Red Dragon Workshop - Tokyo 2014

[Phil Holland]

Hello all,

I'd like to share a few notes from a recent adventure we had in Tokyo Japan:




I had the tremendous privilege of instructing a Red Dragon workshop for about 70 experienced Red shooters out in Tokyo last week. Working with Red Japan we had about 35 attendees each day and did the same presentation and workshop two times. I gathered up a great deal of material I've shot with Dragon and put together a fairly concise presentation with many, many graphics and sample videos to assist the attendees with understanding my words while they were translated.

I had one keen focus for this workshop:





Since so many of the attendees were familiar with DSMC bodies with Mysterium-X, and a few even with Dragon experience, we focused on fundamentals of the DSMC system. Critical focus, various exposure methods and techniques, as well as topics like proper Black Shading and Fan Control. We covered some of the newer features as well like Independent Display LUTs and D.E.B. Interesting to me is that much of this was new to the overall audience. And even some of the core concepts were rather new for them.

Only about 7% of the audience had Dragon experience.





So I put together some images showcasing some of Dragon's strengths over Mysterium-X and shared pretty my own journey as I discovered more and more about the system. For me the biggest enhancement that I wasn't fully aware of from the announcement of Dragon was it's increased color performance, but anybody who has used it knows it and "feels" it pretty immediately. I had a small reel of footage straight out of Redcine-X Pro rolling that showed off some of the new pure and vibrant color performance and the attendees certainly saw the same thing as well.





Some of you are familiar with my Dragon Data Sheets and I did use them a bit for this workshop. In this particular instance above along with a visual aid I explained how ISO worked on Red cameras.





We talked a bit about Format Relevance in relationship to Film Formats and I briefly went over my history with film scanning and even showed some comparisons of 4K, 6K, and 8K film scans from S35 and 65mm 5-perf. But much of this was to lead to discussing exactly how to use a Multi-Format System like Dragon and just how exactly you can use the 6K Dragon Sensor. It was nice actually attending the Gone Girl panels right before this and having my last two shoots using 5.5K as a capture format to have a conversation about Re-Framing, Post Cropping, Stabilization, or just simply using the "format" you want to capture in. 6K, 5.5K, 5K, 4.5K, and 4K are suitable for a 4K finish on Dragon. It's just a matter of how you want to use it.





I did a good deal of showing off where all of the Dynamic Range can be found and in particular showed off the vastly improved Highlight Roll-Off that Dragon has over the Mysterium-X Sensor.





Another topic explored was the vastly improved IR Performance found in Dragon. I presented images from various brands of ND Filtration shot on Dragon and Mysterium-X and even showed my more recent Formatt-Hitech Firecrest ND Filtration Test. Since the crowd were all seasoned MX shooters and for those new to Dragon this was more or less a "whoa" moment.


Red Japan received a 4K Broadcast Module and I was excited to go over it for the workshop as pretty much everybody there had never seen one before.





We utilized the 4K Broadcast Module to shoot me while working at the camera and pushed the signal out via a 4K SDI to HDMI converter up onto a Sharp UHD 4K screen.





This was pretty cool as the attendees were able to see the 4K Broadcast Module in action and also see some of the effects of it's output in real time. Adjusting the Look or Sharpness for example.


Zeiss provided lenses for this workshop and I was pleased to use this opportunity to show off the Zeiss Compact Zooms (CZ). We used 2X 28-80mm T2.9 on my Dragon and the Dragon capturing the presentation and we had a CP.2 on the other Dragon.




I rather like these lenses as they still are the only zooms designed for cinema applications for larger format sensors like Dragon 6K FF and they are indeed tack sharp wide open.





As much as I was sharing "fundamentals" was also sharing some of my own personal thoughts in regards to quality control. One of the things I've been saying for a while is that when working at higher resolutions it's good to take extra care to help eliminate things like tripod/fluid head or lens operation related vibration. For zoom lenses in particular, and many of us know this, it's a good practice to have some sort of lens support. In this case here I'm using the 19mm Red Lens Support. Having the 4K Broadcast Module pushing the UHD 4K signal it's pretty clear to see the difference when operating the lens with and without the support.


