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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 :)

Red Dragon - It's Just Paint.

If you'll bare with me, I'm gonna drop some stills from the finished version now. I'll likely upload a proRes version of the final tomorrow.


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Part 1. Final Grade.



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Onto the finish. So my first effort and desire was to showcase what Dragon could do right “out of the can” and that's what the first light quick grade represents straight out of Redcine-X Pro. That happened with a one day turnaround. However, the final color grade is not that at all. It's more about what you “can” do with Dragon REDCODE Raw. This was a slow cook. After spending a week getting real intimate with the Dragon material I can comfortably say you can do a lot. And for those of you who downloaded the original .R3Ds you probably saw the same thing.


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Just a reminder to keep in mind what my original logic behind this quick test shoot was. Capture detail, texture, skin, and scenes with a lot of dynamic range explored through different exposing methods to test things like overexposure and highlight roll-off. All of this done in what I would describe as a realistic and common shooting situation.


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Part 2. The Final Color Grade.


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I focused mostly on an "enhanced reality" look. Colorful, yet not too stylized. However, not exactly a straight up grade either. Mostly a subtle approach with a few more elaborate grades towards the end there because I couldn't resist attempting a pastel/metallic scheme with those final shots. You'll also notice I attempted to use various levels of black, which I wouldn't normally do with something like this, but just trying to show some variety here. Working in 16bit the Dragon material allows for a level of nuance that can be applied to skin tones and I went for that rather than a typical approach of smashing them towards one direction.


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Within the piece you'll notice a few frames where I really played with Dragon's new found dynamic range by introducing what could have been overexposed highlights back into the “light” territory. The sensor itself has more character to it than Mysterium-X and rolls off and overexposes very differently. It's actually more “beautiful” and not so instant. This material also has more freedom of chromatic and tonal latitude to move things around with the new dynamic range and lower noise floor. Which helps if you are trying to add some depth to more subtle tones or perhaps really want to separate tones for a deliberate approach. I love it. I can't stress enough how much joy this freedom provides.


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The finish was a big question mark as I first had to determine what type of piece this material should be. Over the last week I tested out over two dozen finishing methods with 15 second clips and from that insanity in my laboratory this particular approach was born.

To be continued in just a sec.


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Part 3. The Finish


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The quick and dirty rundown. I graded in 6K and the material was exported via a sharpening pass at 6K and scaled down to 4K UHD. I went for a natural, yet punchy sharpening effect with a bit of local area contrast applied as well to help carve my shapes and forms. I decided to remove some of the optical aberrations introduced by the lenses, but I also left a few in there for “flavor”. I then looked to the highlights and wanted to get more out of this “enhanced reality” concept, so I decided to add a very subtle halation to the highlights. From there I examined and looked at the grain/noise both chroma and luminance. I decided to apply a slight fine film grain to the material to give it a “consistent canvas” and lively feel.


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I graded in REDLOGfilm and this was pushed through a Kodak 3D LUT and was finished via a tuned print stock emulation. This particular technique provided a very rich look that effected both subtle hues and overall density. While it's been a long time since I've shot on or worked with film, this is a nice way to incorporate the best parts of what that medium provides while working within the freedom of digital space and raw to paint exactly what I wanted here. For whatever reason, it felt somewhat right to use this method with the final piece.


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What I think is fun with this particular finish is there's much you won't experience in the 1080p version, but will certainly see and feel in the UHD 4K version.


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In terms of detail alone you can carve out whatever edge you'd like from the Dragon 6K material and that was the fun line to balance on. How much bite do you want from your images? It's pretty much up to you. Putting the Bayer Pattern sensor aside, the UHD 4K finished resolution shown here is 39% of the original 6K WS. Lots of room to explore and create the detail you desire.


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Part 4. Wrap up.

My first two shots I ever shot with Dragon were of a rusted metal in a junk yard and beat up car, which is appropriate if you know me. This is my first full piece shot on Dragon and I really can't wait to shoot more. Mysterium-X paved some beautiful roads, but Dragon is just better in every way. Different. And good. Added to that it appears to have it's own uniqueness, which is important to me.


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It's got my juices flowing because I know I've scratched the surface of it's potential.


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This project contains 6500 frames and every one of those has lovely bits in there. And every frame could be extracted and printed large. These are truly moving pictures. Strands of hair, random spurts of paint, ghostly subtle lens flares, faint images found within pupils, distorted reflections on the airbrush, the tiniest of hairs on skin, activity found within the catch lights in the eyes, the glitter of dried paint on fingernails, and a variety of hues across skin.


