Future of the RED Camera? – Food for Thought from our Founder

DBP said:
I can understand handheld..but I really have a hard time buying that a lot of what's used as handheld has to be *that* shakey. It really looks like they're actively trying to make it shakier than they have to, which is a strange choice as far as I'm concerned.
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For sure, even I have trouble with my own handheld... sometimes I just can't breathe right xD Tried sticks recently, really disliked it, gotta be a middle ground somewhere's!

Carry on!
 
I'm not a fan of shakey cameras either, but I will give movies like Safety Not Guaranteed a free pass, because I know from shooting my stuff that hand held is faster and cheaper. Sure you don't have to shake the hell out of it, and maybe Safety did, I can't remember (was tired when I watched it). But when you are shooting on sticks or dollys, you have to spend more time on composition, blocking, set dressing etc. With hand held if someone moves a foot too much to the right, then you can compensate for it on the move, and you don't have to yell cut to re-frame or re-block the action. All of a sudden the actor moves too much again and the lights will be visible in camera if you just tilt up with him, with hand held you can just raise yourself up a bit more to compensate.

However, my favorite kinds of movies are the ones in style of Citizen Kane, There Will Be Blood, with excellent tracking shots, I prefer well planned shots, but not necessarily to the degree that Scoresese does in Hugo, Goodfellas, etc. he is too elaborate, which is also distracting.

Probably one movie with the best and soundest cinematography is American Beauty, you only have hand held during one violent scene. Action/style/atmosphere dictated the camera work.
 
Robert Ruffo said:
Good cinematography doesn't have to cost a whole lot - and the script was written before the budget was even created/found, and before the DP was even hired.
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I'm a little confused why you're refusing to acknowledge that the director was also hired to direct the new Jurassic Park movie.

Also here's an article that goes into a little more detail about the choices they made: http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.co...hooting-sony’s-f3-safety-not-guaranteed/59539
 
Safety Not Guaranteed looks like video because it was shot before SLOG was available for the F3. It's a shame because SLOG completely transforms that camera. But I still really enjoyed the film regardless - the benefits of a good story and solid performances I suppose.
 
They shot in Seattle, my guess is they planned for overcast weather, in which case the F3 should have been fine. The sunny exteriors killed them, it looks like 8bit in the trailer. The trailer may also not be from the final grade, and it's on Youtube. If it looks that bad in a theater, that would be a bit embarrassing for the DP, but it's all about the story and the story telling in the end. If it's not so bad that it distracts from the story I think most younger audiences(their target) will cut them slack.
They got a very popular actor from New Girl, Jake Johnson who was also in Pacific Rim this summer, and what comes across as a good script and descent directing at least in the trailer. If their final grade looks that saturated and blown out, that sucks, but it got into theaters and made just over $4mil at the BO. They can afford to make better visual choices on their next one. The film makers should be proud of what they accomplished even if the aesthetics are a bit lacking. We should all do so well with our projects.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1862079/business?ref_=tt_dt_bus
 
Lee Saxon said:
We haven't had a budget revolution because producers don't understand the digital revolution. They're budgeting and shooting these digital shoots exactly the same way they would a film shoot, minus the cost of the film itself. Since you're right that labor, not the cost of film, is where the money goes and how digital shoots ought to be different, that strategy obviously doesn't work.

You're now shooting at ISO1600 instead of ISO200 (or less). You don't need six trucks worth of lighting gear. The camera now weighs 7lbs instead of 50. You don't need a crew to move it around. You pull a memory card out of the camera, slide another one in, and walk the first over to a computer. You don't need, for that, the 73 guys it took to keep film magazines constantly reloaded. Etc.

The other day on Freret Street in New Orleans I saw 6+ grip trucks lined up outside a shoot that was taking place in a rowhouse so small three light stands wouldn't have fit inside. I don't know what those guys were doing, but in the digital era I'm sure they didn't need to be doing it.
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Molding light still requires a lot of equipment. Maybe you don't need as powerful lights as with film, but if you just turn on a practical and shoot it's not going to look gorgeous. Maybe you're not going for gorgeous, but if you are, yea that still takes equipment. If you get serious about lighting and want to achieve a certain look you may need the smallest flag to take out a distracting flare, or you may want some extra light just on the actors eyes, etc. The fact that you have a great ISO doesn't make that any less labor or gear intensive.

So sure, if you're like, I just want to make sure you can see the actors and it's not to noisy, you don't need much gear and some films will be just fine that that look. However, some productions are going in a different direction.

I"d also say that the labor you get rid of with film is often replaced. Sure, you no longer need a "loader" for the film mags, but now you may need a DIT guy to keep up with offloading the cards, charging the batteries, etc. Can you do without a DIT? Sure, you can do sound, lights, and camera all by your self if you want to, but it's going to produce a different result the less assets you have to work with in the time you have to shoot.
 
My point is that if you can shoot ISO 800 instead of ISO 200, you can do with a 250W prolight what you used to do with a 1K fresnel. Of course you still need lights, and difussion and flags and reflectors and whatnot. But the light itself is a fourth of the price, and you probably don't need generators and an electrician and all that.
 
