chris morgan
Well-known member
picked up our scarlet last wednesday down in irvine before heading up to the red event. did a bit of the obligatory shooting of whatever was in range of the camera (and, for now, the nearest outlet). then packed her up on friday to do a shoot of... something with some of my cohorts.
we ended up shooting a potential 'backstory' video for a superhero character that one of our clients is developing. we had a basic idea but it was largely made up as we went along.
i have one 64 GB card right now... and we ended up using just over half of it at 8:1. lit the whole thing with two sketchy ass flowlight LED panels and a bare-bulb tungsten and one tuna sandwich worth of black foil. kept a careful eye on the goalposts and traffic lights, and shot about 15 minutes' worth of stuff.
back at home base, i popped the redmag into the reader, copied over the 32 GB or so in about 3 or 4 minutes i think over ESATA.
cracked open premiere (first time using it EVER in about 12 years or something) and there were the clips. they played beautifully at 1/4 rez. i created a project layout that worked... all i remember thinking was "this is a lot like FCP... but... like... A LOT BETTER."
edited the shots together the way we liked 'em, then graded them ONLY using the clip 'source settings' inside of premiere. having most of the functionality of RedCineX right there in premiere was pretty astonishing. then things got better.
we have those few SFX shots in there.. the motion-tracked title and the glowy eyes schtick. selecting a clip and right-clicking to create an AE project was unbelievably cool. and AE handles the 4K just as elegantly (more on that in a sec) as premiere. motion tracking with this 4K stuff was a f**king LAUGH! i've never had it so easy. then... don't even render and output. why bother? just tab back over to premiere and your AE comp is there... essentially RENDERED and in place. *AT 4K*!!!
i'm not sure what black magic this is, but so much of the cautionary fearmongering on the internet when the scarlet was announced said "ohhh the workflow will be impossible... you MUST HAVE the red rocket to work with 4K..."
i come from years of pretty hardcore 5D shooting and working with 4K scarlet footage was an absolute joy compared to importing / transcoding to prores, exporting shots to after effects in clunky ways, and using plugins that, while great, didn't quite give me the looks i wanted. now i'm able to achieve stuff that i consider to be the most cinematic i've ever shot (which may not be saying much) simply using the basic colour correction tools built into the RED raw workflow.
now granted this was a pretty small project, and i say premiere and AE handled it elegantly and they did, but after a few dynamic links to AE and a bunch of clips stacking up, things got a little squirrely. it never crashed on me, and i'm sure i can find a more lean way of working with multiple FX shots and stuff, but it bogged down after a while.
still, after closing AE and premiere and starting them up again, things improved.
rendering out the 4K to a 1080p prores file was a snap in premiere, and the entire 2:30-ish sequence took about 40 minutes to crunch, resulting in about a 1.5GB prores 422 file.
this has been unbelievable. the vimeo version still looks pretty good to me, to be honest... but to see these clips full-screen in their glory in RedCineX is breathtaking. it's the first time i've ever experienced anything that i've shot personally as seeming larger-than-life.
let me know what you think. i'm happy to answer any technical questions that i can if there are any... i learned a lot doing this. i'm curious as to what people think of the overall look. editorially speaking the piece isn't perfect, but 3 of us knocked it together over about 30 hours, so give us a break. =)
we ended up shooting a potential 'backstory' video for a superhero character that one of our clients is developing. we had a basic idea but it was largely made up as we went along.
i have one 64 GB card right now... and we ended up using just over half of it at 8:1. lit the whole thing with two sketchy ass flowlight LED panels and a bare-bulb tungsten and one tuna sandwich worth of black foil. kept a careful eye on the goalposts and traffic lights, and shot about 15 minutes' worth of stuff.
back at home base, i popped the redmag into the reader, copied over the 32 GB or so in about 3 or 4 minutes i think over ESATA.
cracked open premiere (first time using it EVER in about 12 years or something) and there were the clips. they played beautifully at 1/4 rez. i created a project layout that worked... all i remember thinking was "this is a lot like FCP... but... like... A LOT BETTER."
edited the shots together the way we liked 'em, then graded them ONLY using the clip 'source settings' inside of premiere. having most of the functionality of RedCineX right there in premiere was pretty astonishing. then things got better.
we have those few SFX shots in there.. the motion-tracked title and the glowy eyes schtick. selecting a clip and right-clicking to create an AE project was unbelievably cool. and AE handles the 4K just as elegantly (more on that in a sec) as premiere. motion tracking with this 4K stuff was a f**king LAUGH! i've never had it so easy. then... don't even render and output. why bother? just tab back over to premiere and your AE comp is there... essentially RENDERED and in place. *AT 4K*!!!
i'm not sure what black magic this is, but so much of the cautionary fearmongering on the internet when the scarlet was announced said "ohhh the workflow will be impossible... you MUST HAVE the red rocket to work with 4K..."
i come from years of pretty hardcore 5D shooting and working with 4K scarlet footage was an absolute joy compared to importing / transcoding to prores, exporting shots to after effects in clunky ways, and using plugins that, while great, didn't quite give me the looks i wanted. now i'm able to achieve stuff that i consider to be the most cinematic i've ever shot (which may not be saying much) simply using the basic colour correction tools built into the RED raw workflow.
now granted this was a pretty small project, and i say premiere and AE handled it elegantly and they did, but after a few dynamic links to AE and a bunch of clips stacking up, things got a little squirrely. it never crashed on me, and i'm sure i can find a more lean way of working with multiple FX shots and stuff, but it bogged down after a while.
still, after closing AE and premiere and starting them up again, things improved.
rendering out the 4K to a 1080p prores file was a snap in premiere, and the entire 2:30-ish sequence took about 40 minutes to crunch, resulting in about a 1.5GB prores 422 file.
this has been unbelievable. the vimeo version still looks pretty good to me, to be honest... but to see these clips full-screen in their glory in RedCineX is breathtaking. it's the first time i've ever experienced anything that i've shot personally as seeming larger-than-life.
let me know what you think. i'm happy to answer any technical questions that i can if there are any... i learned a lot doing this. i'm curious as to what people think of the overall look. editorially speaking the piece isn't perfect, but 3 of us knocked it together over about 30 hours, so give us a break. =)
