Carl Brighton

"I have a RED on order. Since the beginning I have been vested at #249. Does that make me a fool or an idiot in some peoples eyes?" Can you point out the posts where I've said everybody who had placed a deposit on a RED is an idiot? I can't seem to find them. And don't quote people out of context, it just make other people wonder how much of any posting you actually read. Since I have time on my hands, you're so interested in people, I have my laptop with me, and there is free wireless internet in this lounge, I shall attempt to answer your lengthly and generally incomprehensible post with an even longer, and hopefully more meaningful one! It would appear that you are really only "interested in people" who tell you what you want to hear; sadly I very much fear I will not be one of them. I don't know what your problem is, but as the old sayings go: "Any fool can ask a question a wise man can't answer." and "Just about any fool can be taught to act like a gentleman, but he'll still be an fool," and "Don't attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig". And no, I'm not calling you a fool, or a pig... I think the RED is an amazing piece of technology and its development is set to change visual entertainment industries beyond recognition. There is no question that it works, and it's only a matter of time before Jannard gets it into full production. How much time and how much it will cost him remain to be seen, but since the RED appears to be made mostly out of industry standard computer parts there's every reason to be optimistic that his schedule won't slip too much. Unfortunately, putting down a deposit on a RED does NOT automatically make you into an amazing person... What it will NOT do is change the careers and fortunes of a good percentage of the deposit holders, at least in the way they seem to imagine. Simply reading a lot of the drivel that is posted on REDUSER.net (and elsewhere) tells me (and anybody else who has actually been within two miles of a film set) that a good percentage of the posters/posers there have only the vaguest idea of how a professional movie, TV show or commercial actually gets made. As I said on my very first posting here, I am after information on the RED. REAL information, not the pie-in-the-sky guesswork of some amateur dreamer. The name of that forum says it all actually: "Reduser.net". What bloody "Red users"? Apart from Jannard, a few of his employees, Peter Jackson and his assistants, who the hell has "used" a RED? Yet if you blundered into that forum by accident and didn't know any better, you'd swear that half the movies in Hollywood were made using it! We keep reading this "Film is Dead!" rubbish; even Jannard has publicly stated on this forum that the RED does not, and was never designed to, replace 35mm film! There are already plenty of HD video cameras that have been used to make Hollywood blockbusters, yet most people still use film. Personally I don't think Jannard has done himself much good allowing this "American Idol" Fanboy culture to proliferate. There is a very real danger that up-and-coming but perfectly competent production companies who own REDs, will be discriminated against, because of the sheer number of cowboy outfits that will also spring up, purely on the basis that someone has managed to scare up enough credit to buy a basic RED system. I rather think it will be something like the situation confronting aspiring rock musicians in the 1970s and 80s. About that time, Ibanez and other Japanese companies were producing extremely good copies of American made Gibson and Fender guitars. My first real job was in a recording studio, and I can assure you that on tape or disc, nobody could pick the difference between the original and a Jap copy. They looked almost identical, they sounded the same and the manufacturing quality was easily as good. But nobody would take you seriously as a musician unless you had one of the much more expensive original American makes. This almost entirely to weed out time-wasters who'd been given a Les Paul copy last christmas and thought they were musicians. If you've ever watched the DVDs of the initial try-outs for American Idol (or its equivalents) you'll get some appreciation of the way totally talentless people can be utterly convinced they have someting to offer! And I rather think a similar problem is going to arise with production companies. Unless they can advertise that they've made programs/ads on film or other more expensive acquisition formats, nobody is going to take them seriously, at least not in the initial stages. And saying "Well guess what? That ad was shot with a RED!" isn't going to be particularly helpful either. Every professional can tell you stories of successful commercials that were shot for virtually zero budget in the Account Executive's kitchen or backyard, using supposedly non-broadcast video equipment, which they managed to get transferred to a "proper" broadcast format and nobody noticed. (In the early 1980s quite a few TV spots were done on low-band U-matic videotape, secretly transferred to 1" tape in the wee hours of the morning. I know; I did some of them, and some of them aired for years!:-) You only have to look at the situation with film festivals. Anything shot on film is automatically going to get a closer scrutiny by the selection committee, simply because it suggests you are more serious about your project, (and probably also becasue the expense of film will make you more careful with your shooting). Sorry, it's been a nice rant, but I have to cut this short ;)

