My first RED shoot

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Pete@twenty7pix

Active member
Hey guys,
This is my first post on this forum. I'm doing a last minute gig tomorrow and they're shooting on a RED. I havent been on a shoot yet with one and wanted to get some advice. Should I have the producer rent a mixer (havent saved up enough money yet for one) and go directly into the RED? Or should I use my stand alone recorder (H4n unfortunately) and sync up later? Are there any tricky things to look out for when using the RED? Any info/advice would be much appreciated. This is my first big shoot and I want to minimize the bumps in the road as much as possible. Thanks guys (and gals.)
 
I'd say always record to an external recorder when possible, even if you want to pipe the audio from the recorder back to the RED to help with the sync.
 
External recorders will always give an edge in audio fidelity, but the RED isn't a slouch with audio recording depending on your needs.

What is the nature of your shoot?
 
I'm not a sound guy (as in I don't do it for a living) but I did a whole short going right into the RED and it came out just fine. And that was before they had replaced the audio boards with better ones. I don't know if your H4n would give any better results.

I think the best option is to arrange a test beforehand if you can.
 
William_Robinette said:
but the RED isn't a slouch with audio recording depending on your needs.
Click to expand...

Really?
RED is one of the worst pro cameras out there regarding sound.
It is so untrustworthy its scary.

Ive done I dunno.maybe 50 days with the RED.
I've never been expected to nor would ever dream of recording my only
audio to that camera.
I send a reference feed to it and either jam my recorders timecode (master)
to the camera (slave) or use a timecode slate and treat it like a film shoot.

If you're using a timecode recorder just match it to the camera (23.98)


Im not saying you CANT get usable sound to the RED if everything works properly but
the chances of things NOT going properly is FAR greater with this camera compared to just about any other out there.
 
I suggest if they want him running into the camera as primary to at least use his
recorder as a backup.
 
William_Robinette said:
I'm not a sound guy (as in I don't do it for a living) but I did a whole short going right into the RED and it came out just fine. And that was before they had replaced the audio boards with better ones. I don't know if your H4n would give any better results.

I think the best option is to arrange a test beforehand if you can.
Click to expand...

Don't take this the wrong way but I have done post on an awful lot of projects and I don't think more that a couple thought the production sound was bad. In fact 90% of low budget (as in DVX user low not Hollywood $30 mil low) production sound is bad some is near useless, and the directors always seem surprised.

My point is that as a non sound person one has to take the "just fine" with a bunch of grains of salt.

The onboard audio on the RED is a bit notorious for not being very good. I haven't personally dealt with it since everyone has used external recorders on the projects I have gotten.

The RED is also a noisy camera, so even with dual system sound you get some high pitched whines and if it gets hot and the fans kick in...

Those issues of course don't directly impact the single VS double system audio question but they do show a lack of though about sound.

That said worked right you can get excellent sound onto a portable cassette deck so I'm sure it's possible with the RED.

As a production mixer my problem with going direct is that I don't have control over my recorder. There are ton's of ways camera people can screw up the sound unintentionally and guess who is left holding the bag. The last time I got talked into only going direct (it was quite a few years ago) I got hosed. I figured it was going to be OK, the DP wanted to work that way and "always did i that way". We were splitting the feed and recording to two different cameras with split levels on each, instant backup. Because of logistics I couldn't monitor either camera directly but both camera ops had headphones and we did a trial run so...

After the big shot everyone's happy... At the break camera one notices that they had switched from line to mic - totally blown out sound (and just how did they not hear that?), no prob camera 2 is the backup. We play camera 2 and, dead silence? Nobody knows why. And again they didn't notice no sound??? Now I should have been monitoring one of the cameras but that can get problematic depending on the configuration and you still can't see meters so you really can't monitor with any great accuracy. Point is I ended up doing a few days of ADR for free because I should never have agreed to go only single system. If they want a feed to the camera I do that but I ALWAYS also pass it to my recorder so I have a backup that I have control over.

The short version. Even if the RED has great audio, mirror to a recorder you control because the reality is nobody on set is thinking about sound quality but you. They aren't trying to screw you they just have other things THEY are responsible for. YOU are responsible for getting the best sound you can and the only way to have any control over that is to actually control it.

Until a camera maker offers a remote for the on board audio so that the mixer can control and monitor sound you have to treat them as picture taking devices that happen to also be able to record sound.
 
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