Lance Flores

We are going to include 4K scanning to our Post Labs in San Antonio at our new studio. Very interested in installing multiple Masters and Recording systems at our new facility. Anyone have extensive experience that can comment on performance and reliability?

Hi All,

 

I am trying to put together some information for an independent production company planning to shoot a feature next year in the UK. The director wants to know what is more cost efficient, shooting with the new Arri D-21 or shooting 35mm 3 or 2 perf and going through a DI. With a shooting ratio of 8:1, 2 cameras on set with the need for more for a few large crowd scenes and a planned 6 week shoot time. There is also some VFX work needed and some quite considerable grading will be required.

 

Is there any information which gives a side by side comparison of the 2 workflows and their price implications? Or if anyone has sample budgets for both.

 

All help will be great appreciated.

 

Thanks

Josh

Hardly enough information to make a recommendation. Like .. I need to drive to L.A.; from where? Okay how about one of the BMW sports model cars. Didn't work? You didn't mention you were taking a family of 6 and the two family pets.

First of all what is your responsibility to the Director or he to you? Sounds like he has limited experience. There are a lot of experts available and I would recommend looking at the experience of the people you taking advice. If your Director doesn't understand digital and your team doesn't have experience in digital cinema, then the absolute answer is to shoot film even if you expect to average that many takes. If you can find a team then you should consider digital cinema. Depends what your goal and intermediate objectives are specified.

I initially was going to shoot our BMM project 2 perf. After evaluating our long term goals and available (and emerging) technologies, decided on a 4K 4:4:4 acquisition and designed a highly optimized workflow to accommodate the process from acquisition to film print-ready and watermarked 4K Digital Cinema delivery. If you have access to such a work flow that this is well worth considering. If you can?t get a work flow that substantially more efficient than film then you should use film, though 2 perf may not be your optimum format, and just a fantasy shoot. Don?t know what your goal specification.

I depend on my well experienced cinematography team and my own extensive technology experience to make the call for our visual rendering of the production guided by the specifications set for optimum production value and budget. It is the story and the effective interpretation, performance and rendering of the story that is important. Visual capture and manipulation is an important part, but still, only a part. Present a comprehensive list of your objectives and find the expertise, some you may find here, then go with your decision and don?t look back.

DCS President and Co-founder James Mathers will be a featured speaker at the next L.A. RED User Group Meeting to be held at Kappa Studios in Burbank on September 6th. More details to come.

goto http://www.digitalcinemasociety.org

I happen to like Daschunds! They're unsurpassed for keeping your house free of Platypus and other vermin!

I am surprised that someone with a name like "Jochen Schmidt Hambrock" can't spell "Daschund":-)

I have four dachshunds and I must acknowledge that they have been very successful in preventing a platypus infestation hear in Texas. They're pretty good at keeping the cats at bay, but they only seem to keep the squirrels well exercised. BTW, do platypus fair better on the bar-b-que than armadillos?

I guess you are right, I just always like to see what other people -independent from whoever is trying to get me to buy into whatever is that are selling, is saying about said product before I jump into the fire. Call it skepticism if you will, I just rather have as much info about some new fangled technology before I make up my decisions, especially when "the end of film" or similar claim is part of their PR/ ad campaign. That is all . . .

Saul - try http://www.digitalcinemasociety.org/ Digital Cinema Society. James Mathers is a co-founder and is well respected. Done both film and digital cinematography and is shooting his second feature film with the RED. Also the DP on the film we're in prep with now. Take a look at previous posts. I talk to Jim occasionally from the shoot, but I haven't checked for his public responses on the DCS site recently. Try the site, there might be some straight answers.

Lance,

 

care must be taken whenever judging the merit of the camera based upon projection. It is not mathematically possible to have both satisfied *everywhere* with some of the current techniques used in signal processing in cameras:

 

(1) (more) accurate reproduction of luminance detail

(2) color fidelity near saturated primary colors

 

Hence, any novice analysis that sees the imperfection manifested in (1) or (2) may be wrongly attributed to the power of a camera.

DJ - I'm well aware of such, do a search of my posts and background. Thanks

i have always tried to stay out of this bitchy Red stuff , but i dont want a see a frame on my 19" computer screen i want to a see a film out on a 40' wide screen . It should be a digital projection but it wont be because there arnt enough cinemas with that option so i have to compare Red [ DI out film ] with a 35mm the same . Until then all this talk is just really poop !! .

I agree with you John. My point exactly. I need to see a high quality projection of a finish to make a determination about using the camera. Seems you're an elitist if you're not a true believer. Haven't checked this forum for a while.

