REDucation student comment area for May 2011 class at RED Studios Hollywood

[TedRed]

Hello Everyone,

We are on our last couple days of the May REDucation. Right now we are doing the advanced Cinematography and Advanced post classes.

We had a great night at the RED OPEN house, with 100s of people here from the industry to see EPIC footage on the big screen, and a bunch of really interesting presentations and screenings.

Many of the students asked where they could tell people about their experiences at the class so far, and a place to check out pix of the class in action. I'll post some pix on a link soon, and we will have some great behind the scenes EPIC shot footage of the class in action up in the next few weeks, once we all recover from the class

Thanks to all that came out to REDucation, it was a great time and highly rewarding for me to teach to such a great group of students from all around the world!

Looking forward to your comments and feedback from our Hollywood class, and our NYC remote class via video conference.

+ Ted

 

[Christopher Barrett]

Can't believe we're already down to a just one day left! Even though I've had my R1 8 months there were still some holes to fill and the collaboration has been a blast. I highly recommend the Advanced Post Class if you need to get your workflow straightened out.

 

[BigLu]

Great pics post more if you ever get a chance.

 

[Justin O'Neill]

Great shots Christopher! It was fun working with you this week.

 

[David J Bernstein]

Hey Ted

Thanks for the RED BOOK PRO! (APPLE parts not included)

 

[David J Bernstein]

I created a fb group for us:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_170418623018158&ap=1

 

[Christopher Barrett]

Almost Live!

 

[TedRed]

We will have a special photo site up with all the pix from REDucation pretty soon...

Was a great week... the advanced post and cinematography classes are going on right now (that's some of the pix you are seeing above.

+ Ted

 

[Aiden K.]

My feedback on the Advanced Cinematography class. (I only took this class for the 2 days)

I wouldn't say that I regret taking this class, nor would I say that I am happily satisfied by taking this class. To me, this class felt a little more like a "crash course" into cinematography (And digital movie making, in general *excluding sound). Had I been completely blind to cinematography, I would have been completely lost in this class (But seeing as its noted as "Advanced cinematography", I can understand and agree in the purpose it probably was designed to serve), however, had I already been exposed a lot to cinematography, as a career, I would have been let down, as this class didn't really accomplish anything for the advanced cinematographer other than virtually have them pay $1000 to teach under experienced cinematographers how to do cinematography or worse, have them leave feeling jipped out of $1000.

With that being said, here are a few things that I think would have made the class a lot more productive.

1) Still within a two day class, have the first day be a class where Peter Holland does his thing, lights the scene, block the shots, direct the actors, etc etc..., Day 2, have the groups split up like we did and "go ahead and do it all for yourselves" (with the supervision of Peter and other professional DoPs on set hired by RED for the class. (Day 2 is primarily what happened, without the benefit of what should have happened in day 1 for us under experienced people)

2) Possibly split the group up by experience and do the above for the under experienced people, but I don't see how the experienced cinematographer would benefit from this class, other than to give them exposure to doing everything on RED cameras, if they don't already use RED. But seeing as how the main advertising of this class was REDUSER and on the RED site, I kinda think that MOST of the students in this class were already exposed to RED cameras.

3) The class description on this site was "Advanced Cinematography on the RED Digital Cinema cameras (RED ONE and EPIC) for Features, TV Commericals and Music Videos. Focused on shooting, lighting and various camera techniques." I don't really feel like it was this at all. It was more of "Shoot some scenes/examples that I give you and I will let you know if what you come up with is acceptable or not". The class as a whole lacked a lot of teaching and reference, and was TOO much hands on without too much "help" at all from the instructor(s). So maybe, change up what the description of the class was.

Overall, am I glad I got to have this experience? Of course. Would I take the class again? Depends if someone else took the class next time, and reviewed it to better/different than what my experience was. Would I recommend to a friend? Probably not, as it stands the way it is. The thing I learned the MOST out of this class is what NOT to do, as opposed what TO do and "too many cooks in the kitchen cause fires". If you have 11 people in a group all in a cinematography class, ALL of them are there to do the same job, DoP and get a little turned off being a part of the grip department, or worst of all, left on the sidelines with no job at all but to "stay out of the way".

My opinions are my opinions and not meant to attack anyone personally.

 

[Brad Webb]

Great honest feedback Aiden. I'm sure RED will take your feedback into consideration when planning the next round of REDucation.

 

[Daniel Doherty]

Nice post Aiden. I agree completely. The course would have been better if there were more cameras and less students per camera. Additionally, more instructors (DP's) and grips/gaffers would have helped immensely. The staff was excellent; quick to answer any questions and amicable. Unfortunately, they were spread too thin.

 

[Brian Henderson]

Thank you, Aiden and Daniel, for your posts - we will certainly take your thoughts to build the curriculum for our next Advanced Cinematography course and REDucation in general. We appreciate the quick and honest feedback.

