Why Red causes conflict, and the future of filmmaking

[jan von krogh]

Quite right. David Fincher is looking into 4k acquisition for his next film,

digital movie might be the better word instead of film.

 

so I would expect him to look into the Red as well.

how generous you are.

 

So far there have been no idependent test of the Red and until someone has really put it through the paces to find out where its limitations are and compares it to other cameras, any speculation as to who is shooting what with it are completely useless.

dont speculate.

 

as mr. boddington tried to explain, its a <1k chromatic resolution camera, as you said, chemical film looks more sculpet (or 3d or whatever) etcc.

 

so it is completly SURE that anyone who has his mind wont ever use such a digital camera.

that is why fincher shot his next movie after fight club on chemical! did he?

 

 

btw mr. jacoby, are you booked or still interested in assistance jobs?

if so, you certainly know where you wouldnt find work.

on the other hand, i might have some cheapo 35mm arris on sale soon - isnt that what you are looking for?

[Nate Downes]

Release prints aren't really 2K resolution. This study suggests they're considerably lower.

 

You're the second person to use that study as a source, despite the age of it and the fact that it is dealing with optical printouts *and* with older scanner technologies. By that same measure, you should compare it to the high-end cameras coming from the digital world at that time, namely the Digibeta, for resolution comparison. As digital has improved so has film. Since then, the new realm of Vision2 stocks have arrived, along with newer, higher-density print stocks, and new printing technologies to boot. Which means that article is, shall we say it, a bit dated.

[jan von krogh]

I read that Panavision is going to double its Genesis inventory by September 2007. Why would panavision be producing expensive cameras if the competition is producing the next best thing.

hmm, maybe sony wants to empty their stocks before introducing the NG22? dont forget, panavision genesis is just the oems name for the sony cam.

 

otoh, they might have work for anothher 18 cameras?

 

The problem with some digital cameras is that they aren't as fast as high speed stock.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalright. now its getting funny.

 

The D-20 are designed for ISO 400.

cinealta is at >600 amd you understand that there is no thing like ASA in the digital world?

[Arni Heimir]

hmm, maybe sony wants to empty their stocks before introducing the NG22? dont forget, panavision genesis is just the oems name for the sony cam.

 

otoh, they might have work for anothher 18 cameras?

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalright. now its getting funny.

cinealta is at >600 amd you understand that there is no thing like ASA in the digital world?

 

Then I stand corrected.

[jan von krogh]

You're the second person to use that study as a source, despite the age of it and the fact that it is dealing with optical printouts *and* with older scanner technologies. By that same measure, you should compare it to the high-end cameras coming from the digital world at that time, namely the Digibeta, for resolution comparison. As digital has improved so has film. Since then, the new realm of Vision2 stocks have arrived, along with newer, higher-density print stocks, and new printing technologies to boot. Which means that article is, shall we say it, a bit dated.

 

indeed, and iwe would give the vison II 30% more resolution over its precessors - 35mm kodak vision would be almost in the class of 1080p, correct?

 

a sidenote, you are posting in the RED forum here.

 

so, let me ask this question: how much would the vison II need to improve to have the reds 4k resolution? or 2540p?

 

or, to make the question more precise: so, resolution, as film is inferior there, isnt the point?

[Arni Heimir]

This doesn't make any sense.

 

RED will not have a de facto monopoly on the film industry. The don't even have a camera on the market. They've delayed its release til April.

[Nate Downes]

indeed, and iwe would give the vison II 30% more resolution over its precessors - 35mm kodak vision would be almost in the class of 1080p, correct?

 

a sidenote, you are posting in the RED forum here.

 

so, let me ask this question: how much would the vison II need to improve to have the reds 4k resolution? or 2540p?

 

or, to make the question more precise: so, resolution, as film is inferior there, isnt the point?