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Moments found within moments. Perhaps this is the true potential of what 6K is


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At this moment, especially after the lead up to Dragon and these last few months, I'm real happy with my investment in the Red system. Epic Dragon is probably the closest thing to my ideal camera when it comes to resolution, dynamic range, and format. The color is lovely. Everything "feels" pretty damn right in so many ways.


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I've done things to this footage (and it truly feels like that) that I've never even been able to do before and receive very good results.


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Hello from France,
where the red epic dragon camera's only just arrived!

I m a very new member of this forum, I would ask a specific and technic questions about the red EPIC cameras.
What does the letter X or M refair to ? What the difference between the RED EPIC-X Mysterium X and the RED EPIC-M Mysterium X ?

Thanks in advance!
 
Looking forward for the ProRes, Phil.
Great stuff!!
 
Thanks Phil. Great work.
 
Matt Gottshalk said:
Looks gorgeous Phil!

I'll bet these would looks sweet as metallic prints as well.
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Heh. Now you know why I went with that sudo metallic/pastel look. On a good UHD display it's pretty much like cibachrome in motion. It's gorgeous.


Jeremy Torrie said:
Great examples Phil. This demonstrates the latitude we will have in post. Dragon is going to be such a great tool.
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It's pretty interesting stuff. The captured dynamic range can be moved pretty freely in post. There's always going to be a "too far", but right now the road is much wider.


Martin Stevens said:
Thanks Phil. Great work.
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Cheers Martin!


Vadim Bobkovsky said:
These are gorgeous, Phil. Added grain actually looks cool, huh!
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Grain in itself is an interesting concept. There's certainly an aesthetic and energy about it. In the past, and where my experience initially stems from, we applied grain to VFX shots to visually match the film stock. The cinema finish I did last week actually doesn't have any applied (less sharpening too), mostly because I like the cleaner/smoother look on a big screen.


I mentioned it in my big wordy post, but I'm still a bit in awe on how different Dragon looks compared to Mysterium-X. The color is a given because we knew it would be different, but that more discernible and much more pleasing highlight roll-off is a real nice touch. The character I refer to is exactly how it "burns out" to clip rather than sort of an instant transition. It doesn't really have a digital feel at all. You can go the extreme to produce something rather bad looking, but that sort of fragile world of higher key exposures seems to have a lot more room at the moment.
 
Phil Holland said:
Thanks Ketch. I knew exactly what you meant. I'm half Italian, so I always understand you :)
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Ha Ha... Great, at list now I know some one for sure will get my Itanglish way of speaking... ;)


Again... Great work!! And I am not just talking about the actual Imagery any more, but the way you so "in detail" share with the community!!
 
Phil, AMAZING grades. These latest looks take my breath away.

Question - how different do you think Dragon will feel if you shot only in 5K (ie traditional S35)? The lattitude would be there, and a lot of resolution, but you'd miss the extra "oomph" of 6K, and also the extra shallow DOF. But do you think 5K would get us 80 or 90% there?

Im thinking about quick turnaround jobs where shooting 5K just makes more sense, both for the DIT, the transcodes, etc.
 
KETCH ROSSi said:
Ha Ha... Great, at list now I know some one for sure will get my Itanglish way of speaking... ;)


Again... Great work!! And I am not just talking about the actual Imagery any more, but the way you so "in detail" share with the community!!
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Cheers Ketch. Glad to share and bring this footage to people. Dragon is as important to me as it is to pretty much everybody else.


Nick Morrison said:
Phil, AMAZING grades. These latest looks take my breath away.

Question - how different do you think Dragon will feel if you shot only in 5K (ie traditional S35)? The lattitude would be there, and a lot of resolution, but you'd miss the extra "oomph" of 6K, and also the extra shallow DOF. But do you think 5K would get us 80 or 90% there?

Im thinking about quick turnaround jobs where shooting 5K just makes more sense, both for the DIT, the transcodes, etc.
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I'm assuming your thinking Epic or Scarlet Dragon as a topic here. The good news is you do get the sensor, all the new tech, light sensitivity, dynamic range, and the color that comes with it no matter which choice you make.

Interesting questions though which largely depend on how you work with the material. For certain workflows and projects 6K doesn't really slow you down. I mean I knocked out the edit and first light color work in the evening after the shoot and had that exported out. Redcine-X Pro with GPU support helped and I even had to make proxies because the Dragon update wasn't available yet. This was only about 150 clips or so, so not crazy data management really. Once the Adobe support comes through, everything I've done early on could have had hours shaved off.

