HD For Indies

After our IFA Panel on Why Red Matters ended, we IMMEDIATELY set out to go shoot Font Magica, a gorgeously lit fountain in Barcelona. The week before when Jendra had toured me around Barcelona, she was adamant that we had to end up at the fountain at night, and I was pleased we did - see pics in the above link I took of it. So once we knew we had a Red coming, she lit up and insisted we'd have to shoot Font Magica...in 4K.

I really couldn't argue with that logic.

So as soon as the presentation ended, we hung out and talked with people for a short while, then immediately packed up and zipped up to Barcelona to shoot the Font Magica.

Unfortunately....it was done for the night already. We'd had our times wrong, and it had finished an hour before we got there.

Based on that, we did a quick reassess and drove up to Mont Juic, a beautiful overlook point in Barcelona and shot from there.

One of the great things we learned about the Red during this week is how amazingly well it does at night or low light situations, especially as compared to film. If you're wondering why these look flat or color biased, please read this.

If you look at my .Mac Web Gallery - MontJuicRedShoot, the second shot is highly instructive - it is a 1/5th of a second exposure with at 18mm focal length at ISO 1600 taken with a Nikon D80 (Jendra's I'll bet), and you can see the area we were shooting - the balcony to the left if where the first shot starts, and the boat on the right is where the first shot ends. Well, why not just show you. Clicking on the image below will open the 4.4MB nearly 4K resolution JPEG:

(Above NOT shot on Red One Camera!)

Jendra Jarnagin was operating most of these shots, but we had some camera hardware focus related issues that weren't resolved for a few days. We were shooting on Zeiss Super Speed lenses, I think I recall 85mm being used for many of the shots. All footage was shot 23.976 fps, usually 1/48th exposure but some tests at 1/24th.

Our first shot was A001_C001_071012_00000

It is a panning shot that starts here...



Clicking the above will open a 2K resolution JPEG at 100% quality. For the uncompressed 4K resolution, 16 bit 48 MB TIFF file, right click and Save As here.

and ends here...

A001_C001_071012_01031



Clicking the above will open a 2K resolution JPEG at 100% quality. For the uncompressed 4K resolution, 16 bit 48 MB TIFF file, right click and Save As here.

This is a panning shot that starts on a deck dimly lit and pans across a swatch of Barcelona's seaside port, coming to rest on a cruise ship at a dock behind a parking lot. This is the kind of shot you could never light in reality without a zillion trucks worth of lights...therefore you could never light it in reality. This is the kind of shot that shows off Red well in comparison to film for low light sensitivity. We processed the head of the shot at ISO 640, Exposure=0 in Red Alert for this still, and the tail at ISO 320 with Exposure set to -0.43 to capture highlight detail.

Already this starts to present some of the choices and conundrums of shooting RAW. If one were shooting with a traditional electronic camera, you could approach it one of several ways:
1.) expose for optimal results for either head (darker) or tail (brighter) or shot, biasing towards the capabilities of the camera
2.) expose somewhere in between and do post correction, compromised on both ends
3.) expose to capture max range and watch out for the noise floor.
4.) ???

Now that we're shooting RAW, we shoot wide open then can process it differently in post, much like processing the film - should it be processed at ISO/ASA 320? 500? 800? 1000? 1600? Trial and error reveal the pros and cons of each.

So instead of having to lock in a choice while shooting, we can process it different through Red Alert, perhaps doing a blend between two different ISO renderings of the same shot as it pans, or animating the grade through the pan. Yet to be done, more on that later, but creates fresh challenges. Having Assimilate's Scratch, with native support, suddenly sounds so much more useful than rendering out long multiple DPX sequences and blending them together, potentially with feathered masks.

The next shot was A001_C003_071012_00604 which includes the famous statue of Christopher Columbus pointing...the wrong way. Processed at ISO 640, 5600 Kelvin, 0 Tint, Rec 709 gamma (all are Rec 709 gamma unless otherwise noted), and Exposure set to zero.



Clicking the above will open a 2K resolution JPEG at 100% quality. For the uncompressed 4K resolution, 16 bit 48 MB TIFF file, right click and Save As here.

Next up was A001_C004_071012_00010, the cruise ship again.



Clicking the above will open a 2K resolution JPEG at 100% quality. For the uncompressed 4K resolution, 16 bit 48 MB TIFF file, right click and Save As here.

The next shot was A001_C005_071012_00268, a wide shot of the city below, shot at 4K (as the other shots above have been), processed at ISO 250.



Clicking the above will open a 2K resolution JPEG at 100% quality. For the uncompressed 4K resolution, 16 bit 48 MB TIFF file, right click and Save As here.

Then we shot was A001_C006_071012_00250, quite similar, slightly reframed, but processed at ISO 320. We locked down the head for this shot, you'll see why in a moment.



Clicking the above will open a 2K resolution JPEG at 100% quality. For the uncompressed 4K resolution, 16 bit 48 MB TIFF file, right click and Save As here.

For the next shot, we reset the camera to 2K mode and didn't touch a thing - A002_C001_071012_00000 is shot at 2K with the same everything. The point of this? You can drop this shot onto the above shot and compare how 2K mode and compression compares to a 2K crop from the above shot - we wanted to see if there were any meaningful differences. The focus and lighting aren't perfect in this shot to compare, but it does give you an idea of how to compare.



Clicking the above will open a 2K resolution JPEG at 100% quality. For the uncompressed 2K resolution, 16 bit 12 MB TIFF file, right click and Save As here.

Shot was A002_C002_071012_00000 is a similar 2K shot.



Clicking the above will open a 2K resolution JPEG at 100% quality. For the uncompressed 2K resolution, 16 bit 12 MB TIFF file, right click and Save As here.

Shot was A002_C004_071012_00132 is a another 2K shot.



Clicking the above will open a 2K resolution JPEG at 100% quality. For the uncompressed 2K resolution, 16 bit 12 MB TIFF file, right click and Save As here.

Do take a look at that .Mac Web Gallery, you'll see where and how we were shooting and with what gear. Plus the beautiful place where we had dinner later that night, and I was able to make dailies (or would you call them instants?) on the spot with Steve Tammi's laptop and play back for the group at dinner (note the Red One behind me in that shot). The workflow really is like a digital film camera, in that you need to develop it, massage it, make dailies coloring probably, etc. But a laptop is all that is needed instead of a lab - like that!

We didn't need to worry about data management on set since we shot so little footage and had 6 8GB CF cards. But it was MUCH more of an issue the next day. More on that aspect later...

Special thanks to the group we dubbed Equipo Rojo España, who all donated their time to get to work with the Red camera for several days:

Directors of Photography:
- Jendra Jarnagin
- Pol Turrents, who was also Mr. Connection to hook us up with all of our Spain resources, a VERY special thanks to him

Technical director: Mike Curtis, HD for Indies (me)

Production Manager: Oriol Bramona of Utopic

Red Camera Equipment: Steve Tammi of Otter Creek Productions

Camera Equipment: Service Vision

Production:Independent Film Academy, Utopic, and Service Vision

1st AC: Gabi Garcia

Data management & 2nd AC: Ivan Garriga

Red Postproduction: Utopic

Again, thanks to everyone for their time, dilligence, energy, and professionalism.

OK, that's it for today, the next post will include our Sitges day shoot.

-mike

Labels: Red, Sitges, Spain

I updated my post from last week with the DiVX videos of the 2 1/2 hour presentation on Red One. Descriptions, still pictures, the PDF presentation, and video are now all in the linked article.

-mike

Labels: IFA, Red, Sitges, Spain

After installing Leopard on what I thought was a clean partition, I got the blue screen. I pulled out Dulce and Kona cards, and reinstalled. No dice.

Reinstalled with Archive and Install, finally worked. Hmm.

-After setting up my user account and NOT transferring data and settings over, Software Update already had stuff for me - Remote Desktop Client 3.2.1 and Login & Keychain Update 1.0

-Software Update functionality works differently - instead of installing then rebooting, after clicking OK to install with the Restart warning, it quits all other open apps and THEN installs and reboots. So you can't update in the background any more.

-DEAL KILLER #1: Trying to go to the Edit Posts link in Blogger crashes Safari, even after that first Software Update and a reboot.

-DEAL KILLER #2: no word from AJA on their website as yet on Kona3 drivers - Blackmagic has theirs out already. Will update ASAP when I have news.

AJA/LEOPARD UPDATE - this from a press release I got today:

AJA’s Io HD, the next generation of the company’s popular Io video ingest and output devices, provides 10-bit quality video over Firewire for Apple’s Final Cut Studio, and natively supports Apple's New ProRes 422 format, enabling portable HD editing on MacBook Pro and Mac Pro computers. Io HD support for Leopard is coming soon.

The KONA video capture and playback cards from AJA, including the KONA 3, KONA LHe and KONA LSe, will soon offer support for the new OS, allowing users to take full advantage of Leopard’s robust new features.

