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View Full Version : Dped with RED and Offhollywoodstudios yesterday



indierider
09-03-2007, 05:26 PM
We hosed it down with a couple of REDs this weekend. At Dusk Saturday Mark, Aldey and Pliny of Offhollywoodstudios arrived at my apt in Brooklyn Heights with camera's 0006 and 0007 and it was on.
First thing we did was throw one of them on steadicam(which was no problem) and shoot some magic hour on the promenade. It was the perfect test. The sun coming down the barrel as it set behind the back lit buildings. Rich Contrast everywhere in everything. We took a couple of passes around a sculpture and shot an impromptu iphone commercial with Mike Curtis' (HDforIndies)and his iphone while he was blogging on it. That guy is a crazy blogger. The camera floated around beautifully on the rig (Alec Jarnigin operating) The images were startling. RED held the sky and clouds like slide film.
Next we humped the cameras to my roofdeck where we shot New York Harbor at sunset. Pliny with beer in hand was dumping cards like he has been doing it his entire life. Mark was popping cards and I was operating. The images were startling. What I saw on REDalert looked like a perfectly exposed super thick negative that you know you can take anywhere you want in timing. I felt like I was about to start a 35mm telecine session. Tons of resolution, latitude, nothing clipping, nothing muddy. It looked nothing like video.
The Camera is built beautifully. This thing is tough. If you dropped it on your foot I would worry about your foot before I would worry about the camera. Its like the love child of an Audi S4 and a M16. There is no cheesy ENG plastic on this thing. The Cage is genius. Steel with plenty of places to to rig to and to grab... and I was grabbing the thing.
Day 2. Offhollywood, and my team rolled out to the jersey shore to Driver's East Stunt Driving School where I shot from Owen Holland's (owner of Action Camera Car)camera car and crane an amazing team of Stunt Car drivers hucking there cars into skids, 180s, slaloms, drifts you name it. These guys make Jason Bourne look like he drives like your grandma. I was spinning on the crane operating the camera with cage a lot it was great to have those points to hold onto as Owen and I chased these mad men (Roy Farful and Mike Burke) around.
The cameras worked flawlessly in the hot sun. Batteries performed great, 8g cards provide plenty of shooting time and the turn around is 8mins max. I didn't wait for a thing all day. Mark, Aldey and Pliny really delivered. They know this camera and its workflow inside and out.
It was a great opportunity for me. Thanks to Offhollywoodstudios, Action Camera Car and Driver's East for everything I look forward to the next one and the one after that.
Paul E. McCarthy DP

Seung Han
09-03-2007, 05:42 PM
drooling over here...

Justin O'Neill
09-03-2007, 05:44 PM
Thank you for posting here Paul!

It is great to hear about the camera build and design. Glad to see it is living up to our expectations!

Zach Hilton
09-03-2007, 07:14 PM
I sure hope we get to see some of that footage some time. Sounds like you had a blast! Thanks for sharing.

indierider
09-03-2007, 07:59 PM
footage is on its way. I'm dying to see it too.

Rick Darge
09-03-2007, 09:52 PM
Can't wait !

IAN SUN
09-04-2007, 11:15 AM
Juicy stuff!

Chris Parker
09-04-2007, 11:56 AM
So...what did you do with the cards when full. Interested to hear about the 8 minute turnaround workflow....

Eirik Tyrihjel
09-04-2007, 12:20 PM
Thanks for the report Paul! (Sounds like the long wait for RED ONE is going to be worth every minute of it!)

I am also curious if by 8-minute turnaround you mean - 8 minutes to eject card, dump to disk, reset and insert ready to shoot. (or something more scary)

indierider
09-04-2007, 08:32 PM
8 minutes means that from when Mark took the card out of the camera and gave it to Pliny he had it on a G Raid with 800 firewire and I could go take a look at the footage.

Chris Parker
09-04-2007, 08:34 PM
8 minutes means that from when Mark took the card out of the camera and gave it to Pliny he had it on a G Raid with 800 firewire and I could go take a look at the footage.

Pliny, could you please let us know your workflow from the time you had a card handed to you until the time you handed it back empty. Cheers.

indierider
09-05-2007, 09:21 PM
I saw the stuff today at offhollywood its looking really good. mike curtis(hdforindies) is throwing it down on his OctoMac and 30inch. Thank you very much Mr. Jannard and Red Team the camera is amazing. I'm really blown away.

MikeCurtis
09-05-2007, 10:51 PM
It was WAY fun to hang out on that set. Mark let me post some of the stills Pliny converted with Red's software tools on my site viewable here:

http://www.hdforindies.com/2007/09/red-one-shoot-offhollywood-stunt-cars.html

Paul McCarthy (poster above,the DP from set) came over as I was going through some ProRes files Pliny had flipped from the native Redcode RAW stuff. We conferred a bit (they're 2048x1024 instead of 1080 at this point), so I whipped up a Compressor preset to scale into 1920x1080, letterbox to account for the aspect ratio difference, and windowburn timecode with an opacity. Handed the preset back, dropped it in, ran a batch and it worked like a champ. It's all about bullk efficiency workflow...

Even after 1st gen compression from Redcode, scaling down, and re-encoding to ProRes (the HQ variant), this stuff STILL holds up beautifully.

If you had told me a year or two ago that camera native compression, scaled and run through an NLE vendor's "It's practically uncompressed!" (say with salesman's tone) new codec and it'd look super clean and nice, I'd have stared at you funny. Not here.

There's a lot of footage of high frequency detail in the pavement/tarmac the cars were driving on, I'm interested in squinting at some stills Pliny kicks out and comparing that to the ProResHQ to see what ProRes can REALLY do when you have clean source to compare it to.

-mike