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

Ian-T said:
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.
Click to expand...
28 Days Later was a good boost for the director, be had had already been given free hands on The Beach, which was shot on film and had a big budget. So 28 Days Later, I think is much more his choice, and the DPs choice to shoot on miniDV because of "smaller cameras" instead of a producer bashing them on the head telling them they can't afford film.
,
Also, I remember back then that people complained about the quality of the movie in cinema, but heck, the story/filmmaking was great so it didn't matter. Once it was available on DVD, you also didn't have a problem with pixels, since it was native to around 720*576, and HDTV with Blu-Rays or HD-DVDs wasn't out yet. Off course now it will look like crap on a 60 inch HDTV, but back then on a 32 inch SD tube it wouldn't really be that much of a difference. Really, the problem is that 28 Days Later was made for the time period it was created, compared to film which has the luxury of having more resolution (but hidden) that can be extracted when you go from DVDs and needs to do a Blu-Ray version.
 
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. 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.
Click to expand...

starcentral said:
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.
Click to expand...

You would have a hard time trying to balance ratios with afternoon sun streaming through a window and only a few 250 watters to work with.

I love big fresnels.
 
I get it: if there are strong uncontrolled light sources, you need strong lights, in some cases you wouldn't even notice if the 250W prolight is on or off. But if that's not the case, a set of prolights is more than enough nowadays. And putting ND gel on your windows may be cheaper than getting the huge lights and all that comes with them. Specially at the price of that creativecow thread dustilense posted! (wow)
 
Robert Ruffo said:
The look of Safety Guaranteed did not help it - many distributors passed on it because it looked "cheap and depressing". I must say I agree with them. Critics even mention this - it's very hard to watch because it looks so ugly.
Click to expand...
I finally got a copy of "Safety Not Guaranteed" via Amazon after seeing the trailer and getting interested in the storyline.

It was an NTSC DVD, so no judgements about resolution, but in no way can I say it looked "cheap and depressing", and I just cannot believe any critic can say "it's very hard to watch because it looks so ugly". I really didn't see any (technical) issues in it that were any worse than you'd see in 99% of other films.

And certainly nothing which took me away from the storyline. It's not meant to be taken too seriously, but I can only say that I enjoyed it a lot - and that seems to be the general impression of the comments on Amazon. Very engaging film with good characters, and manages to be both funny with a good story at the same time.
 
harddrive said:
...in no way can I say it looked "cheap and depressing"...
Click to expand...

I wonder if that's because you live in London, which like the Pacific Northwest US can get rather grey. Some of the people who complained no doubt live in Southern California and expect everything to be sunny all the time. Anything less than sunny is interpreted to be a part of a mood that's being set and not just what a place happens to look like. I live here, and I did get a little of that off season beach town/ depressed vibe, but for me it was a good way to enhance the theme that this was about regretting lost opportunities whether from the past summer or back in your youth. If they filmed it during the summer when that town is sunny every single day and packed with kids, it would be more of a screwball comedy and less a look at regret. I think the filmmakers did it right on this one.
 
Andrius Simutis said:
I wonder if that's because you live in London, which like the Pacific Northwest US can get rather grey.
Click to expand...
:) After the events in the UK of last night, it's quite amusing to read that! "Rather grey" was quite an understatement! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24701419
I live here, and I did get a little of that off season beach town/ depressed vibe, but for me it was a good way to enhance the theme that this was about regretting lost opportunities whether from the past summer or back in your youth.......... I think the filmmakers did it right on this one.
Click to expand...
Yes, I agree with all of that. I thought the somewhat deserted atmosphere fitted absolutely well, and the visuals matched it. Perhaps it's the use of "ugly" and "cheap and depressing" to describe it that I would most disagree with.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top