Tyler Purcell

Yea, I do recall seeing a digital back for the SR at one point. However, I can't imagine them being any good for the price. People who own film cameras, generally want to shoot film and modern digital cameras can accept much of the older film camera glass.

Yep, it's pretty exciting. The only thing I can add is that it's going to be an all-new lab, not a re-build from what existed.

I mean, the Egyptian played it three weeks ago for the public and LACMA is showing it saturday for the public as well, both in 70mm. There have been a few public, non-industry screenings, it's just a matter of finding them, as they aren't so obvious. I've been paying attention to the screenings here in CA and sending the info over to Thomas @ in70mm.com, but I don't know the NYC theaters that can show 70, so I never checked for them. I saw it at the DGA (posted my review in the On-screen section of the forum) two weeks ago and it's playing again next week. So if you know ANY union member, you can get into the Weinstein's screenings, they're for ANY industry union.

Now before I begin my breakdown of the Revenant, I must first state for the record, I'm not a fan of digital cinema what so ever. Honestly, the only reason I took the time out to see The Revenant is because I really like Inarritu's films and Lubezki is flat-out amazing. The Revenant is a very simple revenge film. It doesn't really have a recognizable script as such. It's mostly based on what the characters are going through physically. There are huge gaping holes in the story, stuff that you say to yourself... hmm, really? There are around 30 pages of dialog in the 2+ hour movie, pushing it towards that envelope of what you're seeing on screen is the only thing that matters. With all of that said however, the film as a whole is very well made. As a filmmaker, I can enjoy all the good things and because it's so well made, most people can ignore the bad things. What the Reverent does show is Inarritu's desire to make "visual" entertainment and how Lubezki never ceases to amaze me. What the filmmakers went out to achieve is something that only nature documentary filmmakers ever get to do. It looked like a very tedious production, chipping away at scenes very slowly. Capturing a moment here, a moment there and doing it all again the next day. You can see this on screen very clearly because the story covers quite a bit of time and they don't want to dwell on each day, so they're in one location for one scene and another location for another scene. This filmmaking method worked great and it came across very well on screen. Of course, when you're out in the middle of nowhere, you can't send rushes for printing film, so the filmmakers resorted to shooting digitally. Inarritu and Lubezki are both pretty "film" savvy and there is a little bit of 65mm film in this movie, though it doesn't stand out like a sore thumb. About half of the movie is shot with the new Alexa Mini and the other half is shot with the new Alexa 65. You can tell the Alexa 65 was used on the master wides, the detail in the 4k presentation was extraordinary. The movie looks very cinematic, they clearly used a lower shutter angle during the action scenes, which played very nicely and the horrible digital looking motion blur so common with digital movies, wasn't really present. As some people know, Lubezki didn't light anything. In fact, even the interiors which were clearly a set, were only lit with candles and daylight. It was a great stylistic choice and it works very well in this film. The moment they hit snow, the snow works as a bounce card and all of a sudden, there is no reason for lighting at all. There are a lot of trick shots in the film, most of which were created afterwards in VFX. In fact, the film has A LOT of VFX shots in it. Partially due to compositing wild animals and partially due to Inarritu's use of "single shots" throughout the piece. It's a cool visual trick of taking multiple shots and joining them together in post. It works for this movie like it did for Birdman, though in Birdman the transition points were covered up more. I didn't mind the VFX much because they didn't effect the actors, most of them were background and/or fill-in. It's not like the actors were on a green screen sound stage, they were there on location, but maybe something wasn't right, so they'd fix it. Lubezki's choice of wide angle lenses for the film was something I was quite concerned about. The trailer makes it seem like the whole film is distorted and wide, but it isn't. In fact, his decision worked really well with the beautiful locations. I can't imagine using long lenses, it wouldn't work for this film at all. Their decision making process payed off very nicely and I was more engrossed in the film then the technical aspects anyway, which is a good sign! On a side note; I'm a little bit peeved because I really wanted Richardson to win the Oscar for Hateful Eight, but Lubezki has DONE IT AGAIN! He's picking great projects and doing a fantastic job! So... digital. Well... the movie did look very flat. There were very little dynamics in the black's, they simply hovered around grey with no latitude, no deep black. That might have been the projector because even during the credits, I noticed the black was not actually black. The highlights were clean and not crisp, which is excellent. There were many shots with direct sunlight and none of them clipped... though they could have been fixed up in post. The night/dark material with camp fires, the actual fires were white, not red or orange. I'm not sure if that was the filmmakers intention or simply over exposure which led to color drop off. It was amazing to see the actors pupils wide open in those night scenes, that was REALLY cool. The interior candle light scenes had the same issues, the candles were all white, which is pretty common for candles anyway. The interiors did have the motion blur that I so dislike, but it wasn't TOO bad... those scenes were quick and it didn't detract. In the end The Revenant is an extremely well-made film and very entertaining. All of the other technical aspects from the music to the editing (pacing) was just perfect. There were a few moments where I judged the editing too quickly and realized they setup something for down the road. In fact, I'd say the "filmmaking" is generally very clever and if you blink for a moment, you'll miss a little detail that will be brought up later. I can see how some people could get stuck on the plot holes, but every film has them. I call it "ohh well, not everyone is perfect" problems because in reality, it's nearly impossible to do everything perfectly. One has to steal from paul to pay peter and sometimes that means, things are purposely overlooked. The Revenant does however, feel very cut-down, making me wonder if those plot holes were shot, but simply pulled out to make the pacing better. DiCaprio and Hardy were flat-out amazing, they'll both get oscar nods for sure. In fact, I'd say Hardy (who had the far easier job) was actually better then DiCaprio because he was such a vicious evil son of a bitch and had more dialog. For all of DiCaprio's dragging in the mud, naked in the freezing cold and getting raped by a bear... he doesn't have a lot of "acting" to do. He was just beat up the whole film and I don't know of the Academy would consider that "acting". Never the less, he is the character and did a fantastic job. I truly hope both guys get the oscars because they deserved it. Over-all, I really enjoyed The Revenant. I'm extremely picky and this film worked on every level from its magnificent cinematography to it's fantastic cast, music and editing. I really hope everyone gets to see this on the big screen because it's worth it. Reminds me a lot of Gravity, not a lot of story, but boy was it flat-out well made and fun to watch!