By the way, I'll be in Paris to close with our European co-producer/distributor and will be in London to meet with our composer Dan Bewick, a U.K. producer we'll be working with on some projects, and so other friends and cast. Join us for a drink?

Now this is the kind of elitist junk that wastes more forum space

All i need is to get experienced DP's to give me the answers. Well then lets sit and wait for the final word from these experienced DP's.god forbid any individual who isn't has anything valuable to say.

 

Redcode raw files are available in the link I posted. They are there for you to play with. They are raw files not compressed ( other than the cams wavelet cpmress), dithered or other wise. Just what the cam put out. Play with them and see what you get. Lance you can wait for the screening room to get built and the experienced dp's to tell you what to think.

About what I expected. Take everything out of context so you can whine a little more. If your read the post you would have known that Jim had already shot a feature film and is on his second with the RED. Purchase or rent a camera and satisfy you self to your own expectations. I can't afford not to have a well experienced professional give me an evaluation. I'm responsible for other peoples investments.

Thought I'd check in and see if anything has changed. Evidently not, but here's some leads to reliable information on RED productions. Our DP for The Black Messiah Murders which we begin pre-production this week, has already shot a feature film with the RED and is presently on his second RED feature film Montana Amazon http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1208711/ . I am not sold on the RED for our production but Jim thinks with the additional updates it will do a fine job. I am hedging my bet, tentatively scheduling cameras intended for a different picture (for a shoot in London/Ethiopia) or going to a 2 perf 35 for this film, just in case I'm not convinced about the RED.

I don't see how anyone expects to take anything seriously unless they have access to the screening room for the rushes of production shoots. This is why we are asking Grace & Wild to build a screening room so we can view 2K & 4K our rushes from post system. What people hope to get from extremely compressed, dithered, and very optimized data I can't imagine. There is so much noise from processing error and anomalies it is impossible to make anything but a speculative judgment. You can get a general feel from 720 or HD. Even when I gone from 2K proxy viewing to a 2k view of a 4K 12/14 bit color depth raw processed image I am overwhelmed by the difference. The only thing I believe is valuable on this forum are actual reports of production experiences with the camera.

Geezz guys, give it a rest. You need to get information from experienced credible DP's who are pushing the camera limits on the set and can provide objective critique of the product.

I totally agree with you. I've been skeptical too, and I still feel I was in the right, but I hate to see someone come along and try to report an actual experience with the camera only for it to turn into name calling by the 3rd reply.

I was under the impression that Scratch did all of this as well. Are you inferring that you are beta testing another platform which performs in a similar way to scratch ?

 

jb

We tested four of the coloring and conforming post products and chose the Piranha Cinema 5. It did much more for far less the cost and had the fastest render of all the machines. We're purchasing two that will have multi fiber channels connections to the Linux SAN with all fiber channel drives. This was the fastest, and most reliable system we found that had everything we wanted and interfaced well to our Final Cut Pro, sound systems, in a 4K pipeline. If anyone interested in seeing the set up we'll be four-walling the system over at Grace & Wild, Inc. studios, Farmington Hills, Michigan in a few weeks.

How bout Ashley Wilkes?

 

I really wonder how many people will come up with the idea of what the names mean...

 

Why ship a new camera or show it when really your new camera is 100%... now in some people's minds yes... but in mind... I still wait on the Red One for another year...

Frankly, my dear . . .

Actually it is more than the prism. It is also in the chain of electronics as in the DSP, and the CCDs themselves. The more a DSP can process per sample the better the color rendition and the better a CCD can "see" the more color it can reproduce. Sony has introduced a number of chip enhancements over the last few years to make up for the physical and inherent loss of color gamut by electronic cameras.

 

I don't believe this conversation does justice because it seems to be going in the direction that makes it seem that high end video cameras have trouble seeing all the colors they need to and that in fact video cameras can't see colors well at all. Just to wear the other shoe... No a video camera, nor a film camera for that matter see all the color in a CIE chart.

<snip>

And the F23 especially records skin tones very well. With quality lenses it, in my opinion is a better and more pleasing picture than 16mm outputs.

I thinks Bruce is correct in that Max's responses are more emotional than informed. I had a chance to test the F23 and their color gamut claim. It does have a greater color depth than film, and is and excellent alternative to shooting 16mm for television, except for the price. Lot of bells and whistles, but like the lens matching and a few other things. Expensive. Essentially the CCD vertical smearing problem has been resolved. We shot a fair complected blond model and the skin tones were perfect, and there was plenty of detail (data) to manipulate it in post.

