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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Thoughts after seeing CHE

Anybody who turns a camera system away based on seeing one film without doing any research... that's their decision. Every other DP out there will do it the way it's always been done: test it and see.

And Brian is correct, they used the Genesis.
 
jpp said:
It's a nice idea, but no producer in America, including Steven Soderbergh, knows how to break even, much less make money, on 7 figure features. If Jim Jannard could figure out how to do it, or was inclined to look beyond the usual suspects of indie film, that would be a bigger and rarer achievement than the camera.

For starters, a "great screenplay" is the absolute worst place to begin, because if you've found a script that the funders, the producers and everyone in the production office loves, then it's a movie that the public has already seen dozens of times before. Best run for cover.
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I've actually been thinking about that. Can there be no finer example of "F*ck the "experts" than Iron Man?

After a couple of decades of seeing successful comic book franchise characters routinely murdered by "creative" directors who "knew what they were doing", the old farts at Marvel finally wrested back control of the Marvel Universe characters, set up their own Studio, made a movie the way they thought would appeal to their print audience (based on only close to six decades of successful comic publication), and didn't spend any outrageous amount of money on it, and guess what happened?

The problem as I see it, is that too many screenplays get written by people who are not real human beings, in the sense that they have no real experience of everyday human existence. They tend to be single, have chemical dependence problems and (to my experience anyway) are generally f*cked in the head.

The Marvel guys thought they knew what appeals to the wide audience of paying customers, and they were 97% right, at least according to RottenTomatoes.com:)

So actually, I think if Jim Jannard decided to make a feature film, he probably would make quite a good job of it. As would just about anybody else who DOES NOT truly, desperately, WANT to make a film.

It would be fantastic if after producing a revolutionary cinematography camera like the RED, they went on to produce a blockbuster movie using it, again, using a fresh sheet of paper.

As they say, people who seek power are often the last ones you'd want to give it to!
 
Hopefully Jim wouldn't consult us on it! :)

Sorry, ... Genesis... was for Mel.
 
More DR lurks in the grade

More DR lurks in the grade

Finner's assessment of DR coming out the side of the camera on the fly might be accurate. Every camera in this discussion other than the RedOne has far more processing applied (Panalog and the like excluded) before you see it.

The RedOne approach to making a great image depends on a paradigm shift where acquisition and post integrate in a different manner. While the RedOne may have 2 stops less DR than the F23 (the greatest DR of any D-cinema camera I have ever seen) IMHO with proper post processing the DR of the RedOne is very close to the other cameras in this discussion.

Each tool has different characteristics. A tool wielded with intention and understanding can achieve great things. I have seen visually compelling material shot on mediocre cameras (notice I said visually, I do not want to wander back into the story is king eddy, its stipulated).

The digression I do think counts here is craft. A top notch crew with a nice lighting package and the skill to use it can get great images out of any camera in the class we are discussing.

IMHO if you combine good lighting with the natural strengths of the RedOne - RAW color space, lots of genuine resolution (not Sony style sharpening) and the most filmic "look" of any D-cinema camera on the block you can make evocative images of the highest art.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
not Sony style sharpening
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Sharpening (aka detail), AGC, detail and blur are fully switchable on the sony 750/900/950/1500/F23.
From completly off to very strong.

Several sharpening levels can be recorded paralell, as *fully* unsharpened to uncompressed via HD-SDI for the cinema master and sharpened to the realtime PAL master downconverted SDI simultanesly. The different outputs can have individual settings. Processing of sharpening and blur is completly realtime and user adjustable.

I prefer the unsharpened look with sony as with red for hd/1080p and 2K most of the time, for SD slight sharpening is recomendable often.
 
Finner said:
Unless of course if you are talking post where red becomes a whole mess but hopefully with red opening the door soon that will change.
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I agree. The locked out marketleading postproduction tools are the main shortcoming of redcode. Cant wait for adobe, discreet, iridas, cineform etc finally let in.

Back to che:
Soderbergh likes the red very much and is extremly happy with it. He says "usually, people asked if it does look as good as In some years, people will probably ask if it looks as good as the red.".

Therefore i suppose his artistic choices dictated the look of his movies. Blownout whites are used intentionally not only by him - Battlestar Galacticas DoP Steve McNutt uses those all the time (for my taste, in a most pleasant way). I personally also prefer looks without blown out whites, but use them here and there - for lamborghini on the murcielago commercials as example i overexposed the grey skies to white one for DP jacques steyn quite a bit on several aerials.
 
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your post, I think we will see many more films with the
'no time for lighting' look from RED users like S. Soderbergh.
And the short DR with clipped whites look could be the stamp that sets RED apart from many of the other cameras you mentioned.
This is the RED ONE digital look, plain and simple and it's limited. It does not make RED (at the moment) the camera for all seasons with the ability to shoot anything thrown at it. But thats fine.
RED is finding it's niche and probably the breakout film shot on RED will have a look very similar to Mr Soderberg's as a new generation of Director/ DP's start stuffing about with Cinematography.
I know about six in my area who have purchased RED and are test shooting
as we speak, cause I get the odd phone call, 'how the #%#$@#@ do you
do this???'
Our days as DP's are numbered Matt, sorry. At least on RED shoots.
Cheers Mezmo
 
Thats a true statement.

Maybe it all leads to directors becoming DPs and DPs becoming directors and everyone doing a bit of their own DI on a desk top.

Not too far fetched and actually can be the catalyst for the emergence of a New Breed of Renaissance Men.

Thrilling times await and the whole relationship between audience and creator and creator and medium will evolve into a hybrid of content & Form.

DogDay
 
The strong will survive. Its called natural selection. You have jurys of qualified experts whos job is to sort the wheat from the chaff thus sparing you that ordeal.