To add to what Gillvane is saying, when you shoot digitally it is actually much harder to light for it because compared to film it is much less forgiving. I find you have to control your lighting a lot more with digital than you would with film or it will easily look like "video" and usually its the highlights that become the dead giveaway.

Having said that higher end cameras like the F900, F35, ARRI, RED which even though are "digital" do way more to handle how highlights are rendered that produce a far more natural and organic filmic look than something like the F3 or any DSLR "out of the box" will do.

slog or clog does do a lot to remove some of the video look and yield moother highlights, and does shooting in RAW.
 
Samuel H said:
My point is that if you can shoot ISO 800 instead of ISO 200, you can do with a 250W prolight what you used to do with a 1K fresnel.
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Except for the fact that those two lights produce completely different looks.

It's not just about wattage. Sometime you need a big lensed fresnel shooting from 15' away, and you're not doing that with a pepper.
 
It's also not uncommon to mix existing ambient light with your own lights, so often you would still need the power simply to maintain a desired and relative lighting ratio.
 
So about the future of RED cameras. Because we've seen a derailment concerning a movie that cost $750k that made $4million, won tons of festival awards, and propelled the director to go on and direct the next Jurassic Park. I mean, only something every single person on DVXuser could only wish for.....
So in this thread, some have criticized Spike Lee to a guy that seems to have gone from shooting shorts and indies to now directing major motion projects all by using the Sony F3 on his FIRST feature film. And you guys nit pick that? Let me rephrase that. A guy that took the Sony F3 (A camera that is available to all of you) won a ton of awards and took his $750,000 production and made $4million has been chosen to write and direct Jurassic Park 4. You know, that franchise that set records with the first release? Ya know, that movie that was directed by Steven Spielberg? Obviously the guy did this all without worrying about s-logs, peppers and 1k's, Raw.

That alone is a beautiful story. Maybe you should go to the marketplace and pick up a used Sony F3 for about $6000 and film it.....You might not even need one with the s-log update.
 
starcentral said:
good wrap up dusty, good wrap up.
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Since art school I always took notice of the people who said "I think it looks like crap". I then noticed that it was the underachieving students saying that about students creating things that were being noticed and excelling. Funny that it still continues in adulthood. It's called jealousy and usually by people that haven't and never will reach the heights they thought they would.... It's easy to say what you would do or how somebody did it wrong when you have done anything that people took notice of to back it up, because you haven't yet failed....

So what did i do then. I removed myself from those negative students because I realized they would never amount to anything (and i was right). I placed myself around the students that were getting noticed and acclaim. They were better than me and this I knew. They never said negative things about the struggling students. They where happy to share things. They gave encouragement. Most of those students have gone on to VERY SUCCESSFUL careers. I'm no big shot, but man I get by these days. I make 6 figures yearly and I was in my own mind an average student in art school. Positive thinking and being around the like will get you further than any RAW camera or codec ever will.

I see the trailer to this Safety Not Guaranteed and think to myself, "I wish I had a movie that looked like that and did as well as it did". That's all I see in it and think when I see it.
 
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Samuel H said:
My point is that if you can shoot ISO 800 instead of ISO 200, you can do with a 250W prolight what you used to do with a 1K fresnel.
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Not necessarily - the whole point of the lighting may be to light one point of the scene, with the rest of it not under your control. In which case, the power of the light required is not under your control, and ISO rating is irrelevant.
 
starcentral said:
good wrap up dusty, good wrap up.
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Agreed - I've gone back and watched the trailer again, and I can't say I can see anything that really stands out negatively in respect of quality, not that can't be put down to online compression, anyway. Not that's startlingly worse than many other films.

That said, there are a couple of shots that are very burnt out and contrasty - but I now see they seem to be intended to be a sort of "video message", so deliberately made to look lower quality. (You can also tell by the way they are cropped differently.)

If the film was being made today, I'm sure it would make more sense to use at least an F5, ideally an F55. But that's not the point - they weren't available at the time. That it was made with an F3 (and seemingly with the onboard codec?) with the look largely burnt in at the time of shooting just makes me surprised it isn't far worse!

Heck, I'm going to have to buy it now just to see the whole thing - and it's only available as a Region 1 DVD......
 
This convo "sort of" makes me go back to "28 Days Later" and how I enjoyed watching it back then. There was nothing about its technical aspects that took me out of the movie (maybe because I wasn't looking for it). But I watched it again (online) last summer and was floored on badly i thought it looked (in comparison with what we normally see today). This time however I was looking at it with a critical eye (unlike the average viewer). I guess my point is that the director did his job....told a good story for the average Joe to enjoy and also boosted his career. If he were to film it today (and was not as famous as he is now) he would have probably used a Canon 5XX/Panasonic GHX/Nikon XXX or whatever and then ten years from now we critical viewing folks would complain about how poor it looks in comparison with whatever tech they have at that time.
 
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