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FORGED - Shot on RED Weapon 8K

Phil Holland

Phil Holland

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Hello all,

I'm very happy to present something a bit special for the REDuser community.

A short I shot literally last week on RED Weapon 8K.

FORGED

First I want to thank Jarred and everybody at RED for allowing me to get in deep with Weapon 8K early on. This resolution and format size are something I have been desiring for a long, long time. And now that it's here it certainly doesn't disappoint. This Dragon sensor tech scratches all of my film format to resolution relevance guidelines and having a quality VistaVision+ sensor size that "feels right" combined with this resolution in such a small package is damn impressive.

I have some thoughts and some BTS I'll upload in a bit, but for now, I hope you enjoy.
 
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Alrighty. Thoughts and behind the scenes content.

Thoughts on RED Weapon 8K

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I've written much about my thoughts on resolution. And particularly the concept of how over the years we've worked with film, digitizing with the film scanner, and oversampling. RED sensor tech benefits in the very same way through use of a bayer pattern CMOS design. The Dragon sensor we have in both DSMC and DSMC2 class cameras is a very special sensor. Everybody makes their own decisions, but for me the Dragon sensor has allowed allowed me not to miss film really at all anymore.

This Film Format to Resolution Relevance thing I go on and on about is important to those who have worked with film and experienced the best of what it can offer. Shooting at 8K provides the format size and resolution you’d expect from shooting VistaVision 8-perf film, while shooting and windowing down to 5K creates a Super 35mm filming experience. Combining that with impressive Color Science and a very broad Total Captured Dynamic Range, makes this one of the most film-like digital cinema cameras on the market. All of this has me hooked and in love. This camera weighs less than 4lbs un-rigged and it's utter madness this is possible.

As for the 8K format size at 40.96mm wide. In short it's awesome. This particular format size has so much potential. Shallow depth of field, extreme wide angle, a wide variety of glass options, etc... Considering the resolution as well I've found quickly that my close up, mid, and wide shots hold so much richness but also draw in that very film-like smoothness. I'm an active focus puller and focusing on various areas of interest and finding the little nuances that live in those compositions really jumps to life in 8K.

This camera can be used in so many ways. Finishing at 8K, 4K, whatever you want. There's enough resolution and format size to be extremely flexible. In this case on this project there's no cropping, no reframing, no sharpening, just a 8K FF to 4K FF downsample. And to me I think the frames look fantastic. I've been focused on creating "bigger than life" images for a while now and this format and resolution truly brings much of that concept to life for me.


Camera, Lens, and Lighting Details
phfx_REDforged8KBTS_0012.jpg


Much of this shoot was achieved at 8K FF, 60 fps, REDCODE RAW 12:1, using the Standard OLPF. There's a few 24fps shots in there too at 5:1. This was a 4 day shoot and I didn't shoot any differently than I do today. I shot about 3-4 hours of footage per day as Tony ran around his shop. I ended up with a lot of actual setups. ISO Rating mostly 500, however as this was also sort of a camera test for me you'll see shots in the ISO 320-1280 range as well. I opted for the Element Technica V-Lock plate with the Anton Bauer Cine 150Wh bricks that I recently picked up. Each brick got me about 2.5 hours of uptime, shooting days were about 12 hours+ for the most part minus one shorter day. The camera was never off except at lunch. We only had 4 days to pull off what would traditionally be a two week build for Tony and big high fives to him for going hard and producing a beautiful piece.

phfx_REDforged8KBTS_0007.jpg


Lenses. Heh, when I picked up Jarred's camera I thought immediately about which glass I was going to use. I ended up slapping all sorts of lenses on the camera that evening during prep. I went rogue and went with EF glass. Mostly Zeiss Otus and a few Milvus shots in there. The Otus primes look fantastic on this camera FYI. I also used 30-40 year old Olympus OM lenses I had Duclos Lenses Cine-Mod which have a bit of history in the world of VistaVision filming. The major macro shots for instance were the Olys. There was a 200mm f/2.8 Canon prime used as well. Overall I shot mostly at f/2, though there's a fair amount of f/1.4 and f/2.8 in there with a couple f/5 shots. I had the camera in very precarious situations. Literally on a grinder belt or having 2000 degree bits of steel being shot on the camera. As you can see from some of the images I used the Bright Tangerine Misfit Atom with optical clear filters to protect the lens and camera. Though I can't say the optical clear filters survived. They were pitted with metal bits as was my skin.

phfx_REDforged8KBTS_0048.jpg


Lighting was tricky. Tony's shop isn't huge and is also full of machinery. So I tackled this with 2X Nila Boxers to provide bounce and skylight effects as there are some very dark corners in the shop. Additionally I had 2X Litepanel Astra 1x1 units rigged with V-Locks on small sturdy stands that could be placed in tight corners. These would travel with camera and Tony as myself and my camera assistant chased him around the shop. I was mixing these with daylight and the house fluorescents while filming during the daytime, however, when it got dark this setup showed it's real strengths. Anywhere Tony went and I didn't find what I wanted in the frame I setup those Litepanels and redirected the Nilas. More or less a documentary style of working if you will. However, no handheld, all tripod. About 100 setups a day.