“As a long-term development partner with Apple, we’re very excited about the leap in technology that the Leopard operating system represents,” said Nick Rashby, President, AJA Video Systems. “Apple continues to innovate with breakthrough new operating systems that allow users of professional video products to maximize their creativity.”

...so not yet, but "soon."

Blackmagic Design posted new drivers on Thursday for Intensity, Decklink, and Multibridge lines that are compatible with Leopard.

-DEAL KILLER #3 - I'm hearing about troubles with RAIDs and RAID cards

-DEAL KILLER #4 - Adobe's video apps (After Effects, Premiere Pro, etc.) aren't working properly under Leopard

First gut reaction to new UI - don't like it - all the soft blue folders, the Space Age 3D Dock, the overly rounded corners, the soft grey, low contrast menu bar...hmm.

Stacks, however, will be damn handy, I can tell already, and Cover Flow will certainly have its uses, but is just eye candy in some contexts. Quick preview functionality will be used often!

Digging through the System Prefs:
-Arabesque screensaver is kewl
-Sharing - looking forward to Screen Sharing for remote control, Remote Login/Management changes, Xgrid sharing for distro rendering (Compressor?), etc.
-Time Machine - since virtually no one backs up and everyone gets bitten eventually, this will be Sliced Bread 2.0 for data security and integriy. I'm going to be getting a big, whompin' backup disc of some sort for routine backups, and I'm looking into a tape based backup system for archives.

More as the day proceeds...installing Final Cut Studio 2, iWork '08, iLife '08, Photoshop, Illustrator, maybe After Effects if it will let me next...

Labels: Leopard

And Oh Yeah- Leopard, Apple's new version of the OS, shipped Friday.

As with all big software releases, I don't recommend installing right away - I just installed on my Mac Pro and I have two (30 & 23) blue screens, dunno why yet.

UPDATE -Several folks pointed out this article from Apple about blue screens:Mac OS X 10.5: "Blue screen" appears after installing Leopard and restarting

...but interestingly, this WAS a fresh install as best I know - this was on my Mac Pro on the second internal drive which did NOT have an OS on it AFAIK (I bought this box and had shipped to NYC to work with Offhollywood the other month, never installed a 2nd OS on it). So the only things I can think of that could fiddle with it would be the Kona3 board and the Dulce RAID card. When I booted in Single User mode trying to debug the problem (hold down command-s during boot) I saw a line about "Kona board not installed" or somesuch - perhaps it self-installs a driver? Don't think so AFAIK - you have to download and install yourself.

So a few maybes in there and definitely some I'm-not-positives, but still, don't install the OS on a production box for a while, and not until you get positive confirmation from vendors that they've tested their products successfully in conjunction with the other products you use....

FURTHER UPDATE:

I tried installing again on the same second Mac Pro drive after manually deleting all the folders (System, Library, Users, etc.), AFTER pulling the Dulce and Kona3 cards...no joy.

Finally did an Archive and Install, and that seems to be working.

Feh.

-mike
END UPDATE

Here's a report from someone I know who did pretty much the first pass of research I was going to do on Leopard and FCP & video apps, so I'll let him tell it:

B-Scene Films: Leopard: The cat in the Mac

...and his post on why not to update right away:

B-Scene Films: Leopard: Just say no

Labels: Leopard, OS X

Silverado's Apple and RED Blog: AJA IO HD Unboxing and Setup

My friend Torrrey Loomis shot me a link to his unboxing pics of his new AJA IO HD - I'm looking forward to testing one of these myself.

-mike

Blogwad! is back! Thanks to Gideon and Orion for assembling this. There's some interesting Red news noted below - another delay to improve the camera, and my friends at Offhollywood held a public screening of a filmout from their Red Ones, as well as a ton of samples from footage they shot.

As for my Spain footage, it has been a busy week with client work and I'm out of pocket for the weekend, so next week.

Cameras

Sony V1 200fps Smooth Slow Record Testing at FreshDV

Final Cut Pro 6: 1080p24 workflow for Canon HV20 camcorder

Few links to Sony XDCAM EX

Ingenioustv.com
Ieba.wordpress.com
Sonybiz.net

Panasonic HPX500 shoulder mount P2HD camera

Heath McKnight reviews the HPX500.

Short version:

Is everything the HVX200 wants to be when it grows up:
-HD-SDI out
-4 P2 slots
-4 XLR audio inputs
-2/3" sensor
-same res as HVX - just a bigger version
-720pN modes, variable frame rates
-interchangeable lenses, professional B4 mount
-Heath mentions 1080i but not 1080p modes - if true, bummer
-$14K
-does NOT, however, include a lens, so that will SUBSTANTIALLY add to the cost

Beware the Tapeless Camcorder - New York Times: "Beware the Tapeless Camcorder"

Argument against tapeless camcorders for the consumer.

Software/Post

MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh: "Amazon slashed prices on Mac OS X 10.5 'Leopard' - just $109 for the client version and $189 for the 'Leopard' family pack"

DeckLink 6.6 - MacUpdate: "WHAT'S NEW Version 6.6: Support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Support for Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 v3.1, Project presets for Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 v3.1, Analog input anti-alias filter control on DeckLink HD Extreme, Improved Digital Betacam support in Final Cut Studio 2, and general stability and performance improvements."

Intensity 1.8 - MacUpdate: "WHAT'S NEW Version 1.8: Support for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Support for Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 v3.1, Project presets for Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 v3.1, and general stability and performance improvements."

SilverFast HDR 6.5.5r1 software download - Mac OS X - VersionTracker: "SilverFast HDR is high-end imaging software from LaserSoft Imaging which is now available for 48 bit raw data processing for Macintosh. SilverFast Ai combines an intuitive user interface with highest professionality"

Beautiful After Effects Scripting at FreshDV

Final Cut Pro 6.0.1: About transferring AVCHD footage

Imagineer Announces Planar Tracking Solution for AE at FreshDV

Creative Workflow Hacks � Blog Archive � Final Cut Pro to After Effects Scripting without the hassle: "Today is the first public release of the AE CS3 stand alone version of FCPToAE."

ProLost: Magic Bullet Looks: Getting Started Magic Bullet Looks is available and looking sweet

A Lighting Reproduction Approach to Live-Action Compositing: "a process for compositing a live performance of an actor into a virtual set wherein the actor is consistently illuminated by the virtual environment. The Light Stage used in this work is a two-meter sphere of inward-pointing RGB light emitting diodes focused on the actor, where each light can be set to an arbitrary color and intensity to replicate a real-world or virtual lighting environment. "

Getting Rid Of Camera Shake, Rattle and Roll | Studio Daily: "ProDAD, a German video-editing solutions company, has introduced a video plug-in application that eliminates shake from high-definition video images."

RED

RED 4k out to 35mm! - Reduser.net

Offhollywood's Red Filmout - Reduser.net

OFFHOLLYWOOD'S first Red Feature Film & more! - Reduser.net

Candles in Manhattan - Reduser.net

HERE'S ALL THE SAMPLES: Reduser.net - View Single Post - OFFHOLLYWOOD'S first Red Feature Film & more!

Great news! A Production Hold. - Reduser.net: "We are on a Production Hold. But this time, we think you will appreciate it."

Reminder to Owners using Beta Builds ( 4k 16:9) - Reduser.net

30 sec of 2k ProRes footage! Leaves, motion... - Reduser.net

RedRelay | A Host for Red Digital Cinema Camera Footage

RED Ready - Reduser.net: "RED #11 ready to travel anywhere you want to shoot. Located in Austin Texas, at GEAR Inc."

Red also available for rent at GEAR in Austin

RED #20 and #21 Rental Procedures - Reduser.net: "RED #20 and #21 Rental Procedures"

RED available for rent at Silverado

Smokin' Joe Carnahan: THE RED

Other

ProLost: Hue are you?: "Today's entry is entitled 'Skin Tones,' and in it he explores and verifies the claim that the miriad of human ethnicities all tend to land on the same axis of the vectorscope"

Xsan Tuner: Use Final Cut Tasks on PowerPC-based Macs

Superhuman Cinematography | Film & Video

Interview about process and technique. Interesting.

Macworld: News: MacProVideo offers Pro Tools 7 tutorial videos: "Video training company MacProVideo has released the first in a new series of videos for audio professionals. “Pro Tools 101: Mastering Pro Tools 7” is a 5.5 hour video covering the fundamentals of editing, recording and mixing music in Pro Tools."