I've just had a bit of a vision of the future. I've just come back from a sneak preview on a closed set using a pair of Arri D-20s coupled up to four, under US$1,000, 1920 x 1080 Korean-made 40" consumer type LCD TVs. Not special studio monitors, just regular living room TVs with HD component inputs. (It's for a proof-of-concept pilot, and I can't give you any other details). I was absolutely flabbergasted at the picture quality! Up until now, I have not been exactly overwhelmed by any of the demonstrations of HD cameras and displays I've seen, because there really haven't been any proper 1920 x 1080 displays, at least ones that actually PRODUCE 1920 x 1080. I asked if they knew about the RED, and they did, and they would have loved to have given it a trial, but they knew that wasn't going to be possible in the near term. I don't know how much they paid to use the D-20 (if anything) but I gather it isn't likely to be an on-going option unless Arri seriously drop the price. One of the engineers there compares Jim Jannard to the American businessman Earl "Madman" Muntz. Muntz's most enduring achievement was bringing TV to the masses in the early 1950s by drastically pruning the design (and hence the price) of TV sets to the minimum number of parts that would still work reliably. At first the established manufacturers laughed at his simplified design, but later on, virtually all black and white TVs were built to the same concept! Not all TVs sold were Muntsz's, but they probably would have been if the other manufacturers hadn't smartened up their act. Muntz also invented the predecessor to the 8-track car music player. The RED is not a simplified design by any means, but a much cheaper way to make something that people assume needs to be expensive. I can see a future utterly unlike what people are envisaging.

You'll probably find yourself talking to a brick wall there. That is the single most misunderstood aspect of HD vs film cameras: you cannot post-manipulate a pixel unless you can capture it linearly first. Telecine can usually still pull something out of a heavily overexposed pixel on a film negative, but once one of the photodiodes of an HD camera is overloaded, there's no going back. Unless you could build a complex gamma correcting amplifier for every one of the 12 million or so photodiodes, there's no way you can stop the photodiodes overloading on highlights, apart from closing down the iris or putting in NDs. Of course as soon as you crank up the gain to compensate for the loss of signal on the pixels that weren't being overloaded, you crank up the electronic noise inherent in the chip. This is where we came in, about 25 years ago :lol:

That's a bit like the old "good, fast, cheap" adage - pick any two! In other words, if you can't afford film and you can't find anyone to back you, you probably aren't any good. Or, you might have talent, but no appreciation of what might actually interest anyone else. Or you might just be a nut. Not you in particular, but as a general rule.

"I?d been curious about the RED 4K camera for a while, and had pre-ordered five of them, just in case it turned out to be all that was promised. I figured five is the minimum number you?d need for a feature, including a second unit. I had a look at some early tests in LA a while ago and they looked great, but their prototype cameras had never been out of the lab. I liked what they were doing ? making a digital camera of the utmost quality, and making it affordable for indie filmmakers. It also looks like film ? it has a very attractive quality to the image ? none of the ?digital? look I?ve seen with some other HD cameras" Which is exactly what I've always said: why wouldn't you want to buy a RED or three if you were in Peter Jackson's shoes? HE can put them to good use, and I daresay I could put them to good use, but as for the bulk of the dreamers who try to pass themselves as serious cinematographers here and elsewhere, the most effective use they'd be able to put them to is keeping the door from blowing shut! :P There is SO MUCH involved in making a decent film. Apart from having the means to capture images, you have to know how to do so many other things, and you have to know people. Jackson knows the right people, I know the right people, most of the dreamers don't. Without the right contacts (or a lot of money), all you're going to make is some rather expensive home movies! "The real thing will have several stops more latitude, variable frame rates and shutter angles which we didn?t have available to us" "Several Stops?" Maybe one or two, "several", I'll believe that when I see it. Wasn't it Bryan Singer who claimed that the Genesis's overexposure headroom was "within half a stop" of film?! Most people wouldn't even be able to tell if film was "half a stop" overexposed, unless they saw the two negatives side by side. Sorry, carry on...

