The Black Magic Ursa 4.6K.

We shot five limited series and a feature film over the next two years on the Ursa 4.6K, and the camera never let us down. We shot in the daily rain of Scotland and in the extreme heat of the Mojave Desert, and the camera always worked perfectly.

The only problem was, with the camera fully rigged, wireless follow focus, wireless video, and DT tap battery, for a two-man film crew, the rig was heavy. We started to notice we weren’t moving the camera as much and simplifying shots. We started looking for an alternative camera that would be smaller and lighter, but still give us the same quality. That same year, Black Magic released the Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, and we bought one right away.

Taylor and I shot 10 feature films from 2019 through 2024 on the Black Magic Pocket 6K, and just like the Ursa Mini 4.6K, the camera never let us down in all sorts of extreme shooting environments.

NFS: When did you first hear about the Blackmagic PYXIS and what were your immediate reactions?Sean King: We first heard about the PYXIS camera in April 2024. If we had a wish list for the Pocket 6K upgrades, it would have included a full-frame sensor, professional connectors, and more mounting points. The PYXIS camera had all three of these features. We began shooting with the PYXIS in late October 2024 for our series The Salem Sisters.

NFS: What have you found you like the most about the Blackmagic PYXIS and what it can offer for your filmmaking needs?

Sean King: We have been using the PYXIS for 40 production days at the time of this interview, and the biggest surprise would be the balance of the camera. We already loved the color science and post-workflow, but the camera is small and big at the same time. It feels right for handheld shots, it’s heavy enough on a tripod to be smooth and light enough on a gimbal and used all day.

On any given shoot day, we move between car mounts, gimbals, handhelds, and tripods. All the mounting points on the PYXIS have allowed us to quickly move from one camera support set up to another.

NFS: Tell a bit about your filmmaking workflow and how you go from shooting with the PYXIS to Blackmagic Cloud and then to the edit.

Taylor King: On The Salem Sisters, we’re shooting BRAW 6K at Q1 compression. The daily footage is transferred to our edit and backup drives, then brought pre-synced into DaVinci Resolve. As soon as we open the timeline, the proxies start uploading to BlackMagic Cloud, and that day’s footage is ready to edit anywhere on any device that supports Resolve.

The entire process from uploading the proxies to downloading on another computer is usually less than twenty minutes. We have Resolve on our laptops and iPads, which is really helpful on a series. We can pull up any previous shoot day on location and playback scenes for reference.

Our picture editing and sound editing are a thousand miles apart. Everyone is on the same page because any edits or changes are updated across the entire network instantly.

NFS: If you were to recommend the Blackmagic PYXIS to another filmmaker, what would you tell them about it?

Sean King: The PYXIS is a high-quality cinema camera, and if they’re making feature films or TV series, it’s hard to beat the price for quality. But the reason we continue to use BlackMagic cameras is the entire workflow. DaVinci Resolve works hand in hand with the BRAW footage and now the cloud; the entire ecosystem just works.

NFS: What's next for you and your future projects?

Taylor King: After we wrap the 100-day shoot for The Salem Sisters and get it delivered in August, we’re going to take a few months off and finish our book Beg Borrow and Steal about making 22 indie films in 10 years and what we’ve learned.