I was fortunate to be one of the early birds to test out the new Interchangeable OLPF System on Dragon and certain had to show that in Tokyo.





In front of the attendees I went over the OLPF Swap Procedure.





I did this with and without the Red Sidewinder to show how quickly it could be done.





We had a small bit of conversation over the differences between the two currently available OLPF Modules, but the best thing was to simply show the attendees right there.

 

[Phil Holland]

At our location we had an actress lit with 3X HMI Lights and we shot her under both OLPFs.





This showed the attendees exactly what color differences between the Low Light Optimized and Skin Tone - Highlight OLPF are.




We didn't hold back any punches here and I wanted to show them the differences in texture/noise/grain as well. We shot this chart while in Tokyo to show exactly that. This chart is ISO 250-2000 on both OLPFs, however I showed ISO 250-6400 as that clearly illustrates some of the differences.




Much like in the USA there is a mixed opinion about texture within the image. And not surprisingly it's the same general markets in both USA and Japan that desire "very clean" images. We had a short discussion on how to produce the cleanest images with both OLPFs and I showed of a few "glass like" clean samples right out of the camera.


The last part of the workshop was focused on post production workflow.



I mainly focused on Redcine-X Pro, Adobe CC, and DaVinci Resolve. The attendees seemed to all want a general overview of Redcine-X Pro so I spent a bit of time showing the various panels and my own personal workflow through RCX.



It seemed like anytime I did anything color related they were watching me like an eagle.




The PC/Windows Workstation we had for the workshop consisted of two nVidia Titan Blacks and one GTX 780 Ti and I focused on the GPU acceleration and workflow. However, I did discuss exactly where the Red Rocket-X comes into play in when looking for higher resolution debayer playback, faster exports, and speedy transcodes. There was some light conversation on hardware builds and we discussed PC versus Mac workstations a bit as well.


We covered a lot during the workshop and the attendees rather diligently took many, many notes. There was also a healthy amount of Q&A which led us down a few avenues that were interesting.




What people really seemed to watch closely was anytime I utilized the In Camera Exposure and Focus Tools. I also demonstrated the new Gio Scope and discussed some of it's practical uses when shooting. That was also brand new to this crowd.


This was a rather busy and tremendous experience. I'd like to thank Red, Red Japan, and Zeiss for making this workshop possible. Particularly I'd like to thank Ippei for his efforts on the translation. Without him I'm just waving my arms around and touching a camera. Also, I'd like to thank Yuki for desiring to put this workshop together. Here's a few of the folks who helped make this Dragon Workshop possible:




Lastly, though I didn't have much time for it on this trip, I would feel terrible if I didn't go around the city with my Dragon to capture a few images on my first trip to Japan. So I got up early one morning and grabbed a few shots.












Again, thanks to all who attended and helped put this together. As much as they were there learning from me about Dragon, I was there learning from them.

 

[luigivaltulini]

WOw nice Phil

 

[David Battistella]

You are a red dragon machine!

The fact that you so generously share is well, amazing.

thanks so much phil! (And I am sure that is from many REd users.

im sure RED thanks you as well.

 

[Sean Cruser]

Lovely images here! I was using the GioScope all weekend on a shoot and it is now my favorite go-to-tool on the Dragon, especially when dealing with low-light, high contrast lighting situations.

 

[John Marchant]

Good work Phil

 

[Mikael Lubtchansky]

looks like a deep and compact few days workshop... be careful next time I might try to hide in your luggage, I love Japan.

 

[Matt Gottshalk]

Hell. I'd pay to take one of these classes from you stateside.

 

[Matt Ryan]

That's awesome Phil! Just a quickie, what options do you have for the look and settings with the 4k module? You mentioned sharpening and I was curious what could be selected and adjusted in terms of output look. Thanks Phil!

 

[Phil Holland]

Cheers guys. This was a lot of fun and based on the feedback from the attendees I think it went over real well. This was pretty much an entirely different workshop than what we did in South Korea back in March.

Hell. I'd pay to take one of these classes from you stateside.