"Carl how can you call a 4k camera a HD camera?" (Sigh), does every discussion have to get hijacked by members the RED fan club, quoting "scripture". I shall try very hard not to make any inflammatory remarks here... OK for starters, if you'd been paying attention you'd know I don't call it a 4K camera, and neither do a lot of other people, but let's not get into that again. If you can convince your paying clients that it's a 4K camera, and they come back for more, well more power to you. If any of them happened to phone me up and ask my opinion, I would say that while it appears to be a damned fine 2K camera, that extra 2K is all done with digital smoke and mirrors. You're basically putting back something that wasn't there in the first place. All that to the side, my point was actually that it's an electronic camera, regardless of how much definition it has. With electronic imagers it's not so critical knowing how much light actually reaches the pickup device because you more or less have a very accurate light meter built into the camera - the camera is in fact its own light meter. I guess because of that, and because you can't use film camera lenses on video cameras anyway, nobody has been too concerned about needing T stop accuracy on video lenses. (Apart from the fact that most video productions aren't exactly oozing quality anyway :rolleyes: ) "The point being its a 35mm Digital Cinema camera that can be used as a HD camera, not a HD camera that can be used as a Cinema camera." Well, no, as it happens, I rather think it's the other way round, but that's just my opinion. "and hasn't RED worked hard at getting top Directors/DoP's on board like Peter Jackson." I could be wrong, but I think Jackson actually approached Jananrd. Anyway, don't compare watermelons to passionfruit: this is a totally different scenario: the RED is ludicrously cheap compared to equivalent film camera packages and there's no real consumables, so why wouldn't any well-off cinematography be interested in buying a RED package? I'd buy one too if I had the money to throw around, (and if Jannard would sell me one, but he probably won't :lol: ) The bottom line is, if I really thought I could make anywhere near as much money as some of the airheads inhabiting the REDUSER forum and elsewhere seem to imagine they will, I'd have been reservation #29 or something.

I still don't understand why it would cost so much more to have T-Stops instead of F-Stops. Is it just that you get a better price if they're all one type or the other? But be reasonable; Jannard is selling HD cameras. I don't think his customers would be too pleased if they were going to stung more for the lenses, just for the convenience of people who want to use them on film cameras! On the other hand, I can see why people with existing collections of film-type lenses would like them to be all the same. Sounds like a bit of a can of worms!

But what difference does that make? You'd just be putting the marks on a different place on the barrel. The only advantage I can see for F-Stop markings is that you can theoretically do more accurate depth of field calculations, but in practice, I hardly think that's going to make enough difference to matter. You could always supply a choice of stick-on labels :lol: Actually, an automated system where you custom-engrave the iris and focus markings on each lens using some sort of automated milling machine would be a big advance.

Well, when you're shooting film you more or less have to take all the light measurements you can, and then rely on your experience to get the exposure right, because you won't be seeing the results for 10-12 hours at the very least. You really need to be able to accurately estimate how much light is falling on the film emulsion, because you can't measure it directly. With video, at the very least you have a zebra pattern in the viewfinder, and as like as not, a waveform monitor and video screens, so you can set up your exposure on the fly, just basically setting the iris until you get the best compromise between white clipping and shadow detail. Also until recently, most video cameras only had 2/3" or smaller sensors, so you didn't care overmuch about depth of field either, as you don't get a lot of control over that anyway. So basically, with video you don't need to know so much about the numbers on the lens, because you can fiddle with it until it looks right on the monitor. And so, yes, F stops make the lens sound better than it is, particularly cheap lenses! What do they use on the Panavision CineAlta lenses? I've never actually taken any notice.

