HD For Indies

As of last Thursday night, all Red Ones can shoot 120fps. Wanna see? Of course you do.

: )

I've got a little sample posted over at ProVideoCoalition, as well as some of the details of the new build's features. Some coooool ones. Go read! Now. Cuz I sedd so.

: )

There is also Art Adams' Red One Lattitude Tests, which clearly illustrates the differences between shooting under tungsten or daylight lighting conditions on the daylight optimized Mysterium sensor. CTB is your FRIEND to get the red, green, and blue histograms to line up nicely, and not have the red channel clip early.

Art also has articles about Red up discussing the mixed blessings of "I never knew how much processing cameras did for me, until I used a camera that didn’t do any." (opinions vary on to how good a thing this is - I relish it as a post weenie who likes to tweak things to the nth degree to get best results)

Art and Adam Wilt in Discussing RED, uncensoRED - they both start wrapping their heads around the nitty gritty of RAW image processing, Redcine, ramifications of daylight vs. tungsten lighting. I didn't chime in as I was in transit during that conversation, but a lot of stuff going on in there for the techies.

...and some others in the Stunning Good Looks by Art Adams category of PVC. Art is digging into some of the differences between Red and traditional cameras - I like a lot of those differences.

UPDATE - Be sure to check this out too - workflow software for Red from a third party. Expect LOTS more in the future.

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Red One, Redcine

ProVideo Coalition.com: Camera Log by Adam Wilt | Founder: "Three three-letter cameras: EX1, F23, RED
An unfair comparison of three entirely different cameras"

Adam Wilt digs in to check out how a $6500 Sony EX1, a $25,000 Red One, and a $250,000 Sony F23 compare when shooting some (quick, rushed, non-lab-grade-definitive) charts and tests.

An interesting read, well recommended.

Adam observes a bunch of stuff people are coming to understand about Red - shooting 4K for a 2K/1080 deliverable is best instead of just 2K for 2K/1080, Bayer patterns aren't quite as sharp as cosited sampling, and quality glass counts (edit - to further elaborate on the glass issue, Super Speeds, as tested, are great for low light, but not the sharpest glass available).

Speaking of Red, I plan on spending tomorrow catching up on writing about a bunch of stuff I've been doing with my Red since I got it and got to Los Angeles (where I'm living now). Since Adam did his tests with build 14 of Red's firmware, I got build 15 (2nd rev of it too) installed and running on mine. My favorite feature so far? 120 fps at 2K!

Holy g-damn sh*t, that is one HOT feature!

I'm doodling with some high speed footage now, and tomorrow I'll also write up some of the golden goodies I saw at what I think was the first ever Los Angeles Red User Group meeting (LARUG? La Rug?).

Stay tuned.

-mike

EDIT - to clarify, esp. since there have been so many trolls over there (who apparently get bored making up original fake email names pretty quickly) - cosited pixels CAN be more sharp than Bayer pattern - on a PIXEL FOR PIXEL basis. If you throw a bunch more pixels at it, then the overall optical resolution of a high res Bayer pattern based system can be higher than a 3-chip setup. As is the case with the Red One.

-mike

Labels: EX1, F23, Red

ProVideo Coalition.com: HD for Indies by Mike Curtis

I've got Part One of my Red One unboxing article up. Tons of pictures of what you get, how it is packed, a description of what stuff is and how it goes together, etc.

-mike

Labels: Red, Red One

DCS RED Digital Cinema Event - Event Registration Powered By Eventbrite

Oops, forgot to blog this one, here's the info:


WHAT: Join us for an exciting and informative afternoon exploring the RED ONE camera and RED Digital Cinema workflow. Get a close look at the cameras and learn first-hand what all the RED hype is about!

This event marks an important milestone for DCS, as it is also our inaugural Northern California/Pacific Northwest Chapter get-together! Doors open at 12.00 Noon so come early and network with your local industry peers.

WHEN: Saturday March 1st from 1.00 PM to 4.00 PM
Doors open at 12.00 Noon

WHERE: NetApp
495 East Java Drive
Building 3
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

NetApp is at the corner of East Java Drive and Crossman Ave. Enter the parking lot at 495 East Java and proceed to building #3. There are big numbers on the glass. Park in the horseshoe section of the parking lot and enter through the patio – look for the black gate and DCS signs.

View Map and Directions Here

COST: FREE.

IMPORTANT: You must be a Digital Cinema Society member to attend this event, however, non-members will be granted a FREE 3-month DCS trial membership with this ticket registration! So what are you waiting for?