1 perf doesn't sound very economical or practical. I can't imagine the movement being able to work because it needs time to rotate off the frame and rotate back onto the next frame. That particular camera requires quite a bit of work to get 2 perf, I can't imagine getting 1 perf. 2 perf is really good AND Super 16mm with 1.3x squeeze anamorphic lenses looks amazing! So if you're trying to save money, just shoot 16mm.

I don't think so. Neither lens is new enough to avoid full-wide vignetting. Heck, the 10-150 I've used a lot and it vignettes on straight 16mm when all the way wide with close focus. My Zeiss 10-120 does the same bloody thing! Pain in the butt!

Star Trek was all about the technology, exploring, different cultures and science. I'm a huge Trekkie, have been since I was a kid. I grew up with TNG, DS9 and Voyager on television and of course the feature franchise. What those series offered was clever writing which weaved all of those "trek" elements into current event subjects. The features had even more serious subject matters from nuclear bombs and extermination of man kind (the genesis project) to the saving of our marine life (voyage home) heck even to the corrupt governments (Undiscovered country). What MADE "Trek" so great were those stories and sure they weren't big blockbuster films, but they didn't cost much to make either. JJ's reboots are travesties and have no relationship to the Star Trek universe outside of Spock. This is why the first movie discusses the universe as being different. Both movies had poor scripts, they're just stupid action films that have zero meaning. It's clear the writers had never really embraced trek, only tried to mimic certain elements. JJ even mentions having really never been a Trek fan. It's the same problem JJ has with the new Star Wars film. He was never a real fan of the original films, but at least Star Wars is just a silly space soap opera, not a serious discussion on current events. Anyway, this new movie does look atrocious. The poorly cut trailer and gobs of overly done VFX shots, don't help at all.

Ok guys, release list is finally out! http://tickets.thehatefuleight.com/showtimes Type in your nearest city and see where it's showing. So far they got most of the coastal cities covered, which is great. Remember, they are screening it a few places in digital, which is clearly marked as "2D" vs "70mm" in a drop down menu towards the top IF digital is available in your area.

