OK... Film vs. RED

[Graeme Nattress]

Sorry Ralph, did I spoil the discussion. I like this one I said above "Science enables stories. Stories drive science." I think I've got a new .sig

Graeme

 

[Ralph Oshiro]

At least krd stirred up the thread a bit. Was getting kinda pedestrian in here. Kinda miss those turbulent days now at that "other" forum!

 

[Ralph Oshiro]

Sorry Ralph, did I spoil the discussion. I like this one I said above "Science enables stories. Stories drive science." I think I've got a new .sig

Graeme

No, no, no! I thought what you said was really cool! I loved that post! I don't think anyone wants to hear more stories about my oversized washer/dryer, do they? So . . . anyway (how off-topic is THIS?), now I gotta re-frame the damned washer/dryer closet by about a foot. In fact, I may just demo the whole damn closet and make a washer/dryer cabinet instead. (Where is krd when you need him?)

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

If the LOTR was shot on DV the story would have suffered. No question in my mind.

It's the quality of the picture the exciting dramatic vibrant image on the giant screen which made my heart race. The vfx people would have had crappy obvious mattes eveywhere. It just wouldn't have felt nearly as real as it did in HD.

Resolution and quality sell tickets. When I first got discovery HD I was willing to watch just about anything. "NEXT: The sun rising over a pond." Wowwww... pondddddd.

When I'm watching a Dogme film I just sit there wishing they had spent money on lighting and film. It's just so ugly. Sure the story is good, but it's not visually exciting at all.

People like pretty attractive images. We have for thousands of years. RED and Film enable much prettier and attractive images to me. DV does not. It pulls me out of the story because it's ugly.

What if Lawrence of Arabia has been shot on SD and the skies were all blown out and shadows were crushed. I don't think it would be the "classic" it is today. Quite honestly that's a really boring movie when watched on a 13" TV off of VHS . And now... more people walking across sand... more sand... more sand.. I think those might be people I can't tell.

 

[Tom Lowe]

.. he IS arguing that the format in which a film is shot makes less overall difference in terms of its artistic and (often) financial success than most people on this board seem to think it does. And he's right about this. Great technology won't make great art

Uh, yeah, all of us here already understand this, and we don't need another lecture letting us know that "buying a great camera won't make you more talented." We get it. Thanks for coming out.

 

[Ralph Oshiro]

When I first got discovery HD I was willing to watch just about anything. "NEXT: The sun rising over a pond." Wowwww... pondddddd.

Wow! I know what you mean about DiscoveryHD! I recently bought a 720p 50" plasma set, and just watched "The Astronaut's Wife" (1999) on HD cable last night! OH MY GOD! Not the greatest film ever, but OH MY GOD! Allen Daviau's photography was absolutely STUNNING (even highly compressed). Not to mention a younger, hotter Charlize Theron. Allen did these close-ups of her . . . full-screen shots of her lips, eyes, etc. Many close-up beauty shots of her face. If anyone here has an HDTV, try and catch this film this month if ONLY for the close-ups of Charlize, and for Allen's gorgeous lighting and framing. Simply stunning.

Also, many of the sets and backgrounds were very simple, so the CODEC was often under-stressed. As a result, the close-ups on Charlize really held together, even on <20 Mbps cable.

I guess my point is (did I even have a point?), I mean beside the fact that Chalize Theron is hot, is that I dare any straight male to watch Charlize in HD (shot in 35mm, by the way) and not be floored by how the quality of the image enhances your experience of her in that film.

 

[Phil Maker]

If I had a 100 million dollar budget, I would choose... RED.
Grain looks like sh*t.
RED is the future and it's better.
Why fight it.
(that's not a question)

 

[Ralph Oshiro]

If I had a 100 million dollar budget, I would choose . . . RED.

Why does it have to be either or? If I had THAT kind of money, I would shoot . . . EVERYTHING!!! RED, 35mm, 65mm, Super 8, SD interlaced video (you know, for fake news footage, etc.) . . . RED is another brush. Another arrow in our "arrow-holder thing." Super-clean, 4K images. Then cut to some "dirty" gritty, grainy 16mm. Then some black and white reversal. Then cut to some interlaced news footage. Then some bad wireless cell phone video. Different . . . is good.

 

[Clint Johnson]

1) Fine. I do and I care. So do the Inuit and every other underrepresented segment of society who don't have access to capital and want to tell a story.

2) A agree on Telefilm. I will add the Toronto international film fest Inc. for that matter.

3) I disagree, while Franco cinema limits competition it does so to restrain mega media marketing departments. It worked very well for the canadian music industry. Sad to say the little guy needs help.

1) It is nice that you care, just don't ask me to pay for it with my taxes. I can't really speak for the Inuit since I personally know only two (maybe three, not sure) and if they were obsessing on culture they would hate me for my Cree ancestry since it was the Cree that took their land and drove them north above the tree line. But speaking with what little authority my diluted Cree blood gives me, I'd rather see a good film about the Chinese explorer Zheng He than a good film about Chief Peguis leading my Saulteaux Cree ancestors to Lake Winnipeg. Zheng He's story is just more interesting and I'd love to do it myself if I had that $100 million dollar budget.