Ah yes, it was CEI. They're still in business, by the way, but only making video taps I used to have one of their early B&W video tap cameras that someone gave me. It had this huge connection cable and a 19" rack mount control unit that was crammed with electronics. I have never seen anything so-over designed in my life.

Well no, most reservation holders aren't going to be too affected by the delay anyway, because they had no firm delivery date, and they wouldn't have been expecting delivery until late this year at the earliest. I think the biggest concern is that no production REDs have been delivered as yet. Once they reach the point where they've shipped the first say 50 or so and there has been no resultant barrage of customer complaints on these forums, well then everybody will probably settle down, secure in the knowledge that RED will be filling their order as soon as humanly possible. Of course this is the point where people are going to have to start thinking about where they're going to get the other $16,500 I must say, offering a no-questions-asked 120% refund on your deposit is a somewhat radical business practice!

Is that the one that Panavision developed? I remember seeing an ad in an old American Cinematographer for something like that. The only thing it had going for it was that you were supposed to be able to use standard cine lenses, but from what I've been told by ex-PV people, the quality was laughable.

No, I said: You were promoting a camera system that is heavily dependent on the REDCODE software you were writing for it, which was and probably still is, under development. To me that comes under the definition of "vaporware". We were talking about the time before you had really demonstrated anything other then red fabric and renderings, but you were making the RED sound like a done deal. The thing is, the Mysterium sensor is theoretically only capable of producing full-color at about 2K resolution, at least from its "Raw" output. If you've developed some new breakthrough algorithm that makes it look like 4K well that's fine, more power to you. But if you were really saying: "once we've developed this algorithm we'll be able to do that", well then that's the classic definition of vaporware. The problem most of the skeptics had was that the only realistic way you could know whether REDCODE worked or not, was to apply it to the output of a Bayer-masked camera, try it in some real-world situations, and see what happened. A question that has never been satisfactorily answered is, if your RED sensors weren't ready, why couldn't you have applied REDCODE to the output of some other Bayer-masked camera? In theory, REDCODE should be able to convert the output of my CMOS Sony Handycam to full-spec 1920 x 1080 HDTV. Why couldn't you just say "Look: Before REDCODE; After REDCODE, whaddya think of that?" You'd make far more money licensing REDCODE to other camera manufacturers than you would selling the cameras outright. Bill Gates knows a thing or two about that :lol: By the way, when you say "the patents filed", does that mean "granted" or "applied for". You know once you are granted a patent, people will be able to look up the details and find out how it works, which is why a lot of stuff never gets patented.

This is another one of those projects that simply could never have been done (well not convincingly) without modern technologies. That was one of the many things I thought sucked about "Superman Returns"; a lot of the special effects weren't all that much of an improvement over what we saw thirty years ago! Too many of the flying scenes looked like a man being suspended from a crane. Interesting that in Superman Returns they shot the background plates on film and did the bulk of ithe film on HD, apparently the reverse of what they wanted to do for Iron Man.