LOL! Well... a long time ago and galaxy far far away, kinda means you don't come from earth. :)

I agree with Adrian, I don't think Star Wars is quite Sci-Fi. Since it takes place in a different universe, right away it's Fantasy. Sci-Fi content is generally grounded in some realism, usually the characters are from earth and there is a heavy technical/scientific element. Star Trek, Blade Runner, Alien, Forbidden Planet, 2001, Interstellar, etc... they're heavy on the science and come from earth, so they're Sci-Fi. Mind you, that's not putting down the original three Star Wars films. I grew up with them and of course like those first three films quite a bit. However, they're nothing more then western's set in space. The first film was a risk for everyone involved, no-name leads, piss poor script and a concept that could have completely backfired. However, with a heavy marketing campaign and people's desire to see space-based films at the time, it was a win win. Once the first people saw it and told their friends, everything was down hill from there. Honestly, I like the first Star Wars film (Episode 4) the most. It's the only one that stands on it's own in the franchise. It's also sloppy and more fun then the more serious Empire Strikes Back (Episode 5). I do think they went kinda backwards with Return of the Jedi (Episode 6), it went back to the campiness of the first film in a lot of ways. Still, the original three films are pretty solid, especially for the time period. People who bitch about them are the same people who will bitch about the Nolan Batman films 20 years from now. The funny part is, some of the story elements of the prequel's weren't that bad. However, there just wasn't enough meat to each script, so Lucas and co, filled in with horrible subplots and characters that do nothing to advance the story. Plus, the horrid green screen world Lucas uses, looks very dated when you see those movies today. Most of Episode 2 and 3 look like a poorly made Disney or Pixar film, rather then live action. Yet, most Star Wars fan's (myself included) lined up at the box office in droves to see all three of them. It's funny because if I were to pick my favorite movie from that trilogy it would be the first one, minus the pod race, minus Jar Jar, minus the end battle that was so horribly done. Most of that is again, due to it being an origin story and having decent character development. I also liked Palpatine's connection not being so obvious. Clearly, the new film (episode 7) is going to be lightyears better then Lucas's prequel's. I mean JJ isn't going to ruin a space western... like he ruined Star Trek. Ohh yep, I said it! LOL :)

Why yes... that's why it was so interesting to hear him interviewed for the making of Hail Caesar. I believe his problem is more about being on location somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and waiting a day or two. Most of the Coen Brothers films take place in remote areas, so you can understand his frustration. Today with the mobile lab, it makes me wonder if he'd change his mind.

Well... I mean, yea. But that's for a different thread. ;) Roger said himself in a recent interview on his upcoming project with the Coen Brothers (Hail Caesar), his reason for not shooting film was simply being a worry wart. He's been that way his entire life and the solution was to shoot in a format that gave him instant results, so he could sleep at night on shoots. He didn't joke, the interviewer even said "really" and Deakins smiled and nodded yes. I also feel Arri media was heavily instrumental in Deakin's decision process, since he's only shot with Arri cameras, but that's just a guess.

Sorry Satsuki, Robin attacked my belief's earlier in the thread. Like a religion, I feel like commenting when someone does that. Please, if you have something to comment, be my guest. Last time I checked, it had turned into an anti-film and anti-starwars thread.

Pro Res 444 should be fine, if it comes out of the recorder of the camera and not converted.

