TedRed
"The Mouth"
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Last year, I was forwarded a story from Variety... supposedly a well respected trade mag that should be doing their homework... on some confusion generated by what seemed to be certain political factions of our industry, posing the question, "is it really cheaper to shoot Digital" somehow trying to say that Film capture and post is actually less expensive than digital capture and post...
I wrote a factual letter to Variety after doing some extensive research and creating a cost matrix on 35mm shooting vs. HD camera shooting vs RED shooting and showed with the facts that RED is by far the least expensive of the 3 options, while still maintaing a very high quality image pathway, well beyond what the HD cameras could achieve, and on par with what Film capture could achieve.
The writer of that article was very impressed with the research, and the factual data, but told me flat out that Variety would never publish a rebuttal like what I wrote - so I posted it on our user forum instead. here's the link if any of you want to take a look, that might not have seen it.
http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=35705
Those #s are still quite relevant more than a year later, probably could use an update if anyone wants to tackle that and has the time to do the research again to check industry rates here in LA, but certainly it's very clear to anyone that understands the steps required for production and post that RED is the big winner from a budget perspective.
Well the good folks at Variety are at it again... this time with an article this time comparing some of the digital shooting choices out there...
First off, I spent quite a lot of time with the author of the article, giving him lots of information to work with on the many key, high profile projects that have been done on the RED and some of the key technological advantages of 4k RAW capture vs. HD or DSLR (lower than HD rez) capture... he seemed to have chosen to use none of that important information to create a balanced and valid story.
Instead they create a skewed story trying to minimize the success of the RED while trying to trump up some of the other camera choices out there... no mention of a project Directed by David Fincher that Jeff Cronenweth DP'd called the Social Network, that has been well documented on how wonderful, natural and pleasing the images from the RED MX were to David and Jeff, and to many others that saw it. No mention of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and how pleased Dariusz the DOP on that movie was with the RED... and no mention of DP John Schwartzman who shot a few scenes of the soon to be released Green Hornet on REDs after testing all the digital camera options and chose the RED as the one and only digital choice that could hold up and match to the resolution and look of the 35mm film he shot... and is now shooting a very big movie with Epics, after his discovery of what the RED MX sensor can do that no other digital camera can come anywhere close to.
The author also misses a very key point that I went over in detail with him, that a DSLR in still mode is indeed a high resolution device, but when you put those cameras into video mode, it is NOT a high resolution capture device - in fact it is a very low resolution capture device. OK, we will give him the benefit of the doubt... he did ask me quite a number of very basic questions, clearly not a guy that knows much about this stuff, but I was patient and nice and gave him all the info he wanted in a very clear very basic way, he just chose not to use it.
In addition (and far less important) the way they skewed some quotes from me was really disturbing, and why I've discovered it's much better to do on camera interviews where it's much harder for a reporter to take things out of context or try and drive home a point that isn't really what was said from the overall perspective. * That and omitting much of what I did tell him about the key important points that separate the RED from the other devices and why it's become so overwhelmingly successful for so many projects worldwide. *Lesson learned there by me.
Very interesting that they found a few DPs to talk about how much they liked another camera, but minimized with just one very general quote from a DP that loves the images from the RED, and didn't get any quotes from the 100s of other high end DPs shooting and loving the images created from the RED... *But they did have time to find a few DPs that for whatever reason can't or don't have the skill to make really wonderful images with the RED when so many can and do all the time, it's a very easy and intuitive camera to work with.
There was also mention of the images of a certain actress, which I was told by someone that worked directly on the project was a very intentional choice by the Director to make that very glamourous and fantastically beautiful actress very natural and not made up for this movie... I've seen the movie Rabbit Hole on the big screen, and she looks wonderful in it, with the same resolution as if they had shot in 35mm film without any artificial sharpening that if they had chosen to go with an HD camera would have created... The RED creates beautiful, pleasing high resolution images (ask Peter Jackson among others why they like the RED so much) I would love to have a discussion with the DP on that movie in a theater while looking at the images projected on a big screen, to see if his opinion may be a bit different than how he was quoted in the article. I'm curious if they were looking at the videotap images off of the RED one on the set when they thought the images looked harsh, vs. looking at the RAW files the camera creates and how they were viewing those images... be interesting to find that out.
So you can see this article has stirred up a bit of a personal Hornet's nest for me... sometimes trying to be friendly and patient to everyone that wants to talk about the RED has it's limits, and you need to defend your home turf, especially when it's clear to so many in the industry at the highest levels that the technology at RED and the people working at RED are doing the right things when it comes to respecting the level of imaging that Film has created for so many years, and not accepting that cameras that produce an image lower than 2k resolution are the right choice for professional imaging.