 

But this study was printed in 2002, and does not list if they used the original Vision Color Intermediate film (introduced late 2001) or the older 5244 print film. And this remains the optical printing process, correct? How does this compare to 2k, 4k or even 8k scans-to-film?

 

As for Red, this is a discussion on why it causes conflict, and I think yours and my responces clearly demonstrate the reasons why, namely that a lot of filmmakers are tied to their respective formats, and see it as some kind of mantra, or some kind of magic bullet, and those that don't agree are heretics. It's an ugly fight.

 

For me, you can argue resolution as much as you want, the reasons why I shoot film come down to 1 in the end: cost. I can't afford to shell out $250k every 2 years to keep up with HD technology. That's not just the cost of the camera, it's for the editing machine needed and support components as well. So, I keep using my now 30 year old russian film camera and 40 year old japanese cameras, and my film viewer and splicer, using a negative conformer. Then the cost is only per-project, giving me a very very low overhead. If I don't have a job for a month, hey, at least I'm not staring at credit bills for having bought all of this equipment. It's all paid for, so all of the money I make can go into my pocket (sans a little I put into my repair fund). If someone can make a digital camera capable of delivering this quality of image, and this longevity of operation, I'd probably switch. But things being the way that they are, I don't see that happening.

[Chris Kenny]

But this study was printed in 2002, and does not list if they used the original Vision Color Intermediate film (introduced late 2001) or the older 5244 print film. And this remains the optical printing process, correct? How does this compare to 2k, 4k or even 8k scans-to-film?

 

Even when DI is used, the process used to create release prints is mostly the same as when a photochemical finish is used. Maybe in a few years film recorders will be cheap enough that you can record every release print on one instead of using optical duplication, but that's not how it works today.

 

Saying that because this study is a few years old you have to compare with digital acquisition systems of that time is pretty odd for a couple of reasons. First, this study isn't looking at acquisition, but at distribution. Secondly, while film is improving, digital is improving far faster.

 

The reason this study probably gets cited even now and then is because there really are very few studies with actual hard data. This one might be a little old, but it's still more useful than baseless speculation.

 

As for Red, this is a discussion on why it causes conflict, and I think yours and my responces clearly demonstrate the reasons why, namely that a lot of filmmakers are tied to their respective formats, and see it as some kind of mantra, or some kind of magic bullet, and those that don't agree are heretics. It's an ugly fight.

 

For me, you can argue resolution as much as you want, the reasons why I shoot film come down to 1 in the end: cost. I can't afford to shell out $250k every 2 years to keep up with HD technology.

 

The be frank, it's comments like the above that lead folks to believe some of you old film guys are really seriously out of touch. $250K every two years?

 

Next year, you'll be able to buy a 4K camera for $17,500, and edit 4K online on a $5000 workstation. If you want to do your grading at home, add one of these for $10K as well. That's a total of $35K (once you add a couple digital mags, etc). Not $250K. And the stuff will probably be future-proof enough to last five years, not two, by which time the much better stuff you buy to replace it will probably cost half as much. (Lenses, etc. are PL mount, so I'm not counting them because those costs are the same as with a PL-mount film camera, and lenses don't have to be re-purchsed when upgrading.)

 

This is, in most cases, going to be less than the cost of film stock for a single 35mm feature. Of course, there are per-feature costs with digital as well... about $2000 worth of hard drives per feature, if you're using Red's or CineForm's compressed 4K.

[Stephen Williams]

Next year, you'll be able to buy a 4K camera for $17,500, and edit 4K online on a $5000 workstation. If you want to do your grading at home, add one of these for $10K as well. That's a total of $35K (once you add a couple digital mags, etc).

 

Chris,

 

Do you beleive that color grading is something people can do at home to the same standard as a professional colorist? Just curious.

 

Stephen

[Michael Schrengohst]

Chris,

 

Do you beleive that color grading is something people can do at home to the same standard as a professional colorist? Just curious.

 

Stephen

 

I guess if the Professional colorist wants to work out of his/her house I guess so??

