Red Dragon - It's Just Paint.

[Jamon Lewis]

That stuff looks incredible, GREAT JOB Phil, GRAET STUFF

 

[Patrick Grossien]

Thank you very much, Phil!
I was about to get an outrigger handle with my next order, but I guess this just changed... Will probably still be a while though until it comes out. Does the part that's sticking out have any holes to attach something? Or just the part on top of the brain?

 

[Phil Holland]

That stuff looks incredible, GREAT JOB Phil, GRAET STUFF

Thank you Jamon.

Does the part that's sticking out have any holes to attach something? Or just the part on top of the brain?

Nothing that I could see, but remember that this is likely in prototype form and could change before release. Look at how different the REDVOLT XL Module was compared to the prototype shown 2 months earlier.

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Finished Look Tests

So part of what was going through my mind about the "it's just paint" concept comes down to the level of finish and just how you want image to look and feel on screen. I've done over 30 tests now for 6K, 4K, and 4K UHD delivery in a variety of packages and a couple of my own things. Similar to the tests and how I actually work with the Mysterium-X footage.

I thought I'd share 4 of the looks I landed on while I bake a fifth one in the oven.


001 - Scale:
This is pretty much a straight downsample of the 6K WS Dragon REDCODE. It's got that smooth look to it. When the footage is in motion it feels very "kind" without being too aggressive.


Click for UHD 4K Version


002 - SmoothOpCor:
This is a sharpening pass that's been smoothed out by a few things. I've also added some optical artifact correction into the mix to remove some of the chromatic aberrations. I like the feeling of this as it's got some pop to it, but some who desire more character may choose to add a grain pass.


Click for UHD 4K Version


003 - Sharp:
This is 6K WS material that's been sharpened and down sampled to UHD 4K. I'd say it was a fairly aggressive sharpening pass. Most of the material holds nicely finished in this particular manner. Although stretching out to the higher ISO ranges will reveal image noise and some noise reduction may be desired on shots like that.


Click for UHD 4K Version


004 - Organic:
This pass was sharpened at 6K WS, downsampled, and I applied a Kodak grain pattern over the material at UHD 4K. For those who like the look of film this is a nice way to go and obviously you can tweak the grain effect depending on your methods. This was a 6K grain scaled down and not used very heavy handed. I'd say it looks close to a "clean" film scan. This is fairly typical if I have to finish digital shots or VFX elements and integrate them with Super 35mm material. I actually don't typically finish my pure Red projects this way.

Something interesting that I find with Dragon is how organic the highlight roll off appears. It's a totally different feel than Mysterium-X. I actually am really enjoying the subtle grain on the upper highlight range. Especially on the two balcony shots where I let it "go" at the end. It feels very familiar in the way it "burns" out. I did leave the optical artifacts in this particular version. The one I'm baking right now is a film look with correction and sharpening.


Click for UHD 4K Version


I do wonder sometimes where the texture of film grain comes into play in a world of UHD 4K displays and Laser Projection. There's certainly an aesthetic to it, but does it make sense on the technology we watch it on these days? Meh. A question for another time perhaps.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Great work!!

And do keep all the great tests and specs info coming Phil, truly great spirit of sharing with the community... Love it!!

Oh... PS: I hope you did took my first reply "It's Just Beautiful" for the compliment that was intended for, in copying form the title, and not as in oh, well, nothing special really, it's just beautiful...

 

[Nick Vera]

[/QUOTE] Cheers Nick. Interesting take on the footage. The flicker that you see within your footage comes from Adobe Camera Raw/Lightroom [/QUOTE]

Thanks Phil, yeah I've experienced that in the past. Thanks for the info. I kind of figured that's what it was doing, unfortunately there's no way of taking off the auto adjustments. The point was to push the image as much as I can with Lightroom. I love the look that Lightroom gives, it really gives tremendous dynamic range without haloing. Also Film Convert really is awesome with Red Dragon, the best stock was Kodak 5213, it gave less orange tones. Anyway would love to work with you one day, and learn from you. I used to work at Cine Video Tech in Miami, FL so I have experience with the Epic and Arri 435 ES, Zeiss Primes and Todd Anamorphics. Unfortunately now I'm jobless since I'm doing my MBA at Loyola Marymount. You're shots help me get my creative juices flowing, I haven't done something film related in a month, which is what my jobs consist of. Thanks for sharing the vids, and if there is anyway I can work with you that would be great.

 

[Patrick Grossien]

These gradings are just "wow" and the thorough Mr. Phil with his beautiful write ups just adds to the excitement.
Thanks for doing this! Would you mind sharing a bit about the sharpening method you are using?

Also: with the new found knowledge about Dragon, would you have a new opinion about Scarlet Dragon vs Epic-X upgrade if one has only the choice for one of the options?

 

[Phil Holland]

Great work!!