Mike Minkler and Bob Beemer Get out the Grit for American Gangster | Studio Daily: "Collecting Authentic Elements for a Funky Period Sound Design"

Video Tutorial: Understanding Depth of Field at FreshDV: ". I believe that you’ll find it a very informative and approachable explanation of a somewhat arcane and confusing topic. This excellent video tutorial was created by Justin Snodgrass of snodart.com, and is shared with permission here at FreshDV. Justin is a young filmmaker with a passion for screenwriting and storytelling. "

Focus Enhancements Adds FS-100 160GB Recorder to DTE Model Lineup | Studio Daily: " The new FS-100 160GB model sets a new standard for long-form DVCPRO HD recording with up to 6.5 hours of recording in 720p24PN mode, 5.25 hours in 720p25/30PN mode or 2.5 hours in full frame rate 720p/1080i mode."

johnaugust.com � 2007 Insomnia Film Festival: "2007 Insomnia Film�Festival"

Apple sponsored 24-hours film festival

Beware the Tapeless Camcorder - New York Times: "Beware the Tapeless Camcorder"

Argument against tapeless camcorders for the consumer.

MacNN | Broadcom chip offers HD video for handhelds: "Broadcom chip offers HD video for handhelds"

New chip for portable devices can encode and decode HD.

Slashdot | Samsung Unveils 64-Gbit Flash Memory Chip: "The chips can be combined to create a 128-GB flash storage device capable of holding up to 80 DVD movies or 32,000 MP3 music files."

LITTLE FROG IN HIGH DEF: INTERESTING P2 CHALLENGE: "The company I work for needed some DVCPRO HD 720p60 footage converted into slow motion. From 59.94 fps to 29.97fps...a frame by frame transfer that makes for very smooth slow motion."

Labels: blogwad

My Red presentation the other week in Sitges, Spain at the IFA Conference with Jendra Jarnagin, Steve Tammi, and Pol Turrents went very well, I was very happy with it. We ran for about 2 1/2 hours and covered a lot of ground and answered a lot of questions.

This was the first public viewing of a production Red camera in Spain (after Soderbergh shot his movie over the summer there), so interest was high.

For those who couldn't make it, a DiVX version will be posted soon (I'll update when I have the link), and here is the PDF of my Keynote slides (4.27MB), and annotated stills taken during the presentation. The stills have a text walkthrough that actually goes into more detail, worth looking at - many things not in the Keynote slides.

MONDAY UPDATE:
Here's part 1 - good news is that it is all of it, bad news is you have to have DiVX installed to watch it:



Here's part 2:



(if you're having trouble watching the streaming embedded version above, you can download the DiVX clips to your local drive from the IFA page on Stage 6. Go to the page with the video you want, and there's two buttons over the video itself - one to play, one to download.)

Big, BIG thanks to Utopic and Service Vision for their aid, equipment, and support, and to the local Blackmagic Design folks for jumping in at the last minute as well. We couldn't have done this presentation 1/10th as well without them, and huge thanks to Steve Tammi for having the faith to get on a plane with his Red One #17 in Tennessee to join us and help us in Spain. Pol Turrents was critical to all this pulling together as well, it was his contacts and resources that got us what we needed.

And of course special thanks again to Juan and Inga, the organizers of the IFA Conference, for inviting us over, putting us up, and treating us so well, without whom NONE of this would have happened.

Here's how it went down:

After the crowd filed in, we introduced ourselves, gave a little history of Red and the philosophy behind it, and jumped in with with "Why Red Matters." I broke it down into six categories:

Image Quality/Resolution
Modularity/flexibility
RAW & Redcode
Filmless/Tapeless
Cost - both buying and integrating

After going through those categories in detail, we went into the workflow from both a DoP's perspective (Jendra) as well as the techie/post side (mine), talked about the camera a bit, then showed the differences in resolution between the primarily available formats. After that I showed a draft of an edit of the stunt car shoot OffHollywood shot when I was in NYC with them last month, and then showed a split screen before/after grading version - very effective.

Then the fun part - a live walkthrough of how the camera works - shooting, ingest, editing, grading, the whole deal. Since Steve Tammi had brought a Red over, he and Jendra fired it up, rolled a few seconds of the audience, then Jendra walked the CF card over like Vanna White - no tricks up our sleeves.

I put the CF card into a CF reader ("THIS is your HDCAM SR deck for Red."), pulled it into the Mac Pro (kindly provided by Utopic, a post facility in Barcelona, many thanks to Oriol).

I showed how Red set up their naming structure to try to prevent duplicate file names, showed the file/folder structure created on the card, and then opened up the clip in Red Alert. There I showed how RAW images could be manipulated beyond what a regular electronic camera can do.

From there I made QuickTime proxies, showing how 2K, 1K, and 1/2K proxies could be made on the fly from the 4K source instantly, then converted the 2K proxy to a 1080p ProResHQ file for ease of use in Final Cut Pro (including window burn for assurance during conform later). I dropped that into Final Cut and showed that playing, then went back to Red Alert and exported it as a DPX sequence, then conformed that simple shot from Final Cut into Color, and showed how much far you could push Red images around with a 10 bit log version of the audience shot.

After that, we did a Q&A, with Pol Turrents translating the techie for us between English and Spanish (with a bit of Catalan thrown in their too.).

Then we packed up and headed out to shoot 4K in Barcelona...but that's another story (forthcoming).

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Redcine, Sitges, Spain

While I was at the IFA Conference the other week, I sat in on DoP Jendra Jarnagin's Hands On Lighting Workshop at the IFA Conference in Sitges, Spain. It was intended for a small group of relative beginners, so certain broad statements and shortcuts were used to keep things moving along.

Below are my raw notes, unedited, as I took them and added my own asides which might be wrong, so anything wrong is probably my fault (I'm a post guy not a shooter).

It was an enjoyable and highly educational day for me - it is always good to round out one's skillsets.

I took some pictures during the presentation, and then some of her big notepad notes, viewable here.

Big, BIG thanks to Service Vision for providing us with an F900R equipped with a rare 35mm adaptor, lights, stands, etc. - it wouldn't have been possible without them. We visited their facility and did extensive tests (including 35mm side by side with Red) while I was there the other week, that'll be another article next week probably. Also, thanks to Rosco for providing production gels and expendables, as well as sample gel kits for all students - very helpful and much appreciated.

-------------------

No camera recording today's talk, so I'll take notes. Jendra lighting seminar:

Sony F900R - handle dynamic range differently by having the highlights be a higher priority

Bad looking highlights are what make video look bad/not like film

-F900R has sophisticated and powerful controls, but the menus are complex and potentially confusing, so often need a DIT in order to get the best results out of it

-If doing a one day shoot like a commercial of music video etc., most DoPs will keep the camera in the default modes if they don't have the time and tech assist

-If you start mucking about in the menus and don't know what you're doing or forget and leave it tweaked for one scenario before you move on to a different one....BAD!

-If shooting outdoors in daylight of in other challenging situations, getting into the menus can really pay off

-Viewfinders are often black and white, and almost universally low res - therefore DoP doesn't want to be relying on that

DIT - digital imaging technician that knows all the techie nitty gritty of the menu systems to get best results

-Gaffer - in an interview setup if it is a simpler thing, there may not be an extra lighting person, sometimes you have a gaffer that you communicate with who will execute for you, on a big movie you'll have a whole crew of electricians, and the gaffer will manage that team to execute the DoP's intent

-Jendra started as a gaffer, was important for her to have an understanding of what your choices are and know what the lighting package should be, etc.

-Some DoPs light, others rely more heavily on their gaffer

- Different lights are different for different kinds of situations; some lights are more versatile for multiple situations

- The most common workhorse is a Fresnel - is a spotlight, come in different wattages, this is a 650 we're working with, have 300 and 1000-watts in same design

- The filament and the bulb is different between the U.S. and Europe

- Up to 20 amps in the US, up to 10 amps in Europe, you can run on house power - no generator needed, or tie into an electrical panel if you're working with lights of certain amperage. All the lights we have today we can plug into the wall. Fresnel designs can go up to 10 or 20 kilowatts, but those require a generator.

-Jendra can bring her lights from home, but has to buy lamps (bulbs) to use her gear in Europe.

- If you were traveling worldwide, you can use a travel transformer, but you have to pay attention to the watts.

- A 650-watts Fresnel in U.S. vs. Europe is still 650-watts, but the amperage is different based on the electricity.

- A lot of inexperienced folks will plug all of their lights into the same room and blow fuses and circuit breakers, and everyone gets mad at them as production stops for an hour and a half while it gets resolved.

- If you have an electrical outlet - you have to think about age of building and how modern the wiring is and how things are wired.

- Two outlets in the same room are likely on the same circuit - so not 10 amps per circuit, likely are all on same circuit

-MAYBE on opposite walls it is a different circuit.

- Older houses in the U.S. only have 15 amp circuits instead of 20 amps circuits.

- You can depend on 20 amp circuits out of kitchen outlets, since higher-powered devices are in there.

- Electrical code – You have to have two counter top outlets on different circuits - so if in a tight situation, run two lines to the kitchen.

- In the US, circuits are 15 or 20 amps.

- In an office or factory, circuits are 20 amps.