Yes, in fact I use to shoot exclusively in reversal. I even had prints made of the reversal so I could edit with a flatbed. On negative films, I'd do a one light print for cutting on a flatbed and viewing. We'd cut the negative and most of my stuff didn't need much tweaking, just evening between shots. Really? Its all magically colored properly out of the camera? LUT's are generally the first step in many. However, without a DIT on set (someone monitoring the levels), the LUT won't really help. Exposure and color balance on set, really determines what the files look like. This is why our modern films require a video village and DIT to insure what's captured will be even/balanced for the colorist. It's an extremely time consuming and expensive process that's REQUIRED when shooting digitally and NOT when shooting on film. The only alteration comes when striking the IP. You said there are thousands of digital hours that look great and I said they're unwatchable. I've seen camera originals from hundreds of movies because I spent years working in BTS and trailers. We'd get our raw RED files in and I'd have to spend hours transcoding/correcting before anyone can watch anything. Then once cut, it would take me around a week to color in DaVinci, sometimes doing 10 mattes per shot to fix all the problems with the camera original. Mind you, when coloring raw film scan's to digital, it takes around half the time as raw digital. So right away, your post budget drops. I've done budgets for 16, 35 (2, 3, 4 perf), 5/70 and digital for many projects. It's actually cheaper to shoot 10:1 on 3 perf 35mm then 4k digital, even with a digital (DCP) finish. It's FAR cheaper to shoot anamorphic 4 perf and do a photochemical finish and strike a few prints. The price difference is astronomical. We're talking $100k - $200k difference from 4 perf 35mm anamorphic photochemical finish to 4k digital. When you're working on a half million dollar film, those cost savings are huge. The cost difference from 35mm 3 perf to 4k digital evens around around 20:1 shooting ratio. So if you're one of those guys like David Fincher, who shoots 20+ takes, then digital might cost less. But most films today are unmemorable, pieces of "spur of the moment" entertainment. Sure in the past we've seen lots of those movies, but at least we still have them today. People forget, a lot of the big historical pieces of cinema we hold up high today, at the time didn't do well at the box office. We shot them on the best technology available at the time and look what happened, hundreds of them disappeared because nobody cared. The industry spent billions making film better and the moment we finally have a decent long-term archival format, we change gears and we're back to the dark ages with digital. Mark my words, 50 years from now, we'll be watching RGB separation prints of our modern films. The smaller one's will be long lost because the cost to store master files is huge. Most people won't be able to afford the best storage method's and accidents do happen frequently. So the way I look at it, why not embrace the technology we spent 100 years and billions of dollars developing? Only reason I have anything digital is because I'm forced to. New technology is embraced because we have no other choice. Actually, I'm done with digital. I'm going back to film. Deakin's shoots digital because he is very nervous about how the dailies will come out. It really effects his life and as a consequence, he prefers digital because it's instant results. If he worked on a movie with a mobile lab, with instant results, I think he'd probably change his mind.

In 20 years, nobody will even remember JJ's movies. They're pop culture, with very little longevity to them. Reminds me a great deal of Micheal Bay, which isn't flattering. I'm torn because part of me like's his ideas, the other part of me dislikes what he does with them simply due to LACK OF STORY! Super 8 was his best movie in my opinion because it was well made and stuck to some serious ground, even though it has an alien in it. Spielberg has lost much of his luster in my opinion. Even though I enjoy his current films, they don't have the staying power of his "classics". The Hateful Eight hasn't changed my opinion at all. All it did was prove what I already knew: film projection when done right, is far, far, far superior. Since I launched my school's fundraising campaign and have been sitting down with top industry professionals, learning about the destruction of celluloid distribution, my frustration level has tripled. If you were in those meetings, you would probably get even more angry then I am. So yea, I'm emotional... and I get even more emotional when I see 50's technology BLOW AWAY billions of dollars worth of research and technology. Things are changing though... you just wait and see. ;)

Well, it's true. JJ is a one trick pony. His films all have the same over-the-top look to them. He over-stylizes his films, using jibs/cranes and steadicam's to build tension through camera moves. He colors his films with a blue tint and adds digital/fake lens flairs when they weren't created in camera. His editing and story telling style leaves no down-time, no moments for the audience to relax and think about a scene before he hits you on the head with the next one. He also makes a big stink about shooting on film and using set pieces, yet has no problem making complete sequences in the CG world AND then taking a 2D film and converting it to 3D, which is utter blasphemy considering all the millions spent on that conversion could have been spent on shooting the film in large format 5/70 or 15/70 like Nolan did with the Batman films and Interstellar. Ohh and Lewis Hamilton is a one trick pony as well. But that's another story for another thread. Nothing wrong with digital tools for compositing. Interstellar had some of the best visual effects in film history. They made everything look real because mostly everything WAS real. Yet all of the visual effects shots in the new star wars trailer look too glossy, to over the top, to "fake". Filmmaking is about telling a story and putting stupid-ass sequences in films to make up for your lack of story telling is what's KILLING cinema. The scenes looks like a video game, so fake, so uninteresting, it's just poor filmmaking. Not really. All of the digital cinema footage is heavily altered before being presented. Heck, you can't even watch it without applying a LUT of some kind. Color correction with digital cameras is a lesson in futility, I know, I do it every day of my life. Even if you light perfectly, you still need to generate mattes and I'm constantly doing small composites to clean up minor things. So no... there isn't ANYTHING shot on those cameras that's "fantastic", it's a good base to work from, but so is film. Only reason why people shoot big features with digital, is because they want instant dailies and a video village. How any filmmaker in their right mind could make a $10M+ film and consider 2k digital distribution/finalizing BETTER then S35mm is just uneducated. Isn't the whole point to deliver something good? Hateful Eight in 70mm looks better then ANY digital movie made and it didn't even touch a computer. It makes the last 20 years of digital technology worthless. Maybe the next 20 will be better... but not with most cinema's projecting 2k. 1950's technology STILL TO THIS DAY trumps ANYTHING we have using one's and zero's. Digital technology is just another tool and the only reason it exists at all, is to make things cheaper. But in reality, all it did was make things FAR more expensive. Hateful Eight cost $44M to make, all-star cast, huge location's, 5/70 acquisition and distribution?!>! I mean give me a break, shot digitally that film would have cost the same or MORE and no way would have looked anywhere near as good.

