Red Studio / Red DI indie style

[Patrick Tresch]

AVID and FCP are totally uncompatible. AVID is restricted to OMF or MXF file format. So if you would like to have both system running the same project, be aware of the headache!!!

Patrick

 

[GlennChan]

I want to impress my bosses

How would your bosses respond to somebody handing them an unsolicited business plan?

Might they view it as somebody telling them how they should do their job? Would they respond positively to that?

 

[Bob Gruen]

Scarlets and Epics aren't out yet, so putting them in a business plan doesn't make sense. If you want to be a reputable rental house then you should probably keep one camera in reserve in case one in the field breaks down. If you want two cameras rented or otherwise being used then a third is in order.

As a filmmaker the only reason I would want the Epic would be for special effects shots. Stuff like 4K over-cranking to match the rest of the 4K footage from the Red One. I'm personally not sold on 3D, so I wouldn't be investing a lot of money in it until it proves itself in the marketplace.

If you want to be a one stop shop then you will need a sound kit for every cam in the field. Several mics, blimps, boom pole, and mixer. OR get a list of sound men w/ equipment in your area.

I would get laptops that have 2 internal 500GB drives in a RAID mirror (which excludes Apple). I'm not sure why people want to get to editing while on set, I just want the files copied reliably and securely transmitted to the file server.

Mac OS X and many flavors of Linux can do network teaming. If you hire a knowledgeable IT guru they could set up 2GB NIC teams which should be good enough for dealing with 4K. A stout file server with 24 1.5TB drives will yield about 31 TB, and give you a place to install a LTO drive. Apple and Unix/Linux play well together.

You might cost out these things, but be sure you don't step on anyone's toes. Business plans can be very personal things...

Bob

 

[JackSilver]

Thanks SO much for all the info and replies everyone is sharing.

All very relevant and MUCH appreciated.

Yes, I take note on the business plan being a personal thing and also, about stepping on people's toes. BUT, my employers do love it when people think out of the box and when they go out on their own and come back with concepts and ideas, to throw into the mix.

Anyway, thank you very much for taking the time to read and reply. If there are any other nuggets of wisdom, please post.

THANKS

 

[Stephen Williams]

I can't imagine a studio build up from ground without skilled people, only based on tools.
Patrick

Hi Patrick,

I am surprised you can't think of any! Many companies talk about the kit they own, rather than the skills they bring to the table

Stephen

 

[Patrick Tresch]

Hi Patrick,
I am surprised you can't think of any! Many companies talk about the kit they own, rather than the skills they bring to the table
Stephen

:tongue:

And you know best what kind of results are achieved then! :blink:

Driver, crew and F1 Car makes the winning team!

Hope to meet you Stephen. Are you a Soleure goer?

Patrick

 

[Stephen Williams]

:tongue:

And you know best what kind of results are achieved then! :blink:

Driver, crew and F1 Car makes the winning team!

Hope to meet you Stephen. Are you a Soleure goer?

Patrick

Hi Patrick,

I have an open option for Wednesday so I don't know yet, I will send you a pm if I can.

Best,

Stephen

 

[Eddy Robinson]

Following up from my earlier question:

Audio...hmmm. That's complex by itself.

The Pro Tools console will want to be in a room that's well-insulated and probably THX-certifiable. You'll want your speakers and so on to be THX-certified too. Offhand I'd say $7500 for Mackie speakers. The room itself, I can't easily say - depends on the building and construction. You want 2 heavy fire doors between the mixing room and the exterior corridor, thick carpet with underlay, insulated walls, plus you'll need bass traps etc in the corners. Ideally you want to build the room so that the inner walls and floor/ceiling are not perfectly parallel, as parallel walls are the biggest source of unwanted acoustic anomalies.

Figure a couple of small Pro Tools systems in quiet but not perfect editing suites, since you don't always need the Pro Tools system in full effect. Maybe 2 stations for about $3000 each. Having said that, I prefer to do quite a bit of the sound edit in the picture editing package and export, but then I don't believe that picture should always be locked before sound has any input...you'd be amazed how much money gets wasted that way. A lot of the time, stuff gets ADRed that could perfectly well have been lifted from an unused video clip - though as owners of the facility, you might be happy for such inefficiency if you bill by the hour.