You were promoting a camera system that is heavily dependent on the REDCODE software you were writing for it, which was and probably still is, under development. To me that comes under the definition of "vaporware". Also, remember that Sony are first and foremost an electronics company, with enormous technical resources at their disposal. They have a long and enviable track record in producing high-quality video cameras, in all price ranges, so people tend to treat their projections as credible. As far as I know, apart from a few Oakley sunglasses with built-in MP3 players, your track record in producing electronic equipment is zero. However, there is no question that you have caused a major disturbance in the boardrooms of Sony and elsewhere. In my opinion, the current RED design and concept is where digital (or just plain "electronic") cinematography needed to be about 20 years ago, when the concept was first introduced (and over-hyped to ludicrous levels)! We finally now have a product that REALLY IS "comparable to 35mm film". It doesn't go all the way to film quality, but, it has the potential to pay for its shortcomings wth serious savings in equipment and operating costs. The main reason for the lack of interest in digital cinematography up until now has been the "beer on a champagne budget" aspect of it: you were expected to pay premium prices for a substandard result. I tend to liken this to the attempt to introduce HDTV broadcasting some years back. Despite all the Hype, it's only been in the last 12 months or so that you have been able to buy true HDTV sets at anything like a reasonable price. Once a reasonable HDTV user base becomes established, the market for quality HD source material is going to skyrocket, and that's where I see the RED's real potential, although of course you may not see it that way. Remember Kodak sold an awful lot of 35mm movie film to TV production companies, when there was nothing but NTSC and PAL! Most movie film was not (and is not) used for shooting movies...

Most fluorescent lamps use a mixture of an orange-red and greenish-blue phosphors which produce light that resembles white light but really isn't white. If that sounds a bit confusing, it's because it is! What that means is that if you illuminate a piece of white paper, half with light from a full-spectrum source such as a QI incandescent, and half with light from a fluorescent with the same colour temperature (which is achieved by varying the mixture of green and orange phosphors) both areas of the paper will look the same. The problem is, WHITE things look the same, coloured things DON'T. A "full spectrum" fluorescent has a mixture of red, green and blue phosphors which more closely approximate the spectrum of true white light. Kinoflo's and the like use that sort of phosphor. While this is an improvement, it still isn't as good as a proper tungsten light, which is why they remain so popular despite their low efficiency. Normal tungsten bulbs only have a colour temperature of around 2,200 - 2,700 degrees by the way. A cheap and workable alternative is the QI garage lights that you can get pretty cheap in hardware stores these days. You usually get two 500W lamps with an orientable stand, and you'll find them very useful for non-film related activities too!

I've recently seen that the first live action film featuring the Marvel Comics character "Iron Man" is currently (finally!) in production. There doesn't seem to be much technical information out there, though, mostly just stuff about who's starring in it and so on. (The bulk of fans apparently are greatly relieved that it will NOT be starring Tom Cruise as Tony Stark. <_< ) One anecdote has it that an Aaton 35 was run over by a tank in one scene :lol: Does anybody know what sort of cameras are being used?

Oh come on; you've surely heard dumber things than that! Particularly on this forum...

Now see here Jannard! Did you or did you not recently make this post? "Over-sharpened HD"? And would you like me to rattle off the slack handful of "respected" producers who over the past decade have thought "over-sharpened HD" was the greatest thing since since the bag they put sliced bread in? I thought the images were rubbish, and so I imagine did all the other respected cinematographers, who obviously voted with their feet (or their order books) and DIDN'T use HD cameras! And from the above quote, I would imagine you also agreed with us, and THAT was why you put all your resources into developing the RED. I totally agree that your camera does not look like over-sharpened HD, and I said as much. I'm trying to point out the flaw in your reasoning, that just because somebody embraces a new technology, that does not mean they necessarily know what they're taking about! What I meant was, other people are not necessarily going to see the enthusiasm of Peter Jackson or any other luminary as a ringing endorsement of your product, just as they didn't follow the lead of other luminaries in the past and switch to tarted-up ENG cameras. I am not saying there is anything wrong with your product, it is the best and most practical I've seen by a long way. Have you spent so long surrounded by yes-men and fanboys that you immediately mistrust anybody who agrees with you but appears to have no vested interest in your activities? You get enough of that in the film industry. Look if you like, I can give you my bank account details and you can pay me a couple of dollars a week so I'll then be technically an employee, if that will make you feel more comfortable. (Not too much though; I think there's some "peppercorn" threshold where I don't have to declare the income for tax purposes. I'll ask my accountant) :lol:

