Phil Connolly

I'd be fine using a PINK camera too, but it would make accessorising more difficult, maybe its time for Portabrace to move past blue and expand the line

The more I think about it, the more it has to do with the image of "Masculinity" and the products serve to reinforce the masculinity of its users. Hence why Red has lots of fanboys, but very few fangirls. I know the camera department tends to skew male, thats not a good thing. It's a shame Red feels the need to reinforce that stereotype. I only have a male perspective on this but I get a sense that Red's marketing and industrial design risks alienating female DOP's (and most sensible male ones). Sure a camera's not a fashion accessory, well it shouldn't be. But Red has kind have made it one, or tried to make it one, with the skulls and the rhetoric. Its not an outlandish statement to accuse RED of producing a Masculine camera. Why does a camera need to be gendered in its design, makes no sense? I guess its partially due to its creators previous experience in fashion. Red markets its products in the same way Oakley sunglasses did. Most cameras are Utilitarian in design, 'form follows function' . Red was the first digital cinema companies to push a particular strong design brand. I guess theres nothing wrong with that in principle, but less of the skulls please. When Bic released a "for Her" pen it was ridiculed (https://www.amazon.co.uk/BiC-Her-Ball-Pen-Black/dp/B004FTF6H4) - Reds marketing/design opens them up to ridicule for exactly the same reasons Meanwhile, Why would I want an "Alexa"? Thats a girls name, ugh!

I guess it worked because it filled a niche - they were pushing the small bodies when 3D was a thing and it filled the 4K gap for Netflix etc... The cameras had advantages over the competition so people put up with the design "aesthetic". I don't think most users particular responded to the marketing - just that the Red One/Epic filled a niche in the market not served by other manufacturers. Things have moved on with Venice and Varicam 4k, Alexa Mini and LF. I agree the continued "rebel" thing is strange at the prices they are now charging. If anyone is shaking up the market its Blackmagic not Red. I wonder if it still is "working" on a $53k camera (or $79k for VV), beyond the fanboys are people still investing in then? Even at the Raven end, they are as rare as hen's teeth over here compared to FS7's, C300's and Ursa Minis. When you look at the specs on Netflix shows increasingly the big budget stuff is Alexa 65 and Varicam. I would imagine a lot of Netflix is going to move over the Alexa LF now, removing the main reason to own a Red. If you had $100k to spend on a camera system - buying an Arri would make more business sense. They tend to rent for more, more often and seem to have much better resale value. Back in the day you could buy 2 Reds for the price of one Arri - that's no longer the case. Maybe thats why they are making the phone. Which is perhaps a shrewd idea - they don't seem able to compete with Blackmagic, Sony et al on price. Arri has the high end sewn up and the middle ground is getting crowded. At that point pivoting onto consumer tech products, with its potentially vast market, make's sense. Still they are going to have their work cut out for them, competing against Samsung and Apple. This new Kill-O-Zap phone will need to be pretty special and re-enforce my fragile masculinity with some cool spikes, before I do away my trusty Galaxy S8

Its really impressive, no idea what camera they are using. I'm super impressed by JK Simmons performance's so far, some really subtle acting sometimes to differentiate the two versions of "Howard". You can tell the difference between the two characters but its not over done.

In what sense? - making silly jokes about RED's questionable design choices or the general "film is war" design choices that RED makes. In all seriousness, the last camera, I would own would be called a "Weapon" even if it was 8k. (8k = also silly) I'm not accusing RED of inciting violence of course (that would be a "hot take" too far). But I find the whole Skulls and bomb viewfinders - very silly and not that appropriate on a film set. I guess you could cover it with gaffa tape and Arri stickers to make it look more presentable.

Nah, flannel shirts are for Digital/Analogue Bolex users. To properly fit in with the design of Red cameras you need to look like an extra from Mad Max. I've got a black riveted jacket that looks a treat when partnered with the new the "RED: Bazooka camera", "RED:Vengeance Viewfinder" and "RED:My enemies die screaming - variable ND"

Its a black box with a skull on it, a long way from pretty.

You also need a fogger or Hazer to make the beam visible

I like 360 video that uses CGI video - since its easier to include interesting lighting and camera moves. The big problem with 360 live action is a locked off camera seems the norm. I guess moving the camera is difficult if your trying to hide the rig. There are some pretty good 180 degree videos that can be viewed with a VR headset, it gives you some look around and the VR experience - but the crew can be hidden behind the camera and thus do camera moves. I agree with Curt about the quality - so many of these videos are super compressed and low res enough to be pointless. I guess you need a lot of pixels to properly map to a 360 view. Maybe an 8K source file to do it properly - thats going to melt your typical phone based VR headset. For instance I've yet to see a 360 video on youtube that doesn't look horrible on a headset - the bandwidth isn't there.

