We are shooting Reality TV on the RED

[Biagio Messina]

Hi, Biagio Messina of Joke Productions here. We're the executive producers of VH1's Scream Queens, and have long been interested in shooting run and gun style on the RED. We were producing some behind the scenes footage for SQ Season 2, had Adam Sampson shoot it on two REDs.

Here's our initial attempt.

We will have a large blog post coming soon detailing the workflow. For now, I'll just say it was shot on prime lenses, and Adam pulled his own focus.

Thanks, and hope you like!
Biagio

 

[Adam Sampson]

Reality RED

Reality RED

The shoot went very smooth and we are all extremely happy with the results. I tested a few dozen builds with various EVF-LCD-battery-drive placements, and think we have found a build that is conducive to run and gun style reality shooting. One camera was on a Zeiss MK II speed 25mm, the other a matching 85mm. Of course, would be great to use the rouge zoom lenses...

We shot at 4k, RC36, on 320G hard drives. The entire shoot was un-lit, utilizing 100% of available light which was from cool white flou's in the ceiling and a few heavily tinted windows. We rated the cameras at 640, and shot mainly between a 1.4 and a 2 on the lens. (Thank you RED for the focus color assist!) This is solely test footage for camera configuration and acquisition of run and gun reality material, this is definitely not a lighting experiment or test in any way. We shot takes upwards of 28 minutes at a time- much like an HD tape load.

The camera performed beyond expectations and convinced Joke Productions of the ability to capture this style in the field. Our post work flow for multi camera is smooth but has some more testing to do, and we are all very interested in the RED Rocket™ and look forward to utilizing its abilities.

I shoot a lot of highly lit and stylized material with my RED's and I have been trying to figure out a way to meld the RED and its great look into the HD reality television world. Cheers to Joke Productions for their belief and tenacity in supporting me along the way. A large challenge thus far of converging the RED into reality is finding enough reality/documentary camera ops to crew up a large camera crew. Pulling your own focus on the fly, while running, on a long lens, wide open, and following the action- has proven to be a mighty challenge for those who are used to b4 and HD lenses

And a heads up for everyone out there- Joke Productions is the real deal. They are the best production company I have ever worked with in my 20 year stint in the feature/doc/television world. My only advice to you is, if they call---say yes.

 

[Biagio Messina]

Another example of RED run-and-gun

Another example of RED run-and-gun

We shot this Twitterview on the RED as well. Color corrected it a little cooler. I like the way it looks a lot, though I don't think it gave Adam the chance to do as many DOF tricks :001_smile:

 

[Joseph S.]

aspect

aspect

Not sure, but it looks like aspect ratio is not accurate.

looks like 2:1 originals saved as 16:9.

 

[Biagio Messina]

May be!

May be!

It's entirely possible you are correct on aspect ratio. That's what happens when a silly EP tries to compress things himself. :iamwithstupid:

Thanks for the heads up! I'll look into re-compressing tomorrow!

 

[Ravi Kiran]

Why did you choose to shoot at 2:1 for TV?

 

[Adam Sampson]

2:1

2:1

The decision to shoot 2:1 was driven by research that suggested FCP ingests material better when shot 2:1. We framed for 16:9 safe, so either way it works pretty well. This is also a not-for-air test, so the aspect ratio was of little concern- more about the process.

 

[jake blackstone]

The decision to shoot 2:1 was driven by research that suggested FCP ingests material better when shot 2:1. We framed for 16:9 safe, so either way it works pretty well. This is also a not-for-air test, so the aspect ratio was of little concern- more about the process.

What research is that?

 

[Biagio Messina]

Hey everyone,
Thanks for the replies. Jake, we'll see if we can dig that up for you, but the main purpose of this test, for me, was to see if Adam could hop on a long lens and pull his own focus.

I also wanted to see how the RED would hold up in a run-and-gun style shoot where we used only available light. While it's always great to light a scene in reality, truth is the best story happens when you can't plan for it. I wanted to know, in that situation, what happens on a RED.

Granted, this scene was a bit tame, but we all start somewhere :001_smile:

It's tough for us to sell a network on RED right now for docusoap, and that's understandable...it's a pretty new workflow. So these early tests are key. From a producer's perspective, I think it looks head and shoulder's better than the HD stuff we've done, and I love the shallow DOF.

We're cutting some new reality-style material now, and I look forward to posting it soon!

Thanks,
Biagio

 

[Jason Joseph]

love beauty and the geek, you should shoot that on RED

 

[Biagio Messina]

Jason,

You make a great point...we'd love to be able to figure out how to do a full on, 7 camera show on RED. I have to admit, I don't have my head wrapped around the media management on a show with that much footage. Competition reality is hard with a digital file workflow, especially at 4k.

On Scream Queens, for instance, last season we had 1800 hours of footage, shot at DVCpro50. At 4k, you can imagine how much disk space we'd have to add to our server.

So we're breaking the RED workflow in with some 2 camera stuff. I feel like our best bet of shooting a show on RED will be a docusoap ala The Hills or something like HBO's Hard Knocks.

We're in development on a few docusoaps right now that I'd love to try to go RED on.

Also, on Scream Queens, we shoot screen tests each week with the actresses. I think we'll definitely do those on RED, but that's basically scripted, no reality material.

 

[Ryan Sims]

Hard Drive Space

Hard Drive Space

In terms of storage space for editing, you'll need something like 5 times as much when compared to DVCpro50. DVCpro50 is 50Mb/s (50 megabits)
REDone bitrates range from 28 MB/s (28 megabytes = 224 megabits) to 36 MB/s (288 megabits) currently.

