Hans von Sonntag
Well-known member
Hi everyone,
finally...
we’ve been one of the very early birds over here in Germany. On friday I’ve directed a commercial shoot for cinema release and used the RED for the first time. So this is a brief summary of the shoot from a technical point of view.
Since we have not received our RED yet (due in a month or so) we had to rent. Axel Mertes from Magnamana in Frankfurt was so kind to help us out with his camera und much more important with his expertise - so a great thank-you to Axel.
Axel’s RED has no EVF yet as most of the bunch and we had to rig a HDSDI monitor (Panasonic BTH..9?) instead of the light weight camera powered RED-LCD. Cameraman Peter Schulz (shooting all hand held) wasn’t happy at all with this setup but there was no other way because of the current RED-LCD - HDSDI out situation and we needed a video village for clients and my self (sorry Peter). The HDSDI signal was converted to PAL with an AJA converter and taped for convenient take-checking.
We used my Zeiss Super Speeds which worked like a charm as expected. Setting the right exposure is kind of tricky since one does not see what really happens with the sensor. We shot some tests and developed them in REDCine. Yes, 320 ASA seems the way to go in most cases, perhaps even 500 ASA would do the job as well with out any distracting noise. We used for this exposure test a real-world situation (actually the set we were shooting in) and a conventional light meter.
The picture the RED sends out via 720 is simply stunning and much more than what any one expects from a video-assist. Plenty enough for focus checking if a 17” monitor is used. On a 7” LCD focus is not that easy to see, nothing beats a focus puller and a measure tape. On the RED-LCD there is a way to evaluate focus with the histo, unfortunately on HDSDI out the menue is cropped and therefor not usable.
Please note that any picture be it LCD/EVF or HDSDI is sent from the sensor through a LUT and not the actual picture which RED records. Therefore noise, exposure and the like cannot be evaluated accurately. RED still keeps some mystery in its black-box, something I like... We lit the scene like we would have done on film.
The shoot went quick and flawlessly along and we had an early wrap like if we had been shooting on 35mm. We used CF cards for security reason, the only way to go, IMO. 4 minutes of footage was the same length as the usual 300 feet reels, so again nothing new. The upcoming 16GB CF Cards will shorten turnaround times a bit and make the RED more suitable for more applications.
I strongly suggest to “collect” as shoots go along more and more CF cards, so erasing the cards will not be necessary any more and one backup on a device like the Nexto will do the job. Personally, I don’t think that there is a strong need of a DIT. The classic loader can do the “wrangling” if there is no need for reusing CF Cards and backuping is convient and fast, admittedly he won’t do the clapper board anymore... Watching on lunch break developed footage on a laptop is nice to have. But if the director or DOP wants to see developed footage all the time, well, then things will slow down drastically and a DIT is needed - a downside of this workflow.
Right after the shoot we copied all the files onto the raid in our facility and made a LTO3 backup. With Apple Compressor we converted the medium-proxies QT into ProRes PAL 24p files and edited the project within FCP. The time from loading footage in to the system and being ready to edit was short: 2 hours, not too bad. I know that the Avid route has more obstacles but they will be solved after NAB as far as I know.
Conforming the project with Ian’s great REDTrip (thanks a lot! Reduser is full of smart people) worked perfectly. We will grade the spot with SpeedGrade and won’t use any specific LUT for film-out but cooperate with the very skilled colourist and Arrilaser operator at Geyer, Berlin who always managed to satisfy our needs thoroughly.
Sound will be in Dolby 5.1 and a big laughter, literally.
Bottomline: REDOne is a very capable camera and for me a great new tool that will allow me to shoot tons of rolls without any producer bothering me with budget restrictions. Great that I jumped on this train early. My big respect to the RED team.
Did I mention that the green screen we shot and the later pulled key worked fine (grey curly hair) at least as well as on 35mm?.... The colour space RED produces is huge if scaled down to 1080p 10bit DPX plus virtually no artefacts.
Hans
If any one is interested: under http://hubbertvonsonntag.com/redfiles/redshootyogi1080p24h.264.mov is a short sequence from our shoot. Zeiss Super Speed MKII 35mm T2 1/2, ND9, 320 ASA 4K - 1080p24.