- If you want to be sure, see the electrical panel, it'll say on the circuit breakers 15 or 20.

- To play it safe if you can't get to the panel, presume 15 amp circuits.

- In 50Hz countries (instead of 60 Hz), then your circuits are 10 amps.

Hz is not that important to talk about, doesn't really vary - is a constant in the country, and it doesn't really affect our calculations of electricity. It DOES matter for transformers.

US 110 volts @ 60Hz 15 or 20 amp, Euro 50 Hz, 10 amps, 220 volt

- Plugging U.S. stuff into European stuff, will ruin it because the power is 220 not 110.

- Bulbs for a specialty movie grade is $60 to a few hundred dollars

BUT HMI bulbs are several hundred dollars; big ones are thousands of dollars.

-If you need to change a bulb, DO NOT TOUCH IT - your skin oil gets on it and can break the bulb

- Also unplug before changing bulbs.

- A 650-watt lamp is the same in the U.S. & Europe (but need different bulbs in different countries, U.S. bulb in Europe will kill it!)

- Amps=wattage divided by voltage.

- A mnemonic for that - watts=volts times amps (West VirginiA)

- I'd think A&W root beer

- For example, we're going to do easier math with a 1000-watt lamp

-1000-watt lamp, divided by 220 volts =4.55 amps

- In the US, 1000-watt divided by 120 volts = 8.3 amps

- For Europe, divide by 200 to keep it easy and add some safety factor, and in U.S. divide by 100 to make it easier & keep you in safe numbers as well.

- You can plug up to 10 amps worth of lights in one European plug, beyond which you risk popping a breaker or melting a fuse, and 15 or 20 in the US.

- Dimmer - plugs in between power and light.

- Dimmers only work on continuous sources.

-If a dimmer is at 100%, you've got max voltage. You can turn it down by giving it less voltage - the box still takes in the max voltage for your electrical considerations.

- A dimmer doesn't work on HMI or Kino Flo and won't come back on anytime soon - so DON'T DO THAT!

- In a big studio, some lights will be on dimmer boards and some won't. Best Boy is the secondary person on the electrical crew.

- Make SURE when plugging into a Kino Flo, you're on a NON-dimmer line in a big sound stage.

- With dimmers, as you dim, you're changing the color of the light, so for that reason, you don’t want to use a dimmer in many situations since it makes it warmer or cooler.

- Instead of dimming, use a scrim.

- A red one is a double scrim, cuts back one stop. A green one s a single scrim and that pulls you back a half a stop.

- A half scrim only covers a half circle, so it creates a gradation of cast light – can use it "lamp right half side double" - use the half one, covering only the right, and a double scrim to cut back one stop.

-Scrims do NOT adjust the color unlike the dimmer - that's the advantage.

- Every light that able to be scrimmed, should come with its own set of scrims, often there is a scrim bag that comes with the light.

- So at a moment's notice you don't have to go looking.

- You have to use them so much.

- Every light with your package will come with its own set of scrims.

- You might have 30 lights and only a few dimmers

- Portable dimmers - plugs into each lamp, this one only up to 10 amps, they have standalone dimmers for 10 or 20K big ones.

- A dimmer rack system for bigger shows with a dimmer console (dimmer board) for the dimmer pack (the box)

- The bigger your light, the more the dimmer gets noisy.

- Dimmers work through resistance for the smaller ones - it coils up resistance as you crank it up - so what happens is the resistance vibrates and hums and makes noise. The sound department can potentially hear it and complain. The bigger the light and the more resistance, the more hum.

- If shooting in an apartment and had a 10K on a dimmer, you'd have to have the dimmer outside the room.

- The hum is at 50 or 60 Hz, according to the European or U.S. power.

- This ARRI light is focus-able - it has a knob that softens or hardens the light edge.

- Protocol for focusing a light - start by putting it on full spot, aim it wherever you want it, then start flooding it from there

- A spotlight directly at a person is usually too harsh

- Light is most even when it is flooded

- When you flood, it goes wider, softer, and darker. Spotting it will make it narrower, softer, and brighter.

- You can tweak to adjust the exposure - spotting it in a little bit will tweak your brightness without having to scrim it.

- If you're flooded it'll usually look more naturalistic.

- Spot vs. flood is moving the light front/back between reflector and lens.

- Other lights have no lens on the front, they are open-faced lights. They are brighter because the lens on Fresnel uses up some of the light.

- If we wanted a bounce light off a wall to get soft light elsewhere, open faced lights are good for that to get maximum light output.

- Hardly ever would you light a person with an open faced light, maybe a building, from a distance.

- There is more light output per watt with an open faced light.

- The whole point of Fresnel is to be focusable

- An open faced 1K light casts a broader light source (wider angle light release, think 3D)

- Open face light is a point source only blocked by the body and barn doors

- Fresnel lens guides and diffuses the light

- Other kinds of spotlights used in theater, but are usable in studio, ellipsoidal, most popular are made by Source Four, those do not have Fresnel, and they have a little piece of glass.

TUNGSTEN VS HMI

Film and HD cameras are not as smart as our eyes and brain - our brain auto-white balances

- The definition of white light is that it has all the colors of the spectrum

- Our eyes are adapted to sunlight, and our eyes are more sensitive to blue lights

- Cameras are designed to work with the way our eyes work

- If our eyes see different kinds of light as white, we need a way to describe or quantify the differences between different kinds of white light

- Color temperature was the way defined to quantify different kinds of white light

- Black body radiator - heated up a filament, physically heated it up. At the point at which it glows, that is called degrees Kelvin.

- Plain old regular light bulbs use tungsten. 3200 degrees is the point at which it glows.

- Movie lights are 3200 degrees Kelvin. Household lights glow at about 2900 degrees

- Daylight changes throughout the day based on cloudy, sunny, and low vs. high in the air. Majority of the hours of the day when it is sunny is 5500 degrees. It ranges between 5000-6000 degrees Kelvin. Really late in the day when it looks really blue, it can be up to 8000-10000 degrees Kelvin.

- When we look at daylight, that is white. When we look at a light bulb, that is white too.

- So a 3200 K light looks yellow.

- So we shoot film that is optimized for the lighting environment we want to use

- Lower temps on the scale are more red, higher temps are bluer

- Fluorescent, which is green, is independent of this.

- You can get warm or cool light bulbs. Cool light bulbs are bluer to get more balanced for daylight. Warm ones are used to match internal lighting sources. Fluorescent color temperature varies wildly. And while there is some information on them, it may or may not tell you the color temperature. There are charts online to find out the color temperature of given brands and models of lights.

- During tech scout, you'll pull down some bulbs and write down what they are to find out what kind of bulbs they have

- Using filters on lights or tweaking camera, you can remove the green cast

- How new the bulbs are can also vary the color temperature

- You might even switch some lights around if an inconsistent bulb brand is used.

- If you had two different ones close to a wall, it might have bluer vs. oranger light on the wall - BAD. But a lot of different ones high up.... colors will probably all balance

- Fluorescent has to be matched too and you fix it in post.

- On the camera, however, when you white balance, you are telling the camera what you want it to consider white to be

- Video cameras are natively balanced to be 3200. Sophisticated cameras have a wheel with different filters of different strengths (working w/an F900R), she dials in 5600, and the camera should think that is normal with daylight from the window.

- There is a physical filter wheel to do this on big cameras

- Smaller cameras will have electronic white balance

- Unless shooting under fluorescent, she'll shoot default and then light to that

- In a fluorescent situation, she'll know she wants to white balance the camera


WHITE BALANCING

- With the physical filters, you got to pick one to start with. She picks the 3200 wheel on this F900R

- Take a white card or piece of paper; make sure that the lights you are balancing to is hitting it.

- More less fill the frame, camera will use middle 70 or 80%

- DO NOT overexpose! If your white card is overly lit, it'll error message.

- Needs to be well lit but not overexposed

- There’s a lever on the camera for white and black balancing.

- You hold the switch up; if we're over exposed, auto white balance will say error.

- In this case, 3.5K was the color temperature

- That will remove the green cast of the fluorescent lights

- You can do your white balance that is technically correct, but in this case she likes the present of 3.2K

- It is better to balance to stuff. In the making of paper, there's natural white, extra white, etc. - extra white has a bit of blue

- If you try to white balance to a t-shirt that has optical brightener in the detergent that reflects more ultra violet, that could throw off your white balance.

- Only one person - whether DIT, DoP, whoever the designated person is, is in charge of setting up the monitor.

- On a movie set, the DoP's monitor is in a black tent to block out ambient light that is either dimming the image or affecting your color perception (your eyes/brain auto white balances)

-CRTs have R/G/B guns, and you have phase & chroma & bright & contrast knobs.

In blue gun only mode you can calibrate (so need a monitor that HAS a blue gun only mode) using standard phase and chroma, bright and contrast controls. You CANNOT properly/easily calibrate a consumer monitor because they lack these controls.

