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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 :)

RED's 'Journey' to Manila

Steve Gibby

Steve Gibby

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Those of you curious about the inner details of a multi-camera, hybrid style production using RED One cameras may want to check out my 'RED's Journey to Manila" magazine article in the current print and online issues of TV Technology magazine (see links below).

As many here know, I was a DP and shoulder held cinematographer for a 10-RED camera production in Manila, Philippines a few months ago, as we covered the classic rock band Journey in concert. We had dual DPs, Champe Barton, and myself, because there were many tech details to solve in pre-production, and because I was also one of the cinematographers, we needed a second DP free to roam the venue during the production.

Many details of the production, and a summary of the technology and results, are in the magazine article, but I’ll add a few more here:

This was truly a hybrid production. We used cine lenses and accessories on the long lens cameras – but all focusing was by eye, and no AC’s were used. On the jib, Steadicam, and shoulder held cameras we used 35mm stills lenses (Nikon), no matte boxes (no ND filters were needed), no follow focus units, and again, all focusing was by eye. The style of the production could most accurately be termed “hybrid non-hardlined EFP, with limited hard-lined EFP functions (iMag big screen, intercom), with some cine-style equipment and operation (everything manual on the cameras)”.

The combined hardlined and non-hardlined EFP industries dwarf the cine-style industry in terms of number of worldwide productions each year. RED can be, has been, and will continue to be used widely in the hybrid EFP/cine, hardlined EFP, and non-hardlined EFP industries – you just don’t hear much about it here on RED User, because this board is over-weighted with cine style, and particularly narrative cinema enthusiasts.

In retrospect, RED One performed superbly in Manila. We had absolutely no problems with any of the 10 cameras. It was especially challenging for the shoulder held cinematographers to manually zoom, re-frame, and re-focus the Nikon lenses – continuously for 21/2 hours in the 85 degree Fahrenheit humid tropical night air. But we did it fine! I personally recruited Blair Paulsen (RED #19) onto the crew as the other shoulder held, stage front cinematographer. I knew that like me, he understood how we had to shoot the event, how to operate a hybrid EFP RED rig, and had the experience to nail the shots – and he did.

All cameras were hardlined via HD-SDI 720p to the control room, where on the director’s call they were switched to the IMAG big screen above the stage. Journey’s management and record label executives were in the control room throughout the concert – and they expressed being stunned by the beauty of the images, pace of the cut/switching, and quality of the camera work.

Jeff Ravitz did an fantastic job with the lighting. As planned, and practiced on rehearsal night, we were able to light the stage area to an average of 5.6, thus providing plenty of light for RED One to get very good images.

The executive producer (Dan Barnett) and director (Eli Tishberg) were great to work with, and also really stoked with the results. RSVP Films of Manila, including owner Oli Laperal, did a fantastic job of support by equipment and supplying certain crew. The overall crew from top to bottom was highly talented, super-skilled, and worked together as a cohesive unit – it was truly a “no jerks” crew.

The DVD of this production will be released in the early Fall. I expect it to be VERY good. Check it out when it goes on sale…

Looking forward, the new DSMC camera line from RED should be even much easier to adapt into this type of production – I can’t wait! With the same executive producer there are other concerts being planned for next year – with other famous bands, other exotic locations, and probably as many as 15 RED DSMC cameras. Gonna be fun! I can't wait...

Advice: Think outside the (matte)box! RED One can be used in a wide variety of productions…and those capabilities should stretch much further with the new DSMC cameras…

Here are the links to my TV Technology magazine article on the Journey Manila production:

HTML version
http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/83626

Flash version (Flash)
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/tvt_20090708/index.php?startid=20#/28

It is also on Pages 20-21 of the July 8 print version of the magazine
 
I'd like to post footage Sanjin, but after the concert the footage from the 10 RED cameras went into post production for the upcoming DVD and eventual HDTV program.