But you know, if I had a $5 million budget, that Cheif Peguis story could get me writing too. It just isn't as good a story and no amount of common DNA will change that.

Just because somebody wants to tell a story doesn't mean that anyone else should give a damn... unless it is a good story that enough people would be willing to pay to see. Other than that, they should put it in a museum and get on with life, not try and get the state to force everyone else to pay for their intelectual masterbation.

2) We agree on the TIFF! See, I'm not as disagreeable a git as I'm coming across in these posts. I'm actually quite nice, just ask me.

3) I think we'll continue to disagree about the Francophone film scene, when the province tries to keep people from finding out that there are better films out there, I don't see that as helping anyone but some hothouse production companies that couldn't cut it on quality alone. And this type of protectionism in the music industry may have given us Celine Dion but I still prefer Tom Waits.

I am a little indie guy who doesn't want the help the state offers; tax me ten dollars so you can give me back five dollars? No thanks. I know, I know, I'm supposed to game the system so that the government takes more money from other people to pay for what I want... but outside of the poor economics of it, that just strikes me as morally wrong. So I am stuck with high taxes trying to scrape together non-state funding in a business sector that is addicted to corporate welfare.

Hey Jim, you've sure managed to start a lot of fights with one post! I suppose you are the type of guy who goes around poking hornets nests eh?

In a vain attempt to bring this post back on topic... uhh... I'd rather shoot both Zheng He's $100 million and Chief Peguis's $5 million story on Red digital cinema.

 

[Jason Murphy]

What RED allows is for those stories that i'm passionate about (that are best served by 35mm characteristics) i can now give them their due props. I no longer have to go to the market (time and expenditure) to try and finance them or shoot them on a format that i know will be counter to it's theme. I can choose the stories i've wanted to do for years, and define a workflow that is sustainable with my small bizness.

Hopefully, they'll be worth enough that others will be entertained, but as a famous writer once writ -"I write because i have to, not because i want to". You can add direct/paint and that's what it's about, for me.

Amen to that. I hope we see a bunch of interesting low-budget narrative and 'experimental' (or extreme non-mainstream depending on how you look at it) projects spring from this.

Why does it have to be either or? If I had THAT kind of money, I would shoot . . . EVERYTHING!!! RED, 35mm, 65mm, Super 8, SD interlaced video (you know, for fake news footage, etc.) . . . RED is another brush. Another arrow in our "arrow-holder thing." Super-clean, 4K images. Then cut to some "dirty" gritty, grainy 16mm. Then some black and white reversal. Then cut to some interlaced news footage. Then some bad wireless cell phone video. Different . . . is good.

And amen to that as well. Different IS good. Now, the question is: will the rise of RED (and 4K digital acquisition in general) mean that we see a resurgence in a few hardcore film-makers shooting 65mm? THAT would be a very cool unexpected benefit of RED as well. Would love to see more large format "non-IMAX-event" filmmaking happening.

 

[Ralph Oshiro]

Exactly. Not all of us are going to shoot traditional "narrative" cinema. I hope to start a whole business on just 4K bikini footage for resort hotel location video installations.

 

[Jason Murphy]

Exactly. Not all of us are going to shoot traditional "narrative" cinema. I hope to start a whole business on just 4K bikini footage for resort hotel location video installations.

Damnit! I always KNEW there was a way to make good money off of video installations. Never quite refined the business model though. I think you're onto something there Ralph. LOL.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I was just digging around in my my documents folder through older film scans seeing if there was anything that I would miss moving to RED. But I have a hard time coming up with anything. I really like the look of film but I also like the look of RED so between the two it's kind of a wash in my opinion. The thing that *did* stand out to me was how rediculously bad DV is. I just kept looking at graded and ungraded shots thinking to myself... that wouldn't have survived in DV. Oh no chance that shot would have been presentable. Yep... discard.

I decided to simulate on a random picture what would have happend if I clamped either side of the histogram down to 8 stops and tried to regrade. Now mind you of course if I was shooting this with a DV camera I possibly could have gotten a grad filter on there brought the sky under control and exposed better for the highlights (at the cost of super noisy darks). But I know when I took this photo it was a run out on your porch and take a snap before it's gone kind of moment. You lose those if you have to load up a matte box with 4 filters to get your exposure under control. Even with 13 stops I'm looking at the negative and that sky was precarious as it was. With a perfect exposure I could have easily fit the whole range into 11, but 8 and something would have died.

Just forget story for a second. If you don't care about image quality close your eyes during a movie and see how long it holds your attention. Give it a try. It's the picture that keeps us entertained while people are just sitting in a chair doing absolutely nothing. And with 11.3+ stops of latitude we can finally leave our apartments/Dorm Rooms/Sewers/Warehouses/[insert cliche indie location] without the sky being a big white mess.