And do keep all the great tests and specs info coming Phil, truly great spirit of sharing with the community... Love it!!

Oh... PS: I hope you did took my first reply "It's Just Beautiful" for the compliment that was intended for, in copying form the title, and not as in oh, well, nothing special really, it's just beautiful...

Thanks Ketch. I knew exactly what you meant. I'm half Italian, so I always understand you

These gradings are just "wow" and the thorough Mr. Phil with his beautiful write ups just adds to the excitement.
Thanks for doing this! Would you mind sharing a bit about the sharpening method you are using?

Also: with the new found knowledge about Dragon, would you have a new opinion about Scarlet Dragon vs Epic-X upgrade if one has only the choice for one of the options?

Heh. The final grade I've exported is a bit different as it's not just a one light. Different color scheme, secondaries, power windows, etc... I have a couple other tests I'm going to make before I push this baby out and call it "final". I'm enjoying a "fine grain" film grain on top of the footage. I'll try to watch several versions projected at the end of the week to see what I like most.

Each sharpening technique is different, the pure sharp is straight from Resolve. I did a few experiments using Adobe's After Effects Unsharp Mask and Neat Video. I also have my own scripts that do a bit more complicated and time consuming sharpening. I also tested out several other compositing packages. Scaling methods also come into play. Some will "hold" more detail, but could produce crazy jagged edges. The first shot of the airbrush in it's holster is a real test for that as you'll see the jaggies if the wrong technique is used.

On the topic of Scarlet Dragon versus Epic-X. Tough call really. For me Dragon as a sensor and "look" is where the party is at. The dynamic range is just too good to ignore. However, an Epic-X can work for you today and make you money. It's sort of a toss between wants and needs. I love my Epic, but the look to Dragon is entirely different to me. Especially in the highlights and over exposure. I'm actually doing stuff up there in those highlights now that I can't do with Mysterium-X. Epic is pretty tremendous and huge improvement over Scarlet. I pretty much only shoot in 5K now. It's just a hard choice honestly. There's pros and cons to both. Most come down to when you want a new camera. One's available today. One will be available down the line.

Thanks Phil, yeah I've experienced that in the past. Thanks for the info. I kind of figured that's what it was doing, unfortunately there's no way of taking off the auto adjustments. The point was to push the image as much as I can with Lightroom. I love the look that Lightroom gives, it really gives tremendous dynamic range without haloing. Also Film Convert really is awesome with Red Dragon, the best stock was Kodak 5213, it gave less orange tones. Anyway would love to work with you one day, and learn from you. I used to work at Cine Video Tech in Miami, FL so I have experience with the Epic and Arri 435 ES, Zeiss Primes and Todd Anamorphics. Unfortunately now I'm jobless since I'm doing my MBA at Loyola Marymount. You're shots help me get my creative juices flowing, I haven't done something film related in a month, which is what my jobs consist of. Thanks for sharing the vids, and if there is anyway I can work with you that would be great.

Lightroom/ACR is cool for sure. For motion though I'd get real familiar with Adobe's Speedgrade or DaVinci Resolve. They work differently compared to LR/ACR but you can do more once you get familiar with the tools.

The industry in general is a tricky business as there's no "one way" and everybody has different wants and desires. I'm also a bit of an oddity due to the nature of the different sides of production I work in and I'm a bit of an outsider/insider. However, that's the path I identified with and went from there. In my case I have a firm belief that success is directly proportionate to the effort put into what you want to do. The rest sort of handles itself really.

Keep the juice flowing. Free up time and get some work done. Build from there. Seek out companies, studios, or individuals who align with where/how you want to grow into. That would be a decent way to proceed.

 

[Martin Stevens]

Great thread Phil.

I love your attention to detail.

 

[Tony Reames]

Thanks Phil. amazing work as always.

 

[Nick Vera]

Thanks Phil, appreciate your words. Take care and look forward to see more of your films.

Sincere,

Nick Vera

 

[Jaakko Rinne]

Each sharpening technique is different, the pure sharp is straight from Resolve. I did a few experiments using Adobe's After Effects Unsharp Mask and Neat Video. I also have my own scripts that do a bit more complicated and time consuming sharpening. I also tested out several other compositing packages. Scaling methods also come into play. Some will "hold" more detail, but could produce crazy jagged edges. The first shot of the airbrush in it's holster is a real test for that as you'll see the jaggies if the wrong technique is used.

Phil, do you find yourself doing any blurring before scaling down or do you just try to pick a scaling method that does that for you? I had to work on some 4K footage that was a little out of focus that was to be mastered in 1080p and found the best result was to sharpen in AE and then apply a little bit of blur before downscaling to reduce artifacts from the sharpening. This could probably be a good way to approach going from 6K footage to a 4K master?