That's right, it's ALL members, so it really means whatever looks pretty wins. Which is REALLY unfortunate because technically, Deakin's films look amazing. But that's to a trained eye, to the average audience, they might not understand or notice. It's just nice to win best cinematography because its your best work, not because the film is the best movie of the year or something silly.

What format is the camera? 4 perf? 3 perf? I assume is full gate.

Well, it depends on the type of compressed lossy format you're using. In most cases, lossless formats like JPEG2000 (Red Code) and Tiff (Cinema DNG) are far better as source materials then compressed formats like MPEG2/MPEG4 which is what MOST consumer cameras shoot.

Ya know... after the Academy gave Life of PI best cinematography and didn't even nominate Interstellar a few years later... it's clear there is something wrong with their decision making process.

Yea, IDK man... I think the rumors are probably correct, only time will tell.

The sad part in all of this is that they COULD have done a limited week-long public release THIS WEEK, one week PRIOR to Star Wars in New York and L.A.. That's all they need to qualify for the oscar's. Then, they could have put everything on snooze until AFTER the Star Wars mess and launched nationally sometime towards the end of January. Everything about this launch reeks of horrible organization. There was never a need to install 70mm projectors into cineplexes, that's a HUGE mistake. There are literally 100's of theaters across the country with 35/70 projectors already installed. The problem is that most theaters don't know how to work them. So it's really simple to send a person out, get things cleaned up and find someone passionate about doing a good job, to run the show. During a classic roadshow, prints move from theater to theater. So why not do the same thing here? Run it a week in one city and then pack up the whole thing and move it to the next? This way you could have maybe a group of 4 - 6 people who drive in a truck from city to city with the film prints and deal with everything from re-calibrating the projectors to running the films for that week. Do a thursday - sunday run, get in the truck and drive monday-wednesday to the next destination. Spend the money on marketing, rather then striking prints. The rest of the theaters could run 35mm prints full-time if they have projectors. So my proposal would be to start the full roadshow experience sometime mid-late January with permanent prints DONATED to art-houses in Los Angeles, New York and Chicago. The rest of the screenings in 70mm would be a traveling road show going from city to city. Heck, you could even bring complete 70mm projector heads and platter systems with the traveling show if necessary. They should have also struck a few 15/70 blow up prints for IMAX theaters who still run film. That would have solved some of the venue issues as well. What a friggin' mess!