 

[Paul Nordin]

I attended the Advanced Cinematography workshop. and Yeah, I don't want to just pile-on negative, but I agree with most of what Aiden said. That said, the facility was a bloody fantastic place to hold this type of workshop, and seeing any of our work on the monster 4k screen was a kick! The staff were all working super hard to try to meet the needs of a pretty big and diverse group. Peter rocked and somehow did not look like a wrung out towel at the end of the two days. Ted's intermittent visits always added nuggets of Red Best Practices. And for the most part the break out sessions (particularly on Day 2) were fun.

The one thing that was sorely missing for me, and which I think would have made these two days a home run is to have had a solid part of Day1 being more in the form of a Master-Class. Where we get to walk through several types of setups with Peter, seeing how he works, how he evaluates, and executes shooting a scene. If we had done that more as an observer, then done the breakouts with our brains stuffed with new approaches, it would have probably been a richer class for people with varying degrees of experience.

 

[TedRed]

I'm curious if those that commented so far only took the 2 day advanced class, without taking the 3 Day main REDucation class... As all of this is a learning experiment, and this is the first time we've taught the advanced classes, (and the 8th time we taught the main class) I may make it a pre-requiste to take the main class to then move into the advanced class.

would love to hear from some of the students that took Michael's advanced post class, and what they thought of that.

We already have some good ideas on how to improve the advanced shooting class... in discussion now.

Thanks!

+ Ted

 

[Paul Nordin]

Hi Ted, in my case I did not attend the three day main Reducation class first.

 

[Tim Duran]

The following is based on five days of attendence. (I did skip several hours here and there, but discovered that I didn't miss much.)

First, the Red staff was fantastic. My three plus years of experience in dealing with Red staff has always been good. Meeting some of these same people in person and seeing how hard they work to make the attendees comfortable was a joy. I'm not too good on names, but Brian and Travis are two who jump out as real work horses. They certainly made my experience better.

Second, the attendees represented people from all over the world. I didn't met a person who wasn't nice. And most were very interesting people. There was a high school student from San Diego who had to get permission to skip school to attend. And his dad had to drive him up from San Diego and stay in town to chaperone him. There's a caring dad and a kid with a great future. There was the German who had lots of Red experience and shared his issues with Red post. Christopher (see above thread) from Chicago sat next to me and helped me through Redcine-X issues. A number of people were AC's and DP's (of sorts) all trying to improve their marketable skills. And there were a number of beginners, many who owned Reds and had not used them at all!!

There were a couple of gems for me in the class, which I will discuss at the end, but here I will go over the bad.

The concept of time management doesn't exist with Red executives. We spent /wasted hours and hours of valuable time listening to Red managment and guest DP's praise the Red camera. Ted is preaching to the choir. Everyday we were indoctrinated to the benefits of owing a Red. It got so bad that the section on sound was canceled so that we could hear how great the Red camera is. This underscores Red's lack of understanding of the importance of sound as evidenced in the poor Red One sound capabilities (apparently finally addressed in Epic).

The "class" was far too big. I understood that the class was originally to be limited to 50. We had 60 or so show up not including the ten name tags from people who signed up and didn't make it. This, along with the video conferencing, clearly showed that Red's bottom line is making money first, educating second. We broke up into groups of 7-8 or so to shoot scenes. Some people hogged the camera, others found themselves just standing around as stated in a thread above. The tie-in to New York was a distraction. This was an experiment that didn't work. I can't believe that the NYC attendees got anything out of this experiment and I know it was a distraction across the board. Lots of time waving back and forth. Ted forgets to turn on the feed several times.

With proper planning, the two extra days for post or advanced photography, could have been cut to one day each. I got a lot out of the post class, but I missed shooting on green screen. Again, if we didn't squander so much time hearing about how great Red is, there would have been plenty of time to have included both.

I think everyone was complimentary on the quality and quantity of food for the first three days--broiled chicken, rare roast beef. But days four and five (where attendees paid more per day than the first group), food was macaroni and cheese and sloppy joes. Keep those costs down is Red managment's creed.

The low point for me was when this big Red management guy gets in front of us smoking his cigar. We have a guest speaker telling us how great the Red camera is. When the Mr Cigar offers one to our guest speaker, the guest politely says no. By the end of the talk, the guest speaker is now standing 30 feet away from Mr. Cigar. People are caughing in the audience. Mr. Gigar is oblivious to everything, sitting on the stage, occassionally fanning the smoke with his hand in an attempt to disapate it (into the audience). There is a certain arrogance with Red managment here, which I have commented on in past threads. Throughout California, laws say you can't smoke inside buildings. Not a sole in the audience was smoking other than Mr. Cigar.

Here are some highlights for me: 1) Michael Cimoni, CEO of Light Iron. Great speaker, educator and futurist. Two days with MIchael was worth the five day charge. I'm coming to this as a producer/director. I'm a generalist. Michael's talk really put past, present and future post into perspective for me. No doubt in my mind that I'm going to save a lot of money out the shoot by hearing Michael's talk; 2) Ted at Red. Although I blame Ted for the poor organization of the Reducation No. 8 and the wasted hours, if you had a technical question and came up to him for a private one on one, he was always available to me; 3) some fellow attendees. I met a few people that I will definately consider for crew spots on future shoots; 4) the sound guy at Coffey Sound. He volunteered to spend an hour with me next week in his shop to answer any questions I have on sound. That certainly impressed me.