AGENDA:
* RED ONE Cameras on display
* RED Digital Cinema overview
* DCS President and Cinematographer James Mathers discusses RED ONE Production Workflow
* Silverado Systems President Torrey Loomis discusses and demonstrates RED Post-Production Workflow
* Screening of RED ONE demo footage and selected clips from two RED Features
* DCS Member Panelists: Filmmaker Adam Wilt, DP Art Adams and VideoFax Managing Partner Leigh Blicher lead topical discussion during our Q & A Sessions.

Light refreshments will be available.

This meeting is being organized and moderated by Chapter President Simon Sommerfeld, and hosted by DCS member and Creative Director, Trudi Melohn at NetApp.



See their page for map and directions. Should be good!

Labels: DCS, Red

#417 arrived at my friend's house today (I wasn't sure if I'd be in town, had it shipped there). I'll be taking pictures and writing up my thoughts on ProVideoCoalition.com as I can.

-mike

WEDNESDAY UPDATE - I have a ton of pictures and analysis. A family member had surgery yesterday out of town, I've been sitting with. All went well, but I'm playing catchup. It is a' comin'.

Interesting to see what has changed, in terms of hardware, since last I worked with several of the original batch of beta #s 6, 7, 11, & 17. I've decided to point some of that out, too.

MUCH going on here.

-mike

Labels: Red

Hey all!

I've been in LA this week, but I just got off the phone with my Red rep and I'm finally ready to take delivery on Red #417. It has been ready to go since before I left for Spain at the end of January, but travel and logistics have delayed the process on my end.

I expect it to arrive in Austin next week, and I'll be documenting the OOBE (that's Out Of Box Experience) for all interested, and probably doing so over on ProVideoCoalition.com.

I've been travelling and working and have some other big news to drop in the next week or so too, so stand by...

-mike

Labels: Red

20 Questions About Red Drives with Ted Schilowitz

First off, I'm writing for the Pro Video Coalition now. I'll do a more formal announcement, but expect serious stuff that I do to show up over there. For now, just go read this and I'll fill you in soon on all the details.

Kicking off, now that Red Drives have shipped and are trickling out into the field, I got in touch with Ted Schilowitz of Red and did some Q&A with him about how they work.

As a follow up since I wrote that, Stuart English confirmed for me that "yes you can record 2k and 4k on the same card.. and switch happily back and forth as much as you want, I do it all the time. Notice though, that your FOV changes of course, so odds are unless your using a zoom you will need to adjust lenses."

Thanks Stuart, and thanks to the PVC (Pro Video Coalition) Team for getting all this up and rolling so fast...

-mike

Labels: Red, techie

4K Delivery... - Reduser.net

"We are very happy to hear Panasonic and Sony announce their 4K displays at CES today. That allows us to finally announce that RED has been developing for release a 4K delivery system.

We have been committed to 4K from day one. It has always been our vision to see 4K in the home as well as on the big screen. We always believed that 1080P was a stop-gap along the way to 4K.

We will be announcing details of the RED 4K Delivery system at NAB in April.

Jim"


So that's more details on both the 4K delivery system and the Scarlet camera at NAB. Gonna be busy at their booth again this year I'll bet....

-mike

WEDNESDAY UPDATE

I was thinking some more about 4K. Red announced at NAB last year what we already knew - that a smaller camera (Scarlet) was under development ("handheld professional camera"), and 4K displays (yes plural) and projectors (yes plural) were under way. Now Red is announcing a 4K delivery system. Well, if you've got a screen, you need a delivery system to watch it. That's some means of delivering 4K, which I'm guessing would require a physical connection interface, a storage medium, encoder and a decoder, etc. Ponder on that as you will.

BUT....back to 4K displays. This all reminds me of the article I ran last year before buying my own HDTV (which I still like), HD For Indies: "When does 1080p make a difference?". That article included links to someone else's chart. Extrapolating from that chart, it seems clear that a display would make sense for those authoring content who can sit pretty close to it. 4K is 2304p by Red's standards for 16:9. Guesstimating that into their charts, that means that with a 60" screen (what I currently have), if it were 2304p you'd need to be 4 feet or less from it to see all the detail. To sit 10 feet back, typical living room distance, you'd need a screen of 140 or 150 or more inches (I'm mentally guessing looking at the graph). That isn't realistic for a display - you'd need a projector for that.

Which gets us back to the 4K display and content stuff - if you're 10 feet back, you'd need a screen in the ballpark of 15 feet (give or take feet) measured diagonally. That's roughly 13 feet by 7 1/2 feet - I don't have a wall that size available where I'd want to watch it. The biggest wallspace I have is about 9 feet wide.

The market for true home theaters (dedicated rooms) is growing. But that's a many-tens-of-thousands of dollars investment (unless you have a basement to convert). Is there enough market to support a 4K display/projector to get the costs down, Red volume style?

