Films shot on the RED?

[Daniel Moore]

I remember hearing that David Fincher's movie Zodiac was shot on the RED, but I'm not sure if that's true. Does anyone know the truth behind that?

 

Also, if anyone can list any major films that were shot on the RED(if any), I would be really interested to see what films would be listed. Thanks.

[Stephen Williams]

I remember hearing that David Fincher's movie Zodiac was shot on the RED, but I'm not sure if that's true. Does anyone know the truth behind that?

 

Also, if anyone can list any major films that were shot on the RED(if any), I would be really interested to see what films would be listed. Thanks.

 

Hi,

 

It's not true, Zodiac was completed a long time before any Red cameras were delivered. The Thompson Viper was used.

 

Stephen

[Michael Most]

Also, if anyone can list any major films that were shot on the RED(if any), I would be really interested to see what films would be listed. Thanks.

 

Already released? None, unless you count "Che", which has had a few screenings. Upcoming? There are a few, but I don't know if I'd call the ones I know about "major." That's not to say it won't happen, it most certainly will. But if you're looking for examples in your local theater, you won't find them at this point in time.

[Jase Ryan]

Actually there are a few major films shot on the Red. Che is one and yes I think that counts. I saw that at the Toronto film festival and it looked amazing. Also Nicolas Cages new film, Knowing, Lindsay Lohans new film, Labor Pains and Tom Hanks new film as well were all shot on a Red. Plus there are lot's in the making that have major distribution and the TV series Sanctuary is the first major series to ever shoot on a Red.

[Keith Walters]

Also, if anyone can list any major films that were shot on the RED(if any), I would be really interested to see what films would be listed. Thanks.

So would I.

This question has been asked here several times by various people.

You seem to get the same basic answer: There's apparently LOTS of them, but, nothing that anybody seems to think anybody would pay to see.

Somebody who calls himself "OffHollywood" on Reduser claims to have just wrapped his eighth Red feature! Somehow it sounds like it should be more like "OffBollywood" :lol:

I guess one problem is the highly elastic nature of the word "major".

And where are all the TV commercials?

 

Excuse me, I have to go now. I have to feed this elephant that's in the room. He starts trumpeting when he gets hungry, and I don't want anybody to know he's here :P

[Igor Ridanovic]

So would I.

This question has been asked here several times by various people.

You seem to get the same basic answer: There's apparently LOTS of them, but, nothing that anybody seems to think anybody would pay to see.

Somebody who calls himself "OffHollywood" on Reduser claims to have just wrapped his eighth Red feature! Somehow it sounds like it should be more like "OffBollywood" :lol:

I guess one problem is the highly elastic nature of the word "major".

And where are all the TV commercials?

 

Excuse me, I have to go now. I have to feed this elephant that's in the room. He starts trumpeting when he gets hungry, and I don't want anybody to know he's here :P

 

 

OffHollywood is a reputable facility and a studio in New York City and a leader in RED production and post production. For the full disclosure I am not connected to them in any way.

 

A "major" film maybe be a misnomer. It seems we're talking about U.S. theatrically released pictures and one glance at your local paper calendar section will prove that this is hardly a measure of quality.

[Brian Drysdale]

So would I.

This question has been asked here several times by various people.

You seem to get the same basic answer: There's apparently LOTS of them, but, nothing that anybody seems to think anybody would pay to see.

Somebody who calls himself "OffHollywood" on Reduser claims to have just wrapped his eighth Red feature! Somehow it sounds like it should be more like "OffBollywood" :lol:

I guess one problem is the highly elastic nature of the word "major".

And where are all the TV commercials?

 

I know one of the Irish commercials DP's owns a RED and this has been used on a number of commercials. I also know of lower budget feature films that have been shot using a RED camera.

 

Commercials producers tend not to proclaim the make of cameras they shoot on and you're only likely to find out if you know someone who worked on a particular commercial or camera people talking amongst themselves on other shoots etc.

