Cancel that thought...

[Tim van Dammen]

Apparently according to this thread I don't know what I'm doing.

So I'd love to have someone tell me the settings to get my Red to look like Alexa!

Andrea and Chris crack me up - its like a religious debate or political debate... circles meaning nothing.

[Chris Smith]

... circles meaning nothing.

Most accurate statement today :)

Before I head off to sleep and out of your lives, I will bore you with a great RED experience to make up for discussing 'another' camera today.

I remember my first RED shoot. It was a RED M. An agency forced me to use it and I wanted to use 35mm. I told them I would pay for the film to not have to shoot digital. They didn't hire me. 3 months later they asked again if I want to shoot a package of spots but again I have to agree to shoot digital and not insist on film. I said, oh fine, I'll have to switch at some point. My first few setups of the day were intriguing. I met a dashing man named, Dino who provided his prized Red One. I saw on his lic plate it had his cam number. I spent half the day talking to Dino being fascinated with the whole concept of shooting digital and not staring at a crappy video tap (or looking thru glass). Dino was fantastic at getting me comfortable with everything. I still wasn't sure what I thought about the greater picture of "Film vs Digital". But at the end of the day, I was EXTREMLY hooked on the digital experience. Then the MX chip came out soon after. I was about to shoot a Texas aired Superbowl spot which had plenty of money for film and they expected film and in a turn of events, I told them I was going to shoot the RED with the new MX chip. I happen to be very proud of that simple spot (on the Vimeo page called Status Meeting). I shot for the next, what was it ,year and a half? Whatever the time was between the MX chip and the EPIC. I had a great run with that R1MX. It's built like a brick Sh*thouse (that's a great thing, don't attack). I still have a lot of fondness for it and if'n anyone owns one now, I would say to hold onto that thing for life. Just a great all around camera. For me, my journey took me elsewhere and who knows if it comes back again or onto another corner of this crazy digital camera world. But if it's not back here, for the love of all holy things I won't mention it around these parts ;)

Goodnight!

[Jason Sinclair]

This would be a great script. What was your childhood like? -only joking. Thanks for your honesty.

[Marc Wielage]

I'm not only talking about me, I'm referring to 2 different colorists who tell me how much extra work it takes for them to get a decent look from EPIC because of all the secondary work needed to get the colors balanced, most notably yellows and skin tones.

Putting on my colorist hat, I haven't found this is a problem with either Baselight or DaVinci Resolve. I might make a mild custom curve adjustment and tweak the secondaries and overall saturation a little bit, but the rest of it looks fine to me. I haven't seen that much of a skin tone issue to really worry about it that much, and it's not that much extra work at all, once you drop in a preset.

To me, this is no different than setting up a "base correction" for film transfers. It's always been this way in color correction.

[Bruce Allen]

Putting on my colorist hat, I haven't found this is a problem with either Baselight or DaVinci Resolve. I might make a mild custom curve adjustment and tweak the secondaries and overall saturation a little bit, but the rest of it looks fine to me. I haven't seen that much of a skin tone issue to really worry about it that much, and it's not that much extra work at all, once you drop in a preset.

To me, this is no different than setting up a "base correction" for film transfers. It's always been this way in color correction.

Mark, if you want to do a tutorial or sell me that Resolve preset / curve, I'm game :)

For example, the skin tones in the latest Spiderman trailer have that "RED look" to me anytime it's not controlled daylight light sources:
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthr...-Man-Trailer-3

The very first closeup of Peter Parker, for example:
- entire face seems one shade of brown, except for greyish side highlights and vaguely reddish ears and cheeks
- except for lips which look like the wrong color pink
- whites of eyes look oddly pink and dull
- and hair kinda blends into face in unappealing mushy way

I mean... how the heck do you correct for that?

Sorry, should probably take it to the other thread. But seriously, would love to hear what you as a colorist use as a starting point for RED footage.

Personally for me it's:
- balance out as best I can
- increase saturation a lot overall
- increase saturation some more in certain areas (sometimes it's the shadows, sometimes it's in the relatively-desaturated areas, etc)
- do secondary correction on reds and greens to make them more pure and less pink / brick color (RedColor3 has helped with this)
- by now the hair has usually become a kind of blue shade. So I go back in and fight to get the hair looking somewhat like human hair
- Stop, take a breather and look at some pictures of real faces shot on real film.
- push on...

Any suggestions for improvements in workflow would be appreciated!

Thanks, man.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[Marie Turock]

YES!! Posts at 3:00AM rule! Just made one. Can't say I know of any other company that has such an online omnipresence. Also, don't know of any other camera that can do what Scarlet does for me at the price it sells for. Thanks for doing it right.

[M Most]

For example, the skin tones in the latest Spiderman trailer have that "RED look" to me anytime it's not controlled daylight light sources:

You're judging skin tones in a huge tentpole feature based on a heavily compressed clip on the Internet, viewed on a computer monitor? And probably an uncalibrated one, at that??

I would strongly suggest waiting until the picture is released, viewing it on a large screen in a theater like it's meant to be viewed, and forming your opinion based on that. That at least gives the production and post production team a fighting chance to do its job and show you the results sensibly.

[M Most]

Any suggestions for improvements in workflow would be appreciated!

Here's a few:

1. Keep it simple. Don't try to correct for specific things until everything that's basic is as perfect as it can be.
2. Stay away from lift, gamma, and gain if you're using a log original (i.e., RedlogFilm). Stick to exposure (aka offset) and contrast correction, both done prior to a normalizing LUT. Balance using the overall "printer light" approach, correcting almost exclusively for flesh tones if there are some in the image. Everything else will largely fall into place. Use a bit of shadow correction to rebalance the blacks if you want perfectly balanced blacks (although you don't always want that......).
3. Use primary corrections through tracked windows rather than keyed secondary corrections whenever possible. You'll avoid noise and other very nasty artifacts.
4. Don't assume that everything in the image should look a certain way unless you have evidence that it should. If you use the simplified approach I've outlined above, the colors captured by the camera should make themselves very obvious. By avoiding use of lift gamma and gain for the basic correction, you're no longer "pulling the picture apart" and contaminating certain colors in the process. The colors retain their original values and the pallette is noticeably wider. In other words, your base correction is much less destructive.
5. Do any further tweaking of the original correction downstream of the normalizing LUT. This gives you good control and better separation for any isolations you might want to do at that point.
6. Accept the fact that all digital cameras have somewhat different inherent visual characteristics, and all of them are different than film. Embrace their particular aesthetic and don't try to make them look like something they're not.

That's what I do, anyway...

[Bill Anderson]

How about a RED tutorial series: Post with Most. I'd buy that. ( :

[illya laney]

Well, Canon just announced yesterday that they will be showing their 4K C500 camera with a workflow presentation, a 4K short shown in 4K, and some hands-on touchy feely with the camera and accessories one week from now in LA at the LA Film School if anyone wants to go and compare whatever they are offering with the RED experience. I'm not saying anyone should go or needs to go, but given the ongoing discussion, I would assume some of you would like a comparison of whatever they are presenting vs whatever you yourself have experienced with your use of the RED cameras.

I believe you're talking about the short film they showed at NAB called "Man and Beast." It was shot by Cronenweth and Fotokem developed the workflow.