We’ve been asked this question a hundred times. “Why the ARRI Alexa 35? Isn’t it overkill for corporate?”
No. And that’s exactly the problem with corporate video in France.
The camera is the director’s brush
When a painter chooses their brushes, they’re not looking for the cheapest solution. They’re looking for the tool that lets them realize their vision. At SIGNS, the ARRI Alexa 35 is that tool.
The reason is simple: this camera was designed for cinema. Not for generic corporate produced at scale. For stories. For emotions. For films that last.
When we shot the Rémy Martin films in the cellars of Cognac — the XO, the VSOP, the Tercet — the natural light filtering between the barrels deserved to be captured with the precision of a feature film. A Sony mirrorless wouldn’t have rendered that amber. That grain. That depth.
What the ARRI Alexa 35 changes in practice
Three things this camera does better than anything else.
1. Highlight handling
In a luxury environment, you often shoot in high-contrast spaces: a workshop with windows, a palace lit by candlelight, a set with colored neon. The ARRI Alexa 35 has exceptional exposure latitude — 17 stops of dynamic range. In practice: you don’t blow your whites, you don’t crush your blacks. The image breathes.
2. Skin tone rendering
For employer brand films where your employees’ faces carry your message, nothing betrays an “economy” shoot like skin rendering that pops harshly. The ARRI restores textures, nuances, the living. Your executives don’t look like actors in a LinkedIn teaser.
3. Confidence on set
This point is rarely mentioned. When a crew knows it’s shooting on ARRI, it behaves differently. DPs push their lights further. Performers feel the project’s ambition. Maison Chanel doesn’t react the same way depending on the gear they see arriving on set.
Color grading: where it really plays out
Shooting on ARRI is just the first step. The raw image in LogC4 is intentionally flat — it’s a blank canvas. The real value-add plays out in post-production, in our grading suite under DaVinci Resolve.
Since the arrival of ARRI Film Lab — a plugin that emulates the grain and halation of celluloid film — we work on outputs that give the image a cinema texture impossible to simulate without that base. For our luxury films, we systematically integrate an organic, almost photographic imprint. Not trendy aesthetics. A material.
What it costs — and why it’s an investment
The ARRI Alexa 35 adds a line to your production budget. There’s no point pretending otherwise.
But ask yourself the real question: what’s the lifespan of your film? A generic corporate film, produced on mid-range equipment, with a standard color grade, has an aesthetic lifespan of 18 to 24 months before looking dated. A film shot on ARRI, carefully graded, has a lifespan of 5 to 7 years.
Divide your budget by 7 years. Not by 18 months.
LVMH, Alexandre de Paris, Hodinkee — none of these clients asked us to do “less well for less money.” They asked us to do it right.
To sum up
The ARRI Alexa 35 isn’t a prestige choice. It’s a coherence choice. We make films that deserve to be well filmed. If your brand communicates on excellence, craft, and the human — your brand film must be shot with the same standards as what you produce yourselves.