Red Dragon UHD 4K Workshop South Korea - w/ many images and breakdown

[Phil Holland]

Hello all!

I'm fresh back in town after a tremendous experience. A couple months ago I was approached to instruct a workshop in South Korea surrounding UHD 4K production and shooting with Red Digital Cinema Cameras. The event was put together by DVInside/Red Korea, RAPA, and myself. The overall goal was to assist with RAPA's mission to inform Korean motion picture professionals about working in UHD as they are pushing hard into the future of broadcast and display technology and to display the capture and post workflow with the Red Epic Dragon cameras and how to get the best image quality out of them.




So I put together a three day program to do exactly that. I'd like to share a few of the images, impressions, and stories from this workshop as well as some Dragon footage.


DAY 1: Opening Presentation

During the first day of the workshop about 100 attendees from all facets of the entertainment industry in South Korea showed up. Producers, DPs, Directors, Students, etc...

Mr. Park of DVInside/Red Korea giving the opening talk:




When I took the stage there were many things to consider. I would be working with translators during my entire time in South Korea and I knew I needed to make things simple and easy to understand. I structured my presentation around showing key graphics, broke general concepts down to their basics, discussed general Dragon features, and showed off a bit of workflow.




Straight away I learned that motion picture production is a different beast in South Korea. Programs are shooting 1 hour dramas and delivering that same week. Some leaning towards shooting a whole 1 hour episode in in a single day to deliver at the end of the following day. So I did indeed put an emphasis on faster pipelines.




During the last third of the presentation day I decided to show off some workflow straight off my laptop. Many have general fears of the 4K+ workflow and it was actually extremely fun showing off just how far we've come when working with REDCODE RAW. It's not 2007 anymore and in 2014 with GPU acceleration in REDCINE-X Pro, DaVinci Resolve, and coming soon to Adobe Applications things are easier than ever if you want to work natively in REDCODE. However, I did discuss and showcase working with proxies as well as that workflow suits various users.


Tech Note: We had several 4K displays on hand (LGs and a Seiki), one of which was connected to a REDRAY Player showing various content from Dragon. Additionally we were feeding the displays 1080p HDMI signals via Paralinx Arrow wireless units straight from my laptop so everybody could see what I was doing on stage.

 

[Phil Holland]

DAY 2: Shooting with Red Dragon

This is where things started to get good. Out of the 100 or so people who attended the opening presentation we had a select 30 come out to a gorgeous sound stage to learn about Dragon and get some hands on experience with the cameras. We had 3 Red Epic Dragons on hand. Mine, one Carbon Dragon from a nearby rental house, and another Carbon Dragon from a network that has two of them. Currently there are 7 Carbon Dragons in South Korea.




The above setup was essentially how I chose to familiarize those who don't normally work with Red Cameras on the ins and outs of the menu, camera settings, and tools. In the audience only two people had experience shooting with Epics in the past and only one individual in the group delivered something in 4K. So we had one of the Carbon Dragons pointed at my 9.0" LCD Touch and the Dragon body itself as I went through and explained exactly how everything worked.

Here's a grab from Dragon of what the camera saw during that time:




And one slight variation on that grade:




One thing I enjoyed was even though there was a tremendous language barrier between the audience and myself I was still able to crack a few jokes which the experienced shooters enjoyed.




After going through camera functions, how to properly expose, and focus it was time for the attendees to get some hands on experience with Dragon.




Besides the impressive studio lights we had 6 Lumos Panel LEDs on hand. For this particular portion of the workshop I shot tungsten to showcase how Dragon handles the warmer light.




At this point there were many questions about what the "best" decisions were when exposing. The concept of shooting raw was new for many of these attendees. Working with Red Cameras and in particular even more so with Dragon is about making creative and sometimes technical decisions. I showcased how to use the tools found within the camera to understand exactly what you were seeing and how to nail accurate exposure every time as well as ensuring you get the shot. Whipping out a light meter and using a color chart (and also putting them away) I demonstrated some of techniques I use almost daily when shooting with Dragon utilizing the exposure and focus tools.

