What we need to convince more DPs on Dragon

[Mark L. Pederson]

and makes more-compact files. They're shooting 4K every day for The Blacklist on NBC and doing very well with it.

More-compact files? Not sure about The Blacklist - but the new Michael J. Fox series that was shot on F55 was all 4K SONY RAW - files much larger than R3Ds. Nothing "more efficient" or "easier" than a typcially set up R3D RAW workflow.

 

[Paul Provost]

I see your argument, but I do not really see the point.

Exactly! Thank you I'm out.

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Exactly! Thank you I'm out.

NOT my point.

More like: What is wrong about thinking of how to make the RED cameras more useable for more productions, which is the original question here.

One shoe does not fit all. But if the shoe almost fits some obvious feet...

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

More-compact files? Not sure about The Blacklist - but the new Michael J. Fox series that was shot on F55 was all 4K SONY RAW - files much larger than R3Ds. Nothing "more efficient" or "easier" than a typcially set up R3D RAW workflow.

Interesting. One would hope that much cheaper and larger hard drives are making it increasingly obvious even to most technically challenged producers that it's not such a big deal.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

I think the owner of Red Digital Cinema wants to build a camera that blows his mind, not a camera that producers want to rent. For a guy living on his own island paradise it's way cooler to hang out with Ridley Scott who's using his camera to make an iconic film, than to hang out with whichever director is on this weeks episode of NCIS. There already is an Alexa, why build another? there's not really another Dragon out there. If you were a 70 year old billionaire, would you care if somebody was having trouble renting out what is essentially his pet project? I mean he supposedly owns an Apollo flown / moon surface hassleblad. How do you top that? "Ow wow, episodic producers want to rent my camera this season"! Whoopdy do....

That's nuts. Jim is trying to makes his cameras as successful as possible, for us, and by proxy, for Red and in teh hands of as many users as possible. Jim is not a spoilt child, nor are most highly successful entrepreneurs.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Interesting. One would hope that much cheaper and larger hard drives are making it increasingly obvious even to most technically challenged producers that it's not such a big deal.

The "difficult RED workflow" is rather silly and not based in fact at all. Everyone keeps screaming about how "easy" the "Alexa workflow" is because it records PRORES - but the joke is that there is EXACTLY the same number of steps (and transcodes) required to get to viewing dalies and media for editorial. People are under some strange delusion that people edit (or even view) the PRORES that comes off an ALEXA camera on major TV shows or films - when that is not the case. It gets transcoded. Just like an R3D file. Same number of steps. Same level of "difficulty". One option has alot more resolution to work with.

Perception is more powerful than an army.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Wow am I writing in Chinese or something? Does it not say in my post that he wanted to build a camera that blew his mind, and that he owned probably the rarest of all cameras? And yes of course I know he shot the print ads, everyone knows that right?
Again, why does the red need to become Alexa, and why does it need to cater to the rental market?

It's not just the rental market, it's the producer acceptance market. If the camera is a hard sell, even at an owner-operator level, even never renting to other DPs, (so the owner op rents an Alexa from others for many of the jobs he shoots and his own Epic sits on a shelf), then it's a problem for any type of buyer other than extremely rich hobbiests.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

The "difficult RED workflow" is rather silly and not based in fact at all. Everyone keeps screaming about how "easy" the "Alexa workflow" is because it records PRORES - but the joke is that there is EXACTLY the same number of steps (and transcodes) required to get to viewing dalies and media for editorial. People are under some strange delusion that people edit (or even view) the PRORES that comes off an ALEXA camera on major TV shows or films - when that is not the case. It gets transcoded. Just like an R3D file. Same number of steps. Same level of "difficulty". One option has alot more resolution to work with.

Perception is more powerful than an army.

100% agree. But perception is reality, and I am amazed daily by producers who know nothing technical, or have knowledge that was last updated many years ago, and yet still feel it's their place to make tech decisions.

I would add that 1080p Prores is harder to work with as there is much less information from which to pull things like HSL keys, noise reduction, greenscreen and window tracks, so DI is MORE work on 1080p Prores than 5K R3D, taking longer in many cases, as way more manual fiddling is needed.

 

[David Battistella]

Producers buy the images. Not the camera technology. The RED is very easy to sell in expert hands.