- If you're set up right, you're good for the rest of the day.

- If you set your brightness, you only have to change it whenever the ambient lighting environment changes.

-Adjust until you can see the pluge bar, and then turn it down until it is just barely disappearing

- For instance, when we killed the fluorescents, the room is darker, so therefore the monitor needs to be readjusted

- LCD for monitoring - is sharp, but not good for color or shadow detail. CRT is better for color and brightness but not sharpness/detail. So for on set, where you aren't making super fine color decisions, LCD is more portable/practical. Computer displays don't have the professional controls (phase/chroma, wide brightness range adjustments, etc.) that a professional broadcast style unit would. Mike pointed out that the new Sony Luma series (the very newest, $3500 - $4000 ones) are some of the first, semi-affordable units for field production. I have, at home, a 23" 1920x1080 Apple LCD connected to a Multibridge, AND a 17" JV professional CRT- one for color, one for detail

- Daylight balanced light sources are HMI - (H is the atomic symbol for Mercury, since Mercury is used; M is for Medium arc, which is the blue part, and I is for Iodide.)

- An HMI works as an arc lamp.

- The lights we've been looking at are filaments - electricity flows through a filament, which gets hot and glows. Little of the power becomes light, most becomes heat

- Arc lamp works by creating an electrical arc across a gap in the bulb

- In the glass envelope is Mercury, and when it heats up, Mercury vaporizes and floats around in the tube. HMI's are bright

- A small HMI might be 125-watts and it'll kick out MORE light than a 650-watt Fresnel lens.

- MUCH more expensive and complicated and more pieces...but a smaller lamp

- They are balanced to be daylight color temperature, color temperature shifts over the life of the bulb.

- 5000-6000 degree color temperature

- As the bulb gets very old, it'll drop to 4300 or 4000. By the time it gets really old that you're putting so many blue gels on it that it is time to throw it away and get a new bulb.

- This is a 125-watt, 18K HMI's have an hourly usage meter for your bulb. When it gets to a certain age you change the bulb and reset the clock. Most don't pay attention to the clock, you can tell as compared to the other bulb that "eww that one's yellow". Since so expensive, as it begins to fade you start using blue gels to balance it out

- The way it works - the bulb with the arc gap in it is small. The power supply is called the ballast. The head cable goes from the light to the ballast

- "Pins to power" - the one with male ends sticking out of it goes to where the power is

- There’s a one way only connector with pins, then a locking collar

- Big lamps - if the big lights get turned off, it needs to cool down before you can turn it back on again. If you flip it off and back on it takes time. Big lights take a lot of cooling time. Unless you KNOW you're going away again, you leave it on.

If you're changing setups, it is time for a turnaround, and it is only 10-15 minutes between setups, you don't turn it off. If you know you're moving around, you equip it with a lot of extension cables from the get-go. For 18K's, you might put 100 feet of power between ballast and light (since ballast is so big and heavy), and that way you won't need to shut it down and be stuck waiting for it to cool before can be used again.

- In addition to being an HMI, it is also called a PAR. You can have tungsten or HMI PAR’s.

PAR means:
Parabolic (shape of reflector)
Aluminized
Reflector

- Two kinds of PAR’s - sealed beam and non-sealed beam

- Sealed beam is like a car headlight - it is all sealed in there. When you want to switch the bulb, you're changing out the whole thing, bulb and lenses.

- Non-sealed means the bulb and lens are separate

- PAR is more versatile than a Fresnel

- Her PAR kit, has a Fresnel, has a wide, medium, and narrow lenses to go on the front

- A spot for far away.

- When warming up an HMI, it warms up to brightness and color temperature, and changing as it goes

- Because of the arc (as in welding), there is a large component of ultraviolet radiation when you turn it on, especially when it first sparks and turns it on.

- YOU CAN DAMAGE YOUR EYES

- When turning on an arc lamp, do best to NOT point it at people

- "Striking!" is the term to use, so you declare that, which means everyone close your eyes and turn away. Say it LOUD, because with an 18K you can permanently damage someone eyes

- The glass has ultraviolet protection

- The plain glass has UV filtering in it

- If the UV filter isn't in place or it breaks, there is a safety sensor in place to protect you

- You’re always supposed to have a lens on it. If you point it unprotected at your arm, you can sunburn it

- HMI is efficient - more of the power goes to make light, not heat

- Building a Chimera - in a general sense - is called a light bank

- Chimera is a brand but is used as a generic

- Since so expensive, low budget uses tungsten lights, HMI's are expensive to rent

- The Chimera has different fronts, and you can put a baffle inside that diffuses and knocks the light down even further

- PAR’s come with a Chimera in the small kits, like 200 & 400 Arri, or Joker kits come with a Chimera.

- BUT a Fresnel does not usually come with a Chimera by default; you have to ask for it

- Benefit of having the diffusion further from the light source - the further the diffuser is, the softer the light can be - creates a larger non-directional light source for softer light, which looks better

- Chimera is also very contained with minimal spill, as opposed to hanging diffusion in front of a Fresnel.

- Without the Chimera we're harsh and contrasty, and spills all over the back walls as well

- In an interview lighting setup, you can shoot it with one light with Chimera - whereas without a Chimera, you might need other lights to fill in. Chimera is good.

-3 point lighting - key, fill, and backlight

- Key light is the perceived primary light

- Fill light should be diffuse and shouldn't be making additional sets of shadows

- Biggest enemy of DoP are noses - so where you put the lights has to do with the person's face and the shadows their noses cast

- The default/usual place for key light is about 45 degrees from where camera is, and a little higher than your subject. Shadow of nose falls down across the face and the nose

- Always look at the subject's face for light placement.

- Blocking with the scene is done with stand-ins – it is better if they resemble the actual subject.

- Keep in mind how your stand-in looks different from your main actor, and build that into your starting point. When the actor's come back, you might have to make some slight adjustments based on the face of the actor

- If stand-in for an actor has deep-set eyes and strong brow, which would dictate light placement to penetrate his eyes more

- Depending on mood of our story, it can alter the lighting. If going to talk about his childhood and it was bad, might want more dramatic/contrasty lighting. For something happier/emotionally nicer, bring in a fill light

- Fill light might be a bounce light or a Chimera

- Fill light should be less bright than the key light, if they are of even brightness than they look very flat.

- (With HMI's, dimmer doesn't affect color temperature as much as other types)

- Glasses - reflections can be an issue

- Is sometimes easier to make minor adjustments to actors (turn a little to the right) than move the lights around

- We have a daylight source on one side and a tungsten source on another - color mismatch. It’s an artistic choice. You use colors of light as an artistic choice.

- You can manipulate in post - film is easier to manipulate than video. The further you want to take it from original, the noisier it gets and worse it looks.

- If you're going to do strong choices like a strong yellow wash, you need to be confident it'll stick.

- The DoP may not be available in the color correction session, but locking it in on set protects the intent

- If you want to shoot for flexibility in post, you are safer shooting a neutral image

-CTB is Color Temperature Blue, CTO is Color Temperature Orange

- If want to make tungsten and make it look daylight, use a Full CTB

- There’s full, half, quarter, and eighth

- CTB is used to make tungsten (3200) look like daylight (5600)
- CTO is used to make daylight (5600) look like tungsten (3200)

- She’s got some quarter CTO - if she doubles it up, it is the same as CTO half, and quadruple it up it'll be the same as CTO full

- With full CTB, it knocks down 2/3 of the light - so a 300-watt light gives me 100-watts of output

- If use cheapie tungsten lights and I want to shoot next to a window, full CTB knocks the output down to practically useless

- A 2000-watt light that'll plug into a wall, with full CTB, you're only getting about a 650-watt light would give you. That isn't bright enough to compare to a window

- Shooting with someone in front of a window when you want to see stuff outside the window, on film you can do it with a few lights. With digital, do to lesser dynamic range, you'd need a truck full of lights and it would take longer.

- A polarizer is a filter that, when rotated correctly, can control the reflections/highlights.

- If we were shooting digital in this space, can get neutral density material to hang over the window - put a huge sheet of gel or hard acrylic to knock back the amount of light.

- And that would be EXPENSIVE

- SO WHAT DOES PARTIAL COLOR CORRECTION DO FOR YOU?

- It’s more of an artistic choice to use fractional CTB or CTO

- If full CTO turns 5500 into 3200 light, half CTB turns it into roughly 4350 Kelvin.

- The more dense the gel, the less light makes it through

- So more subtle changes can be made with quarter or half CTO

- Quarter CTO on tungsten lamps all the time to give it a table lamp look, for artistic/creative/mood reasons

KINO FLO:

Fluorescents in an office building have a predominant green cast to them.

- Fluorescent looks ugly on people - green - you rarely want that

- If you are shooting 25 fps in Europe, or 24fps in the U.S., because fluorescent isn't a continuous light source illuminated by alternating current electricity, you're OK - no flicker.