Also tested the Phantom 2k with the new mask (but not the new correction filter) were shot at 500fps 360 degree shutter of two dancers. The male unclad torso w/black slacks medium completion and the female light-medium completion, light chestnut hair wearing a white high sheen satin finish rayon dance dress. At post on both Smoke and Piranha Cinema the skin tones were magnificent and image excellent detail. The camera had plenty of latitude and 42 bit color depth 14 bit sensor (12bits processed) rendered a depth great enough to control shadow and mid-range for such a high frame rate at post.

So far we've evaluated about 4TB of image data from the Dalsa Origin, Phantom HD & 65 w & w/o rev B sensor, F950 and F23. Jim Mathers is continuing the evaluation on Red and has great familiarity with Origin I believe, and recently I had an opportunity to see and manipulate some raw image data from the Genesis. I haven't seen a problem with any as far as color range deficiency that affected flesh tones. Some seem to be better than others and the white blow out just needs to be considered in the lighting design. It just seems for digital cinema you have to shoot for post and maintain all the lighting discipline you maintain for film so you can acquire as much detail and color data in the raw format. Almost all the material I've seen linked from here is extremely compressed and there is no credible way of evaluating except for essential cinematography techniques, lighting, focus, framing, etc., you gotta look at a 2k or 4k projected on a large screen.

I'd surely use the F23 over 16mm if the price was comparable, rental may be reasonable, I haven't seen the rates. The camera cost is high. About $220K-$240K depending what you need, but it's still an HD not 2K camera, an extremely high-end digital hdtv camera with lots of bells and whistles for HD as the end product.

My main impression from the test is "don't shoot on 250 ASA film at night and underexpose it three stops or more..."

 

I guess it suggests that it is easier to screw up film if you don't know what you are doing.

 

My other impression was that, ignoring all the grain and the focus mistakes, the fine detail was similar in both, the highlight latitude was wider with film, underexposure latitude was better with digital. It's hard to make any good judgments about fleshtones in the test.

The latter was my take as well. The point is well taken about film as the cinematographer is taking, in essence, into account the post process during the acquisition, that's why the skin tone is, typically, more finished when it is presented. More processing is done at negative and print. Digital is usually just given basic correction. With the (almost) 4K RGB Dalsa Origin data I've been working with, skin tone, inter alia, I found it is rather easily corrected in 4K finishing in Smoke or Piranha, which is what we use. Some of what the cinematographer does in film acquisition is otherwise differed to post when acquiring digitally. For =>2K digital is somewhat forgiving in the error margins of exposure (except for near over exposure) . . . but, not for poor cinematographic techniques, nothing can fix that.

A couple of weeks ago I was at a test shoot, for the F23 and Phantom HD with the new B rev sensor, processing inline real-time with the IRIDAS and monitoring with a Cinetal 4:4:4 HD waveform monitor and vectorscope. The colour, especially the skintones were just gorgeous. I think, had the Red been processed similarly the results would much better. The film acquisition could have been much better as well, but we all know that.

I believe the tests were shot by film students. The film results are odd -- rather grainier than you'd expect. They say they shot everything with 250 stock, maybe it was Fuji Eterna 250D, I don't know, but the night stuff is quite underexposed.

It's hard to interpret other people's data. I just puled up the images. Don't know what to think exactly. I waiting on Jim's Red data, I was going to send him a drive to put it on and start working on it with on Smoke or Parahna. I've got to make a decision soon.

Not sure what stock they used on the DVD example

or others, but still nice of them to post it.

 

Swedish Post House

Thanks Will - I'll call them today before it gets too late.

Maybe he is....

 

Hmm. Call me cynical....

 

It's in the RED sub forum. Alarm Number 1.

It's from a poster who joined a few hours ago. Alarm number 2.

No Location. Alarm number 3

has already clocked up 10 posts....all effusive about Red. Alarm number 4.

Adam "Smith" ???

 

Nahhhhhhh

 

(and hey. Im ready to shoot Red. Have at least 2 films next year going this way)

 

jb

Okay. You're cynical - but rightly so. The guy must have some experience though, over two centuries old. Checked profile - nothing there. So much for real names.

<snip>... and creating a website, after much prodding from my agent.

<snip>

Anyway, check it out:

 

http://www.davidmullenasc.com

Very nice. Only recommendation is that your agent get a bigger stick.

What, no Austin? (I'd say El Paso....But I'm the only guy I know here, shooting film)

James you could merge El Paso with Luxembourg :D

Hi, The one I shot with in the summer was quite hopeless, pleased it's now usable.

 

Stephen

I understand Stephen, that's why it wasn't in our plans for our current project.

