Tucker Spofford
Member
- Joined
- Nov 17, 2011
- Messages
- 16
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
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- Location
- Seattle, WA
- Website
- www.artefactgroup.com
Michael and Ted both asked for attendees of last weeks REDucation to post their thoughts about REDucation so others could benefit. Here's my take:
REDucation
Good:
Got to spend some hands on time with EPIC and SCARLET
Met some Seattle locals with lots of RED experience
Learned a fair bit about issues and workarounds with the RED camera
Ted made a sincere effort to address my concerns about lack of hands on time and Ivan was clutch at answering any and all questions without bias
We got to shoot and then project some pretty awesome shots on the 40ft 4K screen!
There are lots of interesting people to meet at REDucation
Bad:
Most of the information we covered is in the SCARLET / EPIC Manual. Read it your self you'll save $1500.
There wasn't enough equipment, and often things weren't working correctly. What I thought we were paying for was hands-on time.
(There were maybe only 10 cameras for 75+ people, most cameras were just bodies with side handles, for me this is one of the biggest disappointments, living in Seattle, I was hoping while at RED to see and use and explore all of the various RED products. Instead we got one demo of someone putting together a gunner and clutch rig, but my group never go to use either and we were constantly scavenging for enough equipment just to get a running camera rig together. As the manufacturer of the equipment I was disappointed that RED wouldn't make more of an effort to get every piece of equipment in our hands, and let us construct our own rigs, I still don't know which pieces I will want to eventually purchase or our shoulder rig)
I feel and others agreed, that a large part of this "class" consisted of RED marketing/indoctrination and Arri/Sony Bashing
(We recently purchased a Scarlet and sent two people to REDucation, we are fully committed monetarily and philosophically to RED, it was frustrating to pay money and be pitched to)
For $500 a day / per person, I expected a much more structured and organized experience, with lesson plans, activities, and a process that involved more hands on time with the camera/equipment
After this class I still had not completely completed a RED workflow, we were only shown how to offload and told how to conform/manage files, no hands on
(It would have been nice to shoot, offload, and export all hands on)
In general everyone was very defensive when discussing limitations of the camera. I didn't feel like a lot of questions were answered fully, but instead we got the press secretary answer.
Wednesday night's open house was pretty forgettable and a waste time. We didn't shoot or use the cameras at all on Wednesday, and the "party" started at 3:30 which meant we paid for 2:30 hours of standing around while vendors tried to sell us stuff.
Finally we were broken into groups, each with a TA, most of the TAs were excellent, but my first TA had very little practical knowledge of the deeper workings of the camera, and wasn't good at leading the group. They often just left us hanging while they searched for some camera part. I changed groups and Ivan was a rockstar who led our group, and had tons of knowledge and advice and was able to answer our questions.
2 Day Post Class
Good:
Michael Cioni is the man, he is both an excellent speaker, and covered his topics with total passion
Everything Michael covered with either hands-on, or a practical use case based description of the post production workflow
Michael was very candid about limitations of RED and their shortcoming and triumphs, for me this made him a much more credible source of information
Michael knows his stuff and cares about quality, but wasn't a quality fanatic, which meant he gave us practical information
LightIron vist was amazing, Michael has created a truly awesome company, I knew that when I saw their kitchen, they have 3 Beers on Tap, Artefact, where I work only has two ;-)
Michaels talks were much more structured and seemed to be in an order that made sense.
Bad:
No hands on time with the camera or RED rocket, we are still debating the RED Rocket and while Michael says we need it, I didn't think we got a good idea of what we could do without it
Workflow information was biased toward Features and big TV shows, we work on projects less than 3min long and I think a lot of our needs weren't directly addressed (although we got enough info that we will be able to figure it out)
We never touched Premiere or Aftereffects, which are our preferred tools, in fact, the only software we used was REDcineX
Some of the slides about equipment were out of date. (examples: 6-core instead of 12-core mac tower, some of the pricing information was wrong or our of date)
A lot of the equipment suggestions weren't exactly indie or low budget friendly, but I think for most EPIC owners things were probably in the right ballpark.
Conclusion
If I were to do it all over, I would have skipped the REDucation part (Day 1-3) and used that money to help pay for a REDrocket. If anything I felt less confident about the purchase I chose to make, because of the dis-organization, indoctrination, and equipment limitations of this class. I think I gained some confidence but overall for $1500 I could have gotten most everything from the manual. I would highly recommend the post class though. Michael was interesting, exciting, and methodical in his approach. I felt like a learned a lot and even the parts that were relevant to the projects I work on, were fascinating and inspiring. I think it was a $1000 well spent for something I couldn't learn from a book.
