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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 :)

Basic question

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Paulcooper

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Hello,
I m new here... And had a question that might seem silly to many of you...
What is so different about the Red Camera VS a regular Cine Camera ?
I mean could someone explain me the difference between video and digital motion photography ? The difference between a "regular" Pro HD Camera and the Red one for example ?
Many thanks... And sorry for being such a novice...
T
 
"What is the difference between Iceland and America?" A Viking asked another.
- It's a new world of coolness.
 
Welcome aboard Paul.

You mention cine cameras and video cameras like they're the same thing. They're not. Cine cameras shoot a series of still images onto a strip of film that, when projected at the appropriate speed (24fps usually) form a moving image. Video cameras shoot a video signal that has very limited frame rates (based on television). Video cameras heavily process the image because that image is then stored as a video signal which is WYSIWYG. That's all you get. The Red, on the other hand, stores its images in files which are, essentially, a bunch of still images and these are saved as RAW files, which means what you see is a fraction of what you get. The ability to grade these images in post means that the camera doesn't have to do any processing, leaving pristine images for you to grade how you feel.

The other way the Red is like a film camera is that the sensor is the same size as a film gate, where the TV cameras generally have much smaller sensors (or groups of sensors) which means the video cameras have greater depth of field so that, when you shoot on Red, like a 35mm movie camera, you are more able to focus the audience's attention with selective focus. They know where you want them to look in the frame. Where with a video signal, as more of the frame is in focus, the true meaning and intention of the image is muddied somewhat. Shallow depth of field also looks so much nicer too!

So the Red is a digital cine camera. Just as a Nikon D3x has replaced film cameras like the Nikon F5, the Red will eventually (some might say it has already) replace Arriflex and Panavision film cameras. Video cameras are for television and the web (IMO).
 
Ok, I'll keep this short and sweet. But its hard to cover absolutly everything and you will needto do your own research to get all the differences.

Prosumer cameras such as the Sony EX1 or Panasonic HVX200 record at HD resolution 1920x1080. The Red Records at 4K which is more then double that. So its ultra Hi Def.

It has better frame rates then most prosumer cams. 120 @ 2K resolution.

Prosumer cams shoot Pal or NTSC where as the Red doesnt have PAL or NTSC just like film cameras.

Red shoots RAW where as other cameras use pretty lame compression.

Its more modular then prosumer cameras. It also supports interchangable lenses where as not all prosumers cameras do. But prosumer camera can get 35mm adapters.

As for film cameras, well Red has some of the benifits of film cameras and is WAY cheaper as far as production cost go. Why? Because its digital. No need to digitize. Yay.

Theres prently more but there you go I spoon feed you some.
 
Shooting ratio...

Shooting ratio...

In my mind the most importing advance from film based cinema to digital cinema if the ability to increase the shooting ratio.

For filmmakers without large budgets there was always a compromise on the actor's performance because you could not afford to make as many takes you would have liked to.

With Digital recording you can delete any bad takes and re-use the media so there is not a high media cost in doing some extra takes while the actors are lit and the sets are standing.

This can raise the quality of your production more than any other advance in camera technology.
 
Dan Hudgins said:
In my mind the most importing advance from film based cinema to digital cinema if the ability to increase the shooting ratio.

For filmmakers without large budgets there was always a compromise on the actor's performance because you could not afford to make as many takes you would have liked to.

With Digital recording you can delete any bad takes and re-use the media so there is not a high media cost in doing some extra takes while the actors are lit and the sets are standing.

This can raise the quality of your production more than any other advance in camera technology.
Click to expand...

Dan is right, that is one of the best advantages of shooting on digital cinema, rather then film.
 
And the feedback

And the feedback

Agreed,
Shooting ratio would be likely my first pick, but a related issue, namely clarity of feedback to the DP and director would be a close second.

With film, unless you have a huge budget, and a lab close by you're going to be waiting for your neg to be processed, and then telecined.

For us low budget guys this turn around can take days sometimes more than a week.

I've got my "negative" right now, on set, and I can adjust the look / exposure real time, and playback the actors performance to be sure we got what we need. I don't have to always be balancing "was that close enough, do I dare do another take, there are only 220 feet left in the mag."

It's a HUGE advantage to not be trading off feet and dollars for performance, and insurance or coverage.

Having said that, I'm glad I've shot film, it teaches one to be conservative with the shooting ratio.


Steve
 
Oh yes, that's why modern digital movies are so much better than the past 100 years of cinema shot on film, because now directors can do more takes for less money. John Ford might have actually made a decent movie in his life if only he was allowed to use a really high shooting ratio. Kurosawa too would have been better off doing a lot of takes.
 
