Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Poorly shot RED footage?

J

Joseph Lavender

Member
Joined
Aug 12, 2010
Messages
5
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Is there such a thing?

I'm trying to prove a point to someone about why the camera is just a tool. There are people out there who think that by running out and buying/renting a RED, they'll have cinematic goodness. Are there any examples online of Terribly shot RED footage?
 
Nearly every "RED vs. xxxxxx" comparison online is a perfect example of how NOT to shoot with RED. <ducks for cover>
 
Just as a good musician can play music on any quality of instrument, so can a great filmaker tell great stories on any camera.
That music will sound better on a high quality instrument and the story will look better on a high quality camera. To say it's just the artist or just the camera is not entirely true. Both help tell great stories.
 
Joseph Lavender said:
I'd love to see some terrible Alexa films lol
Click to expand...

I work in cable television, and can assure I have personally supervised grades for terrible Alexa footage. Its a tool. And any tool can be used badly.

A lot of low budget cable "TV Movies" are shot on Alexa, and look extremely mediocre. Nothing todo with the camera, the production value across all departments is so poor it wouldn't matter what they shot on.

A good friend of mine Gaffs a number of indie features in NYC, and assures me Alexa's are picked for most of them because Producers feel free to slash the grip/lighting packages. Alexa is great in lowlight yes, but what happens is it's often abused and starved for light...which does it no favors.

But like any tool, use it well...and the Alexa is amazing. It's a great camera.
 
I've seen some bad looking stuff, hell I've shot some bad looking stuff lol!

ok so one time i wanted to film fireworks, in slow-motion...it was so clipped that the footage turned into massive macro blocks, like horrible looking...it looked great i thought til i saw it on a large HD screen...on my SD screen it was fine tho lol! I've shot some one man band stuff that was not in focus...that always sucks too, but for action sports gimme a break, things move wayy too fast for me to make everything crisp

ive also seen some underexposed arri stuff, lots of noise... you can make any camera look bad... trust me
 
Joseph Lavender said:
I'm trying to prove a point to someone about why the camera is just a tool. There are people out there who think that by running out and buying/renting a RED, they'll have cinematic goodness. Are there any examples online of Terribly shot RED footage?
Click to expand...
You can save it to a point with great color correction. But at best, if it's awful footage, you can only take it up a couple of notches to "mediocre." If they just aired the footage as-is, it would look horrible, particularly if it's 3-4 stops underexposed or 3-4 stops overexposed. I know of a major A-list director who shot a famous movie on Red where some of the skies had to be replaced due to overexposure and clipping in the camera. So everybody has a bad day.

It truly is the cinematographer, not just the camera, that determines how good, bad, or ugly the footage ultimately is.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top