-If you change shutter angle, or shoot off-speed, anything different to exposure time, your camera can get out of phase with fluorescent lights

- Older HMI's without electronic ballast and have magnetic ballast can flicker when shooting off rate

-Kino Flos cycle at such a high rate, no flicker

- Also they are color balanced so aren't green – they are either tungsten balanced (yellow ends) or daylight balanced (blue ends)

-Kino Flo bulbs cost 20x more than regular consumer fluorescents

- There are green filters that come in fractional densities as well.

- You can put a Kino Flo bulb in a standard fixture to get the right color temperature, but you'll still have flicker, unless using a Kino Flo ballast

- The opposite of green is magenta, so you could put magenta (minus green gels) to correct the fluorescent lights. If you had flat diffuser panels can tape them to that

- If there's a ton of those, it is more practical to filter your own lights to match

- If shooting on the Metro - check the bulbs used (maybe Silvania cool white bulbs) and put them in the Kino Flo

- The green and the magenta is a different issue than the orange and blue

- But you'd have to adjust for daylight/tungsten as well

- Some lights can be driven off of battery - a 12-volt ballast is available for SMALL HMI's or Kino Flos.

-Once all of your lights are matched to one another, THEN you white balance your camera, which will remove the colorcast

- If you want maximum flexibility in post, shoot neutral and lower contrast
- If you want to get the maximum amount of "bend" or "paint" out of the camera for the strongest look with all that
- DoP's aren't in favor of that low contrast, neutral look because it is boring

Back to Kino Flo -

- Not heavy
- Not too big
- Doesn’t get hot
- Is soft
- Doesn't use much electricity
- She might diffuse it or color it, but for a fast setup, this gives a soft place to start
- The only issue potentially with Kino Flo is that the falloff is really extreme - because it is broad and soft and diffuse, as you move it back further from subject, the brightness on subject drops off quickly - has a quick falloff
- A spot doesn't do that

- Soft light goes everywhere and can be hard to control

- You usually put them on a c-stand not a regular light stand
- Like an HMI, they have a light (head), a head cable, and ballast
-"Light" applies to the whole system - head, light, ballast, but not any flags or other stuff like that

- Kino Flos come in 1, 2 or 4 bulb types, at 2 feet or 4 foot sizes
- And they are expensive
- They have really big ones with 8 or 10 or 2 meter blanket lights, etc.
- Popular because easy, fast, don't use much power, are soft, and don't get hot
- She has barn doors to adjust light on subject, but it can darken the subject too much as trying to limit light on the wall
- So now it is time to use a flag

FLAGGING

- The softer the light, the harder it is to flag
- With a spot light, can use the barn doors more independently than on a Kino Flo
- Since the barn doors of a Kino Flo do 2 things - reflect light towards subject, as well as possibly flagging - can't do both at the same time!

- The further from the light the flag is, the sharper the cut of the flag. If you want to have a soft edge (soft cut), be closer to light.
- If you want a hard cut, set flag further from light
- If want to only partially obscure, use a net
- Single net cuts a half a stop of light
- Double net cuts a full stop of light

OR you can use a silk

- Silk lets light through
- A silk diffuses, just doesn't cut
- A common problem - he's wearing a white shirt, his shirt is brighter than his face and draws your eye
- Put a silk in front of just the shirt with a silk flag
- If you just shine a spotlight on a person, it doesn't look real or natural
- Light doesn't hit things in real life in focusable circles of hot light
- In the U.S., a black one is a flag
- Also known as a solid
- A silk and nets are known as "Hollywoods" in Spain
- Silk is translucent and not opaque, it diffuses the light
- Using a flag with a soft light, you can't get the same level of flagging control, since it has a large emission source area - tougher to control
- A direct light through diffusion is tougher to flag

- C-stand or grip stand - used for holding flags (C short for century)
- There are all sorts of specialized clamps for certain uses
- When bouncing light off a wall...you have no control over the wall - can't tilt or move it
- For more control, use a bounce card and a C-stand and a clamp
- Arrange the weight such that if it tensions, it gets tighter not looser

Labels: IFA, Sitges, Spain

No new footage today - as I dig deeper into the way footage is handled and confer with my team, I'm learning things...things like mismatching previews in different applications (different from the usual gamma distinctions), the difference between settings for DI output and video preview, and the fact that prepping content in Red Alert is not something that I'd assign to a low level person - whilst in Spain, multiple knowledgeable people could reasonably disagree as to what optimal settings were.

So I'm taking longer, getting questions answered, and will post footage when I can get it exactly the way I want it.

-mike

Labels: Red, Sitges, Spain

Hey all - one reason for the posting silence over the last couple of weeks is that I have been insanely busy - I was in Sitges, Spain for the IFA Conference, and while I was there did some major wrangling and managed to lure Steve Tammi, owner of Red One #17, to fly over to Spain with his camera so we'd have one to demonstrate with.

After we had it coming over, it dawned on me and Jendra and Pol Turrents that we had time and a Red One, so then we shot for 4 days in Sitges and Barcelona and got some fantastic footage. Oh wait, why don't I just go ahead and post the first public 4K frame from Europe shot on a Red One right now?


Click the above to see the scaled 50% (2048x1024) JPEG at 100%, untouched/adjusted from source material.

If you'd like to download the source 16 bit 4K TIFF, right click and Save Linked File As... here This one is the source clip, completely unadjusted even in Red Alert, exactly as shot. If the slight channel clipping in the corner of the white building bothers you, know that is completely recoverable by altering the Exposure in Red Alert to regain detail.

If you'd like to see an Auto-Levelled, saturation adjusted (+25 in PShop), Unsharp Masked (default settings) 2K JPEG version, click here.

This was shot by Jendra Jarnagin on Red One #17, owned by Steve Tammi of Otter Creek Productions, at 4K with a 16mm Zeiss Ultra Prime, T2.8, ND 0.9 + 1.2 stacked, no polarizer. This is EXACTLY AS SHOT - not even tweaked in Red Alert, since she nailed the exposure on location with the false color exposure tool. Red Alert in DI mode, Matrix off - as original and unadjusted as I could make it, in the Rec 709 gamma (that last bit for you, Stu!)

Special thanks must go to IFA (the Independent Film Academy) for bringing me and Jendra and Steve over, and also to Service Vision for lenses and support and a day of testing, as well as to Oriol and crew at Utopic for post services and assistance and letting us take over their facility for several days. Very special thanks to my new excellent friend (and DoP) Pol Turrents for leaping into action and lining up things like camera cars and stunt drivers, Steadicam operators, and hooking us up with Service Vision and Utopic in the first place.

We shot 4K and high speed 2K in and around Sitges on the coast, then in Barcelona in a variety of photogenic locations including Font Magica, Mont Juic, Casa Battlo, La Padrera, Sagrada Familia, old town and the cathedral on Steadicam, night car shots of a sleek silver Mercedes from a camera truck, and no-light shooting at night in a park, using only the available sparse park lighting.

Going into next week I'll post a different report, with high res stills, posted online every day (or two), from each location, with extensive notes and production stills.

This was a fantastic experience for me, and I've added a great deal of information to my internal arsenal of How To Do Red One.

As always, if you have or are planning a shoot with and/or post from a Red One, I'm available for consulting - just contact me at the email address at the top of the page.

-mike

Labels: Red, Sitges

How crazy busy have things been since Red One launched? So busy I’m just now FINALLY finished touching up this interview I did with Ted on what I call Red Day Zero – the day they shipped their first cameras to their first batch of customers for cameras 1-25. This occurred on August 31^st. We sat down and dove right in.

I’ve also added some follow up at the end from a discussion we had recently, catching up on what has occurred since they shipped the cameras. I’ve put some header topics in bold so you can scroll through and look for the stuff you find relevant. The condensed version: they're shipping, they're still making up their minds as they go on certain features based on user feedback and demand, things are taking longer than they'd hoped, Redcine will be free and available to all, Final Cut Pro support should be here before/by NAB '08.

FEATURES – WHICH ONES WORKING?

Mike- What features are enabled?

Ted - We have a pretty good picture of that. So as we say critical features are enabled, things that people want out of the gate, are enabled. So 4K Redcode raw is enabled, and going to compact flash is enabled.

Frame Rates

Mike- What are the supported frame rates at this time?

Ted - Frame rates, 23.98 24 25 out of the gate (mikenote - this has been updated with subsequent firmwares – see bottom). We’re covering true film. We’re covering 23.98 for all the reasons that you can probably just walk away with why you need 23.98 in this video centric world.

Mike- Or you can pay more for your post -either way.

Ted - Yeah, I’d never be able to monitor anything. A lot of people learn the hard way.
Then 25 obviously. This is a world camera and we are not U.S.A centric here. In our first twenty-five we’ve got people from Australia and New Zealand in the group. Much less New York City, which is probably another country, to say.