Ouch

Ouch

Ok, :001_unsure:

I completely agree with your macro point David.

But in fairness, it's a little bit of an apples to orangutans comparison for those of us that still do projects way down the power curve from where you are my friend.

On my last shoot, (a short btw) we used three different stocks, all <200' short ends, one that had been sitting around for a couple of years, all because the director has very very little money. The entire budget was less than a thousand dollars.

We just didn't have enough footage to do anything twice. Was it a good movie, nope, but did I learn stuff, yes. It therefore was worth doing even with the constraints.

Would it have been a better film if I'd had the chance to do a second take on two of the scenes, and if the director had a chance to review a couple of bad performances and reshoot? You betcha.

I love shooting both, but in a very resource constrained environment digital has some advantages, one of them is ratio, and one of them is review (no video tap on the film cameras I have access to btw,) and there are of course others.

Yes, ratio can be a license to rambling mediocrity. It's a power tool, it can craft beauty, it can cut off hands.

I'm appreciative of the chance to work with film. That is for a number of reasons, but a significant one is the discipline required in shooting ratios.

But as in most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Steve
 
OK. Point well taken David. But for low budget guys like me, those extra takes can come in handy.

For me, just the ability to experiment with cinematic techniques like the ones you've taught us is worth the price of admission.
 
I agree that in order to learn, one has to shoot, so whatever makes that more affordable to do, the better -- which is why I learned originally on Super-8.

But I'm not talking about experimental shooting as a learning technique for beginners... I'm expanding the conversion into whether digital allows movies to be made better because you can shoot more takes, because doing more takes on film is expensive (though more takes = more time spent doing the same set-up, and time = money ultimately.)

Personally, I don't really see it one way or the other. Directors who need a lot of takes (Fincher, Kubrick, Wyler) would be doing a lot of takes whether they shot film or digital, and directors who needed or preferred very few takes (Ford, Kurosawa, Eastwood, Spielberg) would be doing fewer takes whether or not they were shooting film or digital.

So while certainly if you are the sort of director who needs a lot of takes, shooting digital makes that easier and cheaper... but it's harder to equate this with better moviemaking in general, just like I find it hard to really buy the arguments that actors deliver better performances with digital because the camera cuts less often and they can do more takes. It may make things easier on the actors, especially untrained ones... but somehow we've managed to get 100 years of memorable performances using very awkward technology, including Peter O'Toole's amazing performance on 65mm for "Lawrence of Arabia".

I just want people to not come to the conclusion that if movies become easier to make, they therefore become better movies. Some great movies have been made under very hard conditions using very difficult production methods. Sometimes doing things the hard way isn't always a bad idea, or at least, working with limitations brings certain rewards.

I read a lot of posts where people almost worry too much about something becoming difficult for them (the Red camera is too heavy, it's too hard to pull focus on it, etc.) and I wonder if they think that the point of filmmaking is to make everything a breeze to do so they can hardly break a sweat. I think you only grow as a filmmaker, or artist in general, when you are working one degree beyond your comfort zone in terms of your abilities, when the job is slightly beyond your skills and you have to really reach and strain to pull it off.

Anyway, as for being able to do more takes with digital, my experience has been, after 10 digital features out of 33 features total... that it hasn't helped much, it didn't make the movies significantly better or made the director any better as a director.

In fact, in general I've seen a decline in directing lately as more and more directors work by shooting a lot of takes, a lot of angles, using multiple cameras... and THEN try and figure out the point of the scene in the editing room. They walk onto the set with no real idea as to how the scene should flow or cut or what it's about. They just use a firehose technique and soak it with coverage and give themselves nothing BUT options in post, no point of view imposed on the material at all, just mere reportage. And digital seems to be encouraging this mental laziness because "it's cheap".
 
I'll admit, practically speaking, there are times when I like the fact that I can shoot longer on a digital camera... mainly when doing things like driving scenes -- I hate pulling over in busy traffic to reload film cameras every ten minutes. Even slating can cause you to miss opportunities in traffic flow, so often with digital, we just tell the actors to run the whole scene three times in a row without cutting in case one take is better for the background traffic, etc. So there are occasions where digital can help you get the scene in the can. Again, whether or not the movie ultimately is better or not, it's hard to say.

I know of one Red production where the DP switched to CF cards mainly because the director wouldn't cut the camera otherwise, and they were getting bogged down with too many long takes and too much footage to store and convert.