I have all the footage from two of my RED One cameras that were used on the production: my RED #8 which I personally shot as one of the shoulder held stage front cameras, and my RED "London" camera, which was used on a '40 jib by multiple Emmy-winning jib cinematographer Dave Hilmer.

I've personally checked through the footage from both those camera positions - and it came out very good. For now, you'll just have to take my professional word on that - and the words of praise for the footage from the EP, Director, Journey management, and editing team of the production - all loved it. In September you can watch the DVD and draw your own conclusions. I think DVD and program viewers will be be left breathless at the results we were able to get from RED cameras in Manila...

BTW - we set up all cameras to shoot 4k HD at a frame rate of 29.97, and a shutter speed of 1/100th second. The lead singer of Journey (Arnel Pineda) often moves rapidly around the stage and thrust ramp - thus the 29.97 and increased shutter speed to capture smooth motion. The footage "look and feel" is exactly what we wanted for the end result distribution the producer desired - DVD, BluRay, and HDTV.
 
Thanks guys..:-)

I'm way stoked! It was a super-cool project to be a part of. I'm looking forward to many more RED music productions with the same crew.

RED has helped make it a really fun time to be in this industry...
 
Hey Steve, sounds amazing, can't wait to get the DVD.

I shoot multi cam Red here in Australia (up to 7 cams) and would love to hear more about your experience, especially when it comes to jam syncing, monitoring and powering the cameras.

I usually let my roamers go free of tethering, but am looking into expanding closer to what you did with Journey.

Did your tether include HD-SDI and power? How did you jam sync the cameras?

Love to hear more nitty-gritty detail!

Cheers,

Jim in Sydney
 
Thanks for sharing Gibby. Looking forward to seeing the show.
Sounds like a great experience.
 
Fantastic to hear. Don't forget to let us know when it's on TV.
 
Jim, David, and Stefan,

Thanks for the kind words. I think you'll really like the results when you get a chance to check it out...

Jim,

G-day Mate! Its been a while since I last worked in Oz - can't wait to go back there...

To answer some of your questions:

Time code and battery changes
All cameras will drift slightly over time, even if you sync to an external generator. If RED One powers down for a battery change, the frame count of the time of day clock will zero out when you re-start. We didn't need hyper-accurate TC, where we use a Lockit box attached to the camera - thus we jam synced each camera shortly before show time from a slate. The concert was to be around 2.5 hours, so a RED Drive could hold all that in QuadHD. For battery changes, so we didn't lose time code, we used a low tech solution - two production assistants carried battery belts progressively around to each camera, and with the camera running plugged the battery belt into the hot plug on the RED Power Plate (below the battery). Once that was plugged in, we simply removed the battery while the belt was powering the camera, put the new battery in place, and then unplugged the battery belt from the power plate. TC was preserved. We were all connected via intercom headsets, so each camera person could contact the battery belt PA when they were getting power critical.

Hardlines
We were only hardlined via HD-SDI to feed the live IMAG big screen above the stage, and intercom for headsets - that was all. The HD-SDI hardlines were fed to the control room, where the director could in real time see what each camera was getting, and make the live call for the IMAG screen. But the big differences between how we shot and a normal hardlined EFP production, was that each camera person shot manually, had onboard recording, onboard power, and chose their own shots and framings. Thus there was no technical director on the crew - a normal position for a fully-hardlined EFP production. This production was similar to non-hardlined EFP in many aspects - but with a light tether of HDSDI and intercom.

This was a true hybrid EFP/cine production, using some cine lenses and techniques, many non-hardlined EFP techniques, and even some 35mm stills equipment. Everyone on the crew who shot a camera was deeply experienced in both EFP style and cine-style production - and many of them were also experienced in stills photography.

This was true media and equipment convergence...pretty darn cool I's say...

The next-level paradigm in this should be the RED DSMC cameras...:-)
 
Awesome, Steve. Sounds like such a great project!