Here's a nice candid grab of our two actresses for the workshop, Eugene and Michelle:





One of the attendees posed the question of the differences between proper cinema glass and using still glass for motion picture work. After the year with lenses I've had I was happy to answer that particular question and discuss various lenses from manufacturers. It was nice having the 4K displays on hand as you can truly see the difference in the general character, performance, and mechanics extremely clearly.




If you are curious we utilized Zeiss Ultra Primes for this workshop. I also used my 35mm Schneider Cine-Xenar III and EF Mount with both Canon and Voigtlander glass. I think many were shocked just how small you can make the camera with a pancake lens.

By the end of the day everybody who attended was able to shoot and understood the Dragons on hand. It was actually interesting to see those who have never shot with Red quickly pickup the camera menus and operations. I was a bit shocked to see that the Carbon Dragon from the rental house was using the old fan algorithms and it was actually nice to showcase Adaptive Fan Mode and have that side by side audio comparison to show just how quiet the cameras are these days. Explaining Black Shading logic was a bit tricky due to the language barrier, but I feel everybody had a good understanding of Black Shading and it's relationship between operating temperatures and shutter speed/angles is.

 

[Phil Holland]

Day 3: From Capture to Post

We did have a few documentary filmmakers in the crowd and on the last day where much of my focus was going to be on post production I decided to spend the first hour of the day shooting some ambient daylight material with our two actresses to show exactly how to expose and more importantly make deliberate exposure decisions when shooting with uncontrolled light. This also doubled as a nice way to show just how fast the UHD 4K+ workflow is these days as I ingested that material and delivered it at the end of the day.



(BTS still from Dragon 6K 2:1 material)


This was a fun part of the day as it allowed me to show of Dragon's Dynamic Range and vastly improved IR Cut ability as I went between shooting with an Schneider ND 1.2 and clean lens for some slow motion.

These attendees watched me like a hawk every time I operated the camera.

(BTS still from Dragon 6K 2:1 material)


This was also a nice moment where the group could huddle around me as I shot the 10 or so setups and see exactly what I was doing and why I was doing it.

(BTS still from Dragon 6K 2:1 material)


This was interesting as I ran through different exposure techniques used for the "fattest digital negative", the best possible image quality, or a more deliberate and mood influenced decision.

A few Dragon grabs from various setups that I graded on site after shooting, in this case all done in RECINE-X Pro via REDcolor3/REDlogFilm. Everything I chose to shoot in South Korea was 6K 2:1 as I also demonstrated creative framing and cropping later in post, but I stressed for my particular way of working I tend to use the format I decide to shoot in. For these setups I chose using only the 32mm T1.9 Ultra Prime shot mostly wide open with and without ND depending on if I was overcranked.














After that fun quick morning shooting it was time to dive into 4K+ post production. I focused on traditional Color Correction as well as rather heavy handed Color Grades, just to showcase how much color there is in the Dragon material.




As you can tell from the above image I did indeed have a full blown DaVinci Resolve Workstation (4 GPUs and a Red Rocket-X) at my disposal with full panels, which was great to show the pure power of grading REDCODE RAW. Grading is a new concept for some of these attendees and that was a bit of a shocker for me. I also discussed and demonstrated REDCINE-X Pro and Adobe Premeire Pro CC workflows which led to exporting fully color graded ProRes 4K UHD and 1080p sequences appropriate for delivery. I think this calmed a lot of nerves showing just how quickly you could deliver your content these days.





This was easily the heaviest Q&A session of the day as many people were new to 4K+ and somewhat scared of any sort of change to existing workflows they already use. I have a firm belief that working in 4K+ is only as difficult as you make it to be. Given native REDCODE RAW support in 3rd party applications as well as GPU Acceleration and utilizing the Red Rocket-X for even faster debayer and transcoding there's workflow solutions for pretty much everybody now. I demonstrated typical on set DIT color rushes as well as more of a Digital Colorist oriented workflow. Also, and this was key for me, showing that I could use this full blown workstation or my laptop computer to work with the same 6K Dragon REDCODE RAW files and produce the same quality work using literally the same tools was extremely powerful.





That's almost everybody who made it through the two days of camera and post demonstrations. As tradition with most workshops I instruct at we must take a group photo. One thing I was pleased to see is that we did have a few female filmmakers in the crowd. More even during the first presentation day. Everybody left with a good understanding of how to shoot with Dragon and also likely a much more relaxed feeling as they migrate into their 4K+ workflows as South Korea will be pushing hard for UHD 4K landing in homes and in theaters.