Post Workflow
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Huge, huge thanks to Adobe for getting me a very early build of Premiere Pro CC that supported Weapon 8K .R3Ds. This was a 4 day shoot with 2 days of post and a bit of experimentation with various codecs and things. I edited the 8K FF .R3Ds natively in Premiere Pro CC with no real issue. 1/8th playback for time sensitive cuts, 1/4 for QC related work. I also leveraged the Lumetri Color Panels in there. In the screen grab above you can see where I masked off an area on the grinder wheel and knocked it down about 1/2 a stop. The grade was a achieved via a custom 3D LUT I made then individual clip adjustments via Lumetri within Premiere Pro. I exported a whole bunch of versions. 2K, 4K, 8K. What you see on YouTube was a high bit-rate H.264 4K DCI encode. Then of course YouTube re-encodes that and we lose a bit of the goodness. My ProRes, VP9, and H.265 4K and 8K masters are actually much better than what you can see via the web at the moment.

As for the cut, the footage shown in this cut is about 25% of what I actually shot in terms of general content. I had to leave a few things on the cutting floor, like Tony "rounding" a square piece into the pommel, but my focus was on the blade and the assembly for this edit.

Stills + Motion
phfx_Forged8K_fg_0061.jpg


Something that truly hit me was the potential of still workflows or still extraction. Each frame is 35.4 megapixels. I did a lot of subtle focus pulls throughout and having those moments of stillness come through in such print high resolution file is just awesome.

Sword Details
phfx_REDforged8KBTS_0077.jpg


Some sword and concept details. I wanted to put together something fairly unique for my first 8K shoot and have wanted to work with Tony Swatton for over 7 years as his swords have been on a few films I've worked on in the past. This video documents Tony over the course of several days as he forges and constructs a modern take on a Roman Gladius Sword (designed by RED's own Matt Tremblay) that features damascus steel, which I pushed for hard. It was a special few days shooting with Tony in his shop as he gears up to move into a new location after 25 years. I've always found damascus to be one the most beautiful ways to craft a blade. In this case there's a 93 layer damascus technique in the blade, twisted in the grip, and in detailed pieces throughout the guard and pommel nut. The finish of the blade maintains a darkness, yet still captures a shine from the light.


Final Thoughts and Big Thanks


Big huge thanks to Jarred and RED for allowing a few days with Jarred's personal 8K camera (and I didn't even set it on fire!). And big thanks go to Tony for pulling off a hell of a miracle of producing one of the most beautiful blades he's ever created. The only one that even compares to this up close is Jon Snow's Longclaw blade. This Gladius is truly a stunning piece of work. I hope it ends up in a case somewhere for people to see in person, because the damascus really looks tremendous.
 
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Also, Congrats to Matthew Tremblay for a fantastic design on BOTH Weapons.
 
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Phil that was outstanding, but those are the roughest looking milk girls I've ever seen. ;-)
 
Oh man that is a awesome short to say hey heres 8K in your face.
I only wish I hadn't had to ship off my 4K monitor earlier today for an upcoming project. But it still rocked on the Laptop.
Nice job Phil.
And 8K's of thanks..
Cant wait.

Maybe RED should have offered a free sword with your early NAB 8K upgrade...
 
Awesome! Great work Phil... as always.
 
Phil Holland said:
Hello all,

I'm very happy to present something a bit special for the REDuser community.
A short I shot literally last week on RED Weapon 8K.
Click to expand...

Mixed reactions going on here... I am oscillating between "Congrats on producing some camera porn that tips the collective hat towards the 8K future" and "Christ, now I want to sell my Scarlet-W that I don't even have yet, and buy an 8K Red". Can you please PM my lease agent and sweet talk them into increasing our loan by a few digits?
 
Awesome work Phil! Just watched it in 4k on my samsung curve. Looks amazing in 4k. Did you put any filtration on the lens during the shoot? I noticed in one shot looked like you might of dropped a diff in to protect the lens.
 
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