I think the blowups have always been an issue with Nolan's films. Most IMAX DMR films are taken from either fresh scan of the negative or DI file from a neg scan. So the process Nolan takes by colour timing first and scanning an element thats a few generations down seems strange. Your still going to have to do a digital blow up from 70 or 35 to 15/70 - so why not colour time digitally rather then doing it photochemically and save a generation. I feel the desire to be analogue in all things hurts the finished result. Since on an IMAX screen its a bit enlargement and any optical generation loss is going to show. I didn't see Dunkirk projected - but the last 2 Batman films had the problem. The 35mm segments looked like arse, super grainy for anamorphic 35mm. Sure 35mm will look bad when its intercut between 15/70mm and you asking the audience to make a direct comparison. But I saw some super 35 Harry Potter to 15/70mm blowups that looked much better. I would say the Nolan IMAX blow ups look worse then most 35mm DMR blowups to 15/70mm. So the idea of sticking to photochemical really hurts the final quality since your degrading the smaller format and suffering a generation loss you wouldn't get if you'd just scanned the camera neg at 6k/8k. Then to make it worse its intercut with pristine contact printed 15/70 of the camera neg which is going to highlight the differences more. 5/70mm blown up to IMAX with modern stocks should look pretty flawless. I do find the Nolan IMAX approach hard work - sure shooting on large format should be applauded. But intercutting different formats and aspect ratios is quite jarring. As an audience member it takes me out the film because it forces me to notice the technology. Switching formats and textures makes sense if your having a clear storytelling point, e.g the cuts between 35mm and MiniDV in Run Lola Run are motivated by the script - but in the Nolan films it seems quite random and the format is more about what camera could get what shot rather then the specific frame to tell the right story. I think Hunger games 2 had a better idea of one long 50min sequence in IMAX, was more consistent and worked for the storytelling rather then against it. I'm also not a fan of different aspect ratios for different formats of the film. Surely you have one composition thats the correct one and everything else won't have the same power. Thats my problem with IMAX increasingly offering films in taller aspect ratios that were composed in 2.39:1 and robbing the film of its original intent. Q: What do my parents and IMAX have in common? A: They both mess up the aspect ratio when they screen films (sorry)

I've seen 360 work for performance type stuff. A 360 degree concert video tends to work, although you have a shot that may include both the performer and the audience - your naturally going to focus on the performer. It has an in built focus - the audience know where to look. 360 gets annoying when there's too much head turning involved. I saw some cirque do soleil videos that had that problem - yes it was immersive and you feel like your surrounded by the performers... but the downside is you end up with clowns behind you and the last thing I want is to be surrounded by clowns. I think in some ways its a bit like the difference between "theatre in the round" and "proscenium arch". In the former most of the audience get a similar experience but is less immersive and in the latter the audience tend to get very different experiences. I got a Gear VR headset free with my last phone and I used it a lot for the first week, watched loads of 360 videos and now it tends to sit on the shelf. I guess I'm a proscenium arch kind of person

As interesting as 360 content is, its very difficult to apply the skills of narrative cinematography onto the process. Primarily everything is in shot - lighting, crew, boom poles, camera support etc... So the challenge of creating dramatic lighting is difficult - since light fixtures are visible. How do you do smooth camera movement when dollys etc risk being in shot. You can't vary the shot size and its difficult to control where the viewer looks using the usual tools of framing, aspect ratio and depth of field. I think 360 works well for actuality footage and making the viewer feel present, but it robs cinematographers of their basic toolset. So its very challenging to work with. I've seen some cool stuff on 360 video but its more about the spectacle of the place or the subject matter - photography and lighting tends to be less impressive. Personally I'm someone interested in traditional storytelling. I like the way in cinema we can control what the audience see and hear and 360 moves away from that. I want the composition to matter and the camera to be part of the storytelling. Making that work in 360 is going to be much more challenging. The narrative stuff I've seen in 360 tends to use CGI more since it affords more control. I'm sure creative people might be able to make it work and develop a new grammar for 360 film making. Its exciting in the sense, that right now we don't have established rules. Personal taste also comes into it Personally I some times find it frustrating when I don't know where to look. I worry I'm missing something by looking in the 'wrong' direction. Do I want the audience to be able to look at anything or do I want them to look at the important thing in the scene at any point? I'm sure there are ways to resolve this and it will be interesting to see if 360 becomes a bigger thing. Right the 360 videos I've seen that that work, remind me of traditional IMAX documentaries - in the sense you have wide vistas filling your vision and slow edits work better. So more appropriate for documentary then narrative. Fast cutting narrative type films are still problematic on classic IMAX screens - so maybe those kind of films work as a template

I think anyone who shot SD digital in the late 90's early 00's would be fine. The iphone after all is luxury to compared to cameras (PD150/XL1) that many indie filmmakers had to do battle with.

