John Brawley

They are still working a lot of that stuff out. I'm guessing it's something like 640-800 but as I say, they are still tinkering. I'd also say, the footage has been shot with a hand made prototype and they are still working on the sensor calibration to get the noise down. They expect it to perform a lot better as they head towards shipping. I apologise for the grade. I'm literally in the middle of a shoot right now, and I only had a few hours in the middle of the night to do something with this footage, using an application I'd never used before. Believe me though, there's a lot of range in the images. Someone who knows what they are doing will be able to make this camera sing. We have had a colourist looking at some of the internal engineering shots and they are really nice. jb

Hi Vincent. I'm not a fanboy. I hate RED for lot's of reasons. But I have plenty of reasons to love it as well. When I first started shooting with them, they were the only game in town. Its easy to forget that. I shot my first TV series with them in 2008. I've been shooting RED since they first came out and have done a lot of episodic TV with them. Every time I get an operator doing dailies they same thing you've just said...aren't they unreliable ? Don't they overheat ? How do you keep up when they breakdown. I must be really lucky. I've done three seasons on one show alone, that is 3 bodies on main unit and 2 bodies on 2U. We've averaged 26 000 minutes per SEASON. I've now done 39 broadcast hours of TV drama with RED. I've only EVER had trouble with one single shot. It was recovered aside front the first few seconds, which meant we lost the slate. On principal, and to keep my record clean, I sent the drive to RED, who actually managed to recover the entire shot including the slate (though we didn't get it for a month) I can honestly say I've not lost a shot when shooting RED. The cameras work fine 99% of the time. Every now and then there's an annoying bug where the magnify locks in and you can't un-zoom. A 90 second re-boot fixes it. It's never stopped rolling during a take. I replaced one body in the first season that stopped working, but I don't think any camera is 100% reliable. If you set up the correct practices and have a post company that know how to deal with RED footage you'll have no less trouble than with an Alexa. I also have a faiirly heretical view of on the role and way data wranglers should work, but so far it hasn't failed me. I just did a series on Alexa and we lost an entire day's footage from BOTH units. The post house, one of the biggest in town had a problem with their 3 way redundant backup system that meant they deleted both back ups of their servers AND somehow missed backing it up to LTO. Now that's never happened to me before. It wasn't the Alexa's fault either, but so far I've had more issue with Alexa footage than RED. And actually on the same Alexa shoot, one of my three bodies stopped working and would just hang on boot up and had to be replaced. I like the Alexa a lot, and for lot's of reasons it's probably a better episodic TV camera system. But the constant noise about RED being unreliable flys in the face of my experiences.... I even have an EPIC body on my current shoot, and thats been very solid as well. I was expecting more issues with it being so new to be honest and it's been just working day in day out. (but i do hate the BOMB VF ) jb OS3 B1D11 2828 by John Brawley, on Flickr

Not exactly. They had a couple lying around that I made them find.....they were gathering dust in storage. I got them to modify them and build a housing so they could go onto a MK2 Superspeed. Nobodies rented them since ! The problem is that the lens focus calibration get screwed every time you change the lens so focus has to be done by eye checking each point. jb

Hi Phil. This is exactly what I used to shoot the short film that lead to this feature film getting up. On super speeds on an Si2k would you believe. Check it out here http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/home-brew-anamorphic-lenses/

Dom they're a lot more than 3 times the rental. On top I that I've had to pay a fortune in freight to have them brought in from Germany. No one in Australia carries them. We went Hawk because we still felt we got an anamorphic look without the softness. We were certainly wanting to get that look. It's interesting that a lot of people seem to equate anamorphic with horizontal blue lens flares. That's not a effect we wanted and in fact the hawks are very difficult to flare (I beleive the anamorphic element is located in the middle of the lens instead of the front) If we had a full height Alexa then we woul have looked to 2x squeeze. The directors weren't impressed with the look of Epic which we tested with the lomos so that pretty much left Alexa. JB

There a re lot of RED accessories...like the viewfinder, battery etc, that are bought as accesories but in reality are essential to making it work. I'd like to repectfully disagree with you. One of the good things about EPIC is that you can really strip it back down to a ready to shoot body that is smaller than a Masterprime. Alexa is a heavy camera. Heavier than a R1 Body. I'm using EPIC right now on a TV drama series, along with R1 MX. I've also used Alexa for TV drama and am about to shoot a feature using Alexa. Alexa is an amazing camera no doubt and there are pros and cons for each, and then's plenty of reasons to hate using EPIC. There's no way you can get into a car and shoot in-car travelling stuff like you can with a camera like EPIC. Size (with it's IQ) is it's major advantage in my view. It's a great small camera and right now it to sucks a bit as a production camera (only one SDI output, only can use either the TOUCH LCD or the EVF but not both etc etc) (i've only got a shot of it in production mode, but even then it's tiny) jb