I have "worked" out of my house for years but I am getting ready to move back

to an office. At a certain point customers/clients will not come to your house.

Too many great competitive companies who have expresso machines in the office.

Now you can get an office to have a homey atmosphere but it is very difficult

to project a professional atmosphere at home no matter how great you have

made your home office. The real money to be made will be in the editing/grading process.

I hope RED sells 10,000 cameras.....at some point all that RED footage will have to be

processed.

[Chris Kenny]

Chris,

 

Do you beleive that color grading is something people can do at home to the same standard as a professional colorist? Just curious.

 

People aren't born professional colorists; they achieve that level of ability through experience. As I keep saying, this is about giving more people the tools. Some will learn to use them at a professional level, some won't.

 

For my own part, I've never graded a feature film, and I probably wouldn't be able to produce very good results with a colorist's traditional tools. But I have been color correcting images in Photoshop, etc. for the last 10 years, and I can now use tools similar to those for movies. There are a fair number of people with such experience.

[Keith Mottram]

People aren't born professional colorists; they achieve that level of ability through experience. As I keep saying, this is about giving more people the tools. Some will learn to use them at a professional level, some won't.

 

For my own part, I've never graded a feature film, and I probably wouldn't be able to produce very good results with a colorist's traditional tools. But I have been color correcting images in Photoshop, etc. for the last 10 years, and I can now use tools similar to those for movies. There are a fair number of people with such experience.

 

I assume you realise that a proffessional Tangent control surface costs in the region of £15000 and a decent monitor the same. You also I assume know that you will not be editing 4K you will be editing in proxies. Indeed I have not seen anything to suggest how 4K conform is going to be done with Red's workflow. These post figures being banded around are from people with absolutely no knowledge of the post industry. Oh actually my mistake you don't need knowledge or experience you just need to believe right?

[Michael Schrengohst]

The be frank, it's comments like the above that lead folks to believe some of you old film guys are really seriously out of touch. $250K every two years?

 

Next year, you'll be able to buy a 4K camera for $17,500, and edit 4K online on a $5000 workstation. If you want to do your grading at home, add one of these for $10K as well. That's a total of $35K (once you add a couple digital mags, etc). Not $250K. And the stuff will probably be future-proof enough to last five years, not two, by which time the much better stuff you buy to replace it will probably cost half as much. (Lenses, etc. are PL mount, so I'm not counting them because those costs are the same as with a PL-mount film camera, and lenses don't have to be re-purchsed when upgrading.)

 

This is, in most cases, going to be less than the cost of film stock for a single 35mm feature. Of course, there are per-feature costs with digital as well... about $2000 worth of hard drives per feature, if you're using Red's or CineForm's compressed 4K.

 

You are getting close....I think your edit bay will cost more like $20,000 to be usable. Don't forget audio?

Surround 7.1 monitoring alone will cost 3-5K. Most video editors seem to gloss over the audio aspects. And working in your spare bedroom will only work to a point. You will probably still need a dedicated sound studio doing the final mix. And nothing is future proof. in a few years that $20,000 edit bay is worth 2K.....I had one of the first full DigiSuites and thought I was future proof. $40,000 I spent and 4 years later I parted the system out for $1500.......

And 2K worth of drives for a feature? it will be more like 6K once you consider back-ups, duplicates for audio post and effects people. And the final that will be sent for either digital or film prints......

So sure you can buy all this stuff....believe me I have plenty of experience....But it will be the scripts that you decide to shoot and the actors you hire that will make or break your investment in all of your new toys.

[Chris Kenny]

I assume you realise that a proffessional Tangent control surface costs in the region of £15000 and a decent monitor the same.

 

You can get a calibrated 1080p monitor for $10K, and I'm perfectly comfortable doing color correction with an entirely software-based interface. As I said, I've been doing it for 10 years.