It also depends on how you stage the shots. Pulling your own focus on shallow DOF is fine if there's not too much movement. So if your doing elegant Fincher style locked of shots its easier to pull focus. If the camera operating side is complicated, then its more difficult to do both. If you look at multi-cam sitcom and ents TV those camera operators pull their own focus and its fine. TV studio Ped operators have to do everything and could be asked to crab the camera, while booming down, while zooing in and pulling focus. You need 3 hands to do some moves on a ped. In those situations DOF is your friend and thats why studio sitcoms/shows tend to have such deep focus, its to give the ped ops a fighting chance. 2/3inch sensors help too.

Doesn't sound too crazy apart from the weight slowing you down. Lack of ND would be annoying and require a Mattbox. Its probably going to be PL mount so most zooms are going to be big heavy etc... I think the positives would be that its good is low light, so you can use this to your advantage by perhaps needing smaller lights and also being able to stop down and get some depth of field. If your self shooting and pulling my own focus then a deep stop is your friend. I guess the Amira would be dream camera in this situation The Alexa also has a wide dynamic range - this can speed up lighting on set because you don't need to control contrast as much. On a lesser camera you might need to stick ND gel on a window to balance exposure and in the same situation you might get away without on the Alexa - blown highlights tend to look better on the Alexa then many cams. Working with cameras with poor dynamic range can slow you down. I did a shoot on the Blackmagic 4k last year and it was easy to send it into clipping. Lighting for these cameras takes longer, since you have to nail the exposure and they need good monitoring on set. Alexa can be treated a bit more like a film camera in the sense you've got more wiggle room. The other advantage to Alexa is the image tends to look good out the box, so less grading needed in post. You can edit the prores and have good looking footage with a simple grade with simple tools. Many RAW workflows require an additional transcode step an in some cases take a bit longer to grade. I'm considering a similar thing for my next project, I have access to a Sony FS7 so that would be obvious choice, especially if I self shoot (not decided). But I'm thinking the Alexa look is pretty special and the classics are getting cheaper to hire, so I wonder....

The CCD sensor requires more light - the Ikonoskop is native 200 ISO (which I assume is the same for the Bolex) vs the Native 800 ISO of the Blackmagic's CMOS sensor. I suppose one option might be to carry a spare blackmagic for those situations where you need the extra stop. We shot some night exteriors on the Ikon and it was pretty challenging to get enough exposure. We could only afford a 2KW generator which basically gave us 2 x 800 W Redheads - which don't do very much at 200iso. But we got away with underexposing and pushing in post - it got a bit (a lot) grainy but we found the neat video denoise plugins worked well enough to control the worst of the noise.

Not used the digital bolexs - but have used the Ikonoskop Acam - which I believe uses the same sensor. Things to note its not great in low light 200ISO and gets grainy fast if you push it (you make like that look) Its RAW so you can get the colour to look very nice - but takes a bit of work in the grade. The Ikonoskop looked quite strange out the box and needed time in the grade to nail. If your cropping to 4:3 I would be looking for some pretty wide glass, I would be looking for a 8 or 9mm to cover the wide- we used 16mm superspeeds the T1.3 was helpful with low light. 500Gb is probably about 90 mins of uncompressed 2k RAW. Heres some roughly graded ikonoskop footage I shot that has a similar vibe:

Nice footage, agree 50D might be a challenge for a whole film - is that Stoke Newington cemetery? Aways wanted to find an excuse to shoot a film there if thats the case. The short is very impressive - def detecting a Richard Williams influence there

Its an exciting time where the image from a phone can look decent on a big screen. Of course there are many better cameras (digital and film) in terms of technical quality - but if Soderberg likes the look and probably appreciates the simplicity of operation then it makes sense. If your self shooting - a tiny easy to use camera has its advantages. After watching Logan Lucky I get the sense that visual aesthetic is a lower priority for Soderberg behind story and performance - the lighting and exposure on that seemed rougher then his previous work. If light weight digital gear free's up a filmmaker to experiment, there's nothing wrong with that. He could use any shooting format he wants so using iphone represents a specific choice and Soderberg knows what he's doing.

