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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 :)

Reality Check

zeke said:
And film isn't going anywhere. geez. We have a camera that will do a great film out compared to other digital formats. That's called money in the bank when talking to the people holding the purse strings.
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This is the best part of RED. No more, "I'm shooting HD but it might be going to film" or " I am shooing Varicam and I need to do a filmout"....blah blah balh.

Red solves this by shooting a Bigger than 35mm frame.

That is awesome...
 
Hey Gbaby,

Probably not a good first post, but…

I'm glad someone else is seeing the difference! The film shots are so much smoother! To my eyes, the Red just looks like good video. I'll probably be stoned for that statement!

Everyone keeps saying that the Red can do that, it's all in the coloring, etc. Wasn't Crossing The Line colored on some high end system by a professional colorist? Why did it still look video? At least to me, it did…

Anyways, I could go on and on, but I'm no professional! I'm sure you can tweak the footage to get the "film" look, but personally, I'm not interested in that.

Just wanted to thank Gbaby for having the guts to say something! :)


Jay
 
Straight non-colour corrected film looks dull. My guess (from the start) is that RED has the same issue. If you want REDONE footage to look like film than light it good and colour correct it propper. If you cant do that, than hire some of us who can.

Btw Viper cam’s motion makes me sick also. It screams video. Red doesn’t.
 
taylorama said:
To my eyes, the Red just looks like good video.
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You do realize those are practically fighting words around here :-). Anyway I'm curious, did you see CTL projected in 4k? A very large number of prominent industry professionals have seen Red footage projected, and I have yet to hear any say "looks like video." Can you explain exactly why it looks like video? Especially curious to hear you mention that film looks smoother, when the most common comment at early Red screenings has been how smooth it looks.

Have you seen the still frames in this thread? Do all those shots look like video to you? http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4266&page=4

Everyone has their own opinions, of course. I've been shooting and editing video for ten years and for what mine's worth, it doesn't look like video to me.
 
Hey jbeale,

Yes, I know those are fighting words! I might need to get out of here before someone takes my head off.

I've looked at all the frame grabs, clips, etc., that have been posted so far. The closeup shot is the best I've seen so far, but unfortunately we haven't seen it in motion yet!

I did a little experiment. Not scientific by any means, but none the less…

Brook posted a clip of some 35mm shots in the first post of this thread. So what I did was I opened that clip, as well as the 2k clip, and played them side by side. I played them looped, all on my tiny little macbook!

I brought this over to my parents, who have been seeing movies all their lives, and asked them, "Which looks better?"

Within two seconds they both pointed out the 35mm clip, and they both agreed, "It looks like a movie!" Note, I didn't tell them which was which! Just presented them with two clips, and said pick!

The Red footage is close, I'm not denying that. It's way better then the dvx100's and hvx100's that people have been using for a while now, BUT…

(here's them fighting words again!)

It feels like video to me. Maybe this will change when we start seeing actual production footage, as opposed to tests.

I'll be the first to admit, however, it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes film feel like film. Is it the way it handles highlights and overexposure? The latitude, dynamic range, etc.? The movement itself? The grain?

I've seen a lot of stuff shot on the dvx100, and hvx200, that approached a film look, but there's always something that gives it away. There's always something that tells me "this is digital." Apparently it's not enough to shoot at 24p, or have higher latitude, or have the highlights blow out gracefully. (Speaking of which, so far, it looks like the Red clips big time!)

Having said all that, this camera IS up there with all the higher end Sony's and even the Genesis. And a MUCH cheaper price tag to boot! That's your revolution right there! I just wish people would see it for what it is. I high end digital cinema camera, not a 35mm replacement.


Jay

P.S. Please don't kill me! :help:

BTW, no I haven't seen it projected in 4k. I'd love to though! Maybe that smooths out everything?
 
taylorama said:
To my eyes, the Red just looks like good video. I'll probably be stoned for that statement!
Jay
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Not good video, extraordinary video! Everybody uses "video" like it's a four letter word. Red footage seems to fit the definition:

"Video (Latin for "I see", first person singular present, indicative of videre, "to see") is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion."

Red isn't film and it will never be film. They could have designed the camera to add film-like curves with a ton of grain. Hell, Jim could have just built a revolutionary new film camera. Why didn't they? I'm assuming that the intention was to develop a camera with a super clean, unprocessed, high res image that can be processed easily (and most importantly to me... inexpensively!) in digital post. It allows for the most freedom to manipulate the final product however you want. Feel free to get stoned now. It's been a good week!
 