 

You also I assume know that you will not be editing 4K you will be editing in proxies. Indeed I have not seen anything to suggest how 4K conform is going to be done with Red's workflow.

 

CineForm's workflow can handle online 4K on a recent model Xeon workstation. This doesn't necessarily involve real-time 4K playback. One of the neat things about wavelet compression is that you can extract lower resolution proxies from the original file without having to decode a 4K version of each frame and scale it down.

 

I prefer to remain Mac-based, and right now CineForm is Windows-only, so it's not entirely clear if I'll be able to take advantage of CineForm's system, but it demonstrates the technical possibility of editing and conforming 4K on the desktop. I'm sure other solutions will present themselves. (It's basically an open secret CineForm is working on Mac stuff, but exactly what they'll release and when is unclear.)

 

These post figures being banded around are from people with absolutely no knowledge of the post industry. Oh actually my mistake you don't need knowledge or experience you just need to believe right?

 

You just need to pay attention to where the technology is actually going. As I seem to be repeating in every other post now... this is an information technology market now. The standards folks have developed over the last few decades in the traditional acquisition and post industries are now considerably less applicable than the standards of the IT market. Where, for instance, hard drives are 250 times as big as they were 10 years ago (at the same price).

[Stephen Williams]

250 times as big as they were 10 years ago (at the same price).

 

Chris,

 

Is it just me or have hard drives become less reliable over this 10 years.

 

Stephen

[Gary McClurg]

But it will be the scripts that you decide to shoot and the actors you hire that will make or break your investment in all of your new toys.

 

The number one and number two things that sell a movie... the script is your foundation and the actors are who the buying public want to see...

 

A question to the Red guys...

 

Okay what do we know about what we're shooting too...

 

A Red-drive, etc... okay...

 

Lets just shoot at 1080p on the Red... how many Red drives will you need. Will this be like P2, one drive to shoot on and one to transfer footage. We don't know.

 

We don't know how long the transfer time is.

 

We don't know or at least I don't remember how much the drive will hold.

 

Also a thought. I always find it funny that all these camera companies always go after the big time directors and dp's to promote their product. Then they'll say "hey we're making it for the little guy."

 

Yeah I know why they do it. But once you'd think they pick a little guy who's good, let him turn out something great and then use that to say "hey see the little guy can go up against the big guy."

[Chris Kenny]

You are getting close....I think your edit bay will cost more like $20,000 to be usable. Don't forget audio?

Surround 7.1 monitoring alone will cost 3-5K. Most video editors seem to gloss over the audio aspects. And working in your spare bedroom will only work to a point. You will probably still need a dedicated sound studio doing the final mix. And nothing is future proof. in a few years that $20,000 edit bay is worth 2K.....I had one of the first full DigiSuites and thought I was future proof. $40,000 I spent and 4 years later I parted the system out for $1500.......

 

Well, I was trying to address the costs specifically related to shooting digital instead of film; I didn't include audio because it's pretty much the same either way.

 

And 2K worth of drives for a feature? it will be more like 6K once you consider back-ups, duplicates for audio post and effects people.

 

That seems a bit high. REDCODE RAW 4K footage is about 100 GB/hour. 400 GB hard drives at $130 each. Single or multi-drive external enclosures would add about $70 per drive, so call it $50 for every 100 GB (every hour of footage). Assume a 7:1 shooting ratio on a 100 minute feature. That's $600 worth of storage. Buy another $600 of drives for backup. $2000 still gives you $800 for drives to hold proxies, renders, etc. and to send around to different places. And some of those drives are just used for temporary stuff, so can be re-used for each feature.

 

And the final that will be sent for either digital or film prints......

 

Sure, but you get the distributor to pick up that cost, if you sell the movie.

 

So sure you can buy all this stuff....believe me I have plenty of experience....But it will be the scripts that you decide to shoot and the actors you hire that will make or break your investment in all of your new toys.

 

As always.