Building an ADR booth isn't too pricey but you'll want to throw several thousand at it. You can buy them prefab for about $8000 I think, which might be a lot easier than building it, but it depends how many people you expect to be able to squeeze in there. A 15 x 10 room would do for most needs, which would also be big enough to get a small band into, not that you'd need to do that very often. It needs to be well-insulated and again double doors, but you probably don't need to go with a floating floor etc. as you would for a music studio.

You'll want microphones in there too. Music studios would normally employ something like a Neumann u87 which sounds particularly tasty, but for film work you're better of with something neutral, like Schoeps (which is what any self-respecting sound guy uses on production). Whole you're at it, if you're spending ~$200k on camera gear why not spend $25k on audio gear and get yourself a Cantar, Deva or two Fostex PD-660s, a few Schoeps and a long Sennheiser for booming, and a bunch of Lectronics radios with countryman mics (or save a bunch of money and buy sennheisers which are very close in quality). If you're going to be pimping out the RED cameras and presumably 1 or 2 DITs to babysit them/manage the acquisition, you might as well do the same thing with sound because the job is very similar to that of a DIT.

Union rates for sound + gear hit around $1000-1500/day, I'd say with some planning you could offer 'zero headaches sound' at a competitive rate, pay your sound people well, and eliminate one of the major technical/cost bottlenecks by treating sound as an equal part of the acquisition team, rather than leaving it in the hands of the producers who may or may not know what to look for.

I personally don't care that much for Mac and would go with 64-bit Windows. Please no flamewars; I've got lots of experience on both platforms but I just feel like a Windows one would be easier to manage and offer more future-proofing...but having said that, I'd also be strongly leaning towards Adobe Premiere over FCP. You're going to have AE for VFX and Audition (Adobe's sound editing package) is no slouch either. I prefer it to Pro Tools for a lot of uses, though it doesn't replace PT.

All this is really off the top of my head, but I'd say $80-100k split evenly between construction and equipment costs.

 

[Chris Swinbanks]

Projection, surely will be capable on the REAL D 40 foot screen, with the projector they supply. Of course it is a 3D/stereoscopic, but I don't see that this is a barrier to projecting 2D, is it?

This caught my eye... budgeted as:
3D Visualisation:
Real D - LCD, DLP Based TV, Software license and 40 foot projection stereo screen - $30,000

Are you talking DLP based 2k projector capable of screening to 40ft silver screen with Real-D z-screen, or a 3D capable LCD or Plasma TV? Big difference in $$$. $30k might get you the screen (without a frame), or a smaller DLP projector (maybe HD native?)...

And forget grading on a silver screen, if that was part of the thought process...

cheers
Chris

 

[Torrey Loomis]

Hi,

Here's what we're looking at, thus far:
Editing:
AVID Symphony Nitris DX - $35,995
Colour Correction/Viewing Monitor - $3,500

Effects, Animations and Titling:
After Effects BOXX – $5,000

Location editing
MacBook Pro Avid and Final Cut x 2 – $5,000

Sound editing/finishing:
Pro Tools HD - $15,000

Finishing:
BOXX Red (Scratch Assimilate) - $43,000
Film Light Baselight - $75,000

Storage:
50TB Stirling Storage Server - $22,000

3D Visualisation:
Real D - LCD, DLP Based TV, Software license and 40 foot projection stereo screen - $30,000

Cameras:
RED One x 2 - $35,000
RED Epic - $30,000
RED Scarlet x 2 - $6,000
RED Accessories - $80,000
TOTAL: $385,000

Thanks for reading.

Jack

Jack,

A good color critical display will cost more than $3500. The DPX from eCinema costs around $35,000.

Your Assimilate SCRATCH price would not cover a license of SCRATCH Finish (around $70k with maint. and support) let alone include the hardware for a proper finishing system.