I use to work with Apple on NLE development. Apple was loosing money with FCP7, so even though the developers did make a 64 bit version of FCP7, they were let go and some of them went to Avid, others went to Adobe, a few went to Blackmagic. Final Cut X started as iMovie with a slightly different GUI. As they gained traction, they added features to the pre-existing iMovie engine and eventually replaced it with a much more powerful one. Yes, I'd agree that Apple developed FCPX for those people who refuse to learn the standards of editing. I've been editing for 20 years (film and linear) and modern NLE's have nothing to do with editing film. They're more akin to A/B/C roll linear editing actually, with a preview and program monitor, with assemble, insert and cut functions. The J/K/L keys, which act as a jog shuttle. With audio scrubbing like an analog tape machine. Track's are what you need to test new ideas and add layers of effects. You need the ability to add 10 tracks of video on top of what you're working with, so when the client comes in, you can show them different ideas without switching sequences, by simply turning on and off tracks. Plus, when you're really editing, you're constantly isolating effects and tracks to test new ideas without the other ideas gumming up the works. This goes for audio as well, most of my audio tracks have a minimal of 2 effects per track and sometimes even more. Not per clip... per track! Remember, Avid is "track" based editing and FCP is "clip" based editing, very different world. Even though, FCP7 can work just like an Avid, which is pretty crazy. Plus, Avid and FCP7 are both keyboard based editing software. So there is no need for dragging, dropping or frankly, using the mouse. This makes for super fast cutting, far faster then any other NLE if you know how to use it. Yes, it's more key strokes, but those strokes can be performed faster. You're talking about workflow and I've been an advocate for changing the workflow. However, in most cases you can't change it. Most films will be edited using proxy files no matter what. This is to cut down on cost and I haven't seen a single example from anyone editing an entire main-stream feature film on FCPX using raw 4k/6k media. Now, I worked in trailers, EPK's and BTS industry for quite a while. Studio's won't give you the raw media for security reasons, so you're yet again, editing in proxy files, generally given as a Pro Res SD format. Every single trailer you've ever seen, has been cut in proxy and then online edited at a lab where the master files are online. That's just the workflow and that's not going to change because storage is still very expensive and studio's are not going to release feature films in 4k quality for people to cut with, that's never, ever, ever going to happen. "Focus" used 2k media, not 4k media. They proxy transcoded everything as well. So we're not talking about a much different workflow then there rest of the industry already uses. A few pixels from 1080 to 2k. In this case, the NLE is almost irrelevant. In fact, they probably could have edited faster using Avid's script sync which actually listens to your dialog and matches it up to the script in real time. Right, but Avid and FCP7 does all the same stuff. In fact, the Avid Metadata is even stronger because of Script Sync. My workflow is to watch a clip and make markers. I then edit those markers using not just key words, but also notes. Those notes are available to the search system. So whenever I'm looking for something, I can simply type in what I'm looking for and it will pop up. Avid 8 adds a "relevancy" system as well, just like FCPX, so you can adjust relevancy depending on key words. The best thing is that Avid NAILS critical things like "reel" and timecode information. These are both super critical when going back to online media or frankly if you work with ANYTHING ELSE but a modern digital video camera. I honestly don't care about MOST of the metadata collected by FCPX. What kind of camera, what F stop, what shutter speed, what lens, what card, etc... these things are irrelevant in most cases. You do need to know what "reel" (mag) it is. You do need to know where the file is stored (physical location of original media) frame rate, resolution, time/date, timecode, scene and take. There are a few plugins that can read slates, which are nice for auto metadata. But script sync does most of this for ya anyway. I wasted 2hrs of my day watching his videos. He clearly makes money off selling his products. He has some great ideas, but they're just ideas and frankly, shooting a mid-budget feature film with stars in 2k and finishing in 2k, heck even considering that as "finishing" quality, just proves how wrong he is. 4 perf fine-grain 35mm negative is almost 6k worth of resolution and even in the cinemas, fourth generation, it's still around 3k worth of information. So all this new "digital" technology isn't any better then what we shot with for the last 20 years (ever since T grain stock's came out 20 years ago). It's just, a lot of these "whiz kids" don't even contemplate those things. They're not concerned about final output quality or that they're showing a 2k image on a 4k projector, really? I mean the whole thing is just silly and doesn't make any sense. He talks a good talk, but so far none of the numbers appear to be backing up his claims. Yes, it's easier on the filmmaker, but in the 40's, 50's, 60's, we made movies in less time, with less money, without VFX, without monitors, without instant reply and some of them are considered some of the best movies ever made. Digital production is over-bloated with multi-camera shooting, with DIT's, video village, take upon take because there isn't any consequence to just running the camera. I don't share Michael's optimism and future take on technology what so ever. I think the digital age is failing miserably and in 20 years when MOST of the stuff we produce today can't be scaled to whatever our next resolution is, people will look back and say they messed up. It reminds me of the early digital films, stuff shot on NTSC video like 28 Days later. Totally unwatchable today and there isn't anything you can do about it! Forever, that film will look that way, unlike originating on celluloid, which is completely scalable for the future. Nobody thinks about those things.