Or if you want something proper a Philips FP16 can't really be beat

Something like zeiss zf would probaby do the trick. Small and light compared to film style lenses and nice and sharp

Its surly a technology thing - rights holders would nearly always prefer that copying doesn't happen. In terms of music CD's didn't have copy protection because at the time the designers probably assumed that it wasn't needed. CD's came out in 1982 and held about 640MB of data. At the time a home computer user might be rocking a ZX Spectrum with 16 or maybe 48Kb of storage. In the 80's it was inconceivable that home computers would be able to copy a CD. Fairlight samplers costing more then peoples houses had the ability to store 2 seconds of audio. Yes CD's could be copied onto compact cassette but at quite a big quality loss and loosing the ability to skip tracks - so thats self limiting. Sure you'd make a cassette for the car or your friend's but you'd still by a CD or LP for listening at home on your nice hi-fi. In the 90's when CD burners became a thing and harddisks got bigger - it was possible to make a perfect copy of CD and later good MP3's were probably a surprise to the industry and it wouldn't have occurred to them in the 80s to try and encrypt. Movies were harder to copy in the 80's you had quite a big generation loss going from VHS to VHS - and also VHS did have macrovision copy protection but it was easy to bypass. By the time DVD's and later BluRays were a thing - it was known that it was going to be possible to make digital copies using domestic computers. Hence the inclusion of copy protection which has become more sophisticated. I think copyright is an interesting thing to look at these days - especially with the amount of people repurposing and mashing up copyright material while putting it up on youtube. Only a fraction of this is considered "fair use"- but more recently rights holders (both video and audio) have started to understand that sometimes a more nuanced approach to copyright enforcement is better. Pulling all unapproved uses of copyright might be seen as bad by the fans (e.g Metallica vs Napster) and also allowing some instances of copyright theft improves your relationship with fandom. e,g Shorty after the announcement of Peter Capaldi this video was put on youtube: It uses footage from both Doctor Who and The Thick of It. Its on the boarderline of fair use and doesn't properly credit the source, so the rights holders probably could have got it pulled. Particularly because the content really isn't on brand for Doctor Who. However this video is part of the conversation people were having when Capaldi was announced and this video was widely shared and possibly helped hype the news of the casting. So its was probably more beneficial to not attempt to block it. They had every right to block it but decided not to. On the other hand Nicki Minaj pulled the fart remix of one of her videos pretty quick. On line their is this real grey area when it comes to mash ups, fan fiction, fan films etc... all these things technically could be considered copyright theft. But its great that the exist and important for the fandom of a franchise and helps keep it a healthy two way conversation. So in short everything expressed in a physical form automatically attracts copyright, the rights holder controls who can exploit the copyright and enforce how a work is shared and reused - but some copyright holders will allow some unlicensed illegal uses of the copyright work in some cases, if its not hurting them and they want too.... Fun lets now have a chorus of: (also technically copyright theft)

The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona and Terry Gilliam's Brazil is pretty funny in places (and looks great) Scott Pilgrim vs the world

Still even if your cropping 2 perf to 16:9, its still a 1.6X larger negative area then a 16:9 frame on super 16. So that would be a notable bump in quality. During the BBC's HD super 16 ban period - 2 perf 35mm cropped to 16:9 was considered good enough for HD. So if the cost of 2-perf works out as only marginally more expensive then super16 and less then 3 perf its possibly worthwhile, if 3 perf is unaffordable. The question of if the extra quality is worth the bump in cost would have to be decided with testing etc... but it is something you could consider - 16:9 2 perf isn't a completely stupid idea. You also get the benefit of 20min loads which you can't with super 16. Some times 35mm short ends are better priced then 16mm - so you might be able to shoot 2 perf cheaper then 16mm and benefit from a notable bump in quality... win win Of course a 2.40:1 - 2 perf 2.40:1 image is 3X larger then a 2.40:1 super 16 extraction so in that case 2 perf is a lot better. So for scope 2 perf is going to look vastly better then super 16.

At the mid price point the martin stuff is good - at the University we've got a Martin JEM - its not $3000 but still pretty spendy. Its good for fogging big areas like studios and we use it in the TV studio to make our moving lights cast beams on entertainment shows. Hazers are generally a bit more expensive then Disco fogger type smoke machines. You can pick those up in the $100 bracket and can be made to work. The main issue with foggers is they make clumps of thicker fog rather then smooth haze. But using desk fans and patience to waft the smoke about you can achieve a reasonably good even haze. I have one of these at home: https://www.maplin.co.uk/p/prosound-400w-smoke-machine-n41dz Its not perfect but for small locations can be doable. The issue with smaller machines is they are slower to warm up. But at that price point you can complain and can get the look you want if your careful