Scratch Vs. Crimson

[d.andalman]

which tool do you finish on for what types of budgets??

Crimson for 189 dollars total (www.crimsonworkflow.com) - get all the power of RedCine or RedLine when color-correcting your finished feature in 4K, but also conforms your "neg" (source files in the case of RED) and even onlines your timeline. Total cost to conform and cc a feature in 4K 189 dollars plus labor (say 12min of pic a day for two wks is 2,000 for low budget colorist). Notice for all of you film producers - just cut out the line item for neg cutter.

Or Scratch at 375 an hr in the suite - total cost to cc a feature in 4K approximate 45,000. (also covering 12min of pic a day).

Scratch offers powerful power window tools that crimson doesn't. Crimson giving you basically what film has always dealt with until the new millennium (equivalent of RGB lights).

If I'm working with anything less than 2mil I'm using crimson and it's a no-brainer. I might take select scenes, only problematic ones, into scratch, but I'm keeping that line down - way down. Have film-out to look forward to after all.... obviously there are a lot of ins and out in here, but that's what I'm looking forward to hearing about....

For those who haven't heard of Crimson, check it out....just came out - very powerful application... online your 4K footage, color correct and conform your "neg" or in the case of RED the source files.

http://www.crimsonworkflow.com/video...Demo-H.264.mov




Looking forward to your thoughts,
D.Andalman
Producer & Director
TAKOMA PARK (35mm, premiering at the 08 Tribeca Film Festival)
THE BRAGGART(35mm, Austin, Nantucket, Cinequest, Atlanta, etc. etc.)

[Gunleik Groven]

You could also do one-light in RedCine and export 10-bit dpx's and CC in color.

Done a lot here in Norway... (Not the RedCine step, but the Color finishing)

[I Bloom]

I don't think Crimson is competition for Scratch, that is an extremely ill informed notion.

The purpose of Crimson is to find R3Ds, facilitate setting color parameters, translate sequences, and batch process footage.

Scratch is a fully featured finishing app and it's always the first word out of my mouth when people ask me how to finish Redcode. Regardless of the fact that I wrote an app to do workflow, in situations where a Scratch session is unobtainable.

If you try finishing a feature to film with Crimson and Redcine, you are in for a long haul, not so with Scratch. I'd love to sell you a copy of my stuff but that is straight honesty.

IBloom

[Lucas Wilson]

I've talked to Ian about this and several other people.

I don't think of it (and ASSIMILATE doesn't think of it) as SCRATCH vs. CRIMSON. They are complementary tools.

Lucas
------
ASSIMILATE, inc.
LA, CA, USA

[Seth Larney]

What Ian and Luki said..

Also, your argument about the math involved doesn't seem to make sense.

At $45,000 for $375/hr, you are talking about 120hours.

You are saying that a cheap colorist would cost $2000 for the same amount of work. That would make that colorist $16.67/hr.

So, the argument that you seem to be putting forward is "Would you rather pay somebody $16.67/hr to color your film, or pay a professional $375/hr to do it with advanced and efficient tools"

I would cringe at the thought of a junior colorist who only charges $16.67/hr coloring my $2mil budget feature. But that may just be me.

Also, as Ian mentioned, Scratch is an advanced finishing suite. It does much, much, MUCH more than Crimson (Although Crimson ROCKS !! Don't take me the wrong way !), which can easily equate into many man-hours LESS time in the suite when all is said and done, which would make those figures even less balanced.

Crimson really is awesome, and for many who absolutely cannot afford a Scratch suite to finish on, then it is an extremely valuable tool. Ian has really excelled here and I think there us a HUGE market for it. But I would say that as soon as your budget permits the use of a professional and powerful solution such as Scratch, well, this is when you will start to see the return make sense.

When all is said and done, they are not the same tool.

Just my 0.2c.
S.

[Seth Larney]

I just wanted to add as well, there are many things you have not factored into your figures.. a color calibrated viewing environment for example (which would come with that $375/hr Scratch price) etc..

Just food for thought..

Cheers,
S

[d.andalman]

This is what the numbers are based on...

Covering 12min of picture a day of a feature length film that is 120minutes. 10 days of work.

Scratch edit suite runs 375 an hr. with 12 hr days for two weeks = 45,000. This is now 1/20th of your ENTIRE budget of a 2mil feature. (covering one minute of picture, roughly, per hour - obviously this can varry with cuts per minute, how much difficult matching needs to be done, power windows, key framing the power windows, etc. etc..)