[Gary McClurg]

Sure, but you get the distributor to pick up that cost, if you sell the movie. As always.

 

True but you'll still be paying for it out of your profit margin... :( and I mean that from the stand point of the sellers of your film always have these endless costs on what they did to promote your film.

Edited November 7, 2006 by Gary McClurg

[Chris Kenny]

Chris,

 

Is it just me or have hard drives become less reliable over this 10 years.

 

Stephen

 

They're actually quite a bit more reliable, statistically. MTBF is way up. And cheap drives allow for RAID 1 or RAID 5 configurations (not to mention just cheaper backups), significantly reducing the odds of data loss.

 

It does sometimes feel like technology has gotten less reliable... but I think this is mostly a result of the fact that people rely on it so much more, so they notice its failures more.

 

True but you'll still be paying for it out of your profit margin... :( and I mean that from the stand point of the sellers of your film always have these endless costs on what they did to promote your film.

 

Yeah, I've done my homework on Hollywood bookkeeping and the whole phenomenon where, according to distributors, pretty much every film loses money.

 

I am curious when distribution is entirely digital how they're still going to justify charging the production $2000 for every copy they make. I'm confident they'll come up with something :blink:

[Stephen Williams]

I am curious when distribution is entirely digital how they're still going to justify charging the production $2000 for every copy they make. I'm confident they'll come up with something :blink:

 

Hi Chris,

 

Thats easy, they have to get back the cost of the digital projectors.

 

Stephen

[Chris Kenny]

Thats easy, they have to get back the cost of the digital projectors.

 

True, now that they've actually agreed to pay some of the equipment costs to upgrade theaters, that does make a certain amount of sense. I'm sure they'll still be charging 10 years after those costs are paid off, though.

[Michael Schrengohst]

Well, I was trying to address the costs specifically related to shooting digital instead of film; I didn't include audio because it's pretty much the same either way.

That seems a bit high. REDCODE RAW 4K footage is about 100 GB/hour. 400 GB hard drives at $130 each. Single or multi-drive external enclosures would add about $70 per drive, so call it $50 for every 100 GB (every hour of footage). Assume a 7:1 shooting ratio on a 100 minute feature. That's $600 worth of storage. Buy another $600 of drives for backup. $2000 still gives you $800 for drives to hold proxies, renders, etc. and to send around to different places. And some of those drives are just used for temporary stuff, so can be re-used for each feature.

Sure, but you get the distributor to pick up that cost, if you sell the movie.

As always.

 

Hello Chris, the audio is one area that many shooters, producers neglect....I have spent more time on audio on certain projects than we did the video. Imagine a Lord of the Rings with bad audio. And the hard drive figures you quoted are for storage after the fact.....to shoot a feature you will need multiple RED drives or whatever they come up with.....I cannot imagine those units could just be hooked up to an edit bay....same as P2, the info will need to be transferred to hard drives fast enough to edit at least HD on. G raid drives

At least this to start $1700 for 1000 gigs.....and you would probably need 2 to edit. You would need to think about your multiple versions needed.....English, Spanish at least....sub-title versions....the HD DVD versions?

It's not just one 90-120 minute feature you deliver....I am working on a little 10 minute HD video now, English, Spanish, A version that will be projected over 5 50" plasma screens....that is 70 min of finished videos....All of this is just fitting on a 300 gig G-raid......

[Keith Mottram]

Well, I was trying to address the costs specifically related to shooting digital instead of film; I didn't include audio because it's pretty much the same either way.

That seems a bit high. REDCODE RAW 4K footage is about 100 GB/hour. 400 GB hard drives at $130 each. Single or multi-drive external enclosures would add about $70 per drive, so call it $50 for every 100 GB (every hour of footage). Assume a 7:1 shooting ratio on a 100 minute feature. That's $600 worth of storage. Buy another $600 of drives for backup. $2000 still gives you $800 for drives to hold proxies, renders, etc. and to send around to different places. And some of those drives are just used for temporary stuff, so can be re-used for each feature.