Anything is possible


A couple other quickies I can add:



We did talk a bit about REDMAG 1.8" and MINI-MAG media. Lots of questions about what "they should be using". There's no wrong answer here in reality, though I did bring up the advantages of having the lower compression ratios at various formats, resolutions, and frame rates. Also, having access to the longer record times of the 512GB MINI-MAG is useful. I've been thinking about making the switch myself for a while, but I know for sure if I was starting from scratch with a new camera I'd go with the MINI-MAGs for their faster speed and offload rates too. Most are heavily invested in standard 1.8" REDMAG media though and it was good to inform them that it's still a "standard" industry wide and not going anywhere.




One very interesting question I received was "how do you make the highest quality images with Dragon?" This one led us down a bit of a path talking about color calibration on displays, bit depth, codecs, and various other topics. However, one thing I stressed is that the first thing from a shooter's perspective to do is to start with this mentality in camera.




Now that I've done a few of these workshops I feel fairly comfortable saying that exposure and focus technique is the one variable that many have a difficulty grasping. I experience this on a daily basis in my life and it's not just Red camera related. When I was younger I got some very good advice from a rather prominent Cinematographer who told me just how important quality control was in regards to focus and exposure. And specifically getting comfortable consistency and developing a language through exposure. When I was in my early 20's that was a lot of words to me, but now in my mid 30's and about a million different cameras later it's the one thing I "know is true". Some people have a knack for it, some need to spend a bit more time developing a closer understanding and actually a relationship with the camera as a whole. The In Camera Focus and Exposure Tools are your best friend and co-pilot on every shoot.




In this case I went over using a light meter and the In Camera Focus and Exposure Tools. This wasn't a lighting workshop, but that's of course equally if not even more important. This little part of the workshop actually caused an audible "light bulb going off" moment for many of the attendees as a good chunk of them are "just" using the Histogram. While valid for referencing your tonal and color distribution for your given Color and Gamma Space, it's not the whole story. Once they got to see my little ISO talk and this I think that cleared up a whole lot for them.




I did briefly go over how I use my DSMC Side Handle and how I've setup my keys. About 30-40% of the audience uses the Side Handle. I mostly map my quick exposure and focus checks to it. Recently I've added Gio Scope. I also have the front switch set to toggle zebras and the displayed shutter speed/angle. It's certainly not necessarily something you see on rental bodies around town, but for me it's one of things that differentiates the DSMC body from other cameras by allowing me to shortcut to the features I use most on the fly with a push of a button.

They also liked that I mapped one of my keys on my 9.0" LCD Touch to record as I've found that handy. Especially when running with the longer cable that Red offers. I described a situation where I was shooting an interior car and used the LCD Touch off camera to check exposure and start/stop the shot. Don't see many people doing things like that, but it's certainly possible and easy to setup.

 

[Phil Holland]

That's awesome Phil! Just a quickie, what options do you have for the look and settings with the 4k module? You mentioned sharpening and I was curious what could be selected and adjusted in terms of output look. Thanks Phil!

You have access to everything you have now, just currently no Independent Display LUTs as that's not exactly what this traditionally used for.

The 4K Broadcast Module is pretty damn new to market and I suspect Red's going to be adding a lot of features to this thing as more people spend time with it and give them feedback.

 

[Jamon Lewis]

Dope stuff

 

[Eric Z]

Great work, Phil.

 

[David Battistella]

Phil,

Did you review the GIO scope?

Battistella

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil,

Did you review the GIO scope?

Yes sir. It's a pretty new tool for me, but already after having it installed for a bit I have found some very practical uses when shooting. I'll do a fancy write up at some point. So far I don't "light up" everything. Just specific values across the dynamic range. At the workshop I showed how it could be useful in tricky setups in particular when dealing with highlight "holes" and shadow "pockets". Which is very useful for any sort of production shooting.

Most seemed to really respond to the general relationship of the light meter, Video Check, Exposure Check, and Gio Scope. Felt like I was doing a magic show for a minute there

 

[Billy Jim]

Hell. I'd pay to take one of these classes from you stateside.

+1

Please come to NYC.