In terms of 6K versus 5K as a format, that's going to be something each person needs to make a choice on. Epic Dragon allows that choice. Scarlet Dragon does not. My two favorite motion formats are VistaVision and Super35. Epic Dragon gets me close of both of those formats.

I think many will be shooting 6K HD, 6K WS, and the various forms of 5.5K and 5K though. I don't know about putting a percentage on it as it's not a tangible thing like that. I think having 5K in essentially that Super 35mm 3-perf format is something a great deal of people wanted and that's going to really make lens investments feel real secure. It's something that's been "whispered about" and Red delivered big there. In terms of a 4K or UHD 4K delivery 6K and 5K work fine either way. No real limitation there.

The major difference to me comes in the forms of frame rates. Especially if you work in the world of UHD and HFR. Epic Dragon is the only real solution for that at the moment if you need to overcrank a 48 or 60 fps project time base.

I do think Scarlet Dragon with what's listed as it's current specs is a tremendous camera. It's actually a mega upgrade compared to Scarlet-X with Mysterium-X. If Epic Dragon isn't on the table for you, I'd say it's a no brainer to upgrade to Scarlet Dragon.

Think about it this way for a second. You are essentially getting a Super 35mm camera with more latitude and resolution than film at that size and it shoots up to 60 fps. Epic Dragon gets you a bit more in terms of speed and resolution with more sensor real estate.
 
Hi Phil

How you like the schneider cine xenars on the new sensor? They look very sharp... maybe too sharp! How is the coverage on the wide end?
 
Justin Kirchhoff said:
My god these looks absolutely stunning. Thanks for sharing, Phil. Really.
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Thanks Justin!


Lyle Vincent said:
Hi Phil

How you like the schneider cine xenars on the new sensor? They look very sharp... maybe too sharp! How is the coverage on the wide end?
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I like them a lot. I looked at them hard for 3 months before I bought them. The sharpness is more or less how I chose to finish the material for this shoot. I would mostly describe the Cine-Xenars as rendering a crisp edge while maintaining a detailed yet smooth level of micro contrast.

For Dragon they cover 6K WS and 6K HD fine, however, much like many of the S35 designed primes edge softness can occur at close focus with the 18, 25, and 35mm. It's more or less something to be aware of while shooting. I have a full set of lenses that cover 6K FF in EF mount that range 14-600mm and I'll use those to problem solve in specific situations. I'm also expecting Xenon FF-Primes sometime very soon to add to my PL kit which cover 6K FF just fine.

I have two new rare lenses that just arrived that I'll be converted to PL mount extremely soon. Gotta get them checked out on a projector first and clean up some oil on the iris blades. Might do the cleaning myself and have Duclos do the conversion if he's up for the challenge :) Might do it with my machinist. I'll have more info on that soon. It's glass that should play nice with my Cine-Xenars in terms of the general look and will expand the focal range to my ideal cinema set. Can't fathom that I've made this all happen in 2013, but it's damn close to being done! I've got eyes on 3 more "special use" PL lenses to add to this set maybe before the year is out. Should be around a 10 or 11 lenses that all play somewhat nice together.

Next year the goal is to find a way to add the Zeiss Compact Zooms into the mix. The cover Dragon 6K FF just fine. I have some "future lens purchasing" for a certain other format that I'll be after next year too.


Honestly though, I've been kitting up so hard and so fast that Dragon is really the missing link that I've been waiting on for a while.
 
Couple more days of CES. If you're there, check out the Sharp booth:

phfx_IJP_SharpCES2014.jpg


What's cool is the 4K UHD (QHD) resolution image was extracted from the 6K WS Dragon motion. Based on what I'm seeing from productions 6K WS, 6K HD, and 6K 2:1 seem to be the most "fun" for extracting various common aspect ratios and crops.

I've got some other footage floating around CES too, which is cool. Hope I can do the same for NAB this year :)
 
Phil Holland said:
Couple more days of CES. If you're there, check out the Sharp booth:

phfx_IJP_SharpCES2014.jpg


What's cool is the 4K UHD (QHD) resolution image was extracted from the 6K WS Dragon motion. Based on what I'm seeing from productions 6K WS, 6K HD, and 6K 2:1 seem to be the most "fun" for extracting various common aspect ratios and crops.

I've got some other footage floating around CES too, which is cool. Hope I can do the same for NAB this year :)
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Awesome, wish I was there to see it!
 
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