Of course, marketing trumpets reality - and Red certainly knows how to do that (and without buying a single ad, either - I've never seen a Red print ad, have you?).

As a market, 4K is a welcome option, but there is LOTS of progress to be made in optimizing the 1080p we've got now - even shooting on Red ones to make the 1080p BE 1080 pixels worth of resolution. Considering how much of the Planet Earth stuff was shot on Varicam (which only records 960x720 and gets uprezzed to 1920x1080....think how much BETTER it could look if it really WERE 1920X1080 worth of detail. And that takes good sensors, but REALLY takes quality glass.

And to view it, we need truly 1080p, not 1080i, presentation, especially for 24p. Triple, quadruple, or even quintuple flashing makes for a rock solid 24p with no cadence issues. 2:3:3:2, 2:3:2:3 is good but not perfect for 1080p sets running at 60Hz progressively.

I recall someone talking about 4K DI work - and saying that even with optimal projection, if you're not sitting in the first X # of rows of a theater (I think it was like 8 or 15), you're not seeing the difference between 2K and 4K. Similar arguments apply here.

I love that Red pushes the envelope on everything. But is 4K really the place to go? If they did it, I'm sure it would make for a lovely HD presentation as well.

Those are my immediate thoughts, more, of course, to follow later.

-mike

Labels: 4K, Red, Scarlet

The name is... - Reduser.netJim Jannard, founder of Red, put up a post entitled "The Name Is..."

"Scarlet. Our Pocket Professional camera.

We know that the name has leaked out, so we want to avoid any postings and speculation.

Prototypes will be shown at NAB. It is not a competitor or replacement for the RED ONE.

Jim"


Recap of facts- professional pocket camera.

SPECULATION: if pocket sized, and not a replacement for Red One, then likely lower cost, lower resolution, lesser feature set. So maybe 2K/1080p, solid state recording only? Hopefully variable frame rates? To me the price point/feature set balance will be interesting to see - obviously should cost less than the Red One, but how much less? $15K wouldn't make sense, even with lens (and is it fixed or interchangeable lenses? If interchangeable, what mount that would still allow it to be "pocket" sized?) Roughly $10K (or less) would suddenly put it in competition with the rest of the sub-$10K cameras...and hmm, doesn't THAT get interesting for low budget indies and docmakers etc.?

-mike

-mike

Labels: Red

HD EXPO's Red preso stuff

In QT or streaming, Ted's Red One preso. Standard stuff AFAIK, nothing new.

Labels: Red

Cooke Optics Announces Lenses for RED ONE Camera | Studio Daily: "Starting in January, Cooke Optics will offer four standard Cooke S4/i lenses for the Red One camera that provide focal lengths from 15mm through 100mm and are engraved with red lettering. Called the Cooke RED Set, the new digital-cinematography lenses incorporate metadata capture technology that can be read directly by the contacts of the RED camera lens mount. The Cooke RED Set includes: the S4/ 15-40mm, T2.0 CXX Zoom Lens; S4/ 50mm, T2.0 Prime Lens; S4/ 75mm, T2.0 Prime Lens; and S4/ 100mm, T2.0 Prime Lens."

Read on. Not exactly clear how these are new/different than existing Cooke S4i lenses. No, I haven't researched it, so if anyone has (including any more info from Les or other Cooke folks) please let me know.

-mike

UPDATE:

Ah - more info from Cooke's own site:
The Cooke RED Set

"The Cooke RED Set is a special package of four S4/i lenses that offers a range of focal lengths from 15 to 100mm. You will be colour coordinated with special red engraved lenses to complement the RED ONE. Each lens is fully equipped with /i 'Intelligent' Technology. The Cooke RED Set includes: a Cooke S4/i 15-40mm, T2.0 CXX Zoom and Cooke S4/i 50mm, 75mm and 100mm, T2.0 Prime Lenses, a protective glass cover for the CXX Zoom lens and a rigid carry case to hold all four lenses. The RED ONE camera is fully /i compatible and will communicate directly with Cooke S4/i lenses via special contacts in the camera's lens mount. There is no need for additional equipment."


...so is just a subset of the Cooke S4/i lenses, with some purdy colors on'em. Otherwise - they are S4i's AFAIK.

==========

As long as we're talking Red:

December Update... - Reduser.net - more delays, but due to many fixes, and they are going to out-and-out REPLACE cameras 1-100...at no charge, not even shipping. BUT...delays in shipping of upcoming cameras in order to get this done. So I'm figuring I'll get mine...late February, early March?