One comment I got from one DP who is shooting a drama for a network over in SK, was "we know we want to shoot with these cameras, we don't know how to work with the images they produce". Hopefully my efforts communicated and demonstrated the power and creative freedom found in Dragon. I did my best to show how quick it was to work with and deliver UHD 4K while also showing just how much you can get out of the camera itself.

 

[Phil Holland]

Extra Stuff

Though I travel a fair amount, I've never been to South Korea before. I was overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of the folks at DVInside/Red Korea. A very strong emotion came over me while touring their offices and seeing my various Data Sheets pinned on the walls. That hit me in a good way. They are hard workers and great guys all around. A huge thanks for hauling me around and getting me involved with this workshop. Just a truly unforgettable trip with some new friends. Also a huge thanks to RAPA as both of our ideas about getting UHD to the masses lines up. It was an honor to present to this audience.

Another fascinating moment was finding myself in South Korea speaking about Red Cameras and arriving back to my hotel to find that they were shooting a feature film in the lobby on Epics with Mysterium-X. That was another fantastic moment. You can't write that stuff

While out and about in South Korea I created a small rig with a 40mm prime to run around and shoot some 6K 2:1 72fps material with Dragon. Here's a few of my favorite shots that I'd like to share with you all. Rather stylized grades all straight out of Redcine-X Pro RC3/RLF.


One Happy Dog


Unsure Rider


King of the Wheels


Orange and Warm


Not Ready Yet


Snack Time


High Roller


Cotton Candy
[URL="http://www.artbyphil.com/phfx/cinematography/2014_BeyondUHDRedDragonWorkshop/bigs/phfx_SK_UHDRDW_SKGrabs_0011.jpg"]



They All Look Good


Effortless


A Man Who Enjoys His Job


Tipsy Sister



Whoa


Magic Hour Bubbles


Drive By Hi


Underground Beauty


Only Business


Martin, There Are Dragons


Joseph and Me


Wait. We need to document this. Crazy K steals the show.



One last shot of my mug rolling with Dragon

Thanks again to all who made this crazy adventure possible. I'm so happy to share this all with you guys.

Hopefully I'll see a few Redusers at NAB 2014 in two weeks. Time to unpack, do laundry, and pack

Thanks as well to Red, Jim, Jarred, Brent, and all who are behind the scenes making the tools I use.

 

[Zeb B]

Solid Post . . . Dude!!
http://i.imgur.com/SQmThzj.gif

 

[Mark Andersen]

I hope I run into you at NAB, I'm keen to me some fellow Redusers in the flesh

 

[Bobby Farokhzad]

Great post as always.

 

[SUNILPREM]

Great post ........and great experience .



Sunil Prem

 

[Adam Beck]

Real nice Phil,
It looks like everything went well. The grabs of the kids on in-line skates are real nice. Including the photos of the actresses next to the windows. I'll hunt you down at NAB, I've got some questions for you.
Adam

 

[Bob Gundu]

Awesome stuff Phil. See you at NAB.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

Great one Phil!!

 

[Patrick Grossien]

Great write up, Phil! Thank you so much for sharing the apparently awesome time you had. I'm very happy for you!

 

[Eric Z]

Very good post, Phil.
You're doing such a great job, Jim and Jarred might just hire you to be in the RED team.

 

[Detlev Eller]

wouw! very cool & useful ...

I can see you going on a world tour with this ... ;-)

 

[luigivaltulini]

FANTASTIC PHIL

 

[John Marchant]

Great job Phil. This kind of stuff is so rewarding to get your teeth into.

 

[Michael Tiemann]

Wow! I'm sure you will never forget that workshop. And neither will those who attended. Great job!!

 

[Maik Müller]

Congratulations Phil. That must have been an awesome experience. Great job and thanks for the post.

BTW, when is RED finally hiring you?

 

[Joel J. Feigenbaum]

Phil:

Great job. Thanks for such a comprehensive summary.

Best:
Joel

 

[Jacques Mersereau]

Phil, as an ambassador of both RED and the USA, you have literally made the world a better place.

Thank you!

Jacques