For a small percentage, I think one factor is that some of the Middle Eastern and Indian names are quite long, so they are hesitant about using them as a User Name. Maybe some sort of shortened version would be OK in those cases.

When I was in semiconductor R&D, one of the physicists in my group who was Indian, had a long first name and a very long last name. We talked about his office name plate which done in two panels in order present his full name. He said he had the operations department make them that way because it frightened the sales guys, and they wouldn't come into his office and ask stupid questions.

I checked Tim's registration page and this is the FIRST thing you see:

 

So why do so many new people seem to skip the first instruction listed???

"READ THIS - IT'S NOT LONG"

Perhaps the title is too long for most.

Phil, who says an improvement translates to correcting a problem? It may have been perfectly acceptable before but even better now. Do you seriously think that there is ANY product out there (forget just the film industry) that was not improved over the course of its lifespan? The fact that RED brought back in the first 100 to give all the early adopters the improvements is generous, not something to harp on. And I'm sure that if there was a current RED owner who yelled & screamed that he wanted to leave his camera just the way it was then RED would say fine & dandy, though I can't imagine anyone not wanting an improved product.

Well said, Mitch. Just shot the improved Phantom HD. I think this upgrading products might just catch on.

All the 35mm single-sensor digital cameras like the Arri-D20, Phantom, Dalsa, have been under continuous refinement since they first came out -- they have never been "finished", which is why they have mostly been for rental-only.

 

I think more costumers have been happier to get their RED's, even unfinished, than to have them delayed. Especially since the RED team has been so diligent about doing the upgrades free of charge, and now even swapping out the early cameras. In the meanwhile, these early customers have had a lot of input into how the camera gets modified.

 

It's just a different model of working than releasing the DVX100, let's say, and then giving all the improvements the costumers demanded in the DVX100B a year later.

 

Having spent a day with many early RED owners at the big LART event testing the cameras, they are all pretty happy about their purchases -- I mean, why not? Almost every problem they run into is getting addressed one way or another, so they will not get penalized for being an early adopter.

 

I also think that the pressure of getting these problems worked out for the owners has accelerated to pace of refinement for the RED compared to the rental-only Arri-D20, for example, so the camera will be stronger for that.

 

Sure, maybe they should have released the original set of cameras in January 2008 instead of September 2007, but I'm not sure if that's worth harping on.

Quite agree David. I must say, you are among a few productive contributors to this forum, that makes it worth while coming back. Reflective of the type work you've done. Having worked so long on the bleeding edge of technology I appreciate what Red is attempting to accomplish. Incredible task. They're not there yet, but I'm impressed with their dedication to their customer base. I think they'll be just fine.

Its all very well doing long-continuos shots in a drama or in restricted circumstances, but doing long shots in a fantasy with sprawling locations and explosive action (gun shots, explosions) is an incredible achievment.

 

After all, compare Hitchock's Rope with Under Capricorn - Rope with a simple set succeeded, while the extra level of complication in Under Capricorn beat Hitchcock to abondon the technique.

 

And quite possibly the long takes in Children of Men were carefully chosen, to show the enduring lengths the protaganist goes to get through.

Excellent film, one of the best film rendered stories, and effective use of long takes I've seen lately. Probably can not be appreciated much by the amphetamine driven MTV audience, but that's what freedom of expression is all about isn't it. I think its artistic acclaim is deserved.

I was looking this morning at our web site before we did an update, and on our "Theatrical Productions" page <http://www.mockingbirdfilms.com/page2a.html> there was a Google banner ad promoting Country Mice & City Mice. Had the following stating they were waiting for delivery of their RED One camera delivery. I don't know if it ad is still there, because Google changes them throughout the day. Thought you Red guys might be interested.

- - - - -

COUNTRY MICE & CITY MICE

Production Status

December 1st, 2007

We’re still aiming to begin production in February. Our Red camera is slated for delivery at that time.

In the first weeks, we’ll focus on Greater Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Las Vegas Metro, and Phoenix Metro, interviewing local planners, academics, and historians. With several sequences edited, we’ll attempt to raise money to travel to other metropolitan areas.

As I talked about months ago, the film will be primarily a history of suburban growth in the United States - stepping out of history-mode occasionally to view case studies of specific metro regions like those mentioned above.

With research on the history part of things pretty well wrapped up, I’ve been creating a dossier on each particular region, scouring the archives of Planetizen, and every other planning news aggregator. It’s been really enlightening - finding patterns in the local battles that each region has faced over the years. The human scale and the wide range of experience different people share really do help anchor the themes we’re exploring.