[Brian Drysdale]

Searching on imdb found these productions using a RED;

 

http://www.imdb.com/SearchTechnical?RED

[Keith Walters]

Searching on imdb found these productions using a RED;

 

http://www.imdb.com/SearchTechnical?RED

Have a closer look. That's actually a list of films where the sequence of letters "red" appears in the description. There were, as far as I am aware, no RED ones in 1913 :lol:

 

But OK, some of them are genuine RED productions. And these films are coming to a cinema near me ... when?

Most of that stuff would have been shot on HVX or some other cheapo video format if the RED hadn't come along.

[Brian Drysdale]

Have a closer look. That's actually a list of films where the sequence of letters "red" appears in the description. There were, as far as I am aware, no RED ones in 1913 :lol:

 

But OK, some of them are genuine RED productions. And these films are coming to a cinema near me ... when?

Most of that stuff would have been shot on HVX or some other cheapo video format if the RED hadn't come along.

 

Given the RED's price point I would expect most of its productions to either be distributed on TV or DVD. However, I suspect many features shot on film also never get a theatrical (or at best get a very limited theatrical distribution), they either go straight to DVD or TV.

 

Yes, I know that "The House of Flickers" (1925) wasn't shot on a RED, but it's easy enough to spot the ones that possibly were. Indeed, there are so many films which have a RED camera listed before the camera ever existed that it could also be a time machine. More likely some RED fan must enjoy messing around in imdb.

[Thomas James]

I downloaded in 720p the "Knowing " trailer starring Nicholus Cage that is supposed to be shot entirely Red. However it is very difficult to judge the quality of Red unles you see it projected in 4K.

[KH Martin]

I've done some writing for ICG and HDVIDEOPRO, and as a result covered WANTED and MOSTLY GHOSTLY. The Red shooting on WANTED was almost a kind of field test, where they shot alongside film cameras, but saw at some point that it wasn't going to be ideal for a number of factors, so NO Red went into it.

 

MOSTLY GHOSTLY was supposed to be the first feature to release on Red, around Halloween, on DVD direct, but I'm not sure if it did come out or not. The story I did ran a couple months back at:

http://icgmagazine.com/2008/aug/ghosts.html

[Thomas James]

Again how are you going to judge Red quality if Mostly Ghostly will only be released on a crummy low definition DVD ?

[Stephen Williams]

Again how are you going to judge Red quality if Mostly Ghostly will only be released on a crummy low definition DVD ?

 

Hi,

 

Film has always looked beter than video on DVD so I think you will get a very good idea.

 

Stephen

[Keith Walters]

Hi,

 

Film has always looked beter than video on DVD so I think you will get a very good idea.

 

Stephen

Film originated footage looks better on VHS than video derived footage.

Because, resolution is NOT the issue. (Well, not for vast majority of the viewing public.

Otherwise about 1.8 billion VHS VCRs would never have been sold).

 

The issue is dynamic range, or, what percentage of pixels are wasted transmitting "11111111"

A nasty, clippy video picture is going to look just as nasty and clippy whether it's released on Blu-Ray, DVD, VHS or YouTube.

 

But clearly some people desperately want the issue to be resolution, purely because a certain camera manfacturer offers high resolution at an attractive price.

 

And on that subject, I've recently had the opportunity to compare quite a few Blu-Ray movie releases with their DVD counterparts on a 50" "true HD" LCD TV. In most cases I'm damned if I can tell the difference between genuine 1080p from Blu-Ray discs and 1080p up-conversions from regular DVDs.

 

And before you suggest there's something wrong with my equipment and/or my eyes, in some cases I can see a difference, but not many.

 

People used to waffle (many still do) about the alleged superiority of LaserDisc over DVD, but nearly all the more recent releases I've ever seen were clearly mastered from 3/4" videptape!