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil, do you find yourself doing any blurring before scaling down or do you just try to pick a scaling method that does that for you? I had to work on some 4K footage that was a little out of focus that was to be mastered in 1080p and found the best result was to sharpen in AE and then apply a little bit of blur before downscaling to reduce artifacts from the sharpening. This could probably be a good way to approach going from 6K footage to a 4K master?

Typically no. However, depending on your scaling method, what capture resolution you use, and what the content of the frame is you may see visual benefits from exploring a different scaling method. In the end the only right answer will be what do you want your final image to look like. I tend to enjoy detail, so it's usually straight scale or some combination of that with sharpening in the mix.

---

Dynamic Range Freedom

Just a quicky tonight. I wanted to show you guys this example as it represents a very real world situation and how that "16+" stops of dynamic range can come into play while color grading.


Click for bigger version.

This is freakishly impressive and there's more room than that even. Honestly I haven't had this much fun pushing around color within frames in a while.


I finished up the new final grade today and did all the QC and paint work that needed to be done. I chose a 6K->UHD 4K sharpening method and let the optical artifacts go for the most part. I corrected a few in a couple shots. Interestingly I did some subtle highlight blooming in a couple areas that you won't be able to notice on a small screen. I decided to go with a light grain pattern at the end just to do that and give it a bit of texture. 16bit DPX files are exporting right this very second.

I'll encode a REDRAY version and some sort of high quality version to upload somewhere. Web compression just nukes what you really want to see out of the Dragon footage. Probably a proRes file or something. Hopefully I'll be able to screen it on a projector and a few more 4K displays this week. I'll upload a color quilt showing the whole color grade tomorrow at some point.

Not going to lie. This has been a real fun and largely informative last few days.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

Wow, bringing back that detail in the window is freakish.

Nice.

 

[Jeremy Torrie]

So Phil -what's your opinion on HDR-x? Should it still be included with the incarnation of Dragon? Some of us have asked for it with improvements....

 

[Bob Gundu]

In my opinion time is money and you will get better, faster results with native Dragon footage without HDR-X.

So Phil -what's your opinion on HDR-x? Should it still be included with the incarnation of Dragon? Some of us have asked for it with improvements....

 

[Jeremy Torrie]

In my opinion time is money and you will get better, faster results with native Dragon footage without HDR-X.

I actually thought the opposite would be true -particularly with low micro budget features (i.e. under 500K) and docs. In these cases I have had decent success using RCX myself and then taking into Avid...since there are capable editors -but who are not colorists- there would be an ecomony of scale...power windows is a better way to go, but it requires a great deal of expertise and added expense...something the lower budget docs and micro-budget features do not have.

 

[Phil Holland]

So Phil -what's your opinion on HDR-x? Should it still be included with the incarnation of Dragon? Some of us have asked for it with improvements....

I think it "should be included" because the tech is essentially there and there are certainly shooting situations and choices that could be made based on having that tool. It will be freaky, but you could potentially have access to over 20-23+ stops of dynamic range with HDRx. I don't know what the hard limit would be.

It's really hard to peg what Dragon actually is with it's 16+ stops. It's feeling to me, and this is only because I've spent an unhealthy amount of time dealing with HDRIs, somewhere in the 18-ish range. There's a lot held in the highlights. But, it will largely depend on where and how you expose your midtones. I'll do more concrete tests when I have my very own Dragon.

Wow, bringing back that detail in the window is freakish.

I like this as it demonstrates a common shooting situation and produces a result like this isn't as "HDR" as people were discussing. You can make it look that way if you want that though. In my final grade I did a bit of highlight wrangling and letting it roll off to over exposure. Just to show both worlds.

In my opinion time is money and you will get better, faster results with native Dragon footage without HDR-X.

Yep. I honestly think for 99.9% of common shooting the dynamic range found with Dragon is plenty. It's the most I've seen from a camera. This alone is pretty much worth the upgrade. At least to me. I mean there's nothing competing with it anytime soon on this front and the control is totally in your hands with what you want the material to look like.

 

[darren scott]

Im just seeing this today and I must say thank you for all the work you have put in Phil. As a person that can only dream of RED muchless a RED Dragon its nice to be able to play with the files. Thanks again. It looks AMAZING.

my grade using Davinci Resolve 10 lite (each clip is graded differently and not meant to be a consistent grade). Youtube did something weird at the end there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC38qlgqmm8&feature=youtu.be

(Your info is below the vid Phil. I also linked back to your site.)

 

[Andy Roberts]

I think one reason folks wanted Red to keep HDRx was for a sharper (1/96 or 1/192 shutter) x-track that could be used for stills (frame grabs) and then pushed a couple stops to compensate for the underexposure. But for motion, like Phil said, 99.9% of the time, Dragon with no HDRx is more than sufficient.

 

[ericyoung]

The sharper x-track is also good for VFX tracking.