7 ms·

Well, thats a turn out for the books. I've dealt with RED professionally on a few levels. Firstly I came across RED footage shortly after the cameras were rele

Well, thats a turn out for the books. I've dealt with RED professionally on a few levels. Firstly I came across RED footage shortly after the cameras were released to film makers. Back then to transcode the output from the camera (jpeg2000 with some meta data) to something useful required a beefy mac pro, some free software and lots and lots of time (3-10FPS if you were lucky). Either way, it was expensive. (we used to charge £500 every ten minutes of red footage transcoded) This made me sad, especially as there was no SDK for linux to allow us to use the render farm to transcode it. You could spend £5000 on an "accelerator card" however, its £5k and prone to breaking. The annoying thing was the despite the hype the camera really wasn't all that. Yes it was 4k, but it was noisy, had rolling shutter and colours were duller than dish water. It took the Foundry "reverse engineering" the codec to bring RED to linux natively 35mm film was still far better in terms of image quality(assuming decent DoP and film lab). Yet the hype still built. (Early RED films were dark and broody for a reason....) The next generation of camera was alright, still expensive to hire/buy/use. Yes the sensor unit is relatively cheap, but you still needed to buy lenses, adapters, storage medium, handles(£250 for the cheapest handle), focus gears, etc. You then have to factor in the cost of post production. It was at the time expensive to shoot RED. On a par with film. It took at least two generations of RED cameras, and a lots of third party dev hours to make RED reasonable to use. Nowadays RED decoding is fairly trivial to do, and the modern sensors are fairly good, assuming you down res from the 5k to avoid sensor noise. One thing to note is this, RED fans are utterly fanatical. They will swear that anything RED is cheaper, better, faster, messianic compared to the competition. They are also prone to pirating software. In the annals of cinema, there will be many inches devoted to RED. Evangilising its reforming power. However the camera that really stood out is the canon 5Dmk2. It was cheaper (genuinely throwaway in cinema terms) good enough quality to get by, and has cheap high quality lenses. In short, RED camera, its alright for cinema, pain in the arse for post. REDuser.net and the surrounding noise is worse than angry 4chan. The people at RED however are lovely, its just some noisy users that are obnoxious

