CHINA – 8 March 2022 – OPPO celebrates International Women’s Day in collaboration with Director Laura Sisteró to produce the story of Joana Pastrana, who is a world-class boxer and held the International Boxing Federation’s mini-flyweight title for three years in a row. Her achievements were hard won through training and self-betterment. Joana Pastrana represents the spirit of OPPO’s Save the Night initiative, which celebrates the empowerment of women who find they have to push harder and train longer in a world that can seem out of sync with their ambitions.
A story of empowerment
Joana Pastrana’s story is told in a short film made in association with OPPO, directed by Laura Sisteró, and shot in part using the new OPPO Find X5 Pro. It shows what the night can be if we choose to make it so:
“In the dark, I just saw an opportunity. While everyone went back home to rest, I was ready to chase my dream,” says Pastrana. For her, the night was a time to work, and push harder.
Competing in a male-dominated sport only made her self-empowerment more crucial. “I didn’t see many women up there,” says Pastrana.
“I had to become my own role model. And from then on, I never stopped. I trained harder and harder. This was the only way to achieve my goals”, she says.
After three years of competing in the amateur circuit, Pastrana made her professional debut in 2016. At the time she was the only professional boxer in Madrid. By the middle of 2018 she was already a global champion in her weight class.
Pastrana is an inspirational figure, an example of what self-motivation through empowerment can bring. Few could, or would even want to, box at a professional level. However, her words can inspire us all. She says, “the night can be the time to dream wide awake.” It’s a reminder that while dreams and aspirations may seem remote, they may be within reach. This is a sentiment worth celebrating.
Behind the camera
The aim of OPPO’s Joana Pastrana short film was to offer a view into her world. She walks through the empty city streets at night towards her boxing gym, capturing images with the OPPO Find X5 Pro.
She straps up her wrists and takes to the ring to train. As she sits at the end of the session, exhausted, Pastrana visualizes the match to come, when all her efforts will be put to the test.
The film-making challenge was to capture the emotional and physical investment here in a 90-second format. Director Laura Sisteró’s tools were the industry standard Arri Alexa camera and a less likely partner, the OPPO Find X5 Pro.
OPPO Find X5 Pro can be the night companion. Its camera is optimized to produce stunning results, for stills or video, even in the most challenging lighting.
An OPPO Find X5 Pro will record night-time memories, challenges, victories and defeats, which can form an important part of a motivational journey.
The phone was put to the test in the shooting of this short film, used to film some of the more difficult scenes in the piece.
The phone used by Pastrana to visually narrate her journey through the street in photo form. Shots of Pastrana training both in and outside the ring used the OPPO Find X5 Pro’s Ultra Night Video mode. This marks a paradigm shift in the video quality of OPPO phones, bringing the quality associated with enhanced low-light stills to moving images.
“I was quite surprised by the capabilities the phone has to take pictures at night,” says director Laura Sisteró.
A tapestry of software and hardware in the OPPO Find X5 Pro makes this a reality. Its wide and ultra-wide cameras use large, high-quality Sony IMX766 sensors. 5-axis OIS avoids motion blur and allows for longer shutter speeds, and OPPO’s self-developed MariSilicon X NPU fine tunes the camera’s advanced processing algorithms to suit each shooting situation.
To create a night-time short film with the OPPO Find X5 Pro, take some of the creative choices made in the short film as inspiration. Note how Pastrana is not the only character here. The quiet atmosphere of the streets is brought into focus by the use of Pastrana’s footsteps as the primary soundtrack to each exterior shot. This sits in stark contrast to the traffic noise of the first few seconds of footage, shot during the day.
Director Sisteró plays with the shadows and light contrasts of the night-time city, and lets scenes bathe in the warmth of street light and the artificial lighting of neon signs. At night, each shadow can be an outlet for creative expression.