[Michel Hafner]

And on that subject, I've recently had the opportunity to compare quite a few Blu-Ray movie releases with their DVD counterparts on a 50" "true HD" LCD TV. In most cases I'm damned if I can tell the difference between genuine 1080p from Blu-Ray discs and 1080p up-conversions from regular DVDs.

Hm. I have seen maybe 300 HD discs the last 2 years and there was not a single one where the resolution difference between the HD and the DVD was not obvious to brutal. No, I'm not saying I watched the same 200 on DVD in parallel. But I know how DVD looks on my system, even the best DVDs. It was not an LCD monitor, though, but 1080p projection onto 3.5m wide screen.

[Keith Walters]

Hm. I have seen maybe 300 HD discs the last 2 years and there was not a single one where the resolution difference between the HD and the DVD was not obvious to brutal. No, I'm not saying I watched the same 200 on DVD in parallel. But I know how DVD looks on my system, even the best DVDs. It was not an LCD monitor, though, but 1080p projection onto 3.5m wide screen.

Hm. Well all I can tell you is that just about all the discs I saw were fairly recent big-budget releases which were presumably scanned at HD resolution first and the SD release down-converted from that.

 

Without knowing the details of your system or the naybe 300/200 (which is it?) discs, I can't really comment, but I could imagine you might have been comparing pre-HD SD scans with state-of-the-art HD re-scans, which is what we specifically set out to avoid.

[Walter Graff]

And on that subject, I've recently had the opportunity to compare quite a few Blu-Ray movie releases with their DVD counterparts on a 50" "true HD" LCD TV. In most cases I'm damned if I can tell the difference between genuine 1080p from Blu-Ray discs and 1080p up-conversions from regular DVDs.

 

About the only thing that matters is how far you sit from the TV. In most all scenarios, spending additional money on a 1080p television is like throwing money down the garbage disposal. Regardless of how much "resolution" your source is, you simply can not see it depending on your distance from the set.

[Keith Walters]

About the only thing that matters is how far you sit from the TV. In most all scenarios, spending additional money on a 1080p television is like throwing money down the garbage disposal. Regardless of how much "resolution" your source is, you simply can not see it depending on your distance from the set.

A lot of that comes from the fact that for generations we've been used to either watching movies on huge cinema screens whose main function was to be able to show the same picture to as many people as possible, or on interlace-scan TV sets which were designed to be viewed from the opposite side of the average living room, (any closer and interlace flicker starts to become intrusive).

It's no accident that when room and budget permitted, 25 inch TV's were for generations by far the most popular screen size.

It's hard to get people's heads around the fact that, because of the total abscence of screen flicker you can either sit a lot closer to a Plasma or LCD TV, or have a much larger screen at the same viewing distance.

[Michel Hafner]

Without knowing the details of your system or the naybe 300/200 (which is it?) discs, I can't really comment, but I could imagine you might have been comparing pre-HD SD scans with state-of-the-art HD re-scans, which is what we specifically set out to avoid.

No. Anyway, there are many examples out there on the net with the same stills from the DVD and the HD, the DVD upscaled to 1080p for comparison. There is no comparison if the HD is high quality. If they would look basically the same HD would look basically the same as SD. And we all know that is not the case. Either that or Blu Rays suddenly lose their HD detail when they are mastered from the studio tapes. That ain't usually the case either. But there are old transfers around with barely 720p detail and some films are just not that sharp to begin with. So the difference is not always big. Even some upscaled SD has been put on HD disks. That's looks marginally better than DVD, of course. Appreciating HD detail depends a lot on viewing conditions, though.

Some examples here: http://chidragon.thedessie.com/bdcomp/

[Thomas James]

So what is this religious experience that Jim Jannard talks about so much when big name movie directors that are skeptical about digital instantly becaome converted when they see 4K projected for the first time in their lives ?