Digital can allow some overindulgence on the part of directors and actors, who forget that there is still a limited amount of time to make a movie, so you can't spend an hour acting in one set-up dozens of times. They say "wow, with digital we were able to do twenty takes!" as if that was a good thing... and then you remind them that now they are behind schedule and have to drop two other angles to make up the lost time.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
In fact, in general I've seen a decline in directing lately as more and more directors work by shooting a lot of takes, a lot of angles, using multiple cameras... and THEN try and figure out the point of the scene in the editing room. They walk onto the set with no real idea as to how the scene should flow or cut or what it's about. They just use a firehose technique and soak it with coverage and give themselves nothing BUT options in post, no point of view imposed on the material at all, just mere reportage. And digital seems to be encouraging this mental laziness because "it's cheap".
Click to expand...

Brilliant. Funny I thought this was only happening on the bottom. People dont realize that "on set time" is the most expensive time there is, and not having a plan, and "firehosing" a scene, will bone you by thousands of dollars more in time than film stock ever would have.
 
In film school, our first assignment was to take one 3-minute load of 16mm film (100') and make a 1-minute movie out of it (so a 3:1 ratio).

After three more years in film school making some elaborate thesis films and breaking themselves financially to do it, for a number of students, that 1-minute movie was the best thing they actually did in film school. Because it took some thought to plan out the movie.

If digital teaches you everything but discipline... well, that's a problem.
 
The difference between RED and a "Pro HD Camera" is that it's a meta-data based workflow.

All of the settings in the camera are just 'suggested' settings for the software later to offer as a starting point. What you would do in a menu on an F900 you do on a computer later.

Second big difference is the data workflow. With an F900 you'll probably record to tape which you'll later need to log and capture (unless you record to disk). With a RED you can either load the files directly into applications which support RED movies or you convert it into a file format (much like capturing and logging).

The easiest way to think of RED is to imagine that you shot on film but that you have lab and telecine right on your computer.
 
David Mullen is, as usual, bang on the money. On the comment that actors will work better without the pressure of camera cuts, I feel it goes the other way. Walk onto a set with a film camera running $$$ through the gate and everyone seems to perk up and hit it with more energy. The extreme example of this is Mini-DV. The amount of total crap one has to deal with in an edit you can multiply by 50 when they hand you Mini-DV tapes. With the odd exception, the vast majority of Mini-DV footage I've ever had to edit consists of hours and hours of mid shots that wobble about because they could not be bothered with a tripod even, all of which amounts to nothing more than "recording" the action, as distinct from "photographing" it. It's so rare to see that frame, that shot that makes you go, "Wow, great shot" off Mini-DV - and that's rarely the fault of the medium.

Hopefully David's analogy will hold and the young up-and-comers (or the old ones like me) will still develop into the Fords and the Spielbergs despite whatever they're shooting on. The reality is that that will most likely happen but, as the costs come down, there'll be a whole lot more crap to wade through to get to the gold. On the upside, the money has not always followed the talent and maybe the democratizing of high quality image capture may just see a little more gold found that, otherwise, may have been left undiscovered.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
Oh yes, that's why modern digital movies are so much better than the past 100 years of cinema shot on film, because now directors can do more takes for less money. John Ford might have actually made a decent movie in his life if only he was allowed to use a really high shooting ratio. Kurosawa too would have been better off doing a lot of takes.
Click to expand...

Umm nobody was really saying that films shot on digital had a better outcome than film. Only that it had cost benifits.
 
Shane Betts said:
The extreme example of this is Mini-DV. The amount of total crap one has to deal with in an edit you can multiply by 50 when they hand you Mini-DV tapes. With the odd exception, the vast majority of Mini-DV footage I've ever had to edit consists of hours and hours of mid shots that wobble about because they could not be bothered with a tripod even, all of which amounts to nothing more than "recording" the action, as distinct from "photographing" it. It's so rare to see that frame, that shot that makes you go, "Wow, great shot" off Mini-DV - and that's rarely the fault of the medium.
Click to expand...

Hey there Shane - I agree with this, because if you treat a Mini DV production much like a film production and you utilise the medium to the max you can you get a pretty good result.

If you have a spare 13 minutes and a good stomach for dark comedy check out the following short I produced a few years back - Big Bad Wolves - shot on Mini DV.

http://www.vimeo.com/769224

I mean sure, it doesn't look like a 35mm shoot, and we got really lucky and graded on a Baselight (originated on Mini DV, but edited 1:1 and then ouput to Digibeta, ingested into Baselight).... But it was shot on Mini DV with a lot of thought put in by our cinematographer and as much support gear as we could muster with a fairly meagre budget - hopefully it helps prove the point that it's the discipline and methodology that makes a film first and foremost, and the equipment supports that methodology. It's never the fault of the gear, only the people handling it.
 
Very nice piece Craig and a good example of how it's not the gear that makes it good or bad. And I notice that the fact that you shot on Mini-DV didn't result in a one person camera crew. Planning and GAS (Give A Shit) are so important.
 
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