So a 5x increase in drive space does not seem to be a big problem to me.
There are many more aspects of the production and post that will need to be addressed to shoot an entire series on REDs. Archiving the footage is just one issue.

Note: DVCpro50 is not an HD format.

 

[Biagio Messina]

Thanks, Ryan. Agree that disk storage is only one piece of the puzzle, but for us, it's a huge piece, and something I'd like to ask you all about.

First off, while we shoot DVCpro50, we actually cut at DV25, and up-rez at the end. So to keep the 4k files would be closer to 10 times the space we currently have. Even though storage is coming down, adding 10 times the storage just to keep the 4k files is a lot.

My other thought is that, from what I've heard, many people back up the 4k files anywhere from 2 to 7 times. While 7 would probably be overkill, 2 seems reasonable (I think...what do you guys think?) That again increases storage costs.

Now assuming we shoot 2000 hours of footage, keeping 4k files backed up several times over is jut outside the budget of the shows we do. My question is this:

Would it be wise to shoot 4k, immediately convert to Prores, and treat the prores file like it's our negative? Also, have any of you aired Prores directly?

Or, do we convert to prores and smaller files closer to DV25 at the same time, cut the DV25 files off the server, and reconfrom to the Prores at the end? Is taking the 4K out of the process a good idea, or a recipe for disaster.

BTW, from what I understand, shooting at 4K allows for shallower depth of field, which is why I don't want to simply shoot 2K, even though it would save a lot on storage.

I'd love to hear from anyone that's dealt with mass amounts of RED footage on what their workflow was.

FYI, we are 100% Final Cut Pro and always will be. Nothing against AVID, it's just that, also being an editor and compositor myself, I can pull off tricks in FCP I don't know how to do in AVID.

Thanks!
Biagio

 

[Ryan Sims]

ProRes

ProRes

It sounds like you've only been in SD world up till now.

Here's a white paper from Apple about ProRes and data rates:
http://images.apple.com/finalcutstudio/docs/Apple_ProRes_White_Paper_July_2009.pdf

So, my first question is what is the deliverable format you need to supply?
HDCAM for High-Def and DigiBeta for SD?

What frame rate do you want to shoot at (24p or 30p)?
What's the deliverable aspect ratio (16x9, letterboxed 4:3 or full frame 4:3)?
Have you thought about shooting 3K?

I don't think ProRes is a great option to transcode all the footage and edit with. The HQ ProRes 422 data rate for 1920x1080 at 24fps averages around 176 Mb/s. Not enough space savings in my book to throw away 3/4 of the raw data of 4K REDcode. It will also take time to encode all the footage.

I think the RED Rocket is a game changer for you. Edit to your hearts desire in FCP with raw REDcode files and monitor realtime at full HD resolution with a RR.

Use a RR to export real time to HDCAM Tape for delivery.
Use a RR to encode a ProRes4x4 file to archive the master edit (about 1.5x realtime due to ProRes encoding). Note: A master ProRes4x4 1920x1080 24p file would be about 90GB in size for a 44min show. You can archive a file in any form you want really. ProRes4x4 looks like the best choice in a FCP world right now.

Here's an advantage to shooting with RED compared to tape - faster than real time transfer to the editing station. Of course, you will need to backup the files on-set, so time savings maybe a wash.

As far as the question if ProRes is good enough as a mastering format, the TNT show "Leverage" seems to think so: http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/in-action/leverage/index2.html
http://www.apple.com/finalcutstudio/in-action/#Leverage
So it looks like "Leverage" is using the exact workflow you proposed with ProRes422 HQ.

Do you see any flaws in this argument guys?

 

[M Most]

I think the RED Rocket™ is a game changer for you. Edit to your hearts desire in FCP with raw REDcode files and monitor realtime at full HD resolution with a RR.

The Red Rocket does not currently work with Final Cut or any other third party applications. Right now, there is no way to know when or if it will work with FCP. It does, however, provide a rather quick way to transcode to either Apple or Avid codecs.

ProRes4x4 looks like the best choice in a FCP world right now.

I don't know of very many - if any - television programs that are creating 4:4:4 masters. And there are no networks that require 4:4:4 delivery elements.

As far as the question if ProRes is good enough as a mastering format, the TNT show "Leverage" seems to think so:

And "Southland" is posted almost entirely on Avid DNxHD115. That doesn't make either of those choices ideal for everyone, but it does indicate that those here who claim that it's "necessary" to go back to original R3d files are not basing their opinion on current fact.

 

[Ryan Sims]

Space

Space

Thanks for the corrections M Most.
So it looks like you need something around 260 TB of storage to save 2000 hrs of R3D files or about 160 TB to save in ProRes 422 HQ.
The "Leverage" video clip states their only using a 42TB SAN. So having all 2000 hrs up on a SAN is going to get expensive.

 

[Biagio Messina]

First of all, thank you guys so much for taking the time to run me through some possible options. We're running a lot of tests right now, and this is very helpful.

As for frame rate, it would depend on the project. I'm checking out the links you guys mentioned.

Red Rocket is definitely something we're interested in exploring further.

Delivery depends on network and show, but it likely would be HDCAM.

My thinking now is to store the 4K files off the SAN on less expensive drives, and if it's true that we never need to go back to them, dump them at the end. Or (and this is scary) transcoding to the smaller file size, and dumping the 4k early on.

Again, that's why I'm thinking we may be better off saving the RED for the smaller 2 camera doc-style shows right now. But it's an exciting time for us. Really appreciate the great community here!

Best,
Biagio