Gareth Edwards and the workflow behind shooting a $80M Sci-Fi epic on a $4K camera
What happens when you throw out the old production playbook and still aim for spectacle?
Greetings! We spent the past few days at NAB, we had some fun (not Vegas fun, just video pro fun…well some customer meeting-turned-exotic car racing fun too, see video here). And even won best AI product at NAB, thanks CineD.
But we also walked away feeling like we need some better events for pros to come together. An event that represents the intellectual and cultural arm of what we do and for the modern pro. What do you think?
On the work front, the team is gearing up for an important launch next week that will be [redacted by Erika, head of marketing]. We think a lot about workflows, and so this week we’re putting our film geek hats on and looking at a workflow that potentially rewrote the rules of how big movies get made. Efosa dives in with a tale about scale, tools, and the surprising ways a filmmaker can bend the system without breaking it.
What happens when you throw out the old production playbook and still aim for spectacle?
Let’s just say: the future of filmmaking might already be here. And it fits in a backpack.
—Shamir, CEO & Co-founder Eddie AI
The $4K Camera Behind an $80M Movie
Looking at the three images above, what camera would you guess they were shot on?
An ARRI? A RED? Sony Venice? IMAX camera?
You’d be wrong four times.
Gareth Edward’s sci-fi epic, The Creator was shot completely on a Sony FX3, the same camera you’ll find in the camera bags of YouTubers and wedding videographers.
A $4,000 prosumer body. For a studio sci-fi epic.
That tension — between low-cost gear and high-stakes production — is what makes Gareth Edwards’ The Creator such a fascinating case study.
It’s not just about visuals. It’s about workflow. Control. Vision. Edwards didn’t just make a movie. He reprogrammed the system that makes movies.
This is a blueprint for how future blockbusters might be made: lighter, leaner, and faster. A 10-person crew instead of 200. Natural light instead of lighting trucks.
Guerrilla filmmaking at its finest but on a blockbuster scale.
Who: Gareth Edwards, the Guerrilla Auteur
Gareth Edwards
Before The Creator, Gareth Edwards had already built a reputation for thinking scrappy.
His breakout indie Monsters was shot with a skeleton crew across real-world locations. No permits. No huge rigs. Just gear in backpacks, and a belief that story could thrive on a shoestring.
Then came Godzilla (2014) and Rogue One (2016). Bigger budgets, but same sensibility: make it feel real. Handheld cameras. On-location shooting. Discovering the frame in the moment.
With The Creator, Edwards returned to his roots.
The goal? Shoot a big, world-building sci-fi epic the way you’d shoot a doc.
The Gear Stack
The Creator’s camera department looked more like a YouTuber’s kit than a Hollywood rental list:
Sony FX3 (up to 10 bodies on set)
Atomos Ninja V for ProRes RAW recording
Kowa Prominar 75mm vintage anamorphic — 95% of the movie was shot on this one lens
DJI Ronin RS2 gimbal, shoulder rigs, Kessler sliders, lightweight mini-cranes
Aputure & Astera LED lights (portable, battery-powered)
Custom LUTs created in prep and loaded onto every monitor
Everything was designed for speed and mobility. Instead of swapping lenses or re-rigging a camera, they’d just grab the next pre-rigged FX3. Every setup was hot-swappable.
On-Set Workflow
You should know by now that this wasn’t a traditional shoot.
Gareth Edwards operated the camera himself for much of the film. He’d walk into a space, block the actors, and start rolling. Scenes unfolded in extended 20–30 minute takes, letting performances evolve in real time. More documentary than blockbuster.
The Sony FX3s were set to capture in S-Log3 or ProRes RAW, with custom LUTs baked into the monitors for a near-final look on set. While there was a DIT involved, the workflow remained minimal by design. No massive rigs, no real-time grading suites, just a lean digital pipeline and a crew that trusted what they were seeing was close to what they’d get.
Post Workflow: Edit First, VFX Later
Here’s the wild part: they didn’t previsualize most of the VFX. Edwards shot The Creator like it was a road documentary. Real environments, natural light, human performances.
Then, in post, they augmented the sci-fi over it.
Instead of locking in scenes to match green screens, they cut the whole movie first, then sent edited clips with concept art paintovers as references.
Green screen was used sparingly. Most VFX-heavy scenes were shot against neutral gray, which could be keyed or left alone depending on the shot and only a few scenes used LED volumes.
How this workflow differs from the norm
Most big-budget films are shot on ARRI Alexas, with huge lens kits, grip trucks, and dozens of operators. They’re extremely slow-moving machines.
Edwards showed you can get the same cinematic impact from gear you can sling in a backpack.
The FX3 recorded footage sharp enough for the big screen. Vintage lenses added character. The mobility unlocked spontaneity.
And the lean crew meant more time filming, less time waiting.
The Future of Guerrilla Blockbusters
What The Creator workflow proves is that a filmmaker with the right prep, a tight crew, and smart gear can make a studio-level epic without the studio-level bloat.
Sony FX3. LED lights. RAW workflows. Tiny teams. A new kind of filmmaking.
Edwards didn’t cut corners. He just didn’t need them. He trusted that great visuals come from vision, not just kit.
Final Frame
Gareth Edwards didn’t just direct The Creator. He redesigned how movies like The Creator can be made. With a $4,000 camera and a backpack of lenses, he pulled off something massive.
The next great sci-fi epic might not come from a soundstage. It might come from a jungle. A beach. A side street in Hanoi.
And it might already be shooting.
Right now.
On a camera you could buy tomorrow.