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35mm intercut with RED footage

Bal Deo

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Just finished a video that was slated for RED ONE only shoot. The song is in Punjabi incase you are wondering.
Due the schedule and all RED ones rented out here in Vancouver, we shot a day and half on film and during our shoot saw a guy (vince) far in the distance shooting some sunsets. Well! it turned out, he was using his RED One. So we used a RED the following day.

Same Arri Primes were used on the RED. However this was our very first day on RED with "NO" testing. Vince came and showed us the general stuff we needed to know to shoot, within five min's we were up and running.

The biggest mistake we made was not to depend on the meter once we moved to RED.

The project was a 25fps and most of the shoot was offspeed (approx 50 - 60fps, hence 2k for most part and couple of 4k shots). We noted that using the CF cards we were only getting max 89fps. The camera would not allow us to set the speed any higher.

The film was processed and telecined at Technicolour (Vancouver). Colour corrected with a DaVinci 2k by a very experienced CC.
The RED footage was done by myself on Apple colour (not so experienced CC)

this is was a good test for intercutting. considering we were not too experienced with RED and did not really follow the rules (metering and so on) i was very surprised.

here's the link

http://www.vimeo.com/1064056
 
I thought it was very nice looking! I'm not an expert in such things but I wouldn't be able to tell which was Red & which was film. The highlight police around here are probably going to question the exposure on the white jacket around 0:55, but overall I think it looks really nice.

...also, that's pretty incredible that you just happened across someone shooting with a Red!
 
most of the time the difference seemed pretty obvious, but i would attribute that more to experienced colorist than the RED underperforming.
 
most of the time the difference seemed pretty obvious, but i would attribute that more to experienced colorist than the RED underperforming.

yep, i don't think the image was an issue, also as i mentioned DaVinci 2k under the control of a guys with years of experience make a hell of difference.
 
Anyone can explain me which shots are the 35mm and which ones are the Red footage?
 
I'm with Jim, I really couldn't tell when I was looking at Red and when film. I'm guessing that all the stuff in the park was film? Footage from the lake/bay/river (whatever) was Red?
 
If you are having problems spotting the RED footage, look for the 2:1 letterbox bars.

the reason i left the 2:1 crop marks

I think this makes the job of a good colorist (no offense) seem even more obvious.[/QUOTE said:
no offense taken. considering it's my first cc job
 
The DR difference is quite apparent between the two. The red shots with the guy in the white jacket and a few with the white buildings blow out pretty quick but still looks quite nice. IMO the 35mm has a nicer look but the red is soooooo much more budget freindly.
 
I think this is best example of film vs. red comparison so far. Red might not look as good as film now. But hopefully, red will look better then film in a short time.
 
Glad to help

Glad to help

Looks great Bal. I'm glad I could help out.

Vince
 
Before we get too deep into this comparison, can we please see your workflow with the RED footage. You said you corrected in Color. But, what was the process leading up to this? Did you maximize the footage in Redcine and then export DPX? Considering you basically jumped right in with a RED that you came across accidently, I think it's important to speak to the workflow you used on this video. Otherwise, in my opinion it's not a fair comparison.

But interesting nonetheless.
 
Before we get too deep into this comparison, can we please see your workflow with the RED footage. You said you corrected in Color. But, what was the process leading up to this? Did you maximize the footage in Redcine and then export DPX? Considering you basically jumped right in with a RED that you came across accidently, I think it's important to speak to the workflow you used on this video. Otherwise, in my opinion it's not a fair comparison.

But interesting nonetheless.

Just to point out this is NOT a comparison of two medias or any form of test. Simply a first experience using RED.
Again As I mentioned as soon s we went to RED one our mindset changed as if we were shooting Video (very wrong and bad on our part). We were using Video Assist for focus pulling. If the image looks soft it's more to do with bad focusing. We should have deployed the same methods as shooting 35mm.

The CC is a major part, hence Davinci 2k at technicolor vs Apple color with not the best color corrector.

In terms of workflow.
Used REDALERT for exporting dpx files PDLOG 685
Imported into color for CC. Exported Apple ProRes (HQ) for final edit in FCP.
 
Looks great Bal. I'm glad I could help out.

Vince

thanks vince, very easy camera to use. I think all the clips used in the video are 2k. I'll upload some 4k stuff which was not used in the video. Detail was amazing.
 
Looks great, and the fact that it's close at all is a great testament.

It would have been great if you brought the RED footage back to the same colorist and see what they could do with it.

I'll bet it would be very hard to tell at the end give or take some blown highlights.
 
You said the mistake was to not use a light meter with the RED. Was it too tempting to rely on the histogram etc?

So if you could do it again, how would you approach the shoot?

Great job, thanks for posting!

Jim
Sydney Australia
 
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