Audio

Mike- Audio support? I think you guys said before the end of September?

Ted - It’s a month (mikenote - not as yet, forthcoming – see end of article). A lot of things are kind of on a one month schedule. And the choice to kick out today was based on, where we stand now, which feels like a very comfortable zone for people in this inner group that really understand what we’re up to and are paying attention and are ready to go shoot Red.

Mike-What’s the spec on the audio then?

Ted - Its 4 channels 24 bit uncompressed audio.

Mike- 96khz?

Ted - I think its 48 (mikenote - yep – I confirmed later)

Mike- All features, I saw on the website, you guys were thinking October-ish (mikenote – as of this writing on the 18^th, not as yet).

Ted - Yeah that’s our target. Just like everything we work to the targets, and do our best to hit them. (mikenote - see Jim's post (link end of article) about schedules)

HIGHER FRAME RATES

Mike – This is a little bit of editorial on my side that’ll turn into a conversation. So I saw the whole conversation on 2K @ 96fps RAW vs 720p@120fps RGB - my own pet theory on that is it is a lot easier to interpolate size than it is to interpolate time.

Ted – Right – you can always scale size, time is harder.

Mike - Although it appears that 2k @ 96 RAW seemed to be the popular favorite. Is that correct from my own read on the consensus?

Ted - It seems to be. A lot of this is evolving as the technology evolves. This is one of those front-end back-end situations. Where the front end of the sensor windowing, no problem. Recording to the viable pathways that have to move that much data at that frame rate and get it down. It’s very possible that the only thing that will do that right away is the Red RAM Pack. Not the compact flash, but the actual ram pack on the back of the camera.

RED RAM ETA

Mike- ETA on that?

Ted - That’s also in that September-October timeframe. Once the drive is enabled, the flash is enabled. The drive and the flash on the back of the camera are essentially the same animal (same form factor - mikenote). They just have different stuff inside.

Mike- So the target will be able to grow to 2K at roughly 96 to 100 frames? (mikenote - presently up to 80 fps is in the menus, I’ve shot 72fps so far)

Ted - Its always subject to change.

Mike - I noticed on the specs on the website……

Ted – (laughs) – To be totally honest, we actually don’t know day to day, we just figure it out as we go.   

RGB vs RAW

Mike- And for the RGB? It sounds like we’ll get there when we get there, you'll see what the demand is.

Ted - Yes, that’s absolutely correct. As we evolve we have seen it move further and further away from critical path desire. Because the ability to work with raw and multiple raster sizes and formats…everybody’s all about it, and there was a learning curve. There was this teaching of how this camera’s not what you might think it is. How it really is going to shoot these stills and then you push it through a very efficient and logical post path. So, as that happened over the last year and a half we started looking at the viability of RGB at these different formats, and what do we really want our camera to be. So, there’s still a reason to do this, and there is still pathways for broadcast and instantaneous deliverable of 1080p or 720p onboard. All these things. But they get less and less important as we and actually the user base cultivates what they want their camera to be. Right now what they really want it to be is a digital movie camera, and not a broadcast video type replacement camera.

Mike - I noticed the specs as published changed in the last week or two, down to 2K at 60 as the maximum frame rate for Redcode published.

Ted - 2K 60 onboard, correct.

Mike - And that will hopefully grow to 2K 96 to 100.

Ted - And that’s based on the media pathways, and how it drives through the DSP (mikenote - digital signal processing) today. The good news is, I think Stuart used the term, its not a camcorder, its more of a camputer. Which I really actually like that, because if you understand that term it means that upgrade paths are very very viable. And in fact we’ve done them today on our very first day of life here at Red. We’ve been updating, and at the same time we’re delivering cameras to the first users, the first 25 group here. We’ve been working in engineering at the same time, and at the end of the day on delivery, Stuart comes down with a compact flash card and says we have a new build, and some new things are enabled, some new menu choices are enabled, and that we’ve cleaned some things up. Pop it in, two minutes later we upgrade and go, and that’ll happen via email deliverables to these cameras. So that’s in itself is pretty neat stuff.

SOFTWARE – RED ALERT AND RED QUICK AND REDCINE

Mike- Red Quick appears to have been folded into Red Alert – correct?

Ted - Red Quick has been folded into Red Alert. So this is one of those evolving processes, the post tools start out as engineering experiments and then become tools that we use internally to push through our day. So how can we look at files, how do we generate QuickTimes very quickly, how do we push through the post workflow and make ourselves viable. So we had the Red Alert tool which was a DPX generator tool and now we have Red Quick which is our QuickTime wrapper tool, somewhat interim until that will happen in-camera. Red Alert was initially the DPX creation tool to look at still files, still image files. Red Quick today is a very critical part of playback for camera playback.

The functionality to make QuickTimes will actually be in-camera, you will actually make them in the camera, so you don’t have to push the button to make them in software. So right now you just have an extra step. This is part of our evolution, and it’s a fairly easy step, you just take it in and you click two buttons and you say I want to make QuickTimes at 2k 1k 1/2K 1/8K, and it does it almost instantaneously, because it wraps the file and creates a QuickTime reference. We’re going to do that in-camera as well, which is evolving.

Mike- So you’ll be able to just say which of these do I want to play?

Ted - Right, so you just don’t have to use that software, you just load the compact flash onto your MacBook Pro and there are your files, and they look like QuickTimes to you, because they are, and they open up, and then you play. (mikenote – yep, it is doing that as of this writing)

Mike- Okay, so big question that’s been sorting of floating in the air. So we’ve got Red Alert now, when’s it available, and obviously its available to this group today.

Ted - So its in its earliest stages, I guess beta is kind of often a misused word. Its available to people that have the camera.

Mike- So its limited distribution at this time?

Ted - Correct. And as you saw today, it’s updating really fast (they had an updated version the day we were getting cameras – mike). It’s an internal engineering tool, development tool, as well as a user tool. So we hit a bug, we fixed a bug, all in real time for that first 25 group, and they all got to watch it happen. Interesting day to bring that group inside our organization, so they can see how we can do what we did in two years. In any other organization that process might have taken two weeks on anyone signing off on it. It took Jim and Jarred and Deanan and Graham three minutes to say we gotta fix this, go fix it, done. (mikenote - we were getting a workflow demo, and something wasn't working correctly for the particular feature they wanted to demonstrate. We moved on, and an hour or so later, code had been fixed, and they showed us that feature working - I think it was because in a developmental build, something had been flipped off to work on something else and not re-enabled, etc. - classic inhouse developmental glitch, no big deal).

Mike- Longer term, who will get Red Alert, is that just going to be camera owners, or is that going to be more widely released?

Ted - I think we’ll open it up just like Redcine. So we have Red Alert and Redcine. Redcine is a more evolved more fully featured post production tool, batchable, and a UI that is controllable. Red Alert is really a utility tool. But there’s no reason that I can see that we wouldn’t want posthouses to have a UI to run and generate quick DPX’s and QuickTimes until that that happens in-camera.

Jim – The problem with those right now, is that they take Redcode codec, and if you have the wrong codec or part installed, you can probably open up the footage and it doesn’t look right. Since we’re changing this rapidly, if you get an update of the software and forget to update the codec, and you shoot some new footage and it looks like sh*t, you’re liable to think the camera is the problem when it is the node. We’ve already seen that happen a handful of times. We’re trying to wait as best we can…we wanna feed the market but at the same time go slow enough so that the changes can settle down a little bit. Even if you had one or two versions ago, the changes wouldn’t be so dramatic. But now the changes are dramatic.

Mike – …so you’re still in a high state of code flux

Jim – Right.

Ted – You’ve seen this all the time in software.

Jim – the wrong node and your great footage can look wrong, terrible, like something’s wrong with the camera.

Mike – but it is recoverable because you can get the right node and reconvert, right?

Ted – yeah

Jim – as long as the decision has been made to not shoot incorrectly, it’ll be OK. The other problem is that there are a fair amount of people that do not want us to be successful. If they can post bad samples, that doesn’t serve us very well. You can do lots of things to make it look bad, it isn’t very hard to make it look good, but if what gets posted we’d like to come from users who were doing it right first, rather than opening it up to everybody and their dog.

Mike - So that will basically be a gradual release, and the long term plan is that both Red Alert and Redcine will be openly freely available to everybody?

Jim - It’ll remain beta, without responsibility to us, and no charge to any user.

Mike – once you’re out of beta, is that fuzzy, or…

Jim – I’m not sure will ever get out of beta

Ted – that’s kind of an honest way to describe it

Jim – We don’t necessarily want to charge for, but we don’t necessarily want to take responsibility for it either. A free beta…

Mike – it gives you some slack.

Jim - yeah

Mike - So for the QuickTime component under the same rules of that you’ll ease it out to the appropriate groups over time. (yes) And if I heard correctly, Red Alert is presently MacIntel only, today, and that Windows is coming.