DogDay
 
I was at the same screening as Matt and can second everything he has written.

I can't see any reason why the highlights would be blown out intentionally. It does not seem to be used as an artistic choice, as in a film like Lucia Y El Sexo for example. If it is there to serve any artistic purpose, that message is lost to this audience.

To put it all in perspective, I would say 99% of the audience, doesn't notice things like blown highlights. From talking to several "non-technical" people after the screening, what they do notice are other strong artistic choices, like the fact that there are very few close-ups of the main characters, and that it is hard to identify them / with them. The result is that you watch the film with a very external POV like a documentary about guerilla warfare. Personally, I appreciate the fact that Soderbergh is trying to do things that are not mainstream or what you would normally expect. In that sense, Che, and the way Soderbergh has used different formats in the movie, remain interesting and demonstrate that the RED One can be used to achieve very different visual styles. To me, the blown highlights are just something of a "faux pas" which will not deter Che from getting praised for its visual qualities and audacity.

I believe that the best Red One footage will probably not come from seasoned professionals with tons of film experience, but from DPs used to shooting video and dealing with things like limited dynamic range. It's great that Red can get attention with the likes of Soderbergh and other big names, but I'm guessing the most interesting material will come from smaller indie projects.

The clipped highlights problem should not overshadow (!) the fact that the Red One can deliver one of the most stunning images when used in the right conditions. Even though, as a Red owner and user, I was slightly disappointed in some of the aspects of the image seen in Che, I also marvelled at the versatility demonstrated by the camera and the very different looks it can help to achieve (there are 4 very different looks used in Che). The definition in the wide shots of part 2 of Che is simply amazing.

On a side note, the best digital footage I have seen this year in Cannes came from the stunning film Johnny Mad Dog, shot on Sony F900R, and Nuri Bilge Ceylan's beautiful Three Monkeys, also shot on HD though I'm not 100% sure which camera was used. It's a bit of a shame that the first high-profile movie entirely shot on Red does not always show the camera in its best light. But it reminds us (if necessary) that the camera is just a tool. What really matters is how you use it.

Che will probably never be seen by general audiences the way it was presented in Cannes. AFAIK it hadn't yet found a US distrib when I left Cannes yesterday. It had however already been presold in France, Italy, Japan, Scandinavia and the UK.
 
jtm said:
and tons of crap films too. I shudder at the dreck that will flood the festival market.
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Since you can already get perfectly acceptable image quality from a $700 HV20, and since mini-DV features have been a festival staple for years now, it's not likely that Red or any other technology is going to increase the flood much. If anything, a migration to more expensive equipment should reduce the volume somewhat. Or am I missing something? You hear this argument a lot, but to date nobody has been deterred by sub-35mm or sub-16mm quality.

dogday said:
The strong will survive. Its called natural selection. You have jurys of qualified experts whos job is to sort the wheat from the chaff thus sparing you that ordeal.
Click to expand...

Oh really? What experts did you have in mind? Typical festival programming staff includes unpaid interns, film school undergrads who think Stars Wars is the highest achievement of Western civilization, programmers with no obvious qualifications beyond previous programming positions, and festival directors whose chief attraction to management is a willingness and ability to work for nothing for a few months a year.

The fantasies which persist on this board....
 
Some people open their mouth to say something while others do it because they have something to say ... Which one are you?


DogDay
 
dogday said:
Some people open their mouth to say something while others do it because they have something to say ... Which one are you?


DogDay
Click to expand...

You're out of your depth. Goodbye.
 
Says who?

Don`t tell me you are also one of those disgruntled Oscar Winners too? What gives you the jurisdiction?

Or are you self appointed? ... Having an opinion about the value of your own opinions?

So whats the deal?

Had a bad day today? Don`t take it out on me pal.

It certainly didn`t take much huffing or puffing for your house of cards to crumble.


DogDay
 
ähem, don´t forget -

CHE was shot with beta-cameras, i don´t really get in the strong discussion, this was the first big public film shot with a totally new camera without any huge experiences about it..., and all the footage i have seen the last weeks from the latest cams and from operators knowing to handle red better and better is really good to awesome.
 
I saw Che in the "salle des lumières" on the evening projection.

I was also anticipating the RED format and wondering what wonders and disapointments it might bring, especially knowing the quality of the digital projection they have there. (I had seen Zodiac last year)

For my part I was blown away by "the Argentine" part and much less enthusiastic about the "Guerilla" part. Partly due to the clipped highlights, and partly to a certain "video feel" in the movement on camera pans.

I was simply amazed by 99% on "the Argentine", thinking to myself that RED will definately change the industry. The colors are fresh, luscious, and yet subtle in very different situations.

Thanks Matt for the info on the anamporphic lenses, but I also suspect a different shooting format/ different post workflow. Anyone know anything about that?

Cheers,

Louie
 
No offense to Soderberg, but if you are shooting in jungles during daylight, use 35mm, otherwise the white "patches" are going to blow out, guaran-fucking-teed. Sounds like a poor choice of camera for the film. That's just IMO.

Until DR can be increased with new sensors, builds, processors, software, etc, you are going to have to be extremely careful about clipping with Red One. Probably lots of filters during daylight hours, and very careful lighting. That's why I only shoot during magic hours and at night with digital. You will never, ever catch me shooting during the middle the day if there is any way I can avoid it. Digital looks like crap and blows out too easily.

That dude who posted the greek music video a couple weeks ago did it right - shoot in "good" light and you won't have any of these problems. :)
 
Right! I've been shooting in the Brazilian jungle last year (no Red) and without additional light you don't have a chance. Remember, even biology is telling us how the plants on "first floor" are struggling for those few photons left with all the tricks evolution developed for survival.
Definitely one of the most difficult environments for shooting e-camera.

Regards,

Uli
 
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