Improvements, from Jim's post:

We have recently made significant improvements to many aspects of the RED ONE. That includes a new lens mount, better image quality by a new IR/low pass filter and moving it into a new location, better DSP, new sensor processing magic (instead of the new daughter board), a reworked mount system for the board stack, new(er) firmware, more features enabled... you get the idea. SO....


EVFs and Red Drives FINALLY in production.

---

New mount... - Reduser.net - picture and discussion of the new PL mount, which has a backfocus adjustment.

Labels: lenses, Red

Hey all -

I was very pleased with how the presentation went yesterday. There appeared to be 80 to 100 folks there yesterday at peak (we rang long, about 2 1/2 hours) and Stuart English of Red showed up and graciously helped during Q&A (I'd feel a bit of a schlubb to answer questions about Red's plans when he's sitting 20 feet away, so I drafted him in on several questions, thanks very much, Stuart!).

As I mentioned in the presentation, here's the PDF of my Keynote presentation. It is large, at 38MB, since I built it with a bunch of uncompressed TIFF files.

I'd also mentioned other links to Red. At the end of all articles are usually some tags - clicking on the tag word (like "Red" at the end of this article) will take you to a page with all articles with that tag.

Here's all the articles I've tagged with "Red" , including some recent ones with full size, 4Kx2K, 48 MB, 16 bit TIFF frame grabs from various Red One shoots I've done, both graded and ungraded. I've written many other articles on Red prior to these, but didn't start tagging until the last year or so. You can use Google to search for those additional articles on Red One that are on hdforindies.com.

I've also written an article on DV Magazine's website and Videography.com about my first experiences with the Red, here's the version that ran on Videography. The version on DV also has pictures, so you might want to look at that version (the text is virtually the same on both).

I'm working on posting some videos from the Spain Red One shoot as well, I'll let you know in the near future about that as well.

-mike

Labels: Red

Hey all -

just a reminder that my Red One presentation is at 1pm today at 501 Studios, here's a link to the original post with all the details, maps, etc.

Zane points out the google map is WRONG - it is 5th and IH-35 - the map pointed to San Marcos, my sincere apologies!

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Redcine

On December 4th, at 1pm at the 501 Studios Stage, Mike Curtis of HD for Indies (hdforindies.com) will be presenting the Red One camera to the Central Texas market. Mike will be covering the advantages of the camera, covering how the camera works, the workflow, and in general, Why Red Matters.

GEAR (an Austin based rental house) will be providing their Red One camera for the event.

Date: December 4, 2007
Time: 1-3pm-ish
Location:
501 Studios Stage
501 North IH-35 Austin, TX 78702

EDIT - PREVIOUSLY POSTED MAP WAS INCORRECT - the location is 5th and IH-35, on the east side of Interstate 35.

The Plan:

The presentation will include:

-footage from Red shoots in New York and Spain
-overview of the history and philosophy behind the Red One camera
-Details of the camera system - the body, the accessories, the sensor, the codec, the software, the workflow, etc.
-what Red means for production and post
-a live runthrough of Red's workflow - shoot footage, post process, editorial workflows, etc.
-Q&A

I'll update this with more info as the date gets closer.

-mike

UPDATE - in response to a reader posed question, YES this is open to the public.

Labels: Red

Redcine Publicly Released!

For those who haven't kept score, Redcine (think telecine for Red footage) is Red's software tool to convert native Redcode to other formats for you to use - such as to any codec you have installed on your system. You can also think of Redcine as Red's answer to having a hardware deck...sort of. It is how you move and convert footage to other useful formats.

REDcine download page - available for both Windows XP and Intel based Mac OS X.

They've also posted a bunch of user interface overview videos, which I strongly recommend:

http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/interface_overview.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/project_settings.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/shot_settings.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/color_settings.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/output_settings.mov
http://red.cachefly.net/redcine/library.mov

It is quite geeky and not for the casual, shoots once-in-a-blue-moon user. If you want to get optimal results, spend a lot of watching, reading the release notes, and testing. But the good news is that it has a lot of power and flexibility well beyond what Red Alert offers. I'll be posting more in depth analysis later.

Final Cut Studio 2 REDCODE Plugin

Final Cut Studio 2 REDCODE Plugin Page

From the page:

When you transfer media from your CF cards to your hard drive for editing, please be sure you take the Native .R3D files, the QuickTime Reference movies and the Magazine Profile from the CF card. They should all live together in the same folder to allow for offline/online editing and finishing. After you have imported your QuickTime Reference movies into Final Cut Pro do not move the original files to another location. If you move the RED files and media after importing the QuickTime Reference movies into FCP you will lose the connection to the FCP master clips and will have to reconnect the files manually.