Look mister, I for one have been absolutely AMAZED "at what films" have already been shot with absolute rubbish "cinematography" cameras, like, Star Wars for example? I still can't understand how Warner Bros allowed a flagship franchise like Superman to be shot on crap equipment; the picture quality of the 30 year old original was miles better. Not that I'm saying your cameras are crap; I'm just making the point that I don't think that's a terribly good argument to use. Why don't you make a new Oakley ad with the RED and arrange to get it shown in cinemas? Not only will you able to write it off as a business expense, but everybody will be able to see some RED footage without having to travel to Las Vegas or wherever.

Yes, but for most jobs it's the same old story; the bill for camera, film and the people you need to operate it is minute compared to the cost of everything else. Also, people like me, apart the fact that we know our jobs, usually have a van full of all sorts of good bits and pieces, like heavy duty cables, spare batteries, video leads, odds and sods of video connectors, gaffer tape, hand tools, a soldering iron, anything we can think of that might just save save the day one day. I even carry an assortment of washed potato sacks; you'd be amazed at how useful they can be. I get regular work, because people know that if I'm on the set, chances are better that everything will go right, than if I'm not on the set. Nobody is going to hire some totally inexperienced prat just because he happens to own a RED. That's just Reduser dreamland.

You're confusing product lifetime with reliability. There's no question that you can shoot just as good a picture with a 1930s Mitchell as you can with a Arricam, provided it's well maintained. And film cameras require a lot of maintenance, which is the main reason people prefer to rent. A video camera with flash memory would have no moving parts, and these days Hard Drives are extremely reliable. In fact most computer Hard Drives these days get replaced with something bigger long before they wear out, and the same would apply to the RED's hard drives. Film cameras were specifically designed to be reconditioned an indefinite number of times, which is in total contrast to most of the video cameras that have been available up to now. Jannard has specifically stated that RED is designed to be continuously upgrade-able.

What? you don't exist? :lol: As far as I know, at present the only "RED owners" are Jim Jannard and a couple of his close cohorts. Somebody else also made reference to the "Red User Base", but I can't find the post now. Look let's not get Previous the Script here; I have no doubt that Jannard will eventually start shipping product, but it hasn't happened yet!

Yes but we're in a different world now (or we will be when Jannard is able to crank up his production line to meet all his orders!) Video cameras in general don't wear out or need anywhere near as much maintenance as film cameras. Up until now, the most problematic part of a camcorder (of any sort) has always been the tape deck. If you have a HD camera like the RED with essentially no moving parts, and the ability to take whatever cine lens sets you own or have access to, you're talking about a totally different ball game. If a RED cost the same as a fully kitted 435 or Arricam, well yes, most people would be happy to continue renting. But it's not anywhere near the price of one of those! And I'm sure that any pro cinematographer worth his or her salt would soon be able to earn enough on the side using a RED to pay back the purchase cost, and get some real-word experience at the same time. Plus you don't have to pay for film or processing while you're getting up to speed. Mind you, many of the more fervent RED-Heads wouldn't be able to get up to speed with hurricane Katrina behind them :lol:

Why wouldn't any well-off cinematographer want to buy a RED? This is a brand new situation. The "Digital Cinematography" cameras that came before the RED were in the main, horribly expensive and mostly just tarted up HD ENG cameras. Plus, everything was so cloak and dagger you'd have to have been a complete fool to buy such a pig in a poke. How many people got to see any real-world footage from CineAltas on the big screen before they bought a ticket to Star Wars II? Did Sony/panavision go out of their way to show everyone how great it was? Like hell they did! They already knew the answer <_< Compared to that, there's no question the RED works, and works well, and it's CHEAP! Maybe not Handycam cheap, but even if they didn't like its film-out they'd be hard-pressed not to find some useful work for it, even if it was just for rehearsals or casting. Even if they only used it as a glorified director's viewfinder it would still earn its keep!