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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons

digitalfx said:
Principal photography took place in New Orleans this summer on 35mm, but they just came back in town recently to shoot retakes and brought in two RED ONES from LA.
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"Benjamin Button" was primarily shot on the Thomson Viper, not film. Same basic methodology as "Zodiac." David Fincher has been interested in digital cinema for some time, so I'm not at all surprised to see him try Red.
 
Exciting to see Claudio on the Red if that is true - he was by Offhollywood back in September, and he has had other demonstrations from Team Red. Can anyone confirm that this info is correct?
 
Yup, Benjamin Buttons is another big Viper show.

I have to say that I think Michael Mann's use of HD actually hurt the cause. After Collateral and Miami Vice I was amazed anyone would shoot with the Viper ever again.

But it wasn't until I saw Zodiac that I realized what the Viper could actually do. I thought Zodiac looked fantastic.

And then it become clear that Mann actually "likes" the bottom-end of the Viper, he likes that nasty noise floor and intentionally shot those films like that. For a while I just thought he was stressing the cameras to the limits. Now I realize he was doing it intentionally, which kinda baffles me.
 
Robert Sanders said:
And then it become clear that Mann actually "likes" the bottom-end of the Viper, he likes that nasty noise floor and intentionally shot those films like that. For a while I just thought he was stressing the cameras to the limits. Now I realize he was doing it intentionally, which kinda baffles me.
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Miami vice is one of the first movies I've seen with a lot of night exteriors, with backgrounds lit with existing light. Yeah the noise is gross, but there are sync shots where you can see an exposure off of streetlights reflecting off the clouds. That puts you into the feeling of really being there at night. It's a trade off but I can't wait to do more of this on RED.

IBloom
 
mmost said:
"Benjamin Button" was primarily shot on the Thomson Viper, not film. Same basic methodology as "Zodiac." David Fincher has been interested in digital cinema for some time, so I'm not at all surprised to see him try Red.
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sorry, typo...you are correct.
 
ibloom said:
but there are sync shots where you can see an exposure off of streetlights reflecting off the clouds. That puts you into the feeling of really being there at night. It's a trade off but I can't wait to do more of this on RED.

IBloom
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I agree. A lot of folks hated Miami Vice's look but I thought it was great.... really gritty but glossy and synthetic at the same time, suits Miami well
 
i wasn't crazy about the super-fuzzy video noise bits; they kind of took me out of the movie.

But the film looked awesome in other scenes...and I liked how it felt like an episode of Cops when the Miami Vice squad attacks the trailer home.

And Michael Mann gets a lot of energy out of the scene when he can move quickly and not light everything to death.


"Benjamin Button" is going to be incredible. Fincher is the man.
 
I agree, I loved the look of "Miami Vice", including the grain. The cinematography strongly evoked images we were so used to seeing ourselves in daily life - on reality TV, news and also with our own home cameras.

Seeing that iconic "COPS" look, the very naturalistic lighting and colors and - as another poster pointed out - seeing streetlights reflecting off the clouds and that tangible atmosphere of heat and humidity psychologically sold the movie for me completely.

For some members of the public and certainly for many filmmakers who demand only clean, pristine images, i can certainly agree Michael Mann's visual aesthetic may have given them the talisman to ward off HD and its "evils", but I think for some people it gave a fleeting, albeit grainy, glimpse of where movies WILL definitely go in the future and made our hearts skip a beat or three.

Mann can keep on pushing the pixels as far as I'm concerned. :)
 
Someone pointed me to this blog... I am the cinematographer on Benjamin Button and we did NOT use the RED on this movie. Where did you get your confirmation? We did switch for one scene to F23. Mainly we shot Viper, some film and a little F23. Both digital cameras were shot 4:4:4 filmstream onto S2 hard drives. I did look at some early tests of the Red camera, but it was not ready.

Claudio
 
-just gotta step in and say I'm a big fan, Claudio (if you are him)-

...continue :)

-As a side note, when I was at RPM post for the RED training, a guy there told me that a few weeks earlier, Fincher was in there screening room with Jim, looking at RED stuff, and was heard saying "if only the cameras were available earlier..."

doesn't mean anything, just interesting
 
I was in New Orleans. We finally finished shooting the movie. 160 days. I have been with this for over a year.

I am feeling there are a lot of false statements. All the test footage I have seen on the RED camera was not up to par. All the latitude tests I have seen have come up short (maybe this is part of the compression). I have contacted RED and they have not responded to tests I want to facilitate. I have seen the camera and I am impressed with the camera for the price. I do not want to give the impression that I am from any camp. Viper has its own issues. F23 has some of its own as well. I love the RED's size, 35mm lens mount, 4K and simple design. I am not sure about the compression. At 2K on the Viper every frame is approx 8meg (based on images I have pulled) x 24 = 192 meg per sec. That same information at 4K is 768meg per sec. Now compress that and fit it on a flash cards does not seem correct. I would love to test the camera with a dual link adapter to truly test the camera then run that test against their compression and see what I am loosing.

But what I want to get to the bottom is. Who is spreading these rumors? Who is confirming RED on Benjamin Button?

I will contact Fincher and ask about what he saw. Fincher and I were shooting together between Nov 5-17 and did not mention Red. If David is gloating about the RED I am sure I would of heard. I do know he saw some footage a couple of months ago, but the report was not favorable.
 
Claudio, when was the last time you looked at RED footage? The compression is wavelet based, so it's common for data rates to be less than usual.
 
Bummer, would have been great news though. Fincher approved :-)

Cant wait to see Benjamin Button.

Are you attached to Rendevous?
 
Claudio,
I sent you an email. I started the thread based on a report from a crew member who was on location. He stated that two Reds were shipped to New Orleans recently. He never actually said the cameras were used only that they arrived from LA. He would have no reason to make up this story, but I will get to the bottom of it.

For now I'll ask moderators to delete this thread as it appears this is false info. I apologize for posting the info w/o first hand knowledge.
 
Claudio you also have to remember the data rates you are quoting are for uncompressed 4.4.4 images. The compressed images from the Red are Raw images from the sensor - compressed. Much like images from a DSLR. My Nikon D200 has a compressed setting for the Raw images that's 1/3 of the data from the sensor uncompressed and that's still less than the 30MB of the uncompressed tiffs. Also you can't use the images without deBayering the frames into DPX (uncompressed) files or whatever you need. The images from the Viper are regular uncompressed images that can then be color corrected then used. The best way to think of the data from the Red is the raw data is the digital negative which has to be processed into prints to use in the post production pipeline.
 
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