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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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If I had a 100+ million dollars I would probably.... shoot.......... a motion capture movie like beowulf if it turns out like the early buzz indicates the quality might.

I would then take that profit and shoot a run and gun gritty 70million feature on the RED and experiment with printing to film and scanning back to 6k supersampled to 4k if I want a digital delivery. I like the film look what can I say? I still don't own a Digital camera. Good old Canon F1.

After that I would dissapear into obscurity for 10 years as I shoot a documentary in North Korea, Iraq and Africa. If I were still alive at the end of that I would try to create a new short format Science Fiction series where the best serial short story and comic book artists could be given a platform to try and create something new and interesting with little 25-40 minute half features.

btw to answer an earlier question: How do you push 4k? Through two video cards.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
If I had a 100+ million dollars I would probably.... shoot..........
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.... a mc gyver full feature...

and earn by selling the best ever shot "home-improvement" stock footage in the galaxy.

p.s. sorry, just an old producer joke.
 
The funny thing is, given human nature, that if more and more productions were shot in 4K digital, some filmmakers would feel more incentive than ever to shoot film, particularly if they thought they would be the last people to ever get to.

I look back to 1950 when Eastmancolor negative was introduced and then 1955 when the 3-strip Technicolor cameras stopped being used (except for other purposes, lke sodium-mattes or Technirama). The studios jumped at the opportunity to use Eastmancolor (and Ansco over at MGM) as a way of saving money by processing in-house, and even printing color, rather than sign these co-production deals with Technicolor just to make color features. So that last year of 3-strip Technicolor credits (not talking about the dye transfer printing process that continued until the mid 1970's) were b-pictures mostly from the 2nd-tier studios like Republic, etc.

But the last few years of 3-strip also saw some wonderful looking movies like John Ford's "The Quiet Man" and "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon". And if you count 1952, films like "Moulin Rouge" (one of the best-photographed color films in history) and MGM musicals like "Singin in the Rain" and "The Bandwagon."

So if I were a DP back then and knew that the future was Eastmancolor and that 3-strip would be gone by 1955, I probably would have wished I had gotten to shoot one of the last 3-strip pictures (especially since their b&w negatives haven't faded like early Eastmancolor movies have -- we're lucky that the first two decades of full-color movies used b&w film for the most part).

It's great to be cutting-edge and use the latest and greatest digital technology, but once everyone is using that technology, perhaps the only way to be cutting-edge will be to shoot on film before it's gone.
 
There are many reasons why Red is greater than Film, cost is the primary one, but this account of a disastrous screening here in Melbourne recently factors into it as well:


http://www.elroyonline.net/?p=99845703

"Attempting to see Sunshine"
Posted on the March 13th, 2007

Tonight started out to be quite a cool evening. Not only were we going to be seeing the new Danny Boyle directed, sci-fi flick, SUNSHINE, a month before it hits the cinemas in wide release, but following the movie Danny Boyle and one of the film’s stars, Rose Byrne, would be sitting down for a Q&A session with the audience.

Sadly though, about 40 minutes (maybe less) into the screening of Sunshine something happened that I can only describe as a right royal cluster-fuck. For a moment nobody was sure what they were seeing: A dream sequence maybe? After a few more moments the thought started to creep into the back of my mind that there was a very good chance that Danny Boyle and whoever the hell let him release this piss-poor attempt at emulating Stanley Kubrick needed to be lined up and shot.

So, what was really going on? Well, we were seeing what appeared to be the second last reel of the film… right after the first… and it was upside down… and, I kid you not, it was playing in reverse! Then, right before we got to the bit where the monkeys start whacking the monolith with their bones, the projection room finally woke up to the error and hit the lights.

After about 40 minutes we were told that they’d just discovered that the same problem was identified in the other reel, and so we would have to wait even longer before the film could commence again. At this point we were also informed that should we wish to leave that our tickets would be refunded. Having been extremely impressed with Sunshine right up until the point at which it had started playing backwards, we decided to stick it out.

We didn’t have to wait too long before the film started playing again. And then we didn’t have to wait long before a large portion of the audience erupted with shouts of “WRONG REEL!”. Yeap, somewhere in the mix up they’d skipped a reel or two and no-one had a clue what was happening. However, it has to be said that by the time that plug was again pulled on the failed screening (for the final time) we’d again been gripped by the action taking place on the screen.

By this stage the screening was written off as a total loss and the Q&A was started.

I wish I had more to say about the Q&A and the film itself, but there was very little in the way of quotable bites from either Boyle or Byrne. What we did get to see of the film was extremely gripping and dripping with the intensity that I’d hoped for.

Of the Q&A the one thing that is worth stating is that even though the two of them were probably extremely pissed off and probably even a little embarrassed by the debacle that the evening had become, they both handled themselves extremely well, taking the whole affair in their stride.

_____________________________________________________________

This would never happen with Red and digital projection.
 
sharkguy said:
The $100 million question:
If Bruckheimer and Bay ask you to shoot Armageddon:Orbital Return would you fight for Redcinema?
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I'd fight for a better movie. :-)

I think Graeme's secretly working on realtime 4K film grain filters. Maybe he'll make a whole suite of filters called "Degradation Station".
 
That incident has nothing to do with RED - it was a print projection problem that suggests the advantage of digital projection.

Any RED feature released on 35mm prints (which is how most of them will be released over the next few years) can potentially have the same problem.

And any movie shot on film released digitally would be able to avoid the same problem.