Florin_Andrei 13y ago
I still remember the initial Scarlet hype. "$3k for 3k". Man, was I ever pissed when it didn't pan out. :)
cclogg 13y ago
"35mm film was still far better in terms of image quality(assuming decent DoP and film lab)." After following RED for a while and many other (digital) cameras, I came to that same conclusion. But if anyone is to match it ever, I guess it would be someone like RED? I don't really know what it will take to capture the magic of film, ie if they had all of the dynamic range in the world, all of the color detail, etc... would it still not match what silver halide captures? Even the Foveon sensor for still photos isn't really there yet, despite looking better (in my opinion) than Bayer. The personal feeling for me is that watching something shot digitally feels like it's just 1 step away from a DV cam, but something shot on film is like "wow they really put effort into this to give it a proper movie feel". I'm saying this with regards to lower-budget movies. And then on other side of the coin, shooting motion-film seems to be much more expensive for anyone starting out, so it's a no brainer to use digital. ><
- modfodder 13y ago
  The advantage of shooting on film with a lower budget is that it forces the director and dp to plan everything out as much as possible. There isn't room in the budget for very many takes and none for reshoots. You can't just shoot until it's right, you better rehearse and have your shit together or your burn through film like crazy. And I personally don't think the magic of film will ever be matched. The magic is in the organic process. But I do believe cameras will reach look that isn't video or film, but something all together different. The Hobbit was a step in that direction, but imho, not the right project for that ultra sharp look (and they need to relearn how to light so it doesn't feel like a BBC soap opera from 1996). I want to see a sci-fi movie shot at 6K and 60fps, use the tech to compliment the story. Star Trek or Star Wars maybe, but even better if it's not something that is already in our collective consciousness, something completely new.
  - lukifer 13y ago
    I find the high frame-rate stuff to be "hyper-real", and to spoil the magical surreality you want in a LotR-style movie. I think 48/60fps will make its big break with a heavily grounded films in the style of End of Watch or Chronicle, where that non-theatrical realism can be leveraged instead of fought against. High frame rates also raise the bar for the actors every bit as much talkies did; micro-expressions become much more obvious at 60fps.
jluxenberg 13y ago
Regarding the transcoding; there must be other costs at play there. Because by my calculation[1], time on your Mac Pro costs £0.67 per second...which seems quite steep. ((3 frames / second) * (1 second / 24 frames) * (600 seconds / £500 ))^-1 = £0.67 per second
- jimktrains2 13y ago
  Sometimes you price yourself out of a market because it's a pain and you _don't_ want to do it, but will if someone pays you well. I don't know all the details here, but I would venture to say that it's around that idea.
- modfodder 13y ago
  You also typically need someone watching over the footage, making sure everything is transcoded correctly (especially in the early days as the software would crap out halfway through). Most producers were under the mistaken impression, at least early on, that shooting on the RED would save a day of film transfer. It didn't, it just switched that day over to the edit house, preferably to a dedicated machine with an assistant. It still took a day or two to get footage ready for the editor. Also, early on, the camera dept. didn't want anything to do with onset media management and transcoding (the job of the newly created DIT), but over time, camera realized their mistake (in losing that control and revenue) and now DITs are typically part of the camera dept and most transcoding is done on set. Now post will get a drive of the raw footage and the transcodes.
- KaiserPro 13y ago
  that includes storage and basic QA. You have to remember that staff are needed to over see this, data has to be conformed into something sensible. and that post production is expensive.
modfodder 13y ago
I also dealt with RED very early on, the post was a nightmare and still isn't as smooth as it could be. But the dark footage was mainly the fault of film trained DPs who were used to underexposing and pushing during transfer (hence the noise). I was amazed when we'd get footage from Academy award winning DPs that looked awful, then get footage from DPs who had never shot much film, but tons of HD. They understood you didn't underexpose but expose to the right, bringing it right up to the edge before it blows out, that's when the footage looks great. The guys used to film were shooting with a tool they didn't know how to use, hardly the fault RED when the video guys were killing it (don't use a light meter, use a waveform and histogram). And the footage coming out LOG shouldn't have saturated colors, it's supposed to look muddy (have film transferred flat and you'll have the same result). That gives all the power to the colorist as far as the final grade as opposed to DPs locking in a look (another major reason that Hollywood DPs hated digital, it was taking away much of their power). RED was ground breaking and had a huge affect on the market, although, for my 2¢, the Canon 5D has had a bigger impact overall (with an image that's much worse than RED). And RED fans are fanatical. Take the biggest mac fanboy and cross him with a Patriots fan, that might get you close. There is also a very vocal group of RED haters who spew bs for no apparent reason. The cameras should be the tools, not the owners. Full disclosure: I've never owned a RED, but spent quite a bit of time in post with the footage (worked post on some of the first major commercials shot with the RED) and used it to shoot some of my own work. I've owned a 5D since it's release and have Blackmagic Pocket and 4K on order to finally replace it. I learned on film, spent a decade as a news photog shooting betacam before moving to post for features and commercials (nuke/flame and fcp/avid). I prefer working with the Alexa when at all possible, but that can increase the budget considerably (at least for me as i know plenty of great DPs that own REDs). And imho, the most beautiful film release this year was Upstream Color, which was shot on a Panasonic GH-2, current retail for that camera is about $1000. And the most daring was a tie between Computer Chess which was shot on 80's era tube cameras and the experimental narrative Escape from Tomorrow shot on Canon 5D/7D at Disney World without Disney's permission.
stephen_g 13y ago
I think you're overstating a little - I've been editing RED footage on laptops for years (no joke - my main machine is a mid-2011 MacBook Pro 15 inch and I can edit 4K RED files natively in Final Cut Pro X and Premiere CS6)... Rendering takes a little while at the end, but the files downscale to 1/4 resolution on the fly and play back real-time while you're editing. It's never really been that bad - originally we'd just pump out a 1/4 or 1/8th res proxies out of Redcine and then reconform to the full-res files at the end, so you'd only have to render out the ones you'd need in full quality for grading. We did it all in house on pretty standard machines... And I wouldn't say that 35mm film was 'better' - really, that is a big oversimplification. 35mm definitely had the edge over the original RED Mysterium sensor in dynamic range, but not in resolution - although some crazy people scan 35mm all the way up to 6K, when you measure what you get you don't get anywhere near that (I can't remember the numbers exactly now - If I recall, due to the OLPF to stop aliasing and other factors, a 4K pixel raster from the RED ONE would measure at about 3.2K (horizontal), and a 35mm camera neg was somewhat less (around 2.8K or something?)).
- KaiserPro 13y ago
  on a mac! and remember editing has always been easier as you can work with proxies right up to delivery. Also Final cut was the first to have native support. In post land where we are mostly linux, and scaling up macs cost mega bucks, it was not so rosey. From a post point of view, its much harder to deal with just proxies. I was in MCR, so It was my job to convert from RED to exr/dpx etc. Since it was post, artists had to deal with full res most of the time (can't paint and rotos proxies) Your right it is an over simplification, but decent film stock and decent scanner can get "4k" out of 35mm+, however as you rightly point out you are reaching the limit of the actual res of the film stock (more than quite a few cases) +I used to work with a northlight which overscanneds to 8k then down samples to give the final result.
  - HNLogInShit 13y ago
    "Also Final cut was the first to have native support." No way. FCP was way, way behind Premiere and possibly even Vegas. FCP 7 NEVER had native Red support. I don't think even FCP X had it initially. Apple dragged ass on Red support for ages; even Color couldn't be used fully because its ISO setting maxed out at a hard-coded limit of 2000.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
enobrev 13y ago
I'm personally very ignorant on this subject (and really appreciate the detail in this thread). I just wanted to add that I recently watched a documentary by Keanu Reeves called Side by Side about the move from analog to digital in cinema, for better or worse, which included quite a bit about the RED cameras and beyond. I thought it was a phenomenal documentary and well worth the watch for anyone interested. http://sidebysidethemovie.com/ http://sidebysidethemovie.com/