Sure, but you get the distributor to pick up that cost, if you sell the movie.

As always.

 

Chris, can you explain to me where on the red site it says that you can actually do anything with redcode RAW apart from view it or process it into something else? The problem with your post idea is that once you have converted your footage to say 2K for conform you'll be up to about 1.5TB an hour, you will also need top of the range gear to play it back and view it. This is not a question solveable with cheap drives, this is a serious post issue, which every radnut seems to be ignoring. The cheapest system excluding monitors that is mac based and capable of conforming a 1080p feature will be aproxiamtely £10000. If you want to deliver anything but a stack of hard drives to a buyer you will need capture/playback cards additionally. Now add decent monitoring for sound/ picture, plus software and any additional hardware and well... basically 4K is a big headache for a no budget filmmaker and not a benefit.

[Chris Kenny]

Hello Chris, the audio is one area that many shooters, producers neglect....I have spent more time on audio on certain projects than we did the video. Imagine a Lord of the Rings with bad audio. And the hard drive figures you quoted are for storage after the fact.....to shoot a feature you will need multiple RED drives or whatever they come up with.....I cannot imagine those units could just be hooked up to an edit bay....same as P2, the info will need to be transferred to hard drives fast enough to edit at least HD on.

 

Red-Drive mags will just hook up to an edit bay; they're basically just external hard drives with some extra logic for recording direct from the camera. You still want to transfer footage off because regular hard drives are a lot cheaper than digital mags, of course.

 

G raid drives

At least this to start $1700 for 1000 gigs.....and you would probably need 2 to edit.

 

G-Tech is a good company, but that kind of turn-key stuff has big markups. Buy one of these for $440 and stick five of these into it for $700... you've got 2000 GB of storage for $1140. Add $50-100 for a controller card with enough ports to let you connect up to four such enclosures to your workstation.

 

Throughput isn't a problem, REDCODE RAW's 27.5 MB/s is easily sustainable by a single desktop hard drive. Any proxy versions will presumably have an even lower data rate. If you do need something faster, just two SATA drives a software RAID 0 configuration can deliver upwards of 90 MB/s. And you could, if you wanted to, make that entire enclosure a RAID 0 array, which would be pretty insanely fast. (Have really good backups if you go this route; with RAID 0 you're hosed if any one of the drives dies.) None of this requires any extra expense over the hardware listed above.

 

The film guys here who've been shooting for 30 years might know a hell of a lot more than I do about PL mount lenses... but a big chunk of my past experience is in the IT industry... I know this stuff pretty well.

[Chris Kenny]

Chris, can you explain to me where on the red site it says that you can actually do anything with redcode RAW apart from view it or process it into something else? The problem with your post idea is that once you have converted your footage to say 2K for conform you'll be up to about 1.5TB an hour, you will also need top of the range gear to play it back and view it.

 

Going uncompressed is very unlikely to be necessary. Even if Red doesn't deliver anything (and there are hints they will), CineForm has everything in place for a compressed 4K workflow.

 

This is not a question solveable with cheap drives, this is a serious post issue, which every radnut seems to be ignoring. The cheapest system excluding monitors that is mac based and capable of conforming a 1080p feature will be aproxiamtely £10000. If you want to deliver anything but a stack of hard drives to a buyer you will need capture/playback cards additionally. Now add decent monitoring for sound/ picture, plus software and any additional hardware and well... basically 4K is a big headache for a no budget filmmaker and not a benefit.

 

I get more like $3K for the workstation (don't buy extra RAM from Apple, they charge way too much), $2-3K for drives. $10K for a calibrated monitor, or $2K for a 23" Apple display plus an HDLink (not as good, but just might be workable). $1500 for an output card, rent a deck for the day if you need to go out to a specific tape format.

 

This doesn't include audio, obviously, with which I'm not as familiar.