RED Production Workflow

[Hans von Sonntag]

Peter,

as Fredrik I've done quite a few commercials with my red instead of 35mm.

Since I'm stucked to posthouses and their trusted workflows we render the whole footage in best-light to 1080p and dump it on HDCAM SR. From there as usual.

Others worklfows, like FCP, Crimson (nice tool) do not work in commercial land. That is because of the specific needs in this part of the industry: Versioning, VFX, archiving and again re-conforming, versioning, archiving, VFX, etc... you get it.

A conventional tape workflow helps in this regard.

Hans

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Others worklfows, like FCP, Crimson (nice tool) do not work in commercial land. That is because of the specific needs in this part of the industry: Versioning, VFX, archiving and again re-conforming, versioning, archiving, VFX, etc... you get it.

A conventional tape workflow helps in this regard.

Hans

I'm sorry to hear that they put you on the conventual path but for me it's been easy to go the DPX way. It started with that I wanted to take one of my commercials onto print and therefor that was the best solution, since then I have had no problems with persuading them to skip tape until the very last moment when it needs to go to broadcast.

(It's generally quite easy when you tell them that they get a version which can go to cinema if they for any reason would choose that route in the nearby future).

FYI RED footage prints for the cinema looks awesome. It's a trip to watch it as it's slightly cleaner than film but still very cinematic. If you haven't seen it on the big screen I wish I was there the day you will.

Regards,


Fredrik

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

I'm sorry to hear that they put you on the conventual path but for me it's been easy to go the DPX way. It started with that I wanted to take one of my commercials onto print and therefor that was the best solution, since then I have had no problems with persuading them to skip tape until the very last moment when it needs to go to broadcast.

(It's generally quite easy when you tell them that they get a version which can go to cinema if they for any reason would choose that route in the nearby future).

FYI RED footage prints for the cinema looks awesome. It's a trip to watch it as it's slightly cleaner than film but still very cinematic. If you haven't seen it on the big screen I wish I was there the day you will.

Regards,


Fredrik

Actually my 1st commercial with red was a commercial for national cinema release and I cannot agree more with you concerning red's film-out capabilities.

Regarding postproduction: Unfortunately mainstream commercials will get tons of versions and cut-downs I don't attend ad don't supervise (and don't want to). They need a convient solution that fits in their current worklow, aka Avid, Flame, etc...
Commercials are very often paid jobs for income and not always a playground for filmmakers...

Hans

 

[M Most]

Only thing is that the grading has to be for digital grading. If you need to go into for example Spirit you have to lay it onto tape first but that would be a shame, since it would be tape to tape grading and you've lost valuable information.

You would never "go into Spirit." A Spirit is a telecine, it scans film and outputs either video or data. It is not a color corrector.

You might want to use a DaVinci or Pogle color corrector, however - both of which take their input from video.

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

They need a convient solution that fits in their current worklow, aka Avid, Flame, etc...
Commercials are very often paid jobs for income and not always a playground for filmmakers...

Hans

Glad to hear you had a cinema release as well. I understand that they need a workflow but all these machines AVID (avid DS), FLAME etc does take DPX files without problem. All the post houses I've worked with have preferred DPX. Maybe this is because I've insisted on working with it in 2K, which of course doesn't really work with tape (HDCAM SR).

I know what your saying, but most post facilities I've worked with all agree that it's actually easier to just throw around the files instead of tapes and that the future is harddrives and or file up/download. As for final output for broadcast it's of course made into tapes.


Fredrik

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

You would never "go into Spirit." A Spirit is a telecine, it scans film and outputs either video or data. It is not a color corrector.

You might want to use a DaVinci or Pogle color corrector, however - both of which take their input from video.

Sorry Davinci (connected to a spirit scanner). My apologies but the term tape to tape, is generally put with what they have as a telecine machine.

As in - do a tape to tape in their spirit.

(Not saying that's the right way to put it)


Fredrik

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

Fredrik,

in my area most posthouses work in SD, delivery is SD anyway exept for cinematic releases which happen not too often.

The SR for them is a great archiving system from which they can do pan-scan (they love rescaling shots) and offline SD ingesting for AVID, FCP etc... I totally agree that DPX is the way to go. But where to put all that stuff? LTO-3? What's this?

You see, these guys love 35mm, telecine, digibeta. They don't like anything that might disturb their trusty workflow. They hate revolutions.

And I fully understand them because pushing all these versions from client back to NLE to FFF and to client and back again to NLE cutting a new version, conforming, reconfroming, cutting down, new packshot, new label, tracking again, new grading because of a new CI, webversions, re-edit now longer, but a range pack, etc... is hardcore.

I'm more than happy that this is not my job.

For this you need a bullit proved workflow, hence tape.

