As the summer of 2008 arrived we at the Filmworkers Club - Nashville had spent a lot of time testing and re-testing a number of different options and workflows for posting Red footage. The Nashville market saw the addition of two, then four, then six Red cameras come online at two of the local rental houses. That's a lot of new technology to add to a market of Nashville's size in a short amount of time and the vendors were pushing the cameras hard. Like a lot of post houses trying to plan the best workflow, we downloaded some of the ubiquitous drag racing footage available on the Internet until we were able to acquire a hard drive full of some locally shot footage. Then it was off to the races.
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Blacks still look very crushed. No detail in the blacks. Looks like some vertical smaear in the two samples with the guy.
Posted by JOE RIOS on Thursday, August 21, 2008 @ 06:00 PM
2.
The blacks are crushed ... that's the look they were going for. There was more detail to be had if they had wanted it. Was there as much detail as you get in film? Probably not but there was more there. And keep in mind these are just jpeg screen captures.
Posted by Scott Simmons on Thursday, August 21, 2008 @ 07:04 PM
3.
Yea, I can see that too, given the high res images they provided us.
Seriously, 7KB Jpeg?
Posted by Mat1138 on Thursday, August 21, 2008 @ 07:04 PM
4.
I am curious about post costs relative to tape or film.
Its interesting the lack of support from RED with post.
I have heard that statement before that we would need more light with film but i have never seen that be the case, I think its budget relative, if you have money you shoot film with a lot of lights, but a l of of lights arent always necessary.
Kudos To you for making this all work and make sense in layman's terms.
The camera does have the capability of producing good images no doubt.
Posted by Jim matlosz on Thursday, August 21, 2008 @ 07:40 PM
5.
This is a much better workflow article than one published at another magazine. In that other article, their workflow basically came down to this: After shooting, we tried to edit our footage and we had no idea what we were doing, because we didn't test for the shoot." This workflow shows how it should be done. Test, test test. Verify, test, repeat.
Thomas Koch
www.bayarefilmmakers.com
Posted by Thomas Koch on Friday, August 22, 2008 @ 11:19 AM
6.
The cost question is a good one. I've seen cost analysis to RED vs. film that vary widely. I think it really depends on what you are doing with RED. If you keep it in one box with Final Cut Pro ProRes and do color work with REDCine and Color then it's a lot cheaper than a Quantel conform and a DaVinci color grade ... obviously. But then you better have a talented editor/online artist/colorist/QC person ... while I'm often all of those things on a job I truly believe in letting the dedicated artist do their job. It just all depends on the job and budget. It's great I can color grade RED footage on my Mac but it doesn't give me the colorist's eye that years of color grading gives the professional colorist.
As for the 7k jpeg? Sorry they aren't higher quality images. They are only meant to give an idea of the untouched image we offlined with and then the final grade.
Posted by Scott Simmons on Friday, August 22, 2008 @ 12:35 PM
7.
I would like to know about the OLPF compensation. There is no word about that in any of the post-production workflow posted on Net. The images shot on Red looks soft and this needs to be corrected in post by adding sharpen filter which leads to many people to think that by adding sharpen how can you remove noise while shooting for Night. If you are shooting on 3K and 2K the softness is more.
How do you face the above challenges? The question is based on challenges faced by me in more than 7 commercials and 2 Music Videos conformed by me using FCP / Avid / Crimson /RedCine / Smoke - Lustre finish.
Posted by Gopal Balaji on Friday, August 22, 2008 @ 12:50 PM
8.
I believe the OLPF comp happened from the Scratch Cine to DPX files. Can't say 100% but if not there the DaVinci has its own sharpening. Didn't do any for the offline. I don't think there were any issues when they got in color grading AFAIK.
Posted by Scott Simmons on Saturday, August 23, 2008 @ 03:27 PM
9.
Am I missing something? Why are people shooting RED for HD when there are 3chip HD cameras that can take primes, record uncompressed and are superior in color, exposure and workflow?
Posted by Tom Polson on Sunday, August 31, 2008 @ 03:20 PM
10.
One lure of RED is it is new and exciting. I think it's totally subjecting to say the other cams are superior in color and exposure as you can get great images out of RED. Workflow... that is a different story but it's like anything new, it takes time to get it right and easy.
Posted by Scott Simmons on Monday, September 1, 2008 @ 10:06 PM
11.
i will disagree on the subjectivity of exposure and color. by exposure i mean the amount of light a sensor needs to capture an image. this is measurable, pure and simple. refer to fletcher cameras comparison chart and look at the base ASA column. http://www.fletch.com/images/Video_Camera_Comparson_Chart.pdf
as for color, i have now worked on two RED features with extensive green screen. i will qualify by saying they were shot with rev 15, but the noise in the green channel was pretty bad. also the color bandwith needed to correct out spill was about twice as much as film or HD. not subjective, but what i had to deal with.
in either case, the RED uses a bayer painted chip, probably from canon, which uses interpolation to create the image information. 3chip samples what it sees and will always have more accurate and complete color info than a single chip. its physics, not subjective.
now if someone built a 4chip camera, then you got some amazing color.
Posted by TomPolson on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 @ 11:23 AM
12.
I understand what you are say Tom but it is totally subjective as to the look you get out of the camera for a job in question. We've had film up on the telecine side-by-side with RED images and the DP and director have been able to get very good and very acceptable images out of the RED footage. There have been others that didn't think the RED was as good but was completely acceptable for the job they were doing.
Posted by Scott Simmons on Tuesday, September 2, 2008 @ 12:48 PM
13.
I agree with you on that point regarding the subjective look of an image. I referring to the quality of the data at capture which can directly affect the technical ability to achieve a look. And by quality, I don't mean quantity. 4K 12bit is a lot of data, but if the proper color values aren't there, then it can become difficult manipulate digitally. There are limitations as to what technology can do with an image.
Posted by Tom Polson on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 @ 11:22 AM
14.
Great point Tom. I think you see a lot of RED champions and owners who think that just because they capture a 4K "raw" image that they can infinitely do more with that image than any 1080 image capture, regardless of the tlc they took when lighting, setting up the camera and exposing. that's just not always the case.
Posted by Scott Simmons on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 @ 02:46 PM
15.
This is the latest info about how Quantel works (which was not avalaible at the time of this project)
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