Reality (since you are in "fashion") that this is what your client gets by shooting dragon over Alexa, these are facts:

dragon 7x more resolution for frame pulls
more post flexibility in RAW
High resolution 96fps (show me a DSLR that does that)


Its it's been widely shown in feature films that the cameras can be intercut and graded perfectly with perfect skin tone, by a wide range of professional cinematographers.

The camera does not make the images, the cinematographers do.

 

[Phil Holland]

The "difficult RED workflow" is rather silly and not based in fact at all.

Perception is more powerful than an army.

Big time agree on this front. It has literally been years now since I would describe the Red Workflow as being difficult. It was more or less initially a matter of "digitally scanning" the .R3Ds to create frame sequences for use in our feature pipelines, and that wasn't that bad back when everything was so new.

Now with so much 3rd party native .R3D support, Red Rockets, and now GPU acceleration there's nothing difficult about it. It's more about deciding which workflow fits your needs.

 

[Shane Kelly]

The camera does not make the images, the cinematographers do.

True, so what is the route to getting those cinematographers to chose red over a competing camera system?

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

True, so what is the route to getting those cinematographers to chose red over a competing camera system?

#1: Getting them to test the camera. Dragon is a new sensor - so it's a GREAT opportunity to get DPs to test. To kick the tires and see the results themsleves. I believe the camera speaks for itself. It's alwasy eaiser for a DP to just choose the last tool he/she used - the tools "everyone else" is using.

#2: Marketing and Education should respect, and include, the talent that creates great images with RED. The ads in Amercian Cinematographer are a huge step in the right direction. I think that testimonial quotes from ASC members go a LONG way. They should spend the money on ads in The Hollywood Reporter as well - as the show runners and producers consume that magazine.

There are LOTS of people that have no clue that Matthew Libatique shot Pele on Dragon and loved the images. Personally, I love both Fincher and Soderbergh - as I think they are are both very special, monster talents that make amazing films - but .... EVERYONE knows that David and Steven shoot all of their films on RED and have for along time. They, along with Peter Jackson, have been RED's poster boys for a long time. And that speaks volumes - BUT ... it's not the message RED needs right now.

People have closed their minds. To open them - you need to send a "it's different now" message.

What will open minds IMO is hearing about highly respected cinematographers who have NOT been choosing RED - and NOW are choosing RED with Dragon.

#3: RED needs to quickly make a couple of awesome modules designed carefully for function - so everyone doesn't have to keep using "hacks" to get the camera to a config that makes the camera crew confident and efficient.

#4: RED needs to impliment CDL and 3D LUT support yesterday in the camera and RCX.

My 4 cents -

 

[Joe D'Arcy]

#1: Getting them to test the camera. Dragon is a new sensor - so it's a GREAT opportunity to get DPs to test. To kick the tires and see the results themsleves. I believe the camera speaks for itself. It's alwasy eaiser for a DP to just choose the last tool he/she used - the tools "everyone else" is using.

#2: Marketing and Education should respect, and include, the talent that creates great images with RED. The ads in Amercian Cinematographer are a huge step in the right direction. I think that testimonial quotes from ASC members go a LONG way. They should spend the money on ads in The Hollywood Reporter as well - as the show runners and producers consume that magazine.

There are LOTS of people that have no clue that Matthew Libatique shot Pele on Dragon and loved the images. Personally, I love both Fincher and Soderbergh - as I think they are are both very special, monster talents that make amazing films - but .... EVERYONE knows that David and Steven shoot all of their films on RED and have for along time. They, along with peter Jackson, have been RED's poster boys for a long time. And that speaks volumes - BUT ... it's not the message RED needs right now. People have closed their minds. To open them - you need to send a "it's different now" message.

What will open minds IMO is hearing about highly respected cinematographers who have NOT been choosing RED - and NOW are choosing RED with Dragon.

#3: RED needs to quickly make a couple of awesome modules designed carefully for function - so everyone doesn't have to keep using "hacks" to get the camera to a config that makes the camera crew confident and efficient.

#4: RED needs to impliment CDL and 3D LUT support yesterday in the camera and RCX.

My 4 cents -

Great post Mark!

 

[David Battistella]

True, so what is the route to getting those cinematographers to chose red over a competing camera system?

I'm not sure the cinematographers are really getting to make these choices much anymore. I choose RED because I want to use that whole systems in my productions that I executive produce and produce. I have a heavy post background so red makes complete sense and is easy for me. I love R3d redraw as a format for flexibility and I got the concept from the get go.