So it's got nothing to do with any advantage the RED camera would give you. They probably did a D.I. for "Sunshine" and could have opted to have a digital screening.

And it's not like digital screenings can't have their own mishaps. I saw "Chronicles of Narnia" projected digitally and every scene with white snow in the frame had a grid pattern of black specks over the image. I went to a screening using the Sony 4K projector where the top left quadrant was more magenta than the other three quadrants.
 
Opening night of Matrix Reloaded: 15 minutes of the film seemed to be only the green emulsion layer. Super dark and completely green.

I HATE film projection. The projectionist never seems to get the shutter sync just right. The focus is somehow bumped etc etc etc. Just put a really nice 4k projector in a clean room and get it set up perfect and don't fuss with it. Even in the newest of theaters there's also that little tiny bit of vibration in the projector.

Not to mention even when the projector is in focus the picture always feels soft to me. Then the scratches begin. I saw The Fellowship of the Ring at the end of its run when they tacked on the sneak peak at the Two Towers. By that point the FOTR reels looked like a VHS tape and the audio was worse. It was almost completely unwatchable.
 
I look at it this way.

Can I buy a Genesis? No
Can I buy an Arri D-20? No
Can I buy the Dalsa Origin? No

Viper and F23? at the end of the day 2/3" HD cameras.
Want 35mm DOF on a 2/3" HD Camera? P+S Pro 35 US$27K
Little late in the game to start adding film cameras to our inventory.

What was the question again?
 
I tend to see movies in the better theaters in Los Angeles, so I rarely see a projection problem. In fact, after a time when I sought out every digital screening I could, I stopped going because I got fed-up with the problems that these earlier DLP-Cinema projectors had with dark movies or bright movies. I saw "Signs" in DLP and it looked awful, with crushed blacks and odd compression artifacts. And I already mentioned the problems that "Chronicles of Narnia" had with white scenes. And I remember a conversation with Stephen Burum about the DLP-Cinema release of "Mission to Mars" and how the digital projector crapped out on the all-white limbo scenes at the end.

But recently I've been checking out more screenings using the newer 2K DLP-Cinema projectors and have seen a lot fewer problems. In fact, I saw "Superman Returns" in 35mm, DLP, and IMAX just to compare and I was pleasantly surprised at how close the 35mm and 2K DLP presentations looked.
 
Can I just ask, when you do side-by-side tests please don't pull the usual trick of using an old, fast stock that's been badly exposed and then putting it up against 4K and saying "Oh look, it's clearly no-where near as good".

Get someone to shoot the 35mm tests the best way possible and show us a real comparison. That's what'll make the Red look the most impressive anyways :)
 
Brook Willard said:
True, but lasering to film costs just as much from a DI or RED... so there's no difference between the formats here.

It's like saying "you have to light RED, so it costs more there" Well no kidding! You have to light film too.
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Hi Brook,

Only true if you need a DI.

Stephen
 
I saw a filmout of Peter's movie (a short clip) in Prague yesterday. I was disappointed. It felt more film-like and everyone there thought it was very cool. But I missed the crystal clear feeling that I watched 100 times at NAB. I never thought it would happen, but it did. For those that wanted to see a "film", they got it. I was surprised that I wanted to go back and see it on a 4K projector.

We are in the middle of a big change... or should I say a "big alternative". The future will be very interesting in what the consumer chooses going forward. I'm sure that both will survive. But once you see 4K clean, it is a compelling choice.

Jim
 
Jannard said:
I saw a filmout of Peter's movie (a short clip) in Prague yesterday. I was disappointed. It felt more film-like and everyone there thought it was very cool.
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That's the last straw for me. I'm putting an order for a Red tomorrow.
 
Probably should shoot both a fast and slow stock. Fast because that's what a lot of people will use in real-world situations, but slow (and fine-grained) because if you want to compare resolution, you don't want people distracted by grain... because they confuse seeing a grainy image with it having less resolution.
 
Jannard said:
We are in the middle of a big change... or should I say a "big alternative". The future will be very interesting in what the consumer chooses going forward. I'm sure that both will survive. But once you see 4K clean, it is a compelling choice.

Jim
Click to expand...

Cheers to the future <clink!>
 
For me, the experience of seeing the PJ short in the Red booth was "hyper reality'...it was as 3d as a 2d image can be.
 
Shawn... did I thank you for the gift yet? If not... thanks. Really nice.

BTW, I've always liked you. :-)

Jim
 
I think the unique clarity that the REDONE provides enables people to have a greater flexibility in deciding how their film will look in post.

I always like having the choice to add grain, or add vignetted blur, etc in post. But I also love having the untouched crystal clear image to work with before hand.

Once again, RED provides a great choice and more flexibility than film in that respect. This is one of the key points at which it will drive consumers to choice it.
 
4K projection is cool, whether or not you shoot 35mm or 4K digital. Despite some problems with the Sony 4K projector in terms of blacks, and getting those quadrants to be stable and match sometimes, it's just so darn clean, steady, clear, and sharp... that it makes 35mm print projection look like 16mm print projection. And I like 35mm print projection, but clearly to me, it's more like 2K projection... and 4K projection is sharper.

Once your eyes gets used to the digital version, it's hard to get used to the film-out. I spent weeks color-correcting the D.I. for "The Astronaut Farmer" using a 2K projector, and after that, I wished people had seen it in 2K projection because that's what I was looking at, so that's how I think it should look.
 
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