People seem to not be excited about RED?

[CalicoIce]

Hey guys quick question. I'm really excited about this camera. I think it's awesome what red has come up with. But when I talk to filmmakers out there they seem to dismiss it. Isn't this pretty new technology? Or has it been around for a long time? Just curious.

[jbeale]

Red is the newest thing there is... which is both good and bad. A lot of filmmakers are pretty traditional about their workflow, and may think that digital = video = bad. Many people just prefer what they're used to, and why not. I'd say if film works for you, use it. If digital works, likewise. Also, Red is so new that few people have really seen what it can do, since the optimal end-to-end workflow is still being worked out.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Sure were a lot of stoked folks at HD Expo in Burbank today. The Leader of the Rebellion came to speak and it was so popular they had to add a second show. Dozens of people with plenty of filmmaking experience were gathered around the Red Ninjas booth asking lots of questions and showing a lot of what appeared to be genuine enthusiasm about working with the RedOne.

[Blue]

Hey guys quick question. I'm really excited about this camera. I think it's awesome what red has come up with. But when I talk to filmmakers out there they seem to dismiss it. Isn't this pretty new technology? Or has it been around for a long time? Just curious.

Buy it. Try it. If it's no good chuck it in the bin.

[Steve Sherrick]

Denny, what is your film's budget? What style are you looking for in terms of cinematography?

Steve

[Blue]

Hey guys quick question. I'm really excited about this camera. I think it's awesome what red has come up with. But when I talk to filmmakers out there they seem to dismiss it. Isn't this pretty new technology? Or has it been around for a long time? Just curious.

Hey Denny. How was your trip? What trip? The trip to the moon. I'm assuming that's where you must have been for the last year & a half not to have heard of Red.

Take it lightly. Though I am genuinely concerned.

[CalicoIce]

Hey guys thank you so much Blue I've been folowing this camera for a while and I didn't mean that no one is excited I know there's alot of film peeps excited. I just seem to get bashed everytime I talk about the red in other forums. But hey to me it's there loss. I love film but I love what red can do.

Steve,

My budget is 6-7 million, and I want to shoot it on red. I already have Hakon coming out to Vegas to showcase the cam and help raise funds for my other true story film that I got the rights to. So I want to test it on the true story first then Shoot Summons next. And I'm still working on the look and feel of the Summons.

[Eryc Tramonn]

Hey Denny. How was your trip? What trip? The trip to the moon. I'm assuming that's where you must have been for the last year & a half not to have heard of Red.

Take it lightly. Though I am genuinely concerned.

Funny man.

[Sven Seynaeve]

We've seen this reaction all over again in the audio recording biz. The early adoption to digital recording whent quick, then the quality and warmth of the sound became an issue. People then tried to buy the most expensive stuff, and they still do just to get the feeling it will sound right, but in the end it just depends on who is in charge.
Anyway I've always tried to get a non conservative viewpont, and I definately
had to decide some day going all digital , because you just can't beat the workflow and the ease of use.

[Alexander Nikishin]

Everyone I've come across loves the camera and is absolutely amazed at the quality of the image.

[bbb]

Red is revolution and future...
If you know what to do with it!
If you do not know what to do with it...it is just another camera.
You can buy Sunglasses...or you can buy oakley and see!

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

A lot of people seem threatened by anything