Right... "transcode to proxy" that means you're not editing with the raw material, you're editing with proxy files. That's kind of of my point when it comes to the FCP workflow. The last feature I worked on that was shot with RED, had over 50TB of raw material. Good luck organizing and transcoding that in FCPX. They wound up sending it out of house and getting back Pro Res proxy files for editing. That's what MOST people wind up doing with R3D files since Pro Res uses the open GL engine and is designed for multithreading, unlike JPEG2000 which is all GPU. I've never seen this round trip actually work with anything but a short subject piece stored on a single drive. Everyone says it works great, but FCPX struggles to handle bigger projects, using mass storage arrays. I've done lots of testing and most of the time it just doesn't work. I'd love to see 5 layers of video, 20 audio tracks playing in real-time using raw R3D material with no transcodes. . With one video track and a few audio tracks, maybe... but even some facilities I've worked at, they've not even been able to get that far. Direct attached storage helps a great deal, especially if it's fiber or thunderbolt. It doesn't really matter what computer or software you use at that point. Once you get over 2 layers of video in any program that's "native" to R3D material, it generally stops working. I know fancy FCPX with all it's bells and whistles doesn't really want you to work with multi-level video, but unfortunately when you're working on bigger projects, with clients sitting over your shoulders, that's how you've gotta work unless you're cutting a multi-cam television show and simply use the editor as a switcher. Yep, most people will be working with proxy files, which is really the only way to work with R3D material. I'm watching the speech from Light Iron about "focus" right now. I stopped because you mentioned editing on set whilst the filming was going on. I hate to break it to you, but I was doing that 15 years ago when Pro Res first came out. We'd take the tapes shot from the F900, ingest them using a portable recorder directly into our portable raid array. We had 3 assistant editors working through the material and cutting individual scenes and organizing dailies on the spot. A drive would then be dropped off to the lead editors place over night and in the morning they'd do a quick cut of the material, so by noon during lunch, the director could sit down and watch a "cut" version of everything they shot the day previous. In 2007/2008 I developed an on-set editorial system using FCP again, to capture in real time media directly off modern digital cinema cameras. It used a program called Picture Ready, which would store a 1080p squeezed (anamorphic) pro-res file onto the raid array based on start/stop of the camera integrating camera timecode. The editors would take that material and in real time, they could start cutting with it since the files were open and never closed. It allowed for INSTANT cutting of scenes, no transcode, you didn't even have to wait for the shot to be over, we could literally edit AS the camera was shooting! We built a little plugin for FCP that would de-squeeze the anamorphic material by simply drag and drop. We also had the 12 channel raw audio integrated as well, so the editor could pick and choose their audio sources. Plus, when you were done with the cut, the timecode matched up perfectly to the original digital media coming out of the camera if you used timecode as your base. So none of this is new... in fact, I've worked on jobs that were shot on film, where the lab would process over night, telecine and we'd have cut scenes by lunchtime the next day. The problem is, everyone thinks this is all amazing new technology and it really isn't. Integrating media with effects artists located at different facilities, is something we were doing 10 years ago! Now sure, we worked with 1080p Pro Res 422 material on pretty much all of these projects, but that's only because the software didn't accept higher resolutions at the time. The cool part is that our fiber based integration with all the effects houses, would allow us to pick and choose final shots for VFX work, push them over to the effects house with our Pro Res file as a guide and they'd integrate into their compositing tools. Back then, a lot of people were still using Shake, but anyone using Smoke (which was new at the time) would have full integration of XML's coming out of FCP. So we built a huge facility full of Smoke work station's, trained the compositors to use that software and literally pushed XML's and media over fiber between the different facilities. This system is still in use today here in L.A. and all of what this video talks about is stuff we did FAR before anyone of these guys thought about making this particular film. The problem I have with apple and Final Cut Pro is they've ignored the proper way to edit in their GUI. They said, hey everyone, you're going to edit like we want you to edit. They also hide a lot of the features from the public, making it another iMovie and iPhoto which constantly break and are slow because the back-end gets goofed up. The great thing about FCP7 was how simple it is to work with. Even Premiere is far less complex to work with back end wise, then FCPX. Once you learn Avid's back end, it too is very simple and easy to understand. Plus, the great thing about Avid is the AMA linking ability, which is actually 100% native with any JPEG2000 material like R3D. Where I'm not a fan of Avid by any means and it took me years to adapt and start working with it on my own projects, I absolutely swear by it being the best tool on the market. Yes it has problems, but it's a logical program which makes sense. The problem with FCPX is that none of it makes sense. If you're an editor and you wish to get a job editing, learning with FCPX isn't going to help your career. However, Premiere, FCP7 and Avid, they're pretty much industry standard operating, which is vital. As more and more companies make the switch to Premiere and Avid from FCP, it's going to be harder and harder to learn those programs when all you know is the Mickey Mouse workflow that's FCPX.