Florin_Andrei 13y ago

I still remember the initial Scarlet hype. "$3k for 3k". Man, was I ever pissed when it didn't pan out. :)

cclogg 13y ago

"35mm film was still far better in terms of image quality(assuming decent DoP and film lab)." After following RED for a while and many other (digital) cameras, I came to that same conclusion. But if anyone is to match it ever, I guess it would be someone like RED? I don't really know what it will take to capture the magic of film, ie if they had all of the dynamic range in the world, all of the color detail, etc... would it still not match what silver halide captures? Even the Foveon sensor for still photos isn't really there yet, despite looking better (in my opinion) than Bayer. The personal feeling for me is that watching something shot digitally feels like it's just 1 step away from a DV cam, but something shot on film is like "wow they really put effort into this to give it a proper movie feel". I'm saying this with regards to lower-budget movies. And then on other side of the coin, shooting motion-film seems to be much more expensive for anyone starting out, so it's a no brainer to use digital. ><

modfodder 13y ago
The advantage of shooting on film with a lower budget is that it forces the director and dp to plan everything out as much as possible. There isn't room in the budget for very many takes and none for reshoots. You can't just shoot until it's right, you better rehearse and have your shit together or your burn through film like crazy. And I personally don't think the magic of film will ever be matched. The magic is in the organic process. But I do believe cameras will reach look that isn't video or film, but something all together different. The Hobbit was a step in that direction, but imho, not the right project for that ultra sharp look (and they need to relearn how to light so it doesn't feel like a BBC soap opera from 1996). I want to see a sci-fi movie shot at 6K and 60fps, use the tech to compliment the story. Star Trek or Star Wars maybe, but even better if it's not something that is already in our collective consciousness, something completely new.
- lukifer 13y ago
  I find the high frame-rate stuff to be "hyper-real", and to spoil the magical surreality you want in a LotR-style movie. I think 48/60fps will make its big break with a heavily grounded films in the style of End of Watch or Chronicle, where that non-theatrical realism can be leveraged instead of fought against. High frame rates also raise the bar for the actors every bit as much talkies did; micro-expressions become much more obvious at 60fps.

jluxenberg 13y ago

Regarding the transcoding; there must be other costs at play there. Because by my calculation[1], time on your Mac Pro costs £0.67 per second...which seems quite steep. ((3 frames / second) * (1 second / 24 frames) * (600 seconds / £500 ))^-1 = £0.67 per second

jimktrains2 13y ago
Sometimes you price yourself out of a market because it's a pain and you _don't_ want to do it, but will if someone pays you well. I don't know all the details here, but I would venture to say that it's around that idea.
modfodder 13y ago
You also typically need someone watching over the footage, making sure everything is transcoded correctly (especially in the early days as the software would crap out halfway through). Most producers were under the mistaken impression, at least early on, that shooting on the RED would save a day of film transfer. It didn't, it just switched that day over to the edit house, preferably to a dedicated machine with an assistant. It still took a day or two to get footage ready for the editor. Also, early on, the camera dept. didn't want anything to do with onset media management and transcoding (the job of the newly created DIT), but over time, camera realized their mistake (in losing that control and revenue) and now DITs are typically part of the camera dept and most transcoding is done on set. Now post will get a drive of the raw footage and the transcodes.
KaiserPro 13y ago
that includes storage and basic QA. You have to remember that staff are needed to over see this, data has to be conformed into something sensible. and that post production is expensive.