Ted - Right it will be cross platform sometime.

Mike - ETA?

Ted - We don’t have an ETA on that, we’re just catching our breath on Red Alert for Mac, that’s a check back in a few weeks and we’ll have a better answer, right now it would just be speculation.

Mike- Any other software bits that I’m missing? Its basically we’ve got the QuickTime component, Red Alert, and Redcine.

Ted - Nope, that's about it.

RED AND FINAL CUT PRO INTEROPERABILITY

Mike- My conform questions got answered by Lucas. Anything you can talk about in terms of progress with Final Cut? (mikenote – that’ll be another article on workflow….)

Ted - Progress is moving along swiftly, the Redcode ability is there and working and in classic Apple style I can’t tell you anything about it until it is out. But its coming and its gonna do exactly what we intended it to do which is have the ability to open up these Redcode QuickTime files and edit natively in Redcode without transcoding, and then given the choice based on usability and what you’re going to do with it at very very efficient logical pathway, to push to ProRes media or any other uncompressed or whatefver you want, but ProRes is this very logical, makes sense for a lot of users, but if you have a big RAID attached, you can do full-on uncompressed 8 or 10 bit as it makes sense, and there’ll be reasons to do that too sometimes. But all of that is in the works, there’s a development path that is just as viable and strong as this happening on the camera side, on the post-production side all coming.

Mike- Because its doing the relatively quick, not maximum quality debayer, etc… That it’s an editorial path if you go native at this time. And that you would not necessarily want to finish native at this time (Redcode).

Ted - Redcode is intended to be an editorial and then a move to some final finish format dpx files, .tiff files files etc. It has always been the path.

Mike - In terms of viability of workflow, at present you don’t have any of the RT stuff because Apple hasn’t coded for that codec yet.

Ted - Right that will be a release that you’ll see that we’ll hit.

Mike- So that will be sometime in the near future?

Ted – Yes

Mike – So to say sometime between now and next NAB would be a safe bet?

Ted – A very safe bet.

(Jim had to go at this point)

Mike - In the meantime it seems that you if you cut natively you're losing your RT support. What seems to make sense to me would be to transcode to DV or DVCPRO HD or ProRes or whatever?

Ted - Anything you’re comfortable editing with today, I’m loving what you can do with ProRes, because of how efficient and how amazing the files look, so that you can pump it up to a big screen. So today we can throw it up on a 40 foot screen here in the warehouse here, or on monitors out to a Kona card, all looks gorgeous, no compromises, and you can take those files all the way to finish with no compromise.

Mike- And that’s entirely acceptable.

Ted-You can cut it off a FireWire drive, a G-Raid, whatever you want.

UNCOMPRESSED 4.5K ON HIGH SPEED PORT

Mike- On the high speed port, did you guys figure out if it is 10GigE or fiber channel?

Ted - Well its going to be a fiber implementation. It can travel over fiberoptic, but as it stands today, its still a 10 GigE protocol and all the definitions are still yet to come. So they’re still working on that.

Mike- Last time I talked to you, you didn’t know if you were going 10 GigE

Ted - It still could change at any minute, but as it stands today, the development and the logic using a standardized 10 GigE protocol makes sense for everyone, and it becomes somewhat universal that people can tap into this with different devices, and hand off a protocol without going, so what kind of custom Infiniband implementation is this? How do I deal with it?

Mike- Just out of curiosity why fiber optic and not copper?

Ted - Oh well I mean you can do either, that’s just the cable. Just like the Apple XRAID can run short copper cables, or really long optical cables. The connector itself is optical, so you can do optical to copper and then optical on the other end I guess.

Mike- so you can mechanically convert it?

Ted - As long as the signal integrity is there, you can hand it over.

Mike- Here’s my rationale. If you’ve got a fiber optic connector, that’s a less common interface, if there was some kind of adapter or converter, it would be easier to integrate.

Ted - Like an Ethernet port type converter. Today it is a quad-link fiber connector. Its glass so there’s light ports coming out of this connector. And then its camera locking, positive locking, industrial grade.

Mike- But you could have some sort of adapter on the other end so you can plug it into your GigE networks so you can offload and do all that stuff.

Ted - There shouldn’t be any reason why not, as long as the data protocols on the other end are designed to read the data coming off our camera. If you got a bayer pattern data packetized however you want, then its just the wires.

Mike - I would encourage you to go that path just in terms of ease and integration with existing infrastructure. So it looks like the path is, we’ve got CF and then we’re going to go RED Drive for capacity. And then we’ll have Red RAM which will be intermediate capacity but higher speed and better/safer data integrity. So what’s up with Red RAID?

STATUS OF RED RAID

Ted - I guess the best way to describe it is that Red RAID terminology is still in a state of flux. Like are we going to do this ourselves, or are we going to let third parties handle that much smaller segment of the market for very, very high speed storage. Yet to be determined. My instinct is that, that much, much smaller segment of the market can be very well serviced by third party partners. So we’re pushing super high speed storage on the back end with our multiple built in protocols to handle multiple devices.

Mike- so you would say here's the spec you guys can catch it however you want.

Ted - I mean we may end up developing our own device somewhere down the road if it makes sense and the customers clamor for it and say we really want this thing, it makes sense, and we want it at a price point that’s X and a performance factor that’s Y. There’s other devices and companies out there today that specialize in that. I think what you see today that’s interesting is that you cant give everything to everybody, and we’re doing a lot of things remarkably well, remarkably right for such an early stage company.

Mike- Camera and software is pretty broad.

Ted-We’re an imaging company rather than a camera company. (mikenote- touché, Ted – this keeps the definition of Red broad enough to include the forthcoming displays and projectors announced at NAB ’07) We’re creating these brilliant images and packaging them in this nice little body with this brilliant industrial design and everybody is really excited about it. So the things about the optical port and the I can record through this big stack of drives etc...etc… We’ve been putting all our focus into the reasons why you don’t want to do that. And that’s where Redcode RAW came out of and how its evolved. And you see today how much more evolved it is than when Peter Jackson shot his stuff. Which was remarkable, we’re still going to share that, we’ll share that at IBC and the European crowd hasn’t seen a lot of the 4k yet.

Mike - That water stuff was gorgeous. And the fact that I couldn’t even tell the scale of it, it was so clean. Out of curiosity how many orders do you guys have placed to date?

Ted - We will not talk about how many orders are placed past the reservation period which is around 1,500. And its not because we want to be cagey about it, but because the competitive situation that we’re in with a lot of people being very concerned about our little camera company, that is creating a lot of noise in the industry. And now we’re past creating a lot of noise, we’re creating a lot of images.

Mike- You’re creating shipping product.

Ted – We’re creating a shipping product! So we don’t think it makes sense to release the number, on how many we’ve sold to date. What I will tell you is, that it’s a lot! It’s a lot more than the initial 1,500, and more orders are streaming in every single day. And the minute the word hits that successful cameras did indeed ship September 1^st as predicted and are indeed actual functional working cameras doing 4K Redcode, the orders could just explode. So be sure to quote me on, if you want one, get an order in as soon as you can. They’re completely refundable, there’s no penalty other than holding a little money on your credit card. Ten percent of your total order. And you can put in a fairly minimal order, and know that you can add accessories and things as your order number comes up.

Mike- Get the camera, and then add the goodies.

Ted- I would at least get a basic package so I know its coming, and then you can always add stuff later.

ETA FOR ORDERS PLACED NOW

Mike- Do you guys have any ETA for orders placed now of when those might ship?

Ted - At least nine months from now.

Ted-We’re going to push through 1500 cameras at a couple hundred a month. That’s our target, that’s what we’re hitting, everything could possibly all be altered based on production line stuff. So far everything’s looking good to do that. And we did indeed get the units out today to these first 25 customers. That’s a proof that we can actually do it.

Mike- But 9 months that says a lot right there.

Ted - It says a lot about how many cameras we’re going to push out. And how sophisticated this pipeline is going to be. Get an order in and get your place in line and know that you’ve got it ahead of the next guy who waits another week to get their order in.

Mike- And twiddle your thumbs, or rent one from one of these guys in the meantime. I heard you guys got 21 on the Red team now.

Ted - Yeah that’s the official number. And there’s lots of consultants and engineers. But the real core team is still as small really as it ever has been and very focused on the individual pieces of the pipeline. What can we get done with a very small group that thinks smart and to quote Apple that thinks different in the most dramatic of ways, and is not afraid to challenge everything at any point of time. Even to the point where we actually have to do a demo and fix something, we’ll fix it right now.

(mikenote - as I saw demonstrated a week later, when we needed a particular feature ASAP (2:40:1 aspect ratio reticles to demo to a major director for a camera test in NYC - we got a build done overnight with that feature enabled).

Mike- just the whole thing lets shoot 4K we can do this giant thing or, nah, lets put