Hope you can benefit from my honest take.
REDucation
Good:
Got to spend some hands on time with EPIC and SCARLET
Met some Seattle locals with lots of RED experience
Learned a fair bit about issues and workarounds with the RED camera
Ted made a sincere effort to address my concerns about lack of hands on time and Ivan was clutch at answering any and all questions without bias
We got to shoot and then project some pretty awesome shots on the 40ft 4K screen!
There are lots of interesting people to meet at REDucation
Bad:
Most of the information we covered is in the SCARLET / EPIC Manual. Read it your self you'll save $1500.
There wasn't enough equipment, and often things weren't working correctly. What I thought we were paying for was hands-on time.
(There were maybe only 10 cameras for 75+ people, most cameras were just bodies with side handles, for me this is one of the biggest disappointments, living in Seattle, I was hoping while at RED to see and use and explore all of the various RED products. Instead we got one demo of someone putting together a gunner and clutch rig, but my group never go to use either and we were constantly scavenging for enough equipment just to get a running camera rig together. As the manufacturer of the equipment I was disappointed that RED wouldn't make more of an effort to get every piece of equipment in our hands, and let us construct our own rigs, I still don't know which pieces I will want to eventually purchase or our shoulder rig)
I feel and others agreed, that a large part of this "class" consisted of RED marketing/indoctrination and Arri/Sony Bashing
(We recently purchased a Scarlet and sent two people to REDucation, we are fully committed monetarily and philosophically to RED, it was frustrating to pay money and be pitched to)
For $500 a day / per person, I expected a much more structured and organized experience, with lesson plans, activities, and a process that involved more hands on time with the camera/equipment
After this class I still had not completely completed a RED workflow, we were only shown how to offload and told how to conform/manage files, no hands on
(It would have been nice to shoot, offload, and export all hands on)
In general everyone was very defensive when discussing limitations of the camera. I didn't feel like a lot of questions were answered fully, but instead we got the press secretary answer.
Wednesday night's open house was pretty forgettable and a waste time. We didn't shoot or use the cameras at all on Wednesday, and the "party" started at 3:30 which meant we paid for 2:30 hours of standing around while vendors tried to sell us stuff.
Finally we were broken into groups, each with a TA, most of the TAs were excellent, but my first TA had very little practical knowledge of the deeper workings of the camera, and wasn't good at leading the group. They often just left us hanging while they searched for some camera part. I changed groups and Ivan was a rockstar who led our group, and had tons of knowledge and advice and was able to answer our questions.
2 Day Post Class
Good:
Michael Cioni is the man, he is both an excellent speaker, and covered his topics with total passion
Everything Michael covered with either hands-on, or a practical use case based description of the post production workflow
Michael was very candid about limitations of RED and their shortcoming and triumphs, for me this made him a much more credible source of information
Michael knows his stuff and cares about quality, but wasn't a quality fanatic, which meant he gave us practical information
LightIron vist was amazing, Michael has created a truly awesome company, I knew that when I saw their kitchen, they have 3 Beers on Tap, Artefact, where I work only has two ;-)
Michaels talks were much more structured and seemed to be in an order that made sense.
Bad:
No hands on time with the camera or RED rocket, we are still debating the RED Rocket and while Michael says we need it, I didn't think we got a good idea of what we could do without it
Workflow information was biased toward Features and big TV shows, we work on projects less than 3min long and I think a lot of our needs weren't directly addressed (although we got enough info that we will be able to figure it out)
We never touched Premiere or Aftereffects, which are our preferred tools, in fact, the only software we used was REDcineX
Some of the slides about equipment were out of date. (examples: 6-core instead of 12-core mac tower, some of the pricing information was wrong or our of date)
A lot of the equipment suggestions weren't exactly indie or low budget friendly, but I think for most EPIC owners things were probably in the right ballpark.
Conclusion
If I were to do it all over, I would have skipped the REDucation part (Day 1-3) and used that money to help pay for a REDrocket. If anything I felt less confident about the purchase I chose to make, because of the dis-organization, indoctrination, and equipment limitations of this class. I think I gained some confidence but overall for $1500 I could have gotten most everything from the manual. I would highly recommend the post class though. Michael was interesting, exciting, and methodical in his approach. I felt like a learned a lot and even the parts that were relevant to the projects I work on, were fascinating and inspiring. I think it was a $1000 well spent for something I couldn't learn from a book.
Hope you can benefit from my honest take.
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