I know it's an old thread, but it's one of the few that pop up when you punch 1.3X and HAWK into google..... I've been testing the 1.3X anamorphic lenses for a film I'm about to start shooting in January. We've decided to use them after comparing them with 2X looms on Alexa. You can see some examples and a bit of a discussion about it here. http://johnbrawley.wordpress.com/2011/12/19/here-they-are-anamorphic-lens-tests/ jb

Its a misleading article. Aaton ARE still making the Penelope. They haven't stopped. It's a SWITCHABLE camera. You can shoot 35mm or when they eventually get their digital back built for it, it will also be a digital camera. But it will still be a 35mm camera as well. jb

Hi again. This is a 6 camera shootout I did last year, pretty much shot using available light conditions. I've posted the edited footage and explained our thinking behind what we set out to do. I've deliberately withheld which camera is which so try to guess the formats as you watch it. See if you can... Read about it here jb

There was probably only 15 mins in difference between the three cameras shooting that last scene. Long enough to do a take, swing a tighter lens and do another setup. It was after sunset, and film was the first setup, but I was surprised that that much was being held. jb

Just send an email with how many you're bringing to rsvp@johnbrawley.com jb

Could be for any number of reasons. Exposure in your original footage...Noise Reduction in the transfer...was it on an older RANK or on a spirit ?. Super 16 CAN look grainy in HD anyway. It gives some a fright. Other's like it. :-) Well the whole point of this was to get the stuff onto the big screen. it's very....revealing....you should try to come along and judge for yourself. jb

Hi Marcus. I'm between both Melbourne and Sydney. The $ figure I quoted was for STOCK ONLY and didn't include either telecine or processing. There are few places in Sydney that can do it. I'd try cutting edge. They often do good deals for students. Deluxe are top shelf, and you should be getting a good result from them. there's a lot of variables though for 16mm. Did you do a transfer with them already ? There's also "The lab" as well. On thursday night at AFTRS I'm screening another set of tests that I did comparing 6 different cameras. 35mm, Super 16, Alexa, RED the sony F3 and the Canon 1Dmk4, shooting the same scenes. There will be a screening from both 35mm print and hopefully a DCP. It's at 630 and you're welcome to come along. jb

Well that's going to be at least half the cost the rest of the world can get it for. Seriously, the costs of stock alone here is more than $30 per minute, and our dollar is at near parity to the US. jb

Hi David. Editorial is well entrenched with being AVID. Apparently it's much better for networked and shared storage, and it's what the editors prefer to cut with. I was kind of alluding to this with RED workflow advantages earlier. It's not prefect, but the idea of an embedded LUT (metadata) that can be used or discarded at each step of the post pathway...it has a lot of appeal to me. I'm not really a fan of any off-board recording and the codex add's another whack of costs to recording. But it seems like a good idea. At least it's better than a colleague of mine who just did a cable drama show after finally convincing them to shoot RED (previous season was F900 and p+s adaptors). They did AVID transcodes and they mastered and graded from those......ick..... jb

I plan to shoot LOG and yes, I note the 709 for on set monitoring. I guess we'll see how that flies, because we won't be paying for cinetal's ! The best I can hope for is a BMD LUT box inline. I am planning to develop some LUT's with the post house for editorial though. jb

I've been using the AF100 as an insert camera with the RED and it grades very nicely to match. Most can't pick it in the grade. There's a little more compression buzzing in the blacks (if only they upped the data rate on their codec a sniff) I'm a bit heretical in my approach to DIT's. I generally don't have them on set. I shoot to unreliable mechanical spinning drives, split them at lunch time and at wrap. They get sent to the *lab* where they get backed up and tech checked in a more consistent and controlled environment. We did cost up doing tech checks and backup's on set with a DIT and it's actually cheaper than sending them through to our post house. I just prefer that this job is done in a better and less hostile environment than on set. It's worked for 100 years of film so why change it all of a sudden. I'm through something like 70TB of data over the last 3 series and something like 34 000 mins of rushes. So far I've only had a problem with a single shot where the drive failed. All the files were recovered no problem and a single shot was screwed just for the first few seconds before the slate. Then it came good. Just to prove a point to myself I had it sent to RED and they eventually fully recovered the file. So far a 100% success rate. It's a calculated risk and now SSD's will hopefully reduce it even more. Archiving is a similar cost for film I imagine, so back to costs, I think it's still about ratio. That's the key to the costs. jb

No worries Phil, As I said, I wouldn't normally expose it that way either. But I had to have something in common for each of the formats. I basically set an exposure at *base* for when the subject stops and let everything else fall where it falls. Plenty of cameras have failed that glass brick wall. I've shot it many times in tests. RED is in front of a long line. Film is normally the only format that gets close to coping with it. The Alexa did very very well with that particular set up. Yes we could have underexposed (exposed for the highlights) the RED, as per my previous post, and graded it up, but I was keen to see how they would all fare at the same base exposure, knowing that there would be low light scenarios where the RED would be more equal... jb

