RED CAM ONE: Advice creating visual 'look'

[Anna Chaney]

Hello all please help!

I'm in my final year and we are now making our graduation films. I'm the DP for one and we are using our brand new Red Cam One! We're all excited about it although we have much still to discover.

We have precious little time in post and so I am looking for advice to create project settings that will achieve the desired look and effects that we want in camera.

For most of it the visual style we want to achieve is a very grim and gritty look. Children of Men and Saving Private Ryan are good examples. I was thinking that creating a bleached bypass effect could look good and so I'm wondering if anyone has advice about how to achieve this? I also don't want to wash out my blacks when I de-saturate the image. Is there a way I can crush the blacks in camera or can anyone recommend an appropriate contrast filter to maintain a punchy image?

There is a running sequence where we want to achieve a jittery, strobed effect (very fast action, high paced energy), again as seen in, Saving Private Ryan. I'm not sure of shutter angle calculations; I think 45 degrees..., what would be the corresponding shutter speed on the camera? Any thing else required?

Finally, the end scene is to be a Technicolor look. Other than upping the saturation I can't think what else to do in camera or lights to achieve this look? Everything else seems down to costume design.

Many thanks

Anna, Scotland

 

[David Wyatt]

Hi Anna,

Congrats on your film school's shiny new Red camera! To answer your questions the Red shoots in RAW like a digital stills camera so your final look (bleach-by-pass, Technicolor etc) will be created in post using whatever you have at your disposal (Colour?). You can however approximate your look on-set using the look settings in the Video menu (saturation, contrast/brightness, red/blue/green gain, tone etc) - this will all simply be meta-data and not burnt into the footage - that's one of the nice things about the Red camera, if you decide in post that you hate the Technicolor idea you can start again, it's not burnt in.

For your "Saving Private Ryan" shots use a 90˚ and 45˚ shutter - you can set the shutter to display either as film-camera-style shutter angles, which most people prefer, or as fractions of a second in the "Display" menu in "Preferences" in the "System" menu. Make sure you use either the Red Compact Flash cards (8 or 16GB) or if you have it the Red RAM for your running stuff - the Red Drive probably won't be able to take the vibrations otherwise.

Good luck!

 

[Anna Chaney]

Hi David

Thanks very much. I was thinking dialing down the saturation to about 0.8 and taking the blue channel up a bit, and saving these project setting - I'll be testing it soon. I'm not sure how the meta data works within Avid Symphony but I know it's all save raw anyway as long as the exposure is right. We are just trying to achieve as much in camera as possible to eliminate post production time.

We'll be using Compact Flash 8GB cards.

Thanks again!

 

[XiaoSu Han]

What you could also do is shoot something under a similar lighting setup you are going to use, then grade it using REDAlert and then copy the settings using the numbers, so you can create your own LUT's(looks) beforehand.

 

[Anna Chaney]

Thank you, although what is REDAlert?

A.

 

[Jonas Rejman]

Reading the manual never hurt anyone.

 

[Richard S-B]

Thank you, although what is REDAlert?

Red Alert is a program that Red supplies that is used to, as per Red's blurb:

Read REDCODE RAW files, perform white balance, contrast and one light color correction then export DPX, TIFF or QuickTime reference movies. [...] Requires Intel Mac.

Here's the link to Red Alert and other downloadable materials provided by Red... Including that manual Jonas mentioned...

:thumbsup:

 

[Joe G.]

I would pay attention to the color temp of the sources. If tungsten, use a blue filter or gels. If daylight sources, should be perfect.

Also, watch out for superfast panning (don't do it).

 

[jake blackstone]

Look here

Look here

Hello Anna.
You can look here. http://web.me.com/jake4n/MOD_Color/Long-form.html#0
I just had finished this pilot and if that is something that you're looking for, I can walk you through the process. Regardless, most of your look should be done in grading session.

 

[Anna Chaney]

I would pay attention to the color temp of the sources. If tungsten, use a blue filter or gels. If daylight sources, should be perfect.

Also, watch out for superfast panning (don't do it).

Yeah we discovered noise in the shadows when shooting under tungsten. Now we CTB all our lights. It's unfortunate to lose the stop though, given the limited lighting resources.

Thanks for the heads up - I'll avoid whip pans!

 

[Anna Chaney]

Hello Anna.
You can look here. http://web.me.com/jake4n/MOD_Color/Long-form.html#0
I just had finished this pilot and if that is something that you're looking for, I can walk you through the process. Regardless, most of your look should be done in grading session.

Hey that looks great - what is the contrast ratio? The blacks and highlights are superb. This is very similar to the look I wish to create, except a little more desaturated and cooler. I'd be very grateful if you could talk me though it.

I have to achieve most of it in camera as the films aren't going to grading, only dub. Avid Symphony is all that is available although we have the least amount of post time.

Many thanks

anna