At 200 a day, a low budget colorist works on your home system, or you do it yourself, using Crimson. Of course you do not have the same tools available, BUT - you have the equivalent of RGB lights, which were good enough for THE GODFATHER, TAXI DRIVER, HAROLD AND MAUDE, etc. etc.


AND - you are still just working on your video master here... can always shoot an IN/IP - for the 43,000 you saved on Crimson this is not a bad option ... Will still save major. Especially at FotoKem where even before the first answer print you are looking at stips of film shot under different light setting on a light table (as opposed to printing the entire silent answer print).

Also, keep in mind that the major question I posed was "which tool was right for which budget??"

If 2 mil is not your breaking point to go with Crimson then what is?? Certainly with a 200,000 dollar budget you are not going to spend 1/4th of your budget on conforming and color correct when you can do it basically for free. At a certain level you are also banking on a distributor to pick up finishing funds - so you are not going to budget for SCRATCH but you will certainly make sure you do a conform and color-correct with CRIMSON.

This is the type of discussion I hope to open up...

(And of course there is the issue with calibrated moniter etc, but actually every batch of film has minor differences, so nothing is perfect.)

And yes - I have know great colorists to work for as little as 200 a day. Seatle or Boston are totally different markets than Ny and LA, Although Boston of late has blown totally out of control (new tax incentives).

Great to hear some discussion going,
D.Andalman
Producer & Director
TAKOMA PARK (35mm, premiering at the 08 Tribeca Film Festival)
THE BRAGGART(35mm, Austin, Nantucket, Cinequest, Atlanta, etc. etc.)

[I Bloom]

I just want to reiterate. Crimson is not a conform tool, even though we used that double entendre on our mock Soviet poster, saying you can conform with Crimson is like saying "Cocoa puffs are part of this complete breakfast". Breakfast sold separately.

Now FCP + Crimson + REDline + AfterEffects. NOW you are hitting all the food groups.

IBloom

[Lucas Wilson]

At 200 a day, a low budget colorist works on your home system, or you do it yourself, using Crimson. Of course you do not have the same tools available, BUT - you have the equivalent of RGB lights, which were good enough for THE GODFATHER, TAXI DRIVER, HAROLD AND MAUDE, etc. etc.

Everybody has said this a few times, and I agree. Ian has done great work, and Crimson provides a great choice for a lot of people. That said...

$200/day for a colorist? In LA? Even when I interned, I worked for more than $10/hr. I get cutting costs and "making it work," but $200/day? Damn.

I get what you're saying with your analogy to The Godfather, etc. But I don't think it's very valid. In traditional film finishing, there is choice of neg stock, lab processing options, and yes, printer points. But an awful lot of work is done in DI to mimic lab options. There is much more control and creativity over an image in a film chain than just RGB lights. And though Ashby died too long ago to take advantage of DI, Scorsese certainly does a full DI for his movies. New tools, new rules.

AND - you are still just working on your video master here... can always shoot an IN/IP - for the 43,000 you saved on Crimson this is not a bad option ... Will still save major. Especially at FotoKem where even before the first answer print you are looking at stips of film shot under different light setting on a light table (as opposed to printing the entire silent answer print).

At Fotokem... right before they take it into either their DS Nitris, SCRATCH, or Pablo rooms? ;) To be fair, Fotokem is one of the few shops that still employs traditional film timers. And their eyes are astonishing.

Interesting story... a few years ago, I got together with the VP of Engineering at Fotokem on the film side. I showed him how the printer light interface worked in SCRATCH, and he said he had an idea. The guy is a born tinkerer, so I was curious to see what he would do. I came back in a couple of days, and he had wired a Hazeltine interface to a JL Cooper controller tied to the SCRATCH printer light controls. We adjusted the print light controls in SCRATCH so they matched Fotokem's points.

We set it up in a theatre and hid the JL Cooper and the SCRATCH machine and invited the film timers over to try it out. They came over, played with the Hazeltine, and said, "yeah, it's a Hazel. What's the big deal?"

Then we showed them how we had tied it to a DI system and how they could use the Hazel interface... and much much more. They went ape. We spent the next 3 hours or so just letting all of them have a play and figuring stuff out.

It was an incredible day - and such a cool way to bring the knowledge and skill of the film timers into the world of DI. I believe we created the world's only 2K Hazeltine. :)

Lucas
-----
ASSIMILATE, Inc.
LA, CA, USA

[d.andalman]

yes - that goes without say in a forum like this.

But thank you for reiterating just in case (and for using such great humor!)

D. Andalman