modfodder 13y ago

I also dealt with RED very early on, the post was a nightmare and still isn't as smooth as it could be. But the dark footage was mainly the fault of film trained DPs who were used to underexposing and pushing during transfer (hence the noise). I was amazed when we'd get footage from Academy award winning DPs that looked awful, then get footage from DPs who had never shot much film, but tons of HD. They understood you didn't underexpose but expose to the right, bringing it right up to the edge before it blows out, that's when the footage looks great. The guys used to film were shooting with a tool they didn't know how to use, hardly the fault RED when the video guys were killing it (don't use a light meter, use a waveform and histogram). And the footage coming out LOG shouldn't have saturated colors, it's supposed to look muddy (have film transferred flat and you'll have the same result). That gives all the power to the colorist as far as the final grade as opposed to DPs locking in a look (another major reason that Hollywood DPs hated digital, it was taking away much of their power). RED was ground breaking and had a huge affect on the market, although, for my 2¢, the Canon 5D has had a bigger impact overall (with an image that's much worse than RED). And RED fans are fanatical. Take the biggest mac fanboy and cross him with a Patriots fan, that might get you close. There is also a very vocal group of RED haters who spew bs for no apparent reason. The cameras should be the tools, not the owners. Full disclosure: I've never owned a RED, but spent quite a bit of time in post with the footage (worked post on some of the first major commercials shot with the RED) and used it to shoot some of my own work. I've owned a 5D since it's release and have Blackmagic Pocket and 4K on order to finally replace it. I learned on film, spent a decade as a news photog shooting betacam before moving to post for features and commercials (nuke/flame and fcp/avid). I prefer working with the Alexa when at all possible, but that can increase the budget considerably (at least for me as i know plenty of great DPs that own REDs). And imho, the most beautiful film release this year was Upstream Color, which was shot on a Panasonic GH-2, current retail for that camera is about $1000. And the most daring was a tie between Computer Chess which was shot on 80's era tube cameras and the experimental narrative Escape from Tomorrow shot on Canon 5D/7D at Disney World without Disney's permission.

stephen_g 13y ago

I think you're overstating a little - I've been editing RED footage on laptops for years (no joke - my main machine is a mid-2011 MacBook Pro 15 inch and I can edit 4K RED files natively in Final Cut Pro X and Premiere CS6)... Rendering takes a little while at the end, but the files downscale to 1/4 resolution on the fly and play back real-time while you're editing. It's never really been that bad - originally we'd just pump out a 1/4 or 1/8th res proxies out of Redcine and then reconform to the full-res files at the end, so you'd only have to render out the ones you'd need in full quality for grading. We did it all in house on pretty standard machines... And I wouldn't say that 35mm film was 'better' - really, that is a big oversimplification. 35mm definitely had the edge over the original RED Mysterium sensor in dynamic range, but not in resolution - although some crazy people scan 35mm all the way up to 6K, when you measure what you get you don't get anywhere near that (I can't remember the numbers exactly now - If I recall, due to the OLPF to stop aliasing and other factors, a 4K pixel raster from the RED ONE would measure at about 3.2K (horizontal), and a 35mm camera neg was somewhat less (around 2.8K or something?)).

KaiserPro 13y ago
on a mac! and remember editing has always been easier as you can work with proxies right up to delivery. Also Final cut was the first to have native support. In post land where we are mostly linux, and scaling up macs cost mega bucks, it was not so rosey. From a post point of view, its much harder to deal with just proxies. I was in MCR, so It was my job to convert from RED to exr/dpx etc. Since it was post, artists had to deal with full res most of the time (can't paint and rotos proxies) Your right it is an over simplification, but decent film stock and decent scanner can get "4k" out of 35mm+, however as you rightly point out you are reaching the limit of the actual res of the film stock (more than quite a few cases) +I used to work with a northlight which overscanneds to 8k then down samples to give the final result.
- HNLogInShit 13y ago
  "Also Final cut was the first to have native support." No way. FCP was way, way behind Premiere and possibly even Vegas. FCP 7 NEVER had native Red support. I don't think even FCP X had it initially. Apple dragged ass on Red support for ages; even Color couldn't be used fully because its ISO setting maxed out at a hard-coded limit of 2000.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

enobrev 13y ago

I'm personally very ignorant on this subject (and really appreciate the detail in this thread). I just wanted to add that I recently watched a documentary by Keanu Reeves called Side by Side about the move from analog to digital in cinema, for better or worse, which included quite a bit about the RED cameras and beyond. I thought it was a phenomenal documentary and well worth the watch for anyone interested. http://sidebysidethemovie.com/ http://sidebysidethemovie.com/