Good thing: Film versus REDCODE/REDMAGs

[Phil Holland]

Just something to share.

I have cans and cans of 35mm prints and neg laying about. Stuff I've shot, memorable color work, and strange experiments. I had to get some old film scanned recently and was completely fascinated by one of the major and impressive things about shooting on Red.

It was made clearer when I shot some very "hot" insert work on a feature a couple weeks ago. One day, 12 setups, delivered approved graded plates before the day was out. Production asked for the impossible and because of REDCODE, in this particular instance, I was able to deliver. Love me a good fire job.

Considering that a 1000' load of film is about 10-ish minutes of shooting and the added stock cost, development cost, cost of daylighting if it was a rush, sonic cleaning, scanning costs, etc... All to maybe get a good print. And that's not taking into account doing some color work on top of that then shooting that back out via laser recorder to see those prints too. I don't have a short memory and I've been in some painful situations waiting on prints.

It's just a tremendous contrast being able to shoot and deliver cinema quality images the same day and being the single source for that content. That's really some wonderful new ground to explore.

NAB is around the corner. There are hot discussions about workflow on Reduser at the moment. New competitors cameras are here or on the way. UHD is going to land in a very big way for a lot of people pretty damn soon. So much is changing so fast. The one thing that won't change is the need for quality imagery.

I'm more or less one of those folks who has no problem adopting or adapting to new workflows and pipelines. I'm a bit of geek and that all excites me. Everybody has different production needs and clients have varying requirements per job. REDCODE and the support it has in NLE and finishing applications has been a real game changer for the side of the fence I'm on.

I'm also in the mindset that for all intensive purposes we have "passed" film in most ways. 5K and 4K on Mysterium-X really produces that level of quality. REDCODE even upscales well compared to other codecs. With Dragon on the way, it looks like we'll be clearing new ground that film hasn't even been in before. Not to mention digital cinema camera sensors. I can't wait.

See you at NAB.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

Phil, love your attitude towards this stuff. You always bring volumes of knowledge and a good personality to the table.

It's easy to get spoiled by the current state of technology. We do forget the challenges from the past. I love film but I do wonder if what I really like is the end result more than the process. One thing I feared with digital was liking the process and not liking the end result. Those fears have been calmed for the most part.

 

[Sulekh Suman]

That's a very telling image Good work Phil.

 

[Nick Morrison]

Another classic post. Thanks Phil.

 

[David Battistella]

My first CF card holder for my red one was a modified 400foot can with a custom cut foam insert to hold the media. It was a great way to keep track of the cards and a bit hit on commercial sets. Of course, only the shot cards were, "in the can"

david

 

[Filip Orlandic]

My statistics so far:

0 drop frames/0 corrupted files on RED EPIC and several major issues while shooting film negative.

 

[Ale Houston]

Hi Phil! i think it's fair to say that part of what makes Red so great is the amazing community of users, owners, technicians, DPs, DITs and detractors that day to day provide us with all sorts of info abot this and other revolutionary systems.. It's also fair then to thank you for your constant contributions to the Reduser community providing quality tech info for those with the mind ready to receive them.. So thanks man!!

PS: can i use that can/redmag photo for my personal Facebook profile? it really transmits the whole idea behind Digital Cinema..

 

[Phil Holland]

Cheers gentlemen. It's so easy to get lost in everything that's going on in every moment. How fast the industry moves and where it is today from a technological standpoint is sort of a drug for me. However, the more we move forward it seems I have a bit of nostalgia about what it took to get film to a certain point. Especially with what became known as DI. I love little oddities and relationships between where we were really not so long ago, and where we are now.

I yearn for the day where laser projection is more common than not. 4K is in home and theaters. We have 4K today (and for the last six year for that matter). We already have on board raw capture and workflows. That's easily the thing I desired the most.

I think based on what I've seen of pure raw stream 4K workflows (and sub-4K for that matter) the power of what exactly REDCODE provides in terms of compression and storage space will be something to focus on.

PS: can i use that can/redmag photo for my personal Facebook profile? it really transmits the whole idea behind Digital Cinema..

Certainly

 

[Vadim Bobkovsky]

With Dragon on the way, it looks like we'll be clearing new ground that film hasn't even been in before. Not to mention digital cinema camera sensors. I can't wait.

Like Jim said, in terms of dynamic range and crispness, 6K off the Dragon is most likely getting into 65mm territory. Even though 15-perf. IMAX frame is a thing of it's own, you would shoot something visually like The Master and don't worry about "electronic" feel anymore, especially blown out highlights, reflections and things like that. Add some appropriate diffusion filter and you're in the 50s . Obviously you won't get the same frame size as 70mil and optical effects associated with it, but with good glass the level of sharpness of say Samsara projected in 4K theater is possible. In good hands it will be amazing.

 

[Shane Betts]

Great post Phil.

It strikes me that stills guys-turned-cinematographers have embraced Red so wholeheartedly because they were already hip to the whole digital RAW thing before Red came along. So many of the complaints I see and hear are from motion guys, either film or video experienced, who find themselves uncomfortable working a new way and wanting to shoot the messenger and go back to "how it's always been". While props must be given to the traditional players for trying to make their digital cameras as old-school friendly as they can, nothing beats RAW, properly exposed and graded.

 

[Jason Rudd]

I completely embraced digital in the last two years. I sold all my film movie cameras (still have a few Nikon and minolta SLRs).