Thanks to those that took the time to read this... I look forward to your comments.
+ Ted
I wrote a factual letter to Variety after doing some extensive research and creating a cost matrix on 35mm shooting vs. HD camera shooting vs RED shooting and showed with the facts that RED is by far the least expensive of the 3 options, while still maintaing a very high quality image pathway, well beyond what the HD cameras could achieve, and on par with what Film capture could achieve.
The writer of that article was very impressed with the research, and the factual data, but told me flat out that Variety would never publish a rebuttal like what I wrote - so I posted it on our user forum instead. here's the link if any of you want to take a look, that might not have seen it.
http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=35705
Those #s are still quite relevant more than a year later, probably could use an update if anyone wants to tackle that and has the time to do the research again to check industry rates here in LA, but certainly it's very clear to anyone that understands the steps required for production and post that RED is the big winner from a budget perspective.
Well the good folks at Variety are at it again... this time with an article this time comparing some of the digital shooting choices out there...
First off, I spent quite a lot of time with the author of the article, giving him lots of information to work with on the many key, high profile projects that have been done on the RED and some of the key technological advantages of 4k RAW capture vs. HD or DSLR (lower than HD rez) capture... he seemed to have chosen to use none of that important information to create a balanced and valid story.
Instead they create a skewed story trying to minimize the success of the RED while trying to trump up some of the other camera choices out there... no mention of a project Directed by David Fincher that Jeff Cronenweth DP'd called the Social Network, that has been well documented on how wonderful, natural and pleasing the images from the RED MX were to David and Jeff, and to many others that saw it. No mention of the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie and how pleased Dariusz the DOP on that movie was with the RED... and no mention of DP John Schwartzman who shot a few scenes of the soon to be released Green Hornet on REDs after testing all the digital camera options and chose the RED as the one and only digital choice that could hold up and match to the resolution and look of the 35mm film he shot... and is now shooting a very big movie with Epics, after his discovery of what the RED MX sensor can do that no other digital camera can come anywhere close to.
The author also misses a very key point that I went over in detail with him, that a DSLR in still mode is indeed a high resolution device, but when you put those cameras into video mode, it is NOT a high resolution capture device - in fact it is a very low resolution capture device. OK, we will give him the benefit of the doubt... he did ask me quite a number of very basic questions, clearly not a guy that knows much about this stuff, but I was patient and nice and gave him all the info he wanted in a very clear very basic way, he just chose not to use it.
In addition (and far less important) the way they skewed some quotes from me was really disturbing, and why I've discovered it's much better to do on camera interviews where it's much harder for a reporter to take things out of context or try and drive home a point that isn't really what was said from the overall perspective. * That and omitting much of what I did tell him about the key important points that separate the RED from the other devices and why it's become so overwhelmingly successful for so many projects worldwide. *Lesson learned there by me.
Very interesting that they found a few DPs to talk about how much they liked another camera, but minimized with just one very general quote from a DP that loves the images from the RED, and didn't get any quotes from the 100s of other high end DPs shooting and loving the images created from the RED... *But they did have time to find a few DPs that for whatever reason can't or don't have the skill to make really wonderful images with the RED when so many can and do all the time, it's a very easy and intuitive camera to work with.
There was also mention of the images of a certain actress, which I was told by someone that worked directly on the project was a very intentional choice by the Director to make that very glamourous and fantastically beautiful actress very natural and not made up for this movie... I've seen the movie Rabbit Hole on the big screen, and she looks wonderful in it, with the same resolution as if they had shot in 35mm film without any artificial sharpening that if they had chosen to go with an HD camera would have created... The RED creates beautiful, pleasing high resolution images (ask Peter Jackson among others why they like the RED so much) I would love to have a discussion with the DP on that movie in a theater while looking at the images projected on a big screen, to see if his opinion may be a bit different than how he was quoted in the article. I'm curious if they were looking at the videotap images off of the RED one on the set when they thought the images looked harsh, vs. looking at the RAW files the camera creates and how they were viewing those images... be interesting to find that out.
So you can see this article has stirred up a bit of a personal Hornet's nest for me... sometimes trying to be friendly and patient to everyone that wants to talk about the RED has it's limits, and you need to defend your home turf, especially when it's clear to so many in the industry at the highest levels that the technology at RED and the people working at RED are doing the right things when it comes to respecting the level of imaging that Film has created for so many years, and not accepting that cameras that produce an image lower than 2k resolution are the right choice for professional imaging.
Thanks to those that took the time to read this... I look forward to your comments.
+ Ted
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