Edit: This file is NOT colour graded, just as it comes out of REDCine, flat and pure.
finally...
we’ve been one of the very early birds over here in Germany. On friday I’ve directed a commercial shoot for cinema release and used the RED for the first time. So this is a brief summary of the shoot from a technical point of view.
Since we have not received our RED yet (due in a month or so) we had to rent. Axel Mertes from Magnamana in Frankfurt was so kind to help us out with his camera und much more important with his expertise - so a great thank-you to Axel.
Axel’s RED has no EVF yet as most of the bunch and we had to rig a HDSDI monitor (Panasonic BTH..9?) instead of the light weight camera powered RED-LCD. Cameraman Peter Schulz (shooting all hand held) wasn’t happy at all with this setup but there was no other way because of the current RED-LCD - HDSDI out situation and we needed a video village for clients and my self (sorry Peter). The HDSDI signal was converted to PAL with an AJA converter and taped for convenient take-checking.
We used my Zeiss Super Speeds which worked like a charm as expected. Setting the right exposure is kind of tricky since one does not see what really happens with the sensor. We shot some tests and developed them in REDCine. Yes, 320 ASA seems the way to go in most cases, perhaps even 500 ASA would do the job as well with out any distracting noise. We used for this exposure test a real-world situation (actually the set we were shooting in) and a conventional light meter.
The picture the RED sends out via 720 is simply stunning and much more than what any one expects from a video-assist. Plenty enough for focus checking if a 17” monitor is used. On a 7” LCD focus is not that easy to see, nothing beats a focus puller and a measure tape. On the RED-LCD there is a way to evaluate focus with the histo, unfortunately on HDSDI out the menue is cropped and therefor not usable.
Please note that any picture be it LCD/EVF or HDSDI is sent from the sensor through a LUT and not the actual picture which RED records. Therefore noise, exposure and the like cannot be evaluated accurately. RED still keeps some mystery in its black-box, something I like... We lit the scene like we would have done on film.
The shoot went quick and flawlessly along and we had an early wrap like if we had been shooting on 35mm. We used CF cards for security reason, the only way to go, IMO. 4 minutes of footage was the same length as the usual 300 feet reels, so again nothing new. The upcoming 16GB CF Cards will shorten turnaround times a bit and make the RED more suitable for more applications.
I strongly suggest to “collect” as shoots go along more and more CF cards, so erasing the cards will not be necessary any more and one backup on a device like the Nexto will do the job. Personally, I don’t think that there is a strong need of a DIT. The classic loader can do the “wrangling” if there is no need for reusing CF Cards and backuping is convient and fast, admittedly he won’t do the clapper board anymore... Watching on lunch break developed footage on a laptop is nice to have. But if the director or DOP wants to see developed footage all the time, well, then things will slow down drastically and a DIT is needed - a downside of this workflow.
Right after the shoot we copied all the files onto the raid in our facility and made a LTO3 backup. With Apple Compressor we converted the medium-proxies QT into ProRes PAL 24p files and edited the project within FCP. The time from loading footage in to the system and being ready to edit was short: 2 hours, not too bad. I know that the Avid route has more obstacles but they will be solved after NAB as far as I know.
Conforming the project with Ian’s great REDTrip (thanks a lot! Reduser is full of smart people) worked perfectly. We will grade the spot with SpeedGrade and won’t use any specific LUT for film-out but cooperate with the very skilled colourist and Arrilaser operator at Geyer, Berlin who always managed to satisfy our needs thoroughly.
Sound will be in Dolby 5.1 and a big laughter, literally.
Bottomline: REDOne is a very capable camera and for me a great new tool that will allow me to shoot tons of rolls without any producer bothering me with budget restrictions. Great that I jumped on this train early. My big respect to the RED team.
Did I mention that the green screen we shot and the later pulled key worked fine (grey curly hair) at least as well as on 35mm?.... The colour space RED produces is huge if scaled down to 1080p 10bit DPX plus virtually no artefacts.
Hans
If any one is interested: under http://hubbertvonsonntag.com/redfiles/redshootyogi1080p24h.264.mov is a short sequence from our shoot. Zeiss Super Speed MKII 35mm T2 1/2, ND9, 320 ASA 4K - 1080p24.
Edit: This file is NOT colour graded, just as it comes out of REDCine, flat and pure.
didn't we?