09-12-2025 - Filmmaker Interviews
DP Markus Mentzer Embraces the Sony BURANO to Craft an Indie Comedy Throwback in "The Napa Boys"
By: Yaroslav Altunin
The world of independent film is at times kept aloft by pure creativity. Often, filmmakers need to wear many different hats to get a picture in the can.
For The Napa Boys, an indie comedy directed by Nick Corirossi, all three challenges had to be overcome. Lensed by DP Markus Mentzer with the Sony BURANO, the film follows a group of wine lovers in search of the perfect grape.
Sony Cine sat down with Mentzer to learn more about the challenges of shooting an indie comedy on a budget, how creativity can thrive within limitations, and how the Sony BURANO became a critical tool for capturing the project.
Filmmaker Interview: Markus Mentzer Discovers the Visual Language of The Napa Boys
Inspired by the American Pie series that began in the late 90s, The Napa Boys explores a world once made popular by a Merlot-hating oenophile. Writers Nick Corirossi and Armen Weitzman, who also starred and produced the feature, additionally weaved in other tonal references from classic films.
"Creatively, the inspiration was a mash-up of American Pie and Sideways—that then devolved into a John Ford Western movie with some elements of The Lord of the Rings — as they go on this journey to find the perfect grape,” Mentzer explained. “The movie itself is the…fourth movie in the series of movies that does not exist. It goes into these crazy spaces by having this alternative humor that's very comedy-writer based."
Mentzer's main challenge was to craft a visual language that could embrace all of the film's reference material.
"There were a lot of different looks that [the creators] were going for," Mentzer said. "Armen and Nick have essentially been prepping this movie for 5 years, and I think the hard part was trying to blend those looks.
"It's a feature. It's not a sketch where you can just shoot one script and then completely reverse course. You have to find something that connects them."
The classic references also made for an extra challenge. For example, the John Ford references the film needed were pulled from The Searchers, an American epic Western he made in 1956.
"A lot of that movie just sits in these wides," Mentzer said. "You have these matte paintings for skies, everything is backlit by the sun, and you'll have just one hard source of light.”
Balancing the imagery of the 90s with iconic compositions from classic films needed a tool as versatile as the subject matter. For Mentzer, there was only one choice that could achieve everything he needed.
Filmmaker Interview: Markus Mentzer - How the Sony BURANO Turned Limitation into Creativity on The Napa Boys
With limitations giving both creators and the cinematographer little room for error, blending all of the references became an exercise in creative exploration.
"We needed two cameras, and we didn't have a lot of money, and we didn't have a lot of crew," Mentzer said. "We're out in Malibu in the hills of the vineyards, where we didn't have a lot of power.”
"I needed a camera that could deal with all that."
For this, Mentzer leaned on a documentary style of filmmaking and chose the Sony BURANO, which he used in a pair to double up on focal lengths or cross shoot when the need arose.
"Using the BURANO in a more documentary approach just gave me endless flexibility," Mentzer said. "In comedy, if you're going to suddenly roll on a take for 20 minutes and at the last minute, they decide that this is going to work better in handheld, we just don't have the time to create the ultimate handheld rig. We just need to pull the camera off the tripod and start rolling."
"I feel like I can use [the BURANO] on my own without needing a lot of support," Mentzer added. "I was a camera assistant for a long time, and so more often than not, I lean into this hands-on approach where I want to be able to access the camera and change things like color or exposure.
"If I need to run off and shoot some kind of pick up, I can do it on my own or with minimal support and gear."
We shot all of [The Napa Boys] in Super 35 5.9k mode, framed for an IMAX aspect ratio of 1.90:1, which gave us access to vintage zoom lenses that made life easier for us. They were used for over 30 years in network TV, and are both gorgeous and battle tested.
With the compact form factor of the BURANO and its power efficiency, Mentzer and his team were able to shoot and move multiple times a day. The camera was also paired with vintage zoom lenses from Panavision, which visually supported the references Corirossi and Weitzman had in mind.
"We shot all of [The Napa Boys] in Super 35 5.9k mode, framed for an IMAX aspect ratio of 1.90:1, which gave us access to vintage zoom lenses that made life easier for us," Mentzer said. "They were used for over 30 years in network TV, and are both gorgeous and battle tested."
Mentzer was surprised by the power efficiency of the BURANO, discovering that he could shoot on one battery at a time instead of using a dual battery mount.
"And then the other thing," Mentzer said, "[The BURANO] would do some internal exposure compensations on the fly, for a walk from interior to exterior, for inside a car, then outside a car. It adjusts so naturally that it's incredibly helpful."
However, the one aspect that really made the BURANO an asset to The Napa Boys was its codec. Not only did X-OCN LT support the team during production, but it also made for extra efficiencies in post.
"I think the X-OCN LT codec is the biggest selling point of the [BURANO]," Mentzer said. "It's 16-bit and it's very small. It's smaller than ProRes. We didn't need massive hard drives to record all this."
"X-OCN LT is also completely accessible to everybody. It's something that we can grade on our laptops if necessary. Our Colorist Gabriel Sanchez beautifully graded the movie from the original raw X-OCN LT files, which had the original LUTs attached to each file."
Filmmaker Interview: Mentzer Discovers the Surprising Power of the Sony BURANO
Visually, technically, and creatively, the Sony BURANO provided all that Mentzer needed. Whether it was subtle IBIS for handheld shots, full control over color and exposure at his fingertips, or high resolution that was used in post-production to reframe shots, limitations quickly turned into creative opportunities.
"Having limitations and boundaries is what makes films like this better," Mentzer said. "We typically had 4 or 5 moves per day. Even having a camera truck would have been a struggle. So, we just had to be able to move quickly and efficiently."
For Mentzer, the BURANO was able to stay ahead of limitations and offer solutions to problems before they arose. These small surprises kept the film on schedule, where larger cameras may not have been able to meet the demand.
"Being a comedy, two cameras are just critical, and we just couldn't have had two camera bodies with a different camera system that was as technologically advanced as the BURANO."
To catch an early glimpse of Mentzer's work, The Napa Boys will have its world premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.
To learn more about the Sony BURANO and the other cameras in the Sony Cinema Line, visit our Camera Comparison Chart.