Hans

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

And I fully understand them because pushing all these versions from client back to NLE to FFF and to client and back again to NLE cutting a new version, conforming, reconfroming, cutting down, new packshot, new label, tracking again, new grading because of a new CI, webversions, re-edit now longer, but a range pack, etc... is hardcore.

I'm more than happy that this is not my job.

For this you need a bullit proved workflow, hence tape.

Hans

I know what your saying and for SD it's still an overkill with HDCAM SR, but as for versions etc it's all done from archived files not tapes. To go from a non linear workflow to a linear does not make sense. That's why it's been fine on staying on DPX for my sake (of course also because the post houses I've worked has been fine with it).

As I said final output has been tape, but when they're asked to do a version they don't go back to tape for it, they bring out the archived digital files they have. Or at least that's what the post houses I work with do.

And yes "final archiving" needs to be tape of some sort (if it's to last), so it needs to be on either HDCAM or LTO or other data tape backup.

I know it's not the general way to go. All I'm saying is that it's been fine to loose the tape process for us and that it's been so with a lot of post houses I've worked with. When I've confronted them they've actully been interested in doing it slightly different.

Fredrik

 

[pkeenan]

Fredrik and Hans and Florian,
Thanks for the back and forth. On the job I did recently we shot with two cameras both at 24p (Build #15 / Firmware 2.2.5) at 4K resolution throughout except for the high speed. We had one camera as our primary (with sync sound) and the other (MOS). This was spread over a 3 day period. From time to time we shot high speed (120 fps). We did experience some data corruption from that.
Here's our AVID offline breakdown:
-Scratch convert to HDCAM SR dailies with sync audio at 16 bit, 48khz audio
-An ALE of of dailies in HD 1080p, with auxillary time code that contains the RED One camera time code (This was jam-synced froma Diva DVD recorder. Each camera had a "lockit" box attached).
-Post house captured the ALE in HD and down-converted in to AVID in standard definition for offline.
-Offline edit was in SD.
-After final offline edit, an EDL that contained the RED One camera time code was created.

At this point I can only speculate since the online has not happened yet. The idea is to:

-Use RED Alert/RED Cine to create DPX files.
-Batch process .R3D files and set in/out points (So they don't have to render out entire takes. These are interviews after all)
-Use QMaster to spread the rendering over a few different computers wfor speed purposes.
-Final color correct will be done in Baselight.

I'll get an update on the online to see if they're still going down this path.

 

[number6]

Can we veer off course a little?

Can we veer off course a little?

Can we veer off course maybe a little, and discuss any similarities/differences between shooting a commercial and shooting a TV pilot?

 

[Florian Stadler]

Peter, it looks like you had the best workflow already figured out (minus some of the costs associated). Now you handed the project of to the agency for the finishing process with a very good chance of the project finishing smoothly and without stressed calls from the agency producer. This is where the different opinions from Europe come in: traditionally in European commercial production, the director has to deliver a director's cut to the agency and sometimes supervises final color/online. In the U.S. the Original Negative and an off-line editable medium is handed off to the agency and the agency supervises the rest of the process, maybe with some input of the director.
Out of curiosity: is this project going to a film out? Otherwise I don't see the necessity to go back to the original 4K files for finishing (although nice). If you have a nicely done and safely colored HD Cam SR tape, you certainly have enough info there for a nice tape to tape color finish to your HD deliverables.
When the editing houses get their head out of the sand, production will eventually not have to carry post to the water anymore. Hand off your Original Camera files - call it a day - coming to you in 2009....

Best

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Out of curiosity: is this project going to a film out? Otherwise I don't see the necessity to go back to the original 4K files for finishing (although nice). If you have a nicely done and safely colored HD Cam SR tape, you certainly have enough info there for a nice tape to tape color finish to your HD deliverables.
When the editing houses get their head out of the sand, production will eventually not have to carry post to the water anymore. Hand off your Original Camera files - call it a day - coming to you in 2009....

Best

His grading it in Baselight, it takes digital files you don't have to go to "video". I believe he will grade the DPX files to HDCAM tape.

(actually I believe Baselight records to disk before grading no matter if it's film or any other format, please correct me if I'm wrong)

Fredrik

 

[pkeenan]

Florian, Fredrik,

The reason we are onlining in R3D/4K is so that we can do some blow-ups of our footage. That was the real lure to this camera for us. To be able to do a wide shot and later recompose the image without any loss of resolution.

Fredrik, I'm going to contact the post house and get the lowdown on that baselight. They are beta testing it and have only done a few jobs on it, none of them on jobs they off-lined or on-lined. Strictly color transfers. Our wish to them was to keep everything in a R3D/4K realm. We'll see if they cheat or not because they obviously can go back to the HDCAM SR tape that we converted to for the off-line.
-Peter