Import the QuickTime Reference movie size you wish to edit with (2K or 1K) and ensure that your clip parameters match your FCP sequence parameters. FCP will prompt you to automatically match the sequence settings with your clip when you make your first edit into a new timeline. Set your timeline to Unlimited RT and Medium or Low quality playback using the timeline’s RT pulldown menu.

For this release, import your 2K or 1K QuickTime reference movies into your project by using File: Import Files or File: Import Folder. The advanced RED Log and Transfer interface is in the final stages of development and the installer package will be available from RED at this web link in the coming weeks. RED’s integration for full FCP Studio 2 functionality with RED camera workflows is in continuing development.

Depending on your system configuration, you may see less than full frame rate playback. RED recommends the current top end configuration of a MacPro with 8 cores, fast RAID 0 striped drives and a minimum of 4 gigabytes of RAM if you plan on editing the 2K QuickTime Reference movies. RED recommends for RT editing on a MacBook Pro that you use the 1K QuickTime Reference movies or smaller frame sizes that can be generated with the RED Alert! Program provided to camera owners by RED.


Note that this isn't the ultimate solution of importing directly nor converting to ProRes. Note the NAB discussed plugin to alter the Redcode attributes is not mentioned....yet.

RED ALERT! 1.3.0 page - RELEASED TO PUBLIC (wasn't working earlier today)

RED ALERT! page

From the page:


RED ALERT! is an image processing tool that allows you to load REDCODE RAW footage, adjust image exposure and color correction settings, and render selected frame or image sequences images out to 4K or 2K resolution DPX and TIFF file formats. It will also generate QuickTime reference movies from original REDCODE RAW data(.R3D) files for use by 3rd party QuickTime compatible applications.


Latest version of the simpler tool to convert Redcode to proxies, and alter their Redcode color settings. This can do some tricks Redcine can't, like make new QT reference files (proxies), so is definitely worth downloading.

Red QT codec

RED codec download page - still requires a Red camera owner login, so I'm presuming this comes with some of the other tools, would be silly otherwise. Will update this line when I know more.

OK, so now what?

There's already a thread on Redcine feedback:

RedCine feedback.. - Reduser.net

Jarred tells us where to get some Redcode source clips to play with:

1st clips - Reduser.net

Questions and discussions: go to town here:

Redcine Workflow - Reduser.net

Redcine tidbits from Lucas at Assimilate:

REDCINE tidbits - Reduser.net

More good notes on current Redcine status:

REDCINE Information - Reduser.net

This has been the "just the facts, ma'am" post, analysis and hands on to follow later.

-mike

UPDATE - Apple released updates to all parts of the Final Cut Studio 2 suite, OS X 10.4.11 and 10.5.1, read about it here and here.

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Redcine

OK, here's another batch of images from the Sitges Day Shoot (this is Part 2) I did in Spain with Equipo Rojo España, shot by Jendra Jarnagin and Pol Turrents. In case you missed it, check out part 1, which I've updated with some more comments and how-done (screen shots of curves and hue/sat adjustments in Photoshop).

This was with Red One #17, and it had some of the same backfocus issues as some of the other early cameras, thus this series of shots are not as sharp as a Red One can generate. So don't refer to this as what Red can do for sharpness, just Red has fixed this camera and is working on a fix.

For the latest on that see Jim's post on Reduser.net:

Reduser.net - View Single Post - New Schedule:
"Improvements include a new lens mount system, less noise and higher data rate for improved dynamic range, new features and time to test. Several other minor improvements will also be made. We have also committed to bringing serial numbers 1-100 up to the new spec (at no charge to our customers). We also anticipate a few new formats, although they will likely follow in a firmware upgrade. We are doing our best to continue to improve the RED ONE. This effort won't stop as long as I am around..."


Bummer there has been trouble, but they are aggressively on it, so that's far better than them saying something like "Problem? What problem?"

As with Part 1, I've decided to apply no artificial sharpening. So feel free to Unsharp Mask in Photoshop or whatever you deem appropriate. UPDATE - speaking of sharpening, Jim posted his thoughts on the matter, and distinguished between Sharpening and Unsharp Mask:

Sharpening... ugh? - Reduser.net

I also found comments #7, 8, 12, 13, 20 & 33 most useful.

So back to it - here's a bunch of shots below, and to continue the discussion on original camera image vs. graded vs. what can be done in camera, I've taken the liberty of making three versions of each image:

flat=original camera image as shot, no modifications other than perhaps changing the white point to make all the similar shots consistent

graded=tweaked in Photoshop - I pushed these pretty hard to get a strong look, but didn't make much effort to keep them consistent from shot to shot. Just to show you've got ample room to push and still get good results.