A bit on Epic X. For all you bleading hearts feeling sorry for Red management, don't. After a few pointed but diverse questions to Red managment, here is what I got on the status of Epic X. There is a key part that is needed to finish completion of the Epic X. This key part is still being made, but in very small quantities and it's a part demanded by many other companies. Red is obtaining this part for Epic M at a premium, but this is offset by the premium price we pay for M. But Red management's problem is honoring the price quoted to Stage 2, 3 buyers while a key ingrediant has become very expensive. It appears that management's decision is to hold the price as promised until the unit price of the key part comes down. This means holding on to your deposits indefinately until a time that the camera can provide the originally anticipated profit margin to the company. There is a long waiting list for M's and their high profit margins, so pressure is off on processing X orders. I appreciate the moral and financial delema management is in. Many Redusers have suggested that they would be willing to pay more today to get their Epics. I know I would. My suggestion is that management offer Stage 2/3 buyers an alternative. Pay a premium now for a camera now or return the deposits as a show of good faith by managment without a loss of place in line. Why should Stage 2/3 buyers' deposits go to help Epic M buyers?

Finaly, good news. It was confirmed that Red is working on anamorphic lenses.

 

[Chad Lancaster]

wow...

I didn't want to respond to some of that but its hard not to. First Mr Cigar would be Jim, and being CEO lends him to do whatever he wants. If you had a problem with the smoke...all you have to do is move or ask him not to.

I have to STRONGLY disagree that RED's bottom line with the video conferencing was to make money. It was clearly explained as an experiment and those signing up knew that. I don't see how having their screen in the corner was anyway a distraction. One would have to hear from them directly how it went for them but I'm sure the guys at offhollywood filled in at any moment that there was a problem. Only suggestion for the videoconferencing would have been to have their camera in the center of the room so they could have a straight on view of the presentation.

I do agree that the group size to camera ratio was a little too large when it came to using the epics. I had no problem with the group sizes using the red ones. It also allowed us to spin ideas and questions off one another. Being a newbie that was helpful, for the more advanced I could see where you'd want less people.

as for the food..it was good. We are signing up for a camera class at a movie studio not the four seasons. No one said you had to stay on the lot.

Ted did an amazing job making all the information easy to understand and enjoyable to listen to. I didn't know someone could make talking about histograms fun but Ted pulled it off. I learned a lot and was very happy with the information we got from Ted and other guests. I only wish I had the time to take Michael Cioni's post class. Hopefully he does it again in the future.

if you had a problem about how they are handling the staging process and problems, the floor was open to ask Jim..

 

[Jannard]

Sorry the cigar offended you... won't do that again at a REDucation class in a closed building. Criticism is good. Every time we do this can be better than the last... just like our cameras.

Jim

 

[Antonio Forjaz]

just found this so funny...."RED management"..eheheheh....Jim you are really the best...I can't imagine you without a cigar....ehehehe

Sorry the cigar offended you... won't do that again at a REDucation class in a closed building. Criticism is good. Every time we do this can be better than the last... just like our cameras.

Jim

 

[TedRed]

I like all of these comments - I asked for them, and we are getting them... in a class of 60+ (I agree it was a lot, this was one of our biggest classes ever) and we tried a number of "firsts" in this class, like we do in every class. Even though we had a lot of REDs, RED Lenses, support gear and Post gear, we could have used a bit more gear, a bit more staff, etc. - we learn each time, in each class and hone and improve accordingly.

I can tell you for sure that our classes are not about maximizing profit - we barely have time to think about all the 100's of logistical details with such a small staff, much less try and "run the numbers" to see how much cash we can make This is genuinely because we care about education on this relatively young camera, and think it's worth our time and effort to teach this class...

it's easy to say the class was great all around, and it's harder to critique certain soft spots without sounding like you are coming down on the entire experience, so I appreciate the people that are taking the time to give us food for thought to be aware of while also letting us know what they liked and got the most out of.

everything is a give and take - the guest speakers are really interesting and valuable on many fronts, but time is a finite resource as you know... 3 fully packed days of learning with an hour or so of guests in apx. 30 hours of class seems like a pretty good balance to me.

I think the NYC video class was really interesting and worked so well for the first time out, that we are already looking at how to improve that and make it even more viable on many fronts. No profit logic there, the simple goal is to have the ability to teach people from far away places the RED, without them having to make a long, expensive trip... (of course nothing can replace being there in person, but this was the best yet I've ever seen in terms of remote learning technology in action)

60 or so personalities all coming to learn and figure things out is really challenging on many fronts - fun and rewarding, and challenging... I love it.

I'll post the low rez version of the class pix here in a minute.

+ Ted