Did you watch any concert films in prepping?

What Nikon zooms were you using?

Will the final cut be based off the real-time cuts the director made, or will the edit more or less be from scratch?
 
G-Day Gibby!

Let us know next time you are over our way. We have a large and extremely friendly Red community here!

Thanks so much for the detailed explanation. I shot Wayne Brady's Australian tour with 7 Reds and basically had everyone free running. No jam sync, no monitoring, and only my pre-direction for each operator as to what shots they were to bring home. Worked great and an unbelievable result for the budget. Cost about 1/5 of what an HD O/B would have cost.

I'm doing some shows in August that will require traditional live direction so I need to set up monitoring and comms. In a perfect world I will find wireless video sends from the roamers, but the budget is tight so I probably won't get everything I want.

All the best,

Jim
 
Tom,

Thanks!

To answer your questions, everyone on the crew had a solid music production background. Leading up to the production we reviewed what had been done on Journey before, talked about the production values we were after, and watched as much other music production pieces as we could get our hands on.

One of my favorite music productions was the U2 feature Rattle and Hum. I loved the filming and editing style in that.

This Journey piece will be cinematic - with a distinct, organic RED flavor to it.

We used Underdahl Nikon mounts on the two shoulder held cameras, the over the piano and drums mini-jib, and the Steadicam. The 35mm stills lenses we used at various times were: Tokina 11-16 (with Nikon mount) and Nikon 18-200.

The crisp performance of the Tokina 11-16 is well known and respected. But the Nikon 18-200? Before anyone groans consider the lens hoops we had to jump through to shoot the concert in QuadHD. We were dead set on shooting QuadHD - but for the shoulder held cameras we needed to have a wide range in focal length (wide to long) so we could easily cover singers/guitarists right in front of us, but also push to cover others on the stage at a distance. With B4 2/3" HD zooms we'd have that range - but we didn't want to be limited to shooting 2k. We also needed the shoulder rigs to be as light (and mobile) as possible because we had to continuously shoulder and run with the rigs for almost 3 hours in tropical heat.

For the shoulder rigs, the above details totally left out cine lenses as a possibility - they'll cover 4k, but are way too heavy/bulky, and the focal length range is too short for their size/weight. That narrowed it down to Nikon-mount 35mm stills lenses for the shoulder rigs. There really is no top-level Nikon lens that covers wide to long (at least 10:1 ratio) and has a constant aperture of 2.8. We controlled the lighting on our crew, so we lit to an average of 5.6, which gave us some other Nikon lens possibilities. Months before the concert I bought a Nikon 18-200 f3.5-5.6G lens and tested it out on my REDs. It was light, small, 11:1 zoom ratio, and covered QuadHD. In testing I found that it performed surprising well - low CA, low flaring, surprisingly sharp, and very importantly, it held focus throughout a zoom.

So, Blair and I both used the 18-200 on our shoulder rigs for the concert, on ET Mantis rigs we modified, so we could have both hands on the lens to continuously zoom and focus. It worked well - and the bottom line is that footage came out excellent. We were able to pull way wide when the singer or guitarist was right above us, but push clear across the stage for other action. We're both highly experienced at shoulder held shooting, so even the long focal length shots were steady.

Looking forward, I sincerely hope that in the near future RED or someone else will make a reasonably-sized hybrid zoom that is 10:1 and f2.8. That would make hybrid production a lot easier :-)

The real time directors cut (720p) was for the IMAG big screen. The actual program will use the director's cut as guidelines for pace and flow, but yes, my understanding is that the DVD and HDTV cut will be essentially a fresh cut, for a 1080p finish.

That's all the info I can think of right now. It was a fun and challenging gig!!
 
Jim,

Yup - I've done a lot of the non-hardlined EFP production you describe. For low to moderate budgets it can be just the ticket. If the director has real good shooters, briefs them closely on what he's looking for in the shots, and has radios to call his shooters over to the action, with good editing in post you can have a great show. That's still how we do our adventure travel and action sports TV programs.