[Stephen Williams]

So what is this religious experience that Jim Jannard talks about so much when big name movie directors that are skeptical about digital instantly becaome converted when they see 4K projected for the first time in their lives ?

 

Hi,

 

Red digitally projected at 4K at IBC was Very impressive, I found the Arri 2k S16 demo very good as well. I think it's more to do with the projection than the origination. I have yet to see RED projected from film.

 

Stephen

[Walter Graff]

So what is this religious experience that Jim Jannard talks about so much when big name movie directors that are skeptical about digital instantly becaome converted when they see 4K projected for the first time in their lives ?

 

 

It's called marketing. More specifically marketing to monkeys. More of what you do each day has a bigger connection to your brain stem (your reptilian brain) than your higher brain power. From the food you choose to eat, to the color shirt you decide to wear, your million year old brain has more to do with what conscious decisions you make. We are very close to chimps in terms of DNA and even closer in the way we think. Marketers try to use alpha association to make their products seem 'better'. It is a simple concept that says if an 'alpha' uses a product, you will respect that product more and want it more. By trying to say that RED is used on many features and that many "alpha" directors love RED, they are branding their camera as the camera of choice amongst those 'we look up to' and hence we will want their product more. It's not much different than some of the primate research. In some recent research, monkeys were given two choices. One, push a button and get a cup of their favorite orange sugary drink. It's a drink so popular and so addictive to monkeys that they would kill each other to get it. Choice number two is to push a button and on a screen they will be shown alpha moneys. These are not even moneys they have ever seen before, simply moneys that have the appearance and colorings that say they are alpha. And given the same choice over and over, the moneys will pick looking at photos of the alpha monkey rather than get instant gratification with their favorite sugary drink. Companies use the same tricks to get you to think their product is better than any other. And it works. When someone posted once that Steven Spielberg had an HVX200, it spread like wildfire on the web and gave the HVX instant appeal, but more important, made the HVX seem like more than what it was. This form of association marketing is more important than anything else you can do in selling a product.

[Keith Walters]

Hi,

 

Red digitally projected at 4K at IBC was Very impressive, I found the Arri 2k S16 demo very good as well. I think it's more to do with the projection than the origination. I have yet to see RED projected from film.

 

Stephen

I have yet to see RED projected from anything.

 

With the right source material digital projection can look impressive, but just about the cinema digital projectors I've seen are the LCD type and there's no such thing as black with those. With film, when the scene goes from daylight to darkness, the whole cinema goes dark. With LCD projectors the dark scenes tend to look like the house lights have been left on!

 

I have no doubt digital projectors will eventually supplant film types, but they will need to get a lot better, cheaper, and more reliable first.

[Keith Walters]

So what is this religious experience that Jim Jannard talks about so much when big name movie directors that are skeptical about digital instantly becaome converted when they see 4K projected for the first time in their lives ?

Those Sony 4K projectors have been around for a few years now. I seriously too many Industry heavyweights would not have taken the opportunity to see one in action.

 

But it's another same ol' same ol'. There is absolutely no correlation between shooting digitally and projecting digitally. Those are two completely unrelated technologies with totally different engineering challenges. If it looks good shot digitally and projected digitally, chances are it's going to look even better shot on film and projected digitally. There is nothing about a digital projector that magically "balances" the deficiencies of an electronic camera. That is just ignorant techno-voodoo.

 

Speaking of religious experiences, isn't it strange the lack of fanfare when it was announced on Reduser that they have just now caught up with the RED camera backlog? So now, (barring of course those of us with a bad attitude who have no doubt been placed on the never-sell-a-RED-to-this-bastard-at-any-price list :lol: ) anybody who wants to buy a RED presumably simply has to front up with the cash and it's theirs. (They do strongly recommend you phone first, but there appears to be only a small delay).

 

I would have thought that was a major milestone myself, but JJ hasn't commented at all.

 

Then again, maybe he doesn't want to be drawn on how many REDs have actually been sold and taken delivery of....