Could I sell every producer I meet my system and concept? Probably not. My own clients? More likely.

I actually think it is up to RED to market to cinematographers (arri has done this really well) , it not really up to me to do that. I think I would look at how kodak or Fuji convinced cinematographers to go with their film stocks, or how arri, Aaton, or panavison gets people to shoot features with their gear.

To me those companies did that with excellence, a concise focus on mechanical and image quality and by being in humble service to their customers. But then again, those companies products are dead or close to being dead, so maybe this new way of doing business is better.

Battistella

 

[David Mullen ASC]

It's not just the DP you have to convince... If I say "I want to shoot on the Epic Dragon", I don't want to have to overcome a cynical post supervisor and producer because the moment the tiniest thing goes wrong, they'll say "this was your call..." And if you're talking about a TV series, it can't cost them a dime more to deal with R3D conversions compared to ProRes.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

It's not just the DP you have to convince... If I say "I want to shoot on the Epic Dragon", I don't want to have to overcome a cynical post supervisor and producer because the moment the tiniest thing goes wrong, they'll say "this was your call..." And if you're talking about a TV series, it can't cost them a dime more to deal with R3D conversions compared to ProRes.

YES. It's the old ... “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” For anyone to make a CHANGE - their job is on the line. So .. we need to make sure those people afraid of "non-Alexa/ProRes workflow" know about what succeeful shows are being shot on it.

 

[David Battistella]

To to this point David.

Of late, (and I know I am repeating myself) it seems that RED has to innovate (that's a key word) on a post solution that integrates their entire system. This means simplifying post and not making it someone else's problem. Some think its instant proxy creation, some think its a box that is more than offering a dedicated pci-e card. I'm not sure. I have ideas I have expressed.

If you shoot R3D or Prores your post pipeline does not change so that should not be an issue.

You still have to:
-make multiple backups
-create dailies
-do vfx pulls etc

in the DI the post house has to
-add dedicated hardware for R3D (not really with Prores)
-will have to do that again with Dragon

This is not that big a deal, so maybe folks don't really like the images?
-but there is too much good stuff out there that proves otherwise.

On set reliability
-improved but still has this image hanging over it.

So when the choices are being made they look at it and say, "well, this just works with no bullshit, shoots a Prores file and never breaks down." I think it comes down to simple sentences like that. Not a lot of humming and hawing, just simple.

Not everybody wants to complicate things or, think that something is complicated.

Battistella

It's not just the DP you have to convince... If I say "I want to shoot on the Epic Dragon", I don't want to have to overcome a cynical post supervisor and producer because the moment the tiniest thing goes wrong, they'll say "this was your call..." And if you're talking about a TV series, it can't cost them a dime more to deal with R3D conversions compared to ProRes.

 

[David Battistella]

YES. It's the old ... “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” For anyone to make a CHANGE - their job is on the line. So .. we need to make sure those people afraid of "non-Alexa/ProRes workflow" know about what succeeful shows are being shot on it.

and. A lot of show and tell. And. a lot of hand holding. and. a lot of good reasons to capture r3d (the ones we all know)

and. Really finding a way that saves productions money (because bottom lines matter) save folks money from acquisition to post and they will listen, cost them money and they look elsewhere fast.

Battistella

 

[Isaac Marchionna]

As I said in one of the original suggestion threads, I just want a camera that's laid out in a way that makes sense, and does away with some of the poor design decisions of the Epic body.

If I need to copy/paste from that thread I will. But I'd like a camera laid out like a camera. Otherwise AC's and DP's will continue to appreciate the ALEXA for being laid out as it has been laid out.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Producers buy the images. Not the camera technology. The RED is very easy to sell in expert hands.

Reality (since you are in "fashion") that this is what your client gets by shooting dragon over Alexa, these are facts:

dragon 7x more resolution for frame pulls
more post flexibility in RAW
High resolution 96fps (show me a DSLR that does that)


Its it's been widely shown in feature films that the cameras can be intercut and graded perfectly with perfect skin tone, by a wide range of professional cinematographers.

The camera does not make the images, the cinematographers do.

In an ideal world, perhaps, but reality is producers often dictate the camera technology. Period. Same goes for agency creatives, clients, etc. Not all, but many.

DPs dictate even more often what is rented. Very hard for many to amortize a purchase along the richness of a Dragon Epic without a few external rentals - otherwise it's much smarter for many people to rent the Dragon from other people when they need it.