Hate to get into a film vs digital argument here, but one aspect of film still rules: it's a superior archival format. Yes, you can argue that if you backup your data in duplicate, you won't have any problems. But the fact is that most post production facilities don't do that for their clients because the amount of time and manpower that requires. Even then the point the fault point may be your SAN or your fiber optic connection, so you have duplicates of garbage unless you check it by restoring and rendering. And even with duplicates, there's no guarantee that the LTO drive you have will be able to read the same tape(s) ten years from now. Film also degrades over time, but kept in the right conditions it's so far been a far more reliable archive at the places I've worked where we often pulled our hair trying to find a solution to restore data that was sometimes only a few years old. It's easy to say that if everyone does their job maintaining equipment and every year backing up a new set of data to fresh tapes, but who in the hell is going to pay for all that machine time and labor?

 

[Hunter Hampton Richards]

^This guy speaks gospel.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Nicely pictured and said Phil... What? NO LIKE buttons here...

 

[Phil Holland]

It strikes me that stills guys-turned-cinematographers have embraced Red so wholeheartedly because they were already hip to the whole digital RAW thing before Red came along.

It's an interesting thing. I haven't sat down ever and talked with Jim (and someday soon that needs to happen), but I know he was/is an avid photographer and it's clear to see the influence on how that helped Red start paving that road to high resolution raw capture. I have a crazy motion picture film background and love S35 and VistaVision. The whole stills/raw thing was a big part of my life too (still is). My first DSLR camera was the Canon D60 then 10D, 1Ds, 1Ds Mark II x2, III x2, 5D Mark II x too many, etc.... Had a PhaseOne P25 for a heartbeat too.

Red really was and is exactly who I was looking for when it came to a full fledged digital cinema camera. I knew that before the Red One was even in production because literally nobody else was even talking about that. The more I shoot on the Epic and Scarlet the more I feel that this camera is the right camera for me. Every time I shoot or grade REDCODE, usually towards the early stages of working on something, I I have this weird moment that I'm grateful to just have this ability.

It used to be a hell of a lot more work, costly, and time consuming.

it's a superior archival format.

Yes and no. I see the argument and agree, but bad things can happen to archived film. For me it's about keeping relatively "fresh" backups. I practice good data management and I can pull images from 17 years ago. Which is nuts because I was 16, but that work exists. Part of the "plan" for me is to upgrade drives and consolidate backups over time. I think I have a couple drives where I was able to archive all of 1998-2004 in totality because DV and stills didn't eat that much space. As I started producing more work it's certainly become a juggling act of drive storage and some handy labeling skills.

On the studio side it gets a bit tricky and LTO has become pretty popular. Eventually there will be a newer, better, more reliable, and faster systems. At some point that stuff should just get transferred over.

Digital storage to me is an evolving story. Film on the other hand, there's no where to go but where it's at today.

Nicely pictured and said Phil... What? NO LIKE buttons here...

Awe Ketch. Your smiling avatar is all the like I need

 

[Marc Wielage]

My statistics so far: 0 drop frames/0 corrupted files on RED EPIC and several major issues while shooting film negative.

Funny, in 25 years of working at Technicolor, I never saw a dropped frame with film. Maybe I was lucky.

To me, switching between digital and film merely trades one set of problems for another. I see many advantages on many levels, but the biggest thing I think DPs lose with digital is that film is more forgiving of mistakes, particularly overexposure.

No question, digital is faster on a lot of levels and certainly less expensive in terms of storage. But all things being equal, it's a "win some, lose some" equation.

 

[Phil Holland]

To me, switching between digital and film merely trades one set of problems for another.

Perfectly said.

 

[Vadim Bobkovsky]

film is more forgiving of mistakes, particularly overexposure

If the rumors are true, that particular problem of digital will be solved to some degree by Red's new sensor and eventually by other manufacturers, too. In less than ten years digital came so close to the quality of best film stocks, I can't even imagine what's going to be possible with technology in another ten years. Probably Lightfield and some other bananas.

 

[Martin Stevens]

GREAT POST PHIL!

 

[dio Zafi]

Film and Digital can survive together. Film is like painting with oil. Check out a DCP made from 35mm film ..IT'S SPECTACULAR!!

Kodak and Red made in America..(rare these days) and room for both.

 

[Marc Wielage]

Hate to get into a film vs digital argument here, but one aspect of film still rules: it's a superior archival format. Yes, you can argue that if you backup your data in duplicate, you won't have any problems. But the fact is that most post production facilities don't do that for their clients because the amount of time and manpower that requires. Even then the point the fault point may be your SAN or your fiber optic connection, so you have duplicates of garbage unless you check it by restoring and rendering. And even with duplicates, there's no guarantee that the LTO drive you have will be able to read the same tape(s) ten years from now.

This is very true. I have worked on at least three major studio projects where, due to data backup failures, we almost lost the movie, to the point where it delayed the film coming out. In one case (an older title), much of the restoration work had to be redone, at a cost of $700,000 -- and that was a film where 7-year-old LTO tapes failed.

This little story by Pixar is worth repeating...

Note that the Motion Picture Academy has two major 200-page reports on the problem of long-term digital archival storage, and even they haven't figured out we can reliably retrieve digital movies that are more than 15-20 years old...

At the moment, the Academy's only advice is to keep copies of major motion pictures on hard drives, on LTO tapes, and on 35mm negative (made from 4K DPX files). I suspect in some cases, there's a good argument that only the latter will survive 20+ years.