IMPRESSIONS - Red #13 On A High End Shoot

[Ken Corben]

On Thursday Paradise FX, in alliance with GibCor and Billy Summer's with RED #13, shot a high end project for clients in Los Angeles. This thread will address the prep, set ups, work flow and any tips or tricks we learned or developed thus far.

This thread is not about posting images from our client's shoot - so please don't ask. Gibby and I promised to share our experiences and impressions for redusers' benefit along the way to LART and beyond.

Camera was shot as currently enabled - 24fps, 180 deg shutter using HD-SDI out for montoring. #13 shot 4K REDCODE RAW to four 8GB CF cards all day long. I will post in sections with set up photos over the next few days.

Some of the cool stuff we did with RED #13 includes a technocrane shot with wireless remote record/stop on camera. Now that was sexy.

Details to follow...

[Justin Kirchhoff]

Interesting to see what's coming out of this.

[Emmanuel Cambier]

Bring it on !!

[Sam Druckerman]

Sharky, LOL ... I had no idea you were such a tease.....

Do tell.... and Share the Red Love.

[Frank Mirbach]

Looking forward to seeing this !!

[Mike Prevette]

remote run!!! do tell!

[Hrvoje Simic]

I can't wait. Thank you guys. Looking forward to it.

[Ken Corben]

Sharky, LOL ... I had no idea you were such a tease.....

Do tell.... and Share the Red Love.

Hey, I just took a page out of Jim's playbook :-)

Seriously though, I have to edit the stills write the copy from notes etc and am just slammed at present. That is why I plan to post in segments. Also thought it might be more reader friendly that way for specific "chapters." I think our cabling solutions will be of interest to everyone to start.

Disclaimer: I am not offering an end all solution here - just how we are working for a high end client with RED ONE cameras. There will be a ton of new stuff as more features are enabled.

[Sam Druckerman]

Hey, I just took a page out of Jim's playbook :-)


Ahhhh the plot thickens, :-)

Excellent game plan......

Looking forward to the Next chapter.

And Thanks for sharing.

[Ken Corben]

The first thing we got were a pair of AJA cables that have 4 mini connectors to 4 BNC in a cable wrap. This enabled "one cable" to connect to all 4 RED outs.

We used HD-SDI out for monitoring (camera currently recognizes output on start up if LCD is detached).

The coolest feature was the cable out to the FIZ unit that provided remote record/stop function along with zoom and iris on the lens. The DP, Max Penner from Paradise FX, was walking around the set controlling the RED camera and lens remotely on the technocrane. It was a sight to behold. Max said, "This is to die for."

The rest of the cabling seen in this photo is all industry standard with a few obvious adapters. Camera is fitted with 2 RED top mounts, RED universal mount, RED battery plate and RED Arri 15mm base plate.

Next up - data work flow and viewing dailies in near real time on set.

[Evan Owen]

The first thing we got were a pair of AJA cables that have 4 mini connectors to 4 BNC in a cable wrap. This enabled "one cable" to connect to all 4 RED outs.
...

Where would someone find those cables? I searched AJA's website and didn't come up with anything.

Thanks for all the info! I'm looking forward to the rest.

[Ken Corben]

Robert Howie, Paradise FX DIT, labeled and rotated 4 RED 8 GB CF cards like a pro treating each like a film magazine. The CF cards were transfered to redundant dual GRAIDs via a 17" intel macbook pro.

Each set of data used traditional magazine nomenclature, e.g., 320 D, Roll#, Mag # etc. Then, on set, REDALERT was used to create either 1K, 2K or 4K DPX files to check the shots. Near real time dailies for the DP, AC and clients. Check the gate moving on!

BTW - the clients were very pleased.

Billy's #13 with Skull and cross bones burned 4K footage all day long with no heating or fan noise problems (build 9/17/07) and REDALERT V2 was bug free for us all day on set and back in the "lab" where we baked the 4K footage for selects.

Next up - Shake and Bake with REDALERT and G5's.

[Paul Leeming]

The CF cards were transfered to redundant dual GRAIDs via a 17" intel macbook pro.Hey SharkGuy, do you mind sharing the hardware specs you're using to actually do the transfer to dual RAID drives?

I'm guessing you use a FireWire800 CompactFlash reader to ingest the footage to the computer (or at least act as the source if bypassing the computer's actual HDD) but what's your output link? Another FireWire800 external twin HDD caddy set up with RAID1 for two simultaneous copies? Or something else? If you can, could you give model numbers and/or software versions if necessary.

Cheers,

Paul