 

[Peter McCully]

Exactly. Not all of us are going to shoot traditional "narrative" cinema. I hope to start a whole business on just 4K bikini footage for resort hotel location video installations.

Ralph, screen grabs from that venture will be available when exactly?...

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Exactly. Not all of us are going to shoot traditional "narrative" cinema. I hope to start a whole business on just 4K bikini footage for resort hotel location video installations.

Dammit! That's my idea... My camera is about 30 units before yours, I'd better work quick. :bleh:

 

[krd]

First of all, thanks to my defenders (all 2 of them!)

Taking your rebuttals and expressions of impatience in no particular order:

1) I never suggested that Lawrence of Arabia be shot on DV. I thought we were talking about films that non-Hollywood people are likely to make, within 5 or 6 figure budgets. If you've got the money for Lawrence of Arabia, what are you doing here? On the other hand, "Saltmen of Tibet" *was* shot, with epic vistas, with the VX1000, and nobody complained.

2) I am not suggesting that anyone pursue a career in fine art photography using a point and shoot. I do suggest that a filmmaker with limited resources clear his mind of the fallacy that production value or camera resolution is the crucial factor in his success (or failure). This notion is provably untrue, to the dismay of countless investors, and thousands of filmmakers.

3) "The point we are trying to make, that you seem to be skirting (except admitting that it would make a difference for documentaries ?)... is that with all other things being equal, a filmmaker working in the $200k - $500k range could make a picture on the RED for far less money than 35mm that will still have the same image-quality -- ie, lenses, DOF, color, etc. What part of that don't you understand? If your budget is $400K, and you save 50 grand on film costs, guess what? That's 50k you can spend feeding the crew, buying wardrobe, location scouting, doing post sound, etc."

And the point you refuse to either see or concede is that for features in the $200K-$500K range (of which maybe 1 or 2 have succeeded commercially on the arthouse circuit in the last 30 years), lesser formats provide perfectly adequate production values -- indeed, that high resolution will have little to do, at this budget range, with the success of the material. Why not save $90K (rather than $50K) and use HDV or even DVX100, and put *that* into the cast? Of course, if you have a masterpiece at hand, and the only thing lacking to make your project a film classic is RED or 35mm production value, by all means spend $40K on the camera. Is that, however, a realistic outcome?

4) "But many of us are image-makers, and to us, image is important."

And that's all to the good. I count myself among you. Unfortunately, the technical characteristics of the image seem to be far more important than its substance. Do I really need to point out that narrative film is not a fine art, in the sense of classical painting or drawing? That dramatic illusion does not require high resolution?

Thinking here also of the measured comments of David Mullen, I agree that the work should be important to those who do it, whatever the audience may think or feel or fail to notice. But we're talking about an art and a craft steeped in compromise. The typical American independent film, whether it costs $7900 or $790K, is utterly worthless. Even assuming every interlocutor on this board is the exception -- for whom RED would make all the difference, in achieving greatness, even though I don't concede that higher resolution would have much to do with it -- what about everyone else? And, if you're that convinced, why wait? Sell the car and mortgage the house and shoot 35mm right now.

5) "What’s your point? That we’re misguided and wasting our time and really shouldn't expend all our energy on these technical elements?….we should rebalance or redirect our energies? That our amount of technical fervor doesn't fit into the scheme of a human storytelling paradigm?

What's my point. That preoccupation with RED may offer its own unique excitements, to which I'm not immune, but has nothing to do with filmmaking, and solves nothing. Some Red films may look better, if anyone actually sees them, than if they had been shot on lesser formats. Period.

6) "Yes, but it's OFF-TOPIC. It's stating the obvious"

Maybe so. But if it's so obvious, why in the world are people so excited about this camera? If you concede that the films won't be any better (*as* films), and won't find a more hospitable commercial market, why all the fuss?

 

[Tom Lowe]

Do I really need to point out that narrative film is not a fine art, in the sense of classical painting or drawing?

Speak for yourself, dude.

The reason many of us are drawn to cinema is because we believe it to be the highest and most fulfilling form of art.

 

[tj williams]

A friend in LA who does DIT type work told me a major post house and a supplier of the digital recording technology to Viper/D20 type films are looking at retooling for 4.5K uncompressed, which they seem to feel may be a new standard. And where does one get this 4.5K??? I can imagine a lot of reasons that real movies with real budgets may use the RED. Unlike a JVC with an optical box in front....

 

[Poi Boy]

not art..huh ?
-A

 

[krd]

Speak for yourself, dude.

The reason many of us are drawn to cinema is because we believe it to be the highest and most fulfilling form of art.

Okay, inelegantly put. What I meant is, a narrative film can not bear the weight of painterly images, one after the other. A film is a mass-market medium, and it has to move. Otherwise, the viewer suffocates, and the thing is relegated to museums. Believe me, it's been tried.