What kind of projector are you going to use on the 40 foot projection stereo screen? Sony SXRD 4k T-Series projectors are around $100,000 and that doesn't include the lamp or lenses.

http://pro.sony.com/bbsc/ssr/product-SRXT110/

If you want to do stereo with these, you need two projectors. That will change soon--Sony is coming out with an adapter that will do stereo on one projector--but it hasn't been released yet.

If you want to do 4k projection, it can't come from an Avid, FCP or SCRATCH system--those are limited to 2k at the most.

4k has to come from a playback device like a Keisoku Giken:

http://www.keisoku.co.jp/en/product/vw/recorder/udr20e/index.html

These provide quad-channel SDI that is required for 4k playback.

You need a lot more gear for your RED systems. We have fairly complete systems with multiple lenses, hard drives, sticks, etc... They were about $85,000 for each camera.

I would take your budget and triple it. That would make for a nice RED studio.



Torrey
-----------------------------------------------
Torrey Loomis
President & CEO - Silverado Systems, Inc.
Outfitter to the World's Foremost Apple Professionals
2600 East Bidwell Street, Suite 280
Folsom, CA 95630
(916) 760-0032 • FAX (916) 404-5258
torrey@silverado.cc
http://www.Silverado.cc

Check out our StudioBuilder blog at http://silveradosys.blogspot.com

 

[Martin Tlaskal]

If you want to do 4k projection, it can't come from an Avid, FCP or SCRATCH system--those are limited to 2k at the most.

4k has to come from a playback device like a Keisoku Giken:

http://www.keisoku.co.jp/en/product/vw/recorder/udr20e/index.html

These provide quad-channel SDI that is required for 4k playback.

A Baselight system with our (optional) framestore combiner is capable of directly producing the 4xSDI streams required to drive a Sony SXRD projector. So it is possible to do 4k directly in the grading suite - people do this all the time. The major issue is having sufficient i/o bandwidth to playback ~1GB/s for full-gate 4k, plus another GB/s to cache the graded result real-time etc.

 

[Torrey Loomis]

A Baselight system with our (optional) framestore combiner is capable of directly producing the 4xSDI streams required to drive a Sony SXRD projector. So it is possible to do 4k directly in the grading suite - people do this all the time. The major issue is having sufficient i/o bandwidth to playback ~1GB/s for full-gate 4k, plus another GB/s to cache the graded result real-time etc.

Martin,

Right--sorry for not distinguishing that feature of the higher-end finishing systems like Baselight.

I get a lot of questions like "Can I run 4k out of FCP to an SXRD?" and that answer is obviously no.

Tor

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

-Sounds like you're on the right track...

You will probably want to consider some type of high-speed data infrastructure.

GigE won't cut it. 10GigE is still pretty expensive and unproven for post-production. You probably want to look seriously at 4Gb (or 8Gb) fibre channel.
good luck!

NOT TRUE. 10gigE has dropped significantly in price and there are a number of vendor silutions comparable to Fibre... cheaper than 8GB.

NOT proven in post? We hope to disprove that... we do know its WAY more cost efficient than FIBRE... especially for longer runs.

We should have ours installed by April... will advise. but we are hoping to SMOKE fibre thruput... we shall see.

of course it helps having a brother who is a high level network engineer
building this stuff.

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

"What sort of price on creating a small soundbooth in a room (anyone have an experience) - what sort of size should I contemplate, any examples online."

Big enough to fit a band?

www.aurelex.com has awesome tutorials on building "ROOM WITHIN A ROOM" construction for audio.

BUT I would sub out limp mass vinyl... with greencluecompany.com
this viscoelastic stuff is cheaper (relatively) and way easier to use.

You can also find mineral fiber insulation from marine suppliers
cheaper... but the advice is awesome... as are ther roominator kits.

soundproofing is NOT cheap... and there are tons of misconceptions.
Highs and mdis are easy to manage... lows are tough and all about decoupling and mass.

auralex university is a great resource for DIY

 

[JackSilver]

Thanks, great info, and all very much appreciated. I'm going to spend some time compiling all the notes, along with my own, continued research and I will repost to this thread, with a bullet point set, which hopefully will now represent a GREAT red studio!!

THANKS FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ THE POST AND SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS...