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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 :)

OK... Film vs. RED

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As a young and budding digital filmmaker, I've always known that I would always be a digital boy. For me, digital shines in the areas of post-production -- I don't have to pay a lab to develop the film, I can just download and cut. RED is confirmation to me that patience is a virtue, that digital is truly catching up to film and will one day surpass it, and I've saved my pennies and shot my first feature on the HVR-Z1U (which is vastly underrated, speaking as someone who just finished a film with it). Now, with the next project, I'm hoping to get funding and, as part of my compensation for being on the project, get to keep the Mac and the RED (heck, that could even be all of my pay, and I'd be happy).

Digital it is for me. Nothing against film, but she and I never, eh, got it on.

:)
 
Rob Lohman said:
Exactly. This is why RED:

- does no sharpening WHAT SO EVER. If you want to sharpen in post, go right ahead. We're not going to burn that choice in your footage however.

- has a 12-bit signal to deal with banding

- drops no samples (like 4:1:1 or 4:2:0) and is full raster (unlike 1440 x 1080 for example)

- developed our own compression to combat digital artifacts as much as possible. A cool thing about Wavelet compression is that the artifacts tend to make an image slightly softer and reduce noise instead of blocking etc.

- offers an uncompressed output option if you feel that our compression still introduces more artifacts than you're happy with

Obviously when you were to output to film you will get a bit softer image automatically than when you were to project digital. However, for digital projection you can slightly soften the image if that's preferred. It's way harder to undo sharpening (which a lot of camera's do before recording the data).

In the end we're here to give you choice. To give the film maker another tool to work with. If you choose to use it, great. If you stick with film that's cool too.
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Hey that's really cool Rob. In camera "corrections" have never been helpful for me, so I'm glad RED offers the choice to us. Now I thought that at 4k Red downsamples to 4:2:2, am I correct?
 
None of the Red shooting modes do 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. See:

http://www.red.com/formatoptions.shtml

The 1080p RGB mode does RGB, which should convert easily into 4:2:2 Y'CbCr. This is the highest quality route since 4:2:2 is susceptible to generation loss.

If you are mastering onto a 4:2:2 format, shooting 4:4:4 gives you the highest quality. Suppose you had shot 4:2:2. If you apply image processing (like adding a title), most image processing tasks require you to convert to 4:4:4 RGB. So you have to resize the chroma bigger (to 4:4:4 Y'CbCr), convert to RGB, do image processing, convert to 4:4:4 Y'CbCr, then resize down to 4:2:2 Y'CbCr. The resizing up and down can give you generation loss.

*Unless you use box or nearest neighbour resampling, but that just looks terrible! Try resizing things smaller in Photoshop with nearest neighbour... it doesn't look as good as bicubic; but if you resize things bigger+smaller with bicubic, then you get generation loss. So you either get generation loss, or have your first generation (i.e. of titles) look bad. By shooting 4:4:4 (or oversampled RAW) you don't need to make that choice.
 
GlennChan,
I agree. I personally would shoot everything RAW, but maybe that is because I'm taking the mindset of the photographer using dSLR's.

So everything is 4:4:4 then?
 
If you shoot RAW, then it's not exactly 4:4:4. Each 'pixel' on a bayer sensor only records one color at a time. Whereas a theoretically ideal camera would have pixels that record 3 colors at a time (red, green, and blue). Or you use a prism to split the color up (but in practice that has its own issues; and in practice, it's better to oversample via pixel shifting).

Once you de-bayer, you upsample to 4:4:4 / (intelligently) re-create the missing colors. It's sort of like resizing an image bigger, except you can do tricks based on surrounding information.

2- RAW is the highest quality you can shoot on the Red. Unlike 4:2:2 chroma subsampling, you aren't throwing any information away. And there's no point in recording (4K) 4:4:4 RGB since you're recording extra information that didn't exist originally.
 
krd said:
the lower-res dreaming state
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I've read that the 60hz cycle on a TV puts people in trance very quickly.

I think I'd argue that dreaming state is more of a 24P + Shallow DOF + Altered Color Pallettes + AUDIO and not a particular sharpness choice. I much prefer smooth/soft to digital edgy though.
 
I do not like smooth and soft, I like really sharp and in focus. If you look at the Star Wars films, where there is always so much going on in the background that you can watch the movies many times just picking out the details behind what is going on in the foreground, that is my style of filmmaking. I don't care for the whole "audiences are so absolutely retarded that even if we throw a character in front of them who is talking they STILL won't understand where to look unless we ruin the rest of the picture by making it all out of focus and blurry." Wow. Talk about giving me no credit at all, and not to mention the eye doesn't see that way. I never see anything out of focus, everything I see is in perfect focus. I'm not a huge fan of that. I think you should use that for effect sometimes, but it shouldn't be something you do constantly, i.e. every shot. Instead it looks nice to rack focus for emphasis, or throw the character talking out of focus to focus on something behind him if it somehow is better for audiences to look elsewhere briefly, something along those lines. But in a shot with lots of visual interest I'd prefer to see that visual interest shown, not just blurred out.
 
joelnet said:
I think I'd argue that dreaming state is more of a 24P + Shallow DOF + Altered Color Pallettes + AUDIO and not a particular sharpness choice.
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No question all those factors are important, but the inclusion of 24P is telling.

I believe 24fps was the lowest frame rate capable of delivering acceptable optical sound, back in the late 1920s, so that's what they settled on. And yet 80 years later, most people here still intend to shoot at 24 fps, despite the fact that 30 fps (not to mention 60P) is undeniably more "realistic" and artifact free.

I know: 24 fps is still the international projection standard, and anyone thinking of a possible film transfer would be nuts to shoot 30P. But isn't it also true that almost everyone still prefers 24fps for drama -- less data and lower sampling, and a certain amount of abstraction, being somehow preferable for fiction?

Much the same may apply to resolution. At some point, "better" may prove to be "worse", at least for the current film-raised generation. Consider the B&W features of the 30s and 40s, versus today's black and white. The old films appear to have much less resolution. And yet, visually, they're far more evocative for most viewers, even making allowances for the beauty of the old nitrate films.

This is NOT, repeat NOT, a brief against Red (I also hope to use it, FWIW!). Then again, if all someone can afford is an HV20 or a used DVX100, why weep? The contest for screens in the star-less non-Hollywood film market niche is almost always over dramatic content or novelty, not visual aesthetics or resolution. Even today, DV features beat out 35mm productions for these slots.
 
JonathanLB said:
something along those lines. But in a shot with lots of visual interest I'd prefer to see that visual interest shown, not just blurred out.
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I think most movies do both. It's the lack of the ability to do shallow DOF when desired (like tight quarters) that drives some of us crazy. As a storyteller we want the whole pallete available.

But if you like digital video sharpening I can't say I see that the same. That's where I want soft, smooth 35mm-ish edges with high resolution.
 
JonathanLB said:
I never see anything out of focus, everything I see is in perfect focus.
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I don't know... try to look more closely at how your eyes work. Indeed, we are racking focus all the time, a lot like autofocus do on those tiny cams, still autofocus looks like crap on the screen. Do you really think your eyes are so different than the cameras we use? It's just an imager behind a lens, and our eyes obey to the same principles. You don't see beautiful 85mm portraits with your eyes because the lens you have is not that long... But you would if you could zoom in... There's focus, there's lattitude, there is even grain.. Maybe I'm crazy, but I can see all of that in real life if I pay attention to what I'm looking...
 
JonathanLB said:
I never see anything out of focus, everything I see is in perfect focus.
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Close one eye and hold your finger about 6" from your face. Focus on an object in the background - note your finger is out of focus. Now focus on your finger - note the background is out of focus.

It happens with all imagers... analog, digital, photochemical or biological.
 
it's about storytelling

it's about storytelling

JonathanLB said:
I do not like smooth and soft, I like really sharp and in focus. If you look at the Star Wars films, where there is always so much going on in the background that you can watch the movies many times just picking out the details behind what is going on in the foreground, that is my style of filmmaking. I don't care for the whole "audiences are so absolutely retarded that even if we throw a character in front of them who is talking they STILL won't understand where to look unless we ruin the rest of the picture by making it all out of focus and blurry." Wow. Talk about giving me no credit at all, and not to mention the eye doesn't see that way. I never see anything out of focus, everything I see is in perfect focus. I'm not a huge fan of that. I think you should use that for effect sometimes, but it shouldn't be something you do constantly, i.e. every shot. Instead it looks nice to rack focus for emphasis, or throw the character talking out of focus to focus on something behind him if it somehow is better for audiences to look elsewhere briefly, something along those lines. But in a shot with lots of visual interest I'd prefer to see that visual interest shown, not just blurred out.
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you sound like a true techie but not much of a storyteller. by your logic, there also shouldn't be editing to direct audiences to key moments and characters in the story. or musical cues to indicate tone. i guess we should plant an 8k 3d camera in the ground and let it run for a year. that way audiences can decide for themselves who the story is about and who they want to look at because they're so smart.

i think most viewers want to be guided through narrative without too much manipulation or too little. it's basic storytelling from one party to viewing/listening by another.
 
Deep and Shallow Focus

Deep and Shallow Focus

Please do not let this become a Realist vs Formalist argument. There are amazing examples of both Deep and Shallow Focus (Citizen Cane, I am Cuba vs The Insider). I dont think that RED should be concerned with matching other styles, I think our job should be to find new aesthetics with this camera. Because they are giving us something that at least performs like a 35mm film camera, but ofers many more advantages to develop a new aesthetic.
I am waiting to see the new type of filmmaking that this camera unleashes. Just like many other advancements in film technology have done in the past. There is no doubt in my mind that the potencial that RED is offering might be equivalent to many important movements (New Wave, Neo-realism, Third Word Cinema, etc.) I think it would be very useful to encourage each other to use the RED to the limit and find the kind of things that film cameras have not been able to do. Maybe I am to anxious to get mine...
 
OK, I´ll bite...

Jannard said:
We may as well get this out of the way...

1. Cost of equipment- advantage RED
It depends on how long it´ll take for RED to be obsolete. Film cameras tends to hold their value much longer than digital.

2. Cost to use- advantage RED
Yes.

3. Dynamic Range- advantage 35mm film
Yes.

4. Resolution- advantage RED
(If you want to hold this one aside until there are side by side tests... no argument from me). I´ll wait for the test...
5. Grain- If you like it, advantage 35mm film. I like it but that´s just personal.

6. Convenience- advantage RED
Yes.

7. Pulling a key- advantage RED.
True.

Jim
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Extra 8) Overall image quality - This should be the most important...To me the "filmic" characteristic is what brings life to the picture, something related to nature that´s hard to explain in the digital world or using tech specs but yet you can easily see it on the screen and adds a magic component to the overall look.

Extra 9) Do we believe in magic ?.

Regards
 
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