RAgrade=adjustments made in Red Alert (so RAgrade=Red Alert graded) exactly equivalent to what COULD be done on camera (read part 1 if this doesn't make sense) - this COULD HAVE BEEN original camera image if we'd taken the time on set to adjust the knobs

Not all shots have an RA grade - for whatever reason I didn't make one or think it necessary.

==========

Shot: B1C1
Frame: 676
Description: closer shot of the base of the stairs (as compared to the shot posted in part 1) and the waves crashing against the shore, 4K@24p

Lens: 24mm UltraPrime
T stop: T8
Filtration: ND 1.2
Resolution: 4K
Frame rate: 23.976

B001_C001_071013_00676_flat

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.

Red Alert settings
Standard Mode
ISO: 320
Exposure Adjustment: 0
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0

B001_C001_071013_00676_graded

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.

Red Alert settings were the same as above, changes were all made in Photoshop.

B001_C001_071013_00676_RAgrade

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.

Red Alert settings
Standard Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0
Exposure Adjustment: 0
Saturation: 1.75
Contrast: 0.50
Brightness: 2.00

Shot:C1C1A (the "A" was a designation we put on it when we found out it IS possible to make two shots with the same name...ugh...there is an onset workflow to fix this heinous problem, though)
Frame: 5123
Description: is 2K shot at 72fps rocks, similar frame - so compare this to the above for the difference between 2K and 4K...sorta. Keep in mind we had the PL mount issue - none of these are as sharp as they should be. But perhaps the RELATIVE sharpness between the two can be instructive.

Lens: 16mm
T stop: T2
Filtration used: ND 0.9+1.2
Resolution: 2K
Frame rate: 72fps, 1/192 exposure duration I think - or was 1/125

C001_C001_071013a_05123_flat

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0

C001_C001_071013a_05123_graded

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.

C001_C001_071013a_05123_RAgrade

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.

Red Alert settings
Standard Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0
Exposure Adjustment: -0.43
Saturation: 1.3
Contrast: 0.60
Brightness: 4.51
Slight curves applied on the low end in the 25% area.

Shot: B1C7
Frame: 207
Description: more people, fewer stairs

Lens: 16mm
T stop: T2.8
Filtration: ND 0.9+1.2
Resolution: 4K
Frame rate: 23.976

B001_C007_071013_00207_flat

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0

B001_C007_071013_00207_graded

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.


Shot: B1C8
Frame: 366
Description: 4k @24 rocks

Lens: 16mm
T stop: T2
Filtration: ND 0.9+1.2
Resolution: 4K
Frame rate: 23.976

B001_C008_071013_00366_flat

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 22

B001_C008_071013_00366_graded

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.


Shot: C1C1a
Frame: 1446
Description: 2K272 rocks, pretty much same shot but cropped and faster

Lens: 16mm
T stop: T2
Filtration: ND 0.9+1.2
Resolution: 2K
Frame rate: 23.976

C001_C001_071013a_01446_flat

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.

Red Alert settings
Standard Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0

C001_C001_071013a_01446_graded

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.


Shot: A1C6
Frame:227
Description: stormtroopers wide - Mos Eisley? Most unlikely.

Lens: Unknown
T stop: Varies
Filtration: None
Resolution: 2K
Frame rate: 23.976

A001_C006_071013_00227_flat

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5618
Tint: 22
Exposure Adjustment: -0.4

A001_C006_071013_00227_graded

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.

A001_C006_071013_00227_RAgrade

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.

Grading in RedAlert, I futzed around with Kelvin and Tint for a while until durf! I'd forgotten about the "Pick WB" button (that's Pick White Balance), which was one click easy. There is, of course, a button on camera to do this as well.

Red Alert settings
Standard Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Kelvin (white point): 9250
Tint: 15.68
Exposure Adjustment: -0.5
Saturation: 2
Contrast: 0.20
Brightness: 4.00

Shot: A1C6
Frame: 1100
Description: closeup trooper

Lens: Unknown
T stop: Varies
Filtration: None
Resolution: 2K
Frame rate: 23.976

A001_C006_071013_01100_flat

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5618
Tint: 22
Exposure Adjustment: -0.4

A001_C006_071013_01100_graded

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.

A001_C006_071013_01100_RAgrade


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.

Red Alert settings
Standard Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0
Exposure Adjustment: -0.5
Saturation: 2
Contrast: 0
Brightness: 1.21

Shot: B1C6
Frame: 31
Description: nice waves crashing shot

Lens: 16mm
T stop: T2.8
Filtration: ND 0.9+1.2
Resolution: 2K
Frame rate: 23.976

B001_C006_071013_00031_flat

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0

B001_C006_071013_00031_graded

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.