But with more budget, like the Journey production, we had the luxury of hardlining HDSDI to the big screen, and intercom.

As you well know, everything is budget driven. With enough time and budget most veterans can do some serious magic :-)

BTW from the mid '80's to the early 2000's part of my work was on the TV crew covering a lot of action sports. We made it to Australia on several long trips, covering pro surfing events in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, and West Oz. Great fun Mate!!!

Cheers...
 
Hey Steve,

Sounds like a great shoot. 25 years ago, the director, Eli Tishberg was my good friend and on-line editor in NYC for many years. I lost track of him after I moved - but he was great and always on the cutting edge with music (pun intended). Tell him I said aloha if you talk to him again.

Keith
 
Its a small world in this business Keith! Yes, Eli is an excellent director, a great person, and really knows music production well. I'm sure everyone on the crew would echo that opinion. This was Eli's first RED production, and his first using cameras other than 2/3" HD for music production. Me and the other DP (Champe Barton), along with great input from Blair Paulsen, brought Eli and the EP up to speed on the possibilities and nuances of using RED for this type of production. I'll definitely tell Eli you said "hi"...

The Executive Producer, Dan Barnett, was fantastic to work with. He was the visionary, team builder, and glue that made the whole thing possible.

When the experience, skills, chemistry and work ethic of a crew are good from top to bottom there's almost no limits on what can be achieved...and it makes the work flat out fun!

Aloha
 
Interesting an informative article! Thanks for taking the time to link us to it. Also, good job repping a RED shirt ;).
 
This is excellent info. I am currently in the midst of trying to configue a multi-red-camera portable live switched production. Not nearly as exciting as producing a classic rock band show. But, it's a corporate conference type show that I am trying to convince some folks we can do with reds and an anycast switcher. It doesn't need to be shown on jumbotrons. But it does need to stream over cyberspace to some folks live. Anyway, thank you very much for sharing so much information about using these cameras for more than film making. You have answered many questions and concerns with one article. Please keep passing on the exciting "red" adventures to us regular guys.
 
Thanks for the kind words Kevin and Roger. I'm happy to share info on alternative ways to use RED One. The camera is scalable, flexible, and very capable. Sure it can be used for mainstream cine-style production (narrative, etc), but obviously it can also be be accessorized and lensed for many alternative uses. Of them, hybrid EFP/cine production is my cure interest...and will be with Eic and Scarlet too :-)
 
The HD premiere of our 10-Red camera production of the "Journey Live in Manila" concert aired last night on Palladia HD (Direct TV 567, Dish, and cable). It re-airs tomorrow (Monday) on Palladia HD at Noon Eastern Standard Time (9am Pacific).

Link: http://www.palladia.tv/

Naturally this HD broadcast version is 1080i down-sampled for satellite broadcast from the 1080p master delivered to the network. The concert was shot in 4k with 10 Red cameras.

This 1080 version has been significantly re-edited and de-noised from the standard definition DVD released last October.

If you'd like to watch a live multi-camera RED One music production, edited in post for broadcast, and you have Palladia HD, check out this production! As noted, I was a DP for this. Also, me and Blair Paulsen were the two stage-front shoulder held cameramen for this.

As many of you know, when I escaped from Chile in March I went right to Seattle to serve as a DP and stage front cameraman for an 8-Red camera production of the classic rock band Heart in concert, with special guest star Allison Krause. Blair Paulsen, was the other stage front cameraman for Journey in Manila and Heart in Seattle. He did a great job on both!

Looking forward, we have several multi-Red camera, major headliner, live music rock and country productions coming up. I love this! Its a nice complimentary opposite from all the mobile adventure travel, nature, sports, and documentaries I work on.

Fun stuff! Looking forward, I can't wait to use Epic and Scarlet for these music productions - and every other genre I work in :)
 
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