Hi Phil, I know you love to bag RED, and it's definitely got it's baggage but I think it's important to remember that RED has been around for a few years now. I've done a feature (which just went into release in the US). It was shot in 2008. The budget was embarrassingly small. There's no way it could have been shot to get that super 35 look with anything else. I've also done 3 TV seasons, and again, in Australia where NO TV is ever shot 35mm, it was a great tool for doing that and getting a super 35 DOF look. Something NO oz TV show has ever had. When it first appeared, there wasn't anything close to matching it in terms of cost for a large sensor look. Now there is and though it costs double the price, it's considered an equal. So yeah, the Alexa does trump the RED in lot's of ways visually, but it's going to cost 30% extra to the RED for my show to rent them. And RED's are already considered expensive on episodic TV because of the cost of those expensive 35mm *film* lenses. Again, historically, a lot of TV drama in this part of the world has been shot F900. With regard to the linked test material, I've always know that RED run's into clipping very quickly. It's pretty standard for me to underexpose the image and trade shadow reach for highlights. In this case, i was simply exposing them *to the meter* rather than *for the grade*. For the sake of a fair comparison. I actually think one of the most underrated things about RED is the way they manage their post workflow. By having the metadata automatically follow the image around, I can drastically swing the exposure around and still give editorial rushes that look good. They've really done away with the need for LUT's. Or rather, they're automatic. All of a sudden with the Alexa, I'm faced with having to do LUT's for rushes....and multiple LUT's for processing rushes into editorial ! And LUT's on my monitors. That feels like such a giant step backwards to me. Shooting to Pro Res also mens baking in my white point AND baking in my ISO. I haven't tested this enough to see if that's a disadvantage or if the greater dynamic range overwhelms committing to a white point and ISO in the field. I've gotten used the RED workflow and when I step away from it, I suddenly realise how flexible it is. There's also the resolution. Not that it happens often, but you can easily do a 200% frame enlargement on the RED and you'd barely notice it. The Alexa doesn't stand up so well to blowing up. Yeah there's a lot to hate about the RED, but I'm realising now that there's also a lot that I like. jb

Same here really. We have an EP who set's up the show and is very involved at the beginning, who's also producing multiple shows. He hardly ever visits set. There's producer who has a bit more to do on set, but is mainly working with the writers to get the scripts the best they can be and then the Line producer and the Production Manager who keep the wheels turning on set itself. The EP though is still very much involved, because all the producers present the rough cuts to the TV network along with the director. And when the network want other options in the cut *THATS* when coverage counts. So they aren't as involved on set, but they are certainly making the presence felt. And you certainly hear about it if there aren't enough options in the edit suite when the network want something changed ! We had a director that did that last season. He would set up one shot scenes or often do just one take of some setups. He wasn't asked back again on the second season. Thank you. I was lucky enough to work as his assistant for 3 years. His knowledge is irreplaceable. jb

Well that's Television. Cinema still seems to be a bit different..... Probably the worlds finest collection of Auricon cameras. From the collection of the late John Bowring. He was obsessed. There's a few one-off prototypes if you know what to look for.... jb

Well it comes down to ratio. Your example of 5000' That's 2 hours 18 mins @ 24 FPS. Is that the right frame rate for Italian TV ? Is that one camera ? I just did a series with the same producers and we shoot 2-3 hours per camera per day. So we're usually running two cameras on most setups. We certainly try to cut if there's no need to be running, but that's what we average for 8-10 mins of screen time per day (all location based). That's an average of about 30 setups per day as well or about 50 shots. If that was shooting on film that would be up to 6750' per camera per day. (at 25 FPS) Of course I'd argue that the *discipline* of shooting on film would lead to a lower ratio and arguably better shots, BUT TV is a producer's medium and they favour coverage above everything else. jb

I actually felt the Alexa was markedly better than the RED. The highlight information in the first setup clearly shows it can go very close to matching the film. There was also a fair bit less noise in the blacks compared to the RED on the second setup. The camera seems to have a lot of "reach" and I figure I'll be throwing DR away rather than trying to lift anything out of the shadows. Yes, the film looks lovely. The colour reproduction is still something to behold. I love the texture of it too. I do suspect that it won't go that way though because of the cost. jb

HI. I've just uploaded some tests I did whilst in pre for a series that starts up in a little while. We wanted to compare Alexa, RED MX and as a dark horse, Super 16. I've got a few frame grabs and the original footage. Have a look here jb

Hi All. Just an open invitation to attend a screening on both 35mm and DCP of some available light tests that I shot late last year. I shot a series of sequences using the RED MX, Alexa, Sony F3, 35mm, Super 16 and a 1DmkIV. You'll get to watch the same 2 min short film repeated and shot using 6 different cameras. More info here and make sure you RSVP if you're planning to come along. The screening is taking place at ACMI in Melbourne on the 7th of May at 2pm in Cinema 2. I'll be there with the writer director Kate Dennis to do some Q&A after, along with the guys from Deluxe who were kind enough to do the post for us. Hope to see you there if you can make it to Melbourne. jb