Red Alert settings
Standard Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0
Exposure Adjustment: 0
Saturation: 2
Contrast: .75
Brightness: 2.5


Shot: B1C7
Frame: 207
Description: base of Church & people again

Lens: 16mm
T stop: T2.8
Filtration: ND 0.9+1.2
Resolution: 2K
Frame rate: 23.976

B001_C007_071013_00207_flat

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0

B001_C007_071013_00207_graded

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.

Red Alert settings
Standard Mode
Exposure (ISO): 500
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0
Exposure Adjustment: -0.3
Saturation: 1
Contrast: 0
Brightness: 3


Shot: D1C2-C5
Description: Various exposures of a high dynamic range scene. These are all the modified flat originals - some we shot at ISO 320, some at ISO 100 to help us try to identify sensor clip, but here they've all been processed the same to allow more direct comparisons. The major relevant variable is the T stop.

Lens: 24mm UltraPrime
T stop: T11.5
Filtration: None
Resolution: 4K
Frame rate: 23.976

D001_C002_071013_00117

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.

Red Alert settings
Standard Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0
Exposure Adjustment: -0.41

D001_C003_071013_00113

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0
Exposure Adjustment: -0.42

D001_C004_071013_00110

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): -0.42
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0
Exposure Adjustment: -0.42

D001_C005_071013_00112

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.

Red Alert settings
DI Mode
Exposure (ISO): 320
Rec 709 Gamma
Kelvin (white point): 5600
Tint: 0
Exposure: -.040



...so yeah, this is taking forever. Given. But I wanted to do this at a certain level of correctness to be Worth Doing. More coming, and it gets better as we go...

-mike

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Sitges, Spain

This is my continuing coverage, analysis, and footage from my Red One shoot in Spain.

On Saturday, we got up and were ready to shoot. After last night's rearranged shoot (Mont Juic instead of Font Magica), we were itching to get what we wanted - some really gorgeous shots.

You can see the photo gallery of production stills here.

Today I want to do something a little bit different from what I've been doing - I had been posting source 4K TIFF files, completely flat and raw and unmodified. The benefits of such are well explained by Stu Maschwitz here, but not everybody is up to speed on that.

I've fielded a few complaints about the look of the Red One footage in Comments on prior posts, my favorite being that it simply looked like higher res HDV. Bwahahahaaaaaaaa.....let me show you how not true that is.

First up, let us take a look at an image from the same sequence I posted the other week:

B001_C002_071013_00306_flat


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 those of you just joining this game, these images are best viewed with your monitor set to Adobe 1998 - that's gamma 2.2, white point of 6500 Kelvin. If you're on a Mac, and you haven't done it yet, now is an excellent time to use the Advanced calibration options in System Prefs/Displays/Color/Calibrate/Expert Mode (on).

This is the ungraded, flat, optimized for transfer to DI version of this frame. And yes, it looks utterly flat and uninspiring. And yes, there appears to be a dead pixel at 2833 over, 167 down. Drat. I could paint it out, but that would feel like cheating.

For those interested, it was shot with a 16mm Ultra Prime lens, f2.8, with ND0.9 and 1.2, ISO 320, I processed it at 5600 Kelvin, 0 Tint, and I think 0 Exposure since Jendra nailed the exposure so well (perhaps because I convinced her of the rockingness of the false color exposure tool? :D )

EDIT - DO NOTE - this was shot with not one but TWO ND filters - a 0.9 and a 1.2 - so OF COURSE it looks flat!

But take that same 4K TIFF file and apply some aggressive Curves and Hue/Sat in Photoshop, and voila:

B001_C002_071013_00306_graded


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 those of you who felt the original images were flat and uninspiring, there you go - that's more like it.

EDIT - to answer those asking, Photoshop changes were as follows - I applied this curve:


....then pushed the master saturation +47. That's it.

Some are complaining (even one guy on the CML, but not indicative of the overall tone there -EDIT - I misrepresented this before, is why I'm rephrasing now) that you should be able to just shoot and get good results straight out of the camera, that all this post software nonsense is gobblygook, and that finished images should fall out of the camera like manna from heaven (after you stand around and tweak on it on set).

For starters, I heartily disagree - the more specific a look you create in camera, the less likely you'll be able to change it later...with a traditional electronic camera. The Red One is really most analagous to a digital film camera - you have a LOT of room to push it around in post, so notes from the DoP in the field are important if not essential to get your dailies the way you want them...if you shoot it like a film camera, not tweezing all the knobs on set.

This is an essential distinction between the Red One and a lot of other electronic cameras, especially the workhorses of the HD world, the Varicam and the F900. While you CAN shoot with those cameras in default modes, if you REALLY want to get the best results from Varicam/F900, you need to have (or be) a DIT - a Digital Imaging Tech. A DIT can get deep into the menus and tweak all the color parameters to get the optimal results off the sensor head, through the DSPs and color adjustments, then recorded in a compressed (and usually shrunken, excuse me, prefiltered) format to tape. INSTEAD...Red One records all of the image that hits the sensor, unaltered (colorwise) but in a compressed format, and any adjustments you make to white point, gamma, saturation,tint, etc. are all recorded as metadata. It is akin to the difference between making a Curves adjustment in Photoshop, and using an Curves Adjustment Layer in Photoshop - the former you're married to your choices and will further degrade the image to make changes, in the latter you can change your mind without damaging consequences.

SO...all that said, some folks are still cranky about wanting to be able to shoot with the Red One and get pretty images immediately, such as out of the HD-SDI to tape for some workflows (like live production).

This is where all that metadata gets juicy. It just so happens that all of the controls that you have in Red Alert (and will have in Redcine when that ships) are exactly the controls, that work exactly the same way, in the same units, on the Red One camera itself. You've got controls for Kelvin (your white point temperature), Tint, Exposure, Saturation, Contrast, Brightness, then gain channels for Red/Green/Blue. (You've also got a curves editor, but I don't think that'll be available on camera). So what I did was do a quick tweak of the controls in Red Alert, which adjusts the image in the same way it would had I dug into the menus and made all those changes in camera - so it is entirely possible to shoot on the camera and get something immediately like this:

B001_C002_071013_00306_RedAlert Grade.jpg


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 was quick - I spent about a minute doodling with the controls, mostly Brightness, Contrast, and Saturation. You could spend your time (and everyone else's) and their money on set messing with this...or just do it later if you don't have to have it Just So on set. This is by no means a match to what I did in Photoshop with more robust tools, this was just to show that you CAN get a poppy image straight out of the camera (and better than this I might add, I just hacked at it for a minute or so).

BUT...the REALLY juicy bit is this - if I HAD hacked around for a few more minutes in the Redcine software (when it ships), I'd be able to save that look, put it on a CF card and load it back INTO the camera (or all the other cameras running on set) for all the footage they'd shoot until I changed settings again, either by twiddling knobs on camera or mouse click 'n draggin' in Redcine to load a new or modified look.

This was not my most successful in camera simulation, so keep reading...

Next up is a shot of the top of the church. The original from camera, which we could consider a digital OCN (original camera negative), is not terribly inspiring.
B001_C004_071013_02474_flat


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 was shot with an Ultra Prime as well at T4, I don't have notes on which one it was nor whether any ND filters were used. Eyeballing it I'd say there were, probably the same 0.9 and 1.2 if I had to guess.

...but put that that into Photoshop:

B001_C004_071013_02474_graded


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 you can push it FAR, as you can see here. Would I want to push it that far? Not very often, but you CAN, and that is the important thing. Did I mention I haven't sharpened any of these? At ALL? Sharpening is just adding contrast to edges. Feel free to do so in Photoshop or metric equivalent.

I got this look by applying this Curve:



...and then going into Hue/Saturation and pushing the master saturation 34 units, then applying this custom push in the cyans (note the widened/tweaked range):



For those who want snappy right out of the camera, here's that option as well. All image adjustments (except for the watermark, obviously) were done strictly within Red Alert by manipulating the controls in the exact same way you could/would on camera. So you could be rolling this kind of color if you wanted to out the HD-SDI (just not at this resolution, of course!):

B001_C004_071013_02474_Red Alert Graded


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 big picture is this: Even though these source images look flat and uninspiring, in a way that is GOOD - that means you have a LOT of room to push them around in post to get them where you want to go. This means you are less concerned than you otherwise might be about clipped highlights or muddy shadows, and that if you want to add a lot of saturation, you CAN, without having the image come apart like wet Kleenex in your grading app in a sea of mosquito noise and blocking artifacts. Open that source 4K image up in Photoshop and start going nuts with it. Then open up an image from your camera and try to push it as far. See what I mean? Yep. Red One rocks. Or more specifically, Graeme's Redcode RAW codec rocks, since it holds up so well to this kind of knob flailing abuse.

Actually, that's a good place to stop for today, I need to head out.

Thanks again to all the folks who worked on this stuff with me, we dubbed ourselves Equipo Rojo España - "Team Red Spain":

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

We all learned a ton, and are continuing to learn as I dig through all of this. It is striking how much you can learn about shooting in post production of this camera..and how much (more than usual) you can alter the results of the shoot in post.

This is a good thing.

More to follow, keep checking back,

-mike

As always, I'm available for consulting on your projects, especially Red related projects

Labels: Red, Red Alert, Sitges, Spain

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

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 wi