Religious arguments never end and i suspect this battle will never completely end. but i am leaning alot from the passionate battle. Expensive tools need to be handled very carefully, but I am looking forward to seeing many happy "accidents" from this system. bolt it on the funny car, shoot handheld in a fighter jet. strap it onto a bull and see what happens. We have film, now we have something new. I hope someone tries to rig it for astro photo and macro too. Let the fun begin.
 
Actually I think there is a lot of agreement that the Red stuff doesn't look quite like 35mm film. For that matter, Jim has said it's not a 35mm substitute, rather it is a different option. I suspect if treated properly, it has the potential for almost any kind of look, including something very much like film, but it is still too early in the process of working with the footage to have everything worked out correctly. Time will tell.
 
WHy does film look like film? Grain mostly. That's what people see, then motion and the rest. What you've got to do is, quite frankly, put RED up next to some pristine 65mm stuff. Then RED looks very filmic indeed - just not 35mm filmic as 35mm film has too much grain.

Graeme
 
Film looks the way it does because its a photo-chemical process where light exposes grain on celluloid. Digital will always look like digital because its light turned into code. Film is a physical, organic process. Nothing can replace that...yet.
 
Someone should sneak some Red footage through a grain filter and see if it passes as film. With the strong latitude that the Red has, I'm almost convinced that the main reason that people say it doesn't look like film is the absolute LACK of grain. It's so amazingly crisp it's screams digital, even though it's probably the most gorgeous "video" I've ever seen, and I'm a huge advocate of film.

It doesn't have a lot of the trappings that "video" does... the highlights don't clip as horribly (despite the jaggies mentioned), the blacks are rich and the shadows full of detail.

I've got a short and a feature (hopefully) coming up and I'm jealous of all of you Red owners/soon-to-be-owners. So I'll probably shoot S16mm or 35mm instead.

And if Soderbergh is willing to bank two huge Che epics, that (in my first-thought opinion) should have a filmy look, on the Red cam, I think we all know where this camera is headed.

Great job Jim & co!
 
Hey again,

I don't agree that grain itself is what makes film look like film. And this whole idea that Red can somehow standup to 65mm film? Maybe when it comes to grain, but that's not the argument here!

That seems to be the only thing going for the Red, as far as the image quality goes. A lack of grain! Apparently grain has been holding everyone back! So that's why all these indies have chosen digital as opposed to film. They're willing to put up with clipped footage, low dynamic range, etc, as long as there's no grain! Heaven forbid some grain! :)

Just making a point. All I keep hearing about is grain!

Anyways, I'm glad to see some people realize it's not a substitute. Just another option. A much more affordable, higher quality, option than has been available before now.

Lets see some nicer footage!


Jay
 
Jay, sounds like if you want nicer footage, you've got to go shoot it yourself.

I'm all for discussing stuff, but when you talk industry outsiders looking a film / digital comparison, grain is the first thing they see, then motion, then whatever's left.

Clipped footage? You mean film doesn't clip. I didn't know that. Low dynamic range? Have you measured it? I have. And remember, think of the horses :-)

Graeme
 
rgdfilmsRED said:
Film looks the way it does because its a photo-chemical process where light exposes grain on celluloid. Digital will always look like digital because its light turned into code. Film is a physical, organic process. Nothing can replace that...yet.
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I disagree. Film looks like film because of its non-linear response curve, natural shoulder and knee, etc, and broad color space (and motion, and dof, etc) all off that can be emulated pretty darn closely if you ask me. Look at the images that come out of the H3D and compare it to medium format.
 
Graeme,

Film may clip (I think the word used for that is blown?), but it's much more graceful then what we've seen from the Red so far. But obviously, we need to see some better examples.

When I mentioned low dynamic range, I was speaking of the dvx's, and hvx's people have been using. The Red is obviously better then what's been available until now.

I wish I could shoot some footage! I'm sure I'd have a bunch better idea of what the camera is capable of if I could play around with the Raw files inside the Red Alert software.


Jay
 
Years ago I had a similar discussion with a friend of mine about MAC and PC. Funny enough today's MACs are PC.

Cheers
Albert
 
Graeme Nattress said:
WHy does film look like film? Grain mostly. That's what people see, then motion and the rest. What you've got to do is, quite frankly, put RED up next to some pristine 65mm stuff. Then RED looks very filmic indeed - just not 35mm filmic as 35mm film has too much grain.

Graeme
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Hmm.

Shooting anamorphic on relatively slow stock means you see very little grain.

If you watch the film on tv, you see practically none.

Posting a badly exposed, badly graded, unusually grainy piece of film proves nothing guys. Show us a 4k scan from The Thin Red Line or The New World if you want to compare the best you got with the best 35mm film can do...

Otherwise you run the risk of people comparing a 4k scan from The Thin Red Line or the New World (or whatever) with the worst piece of footage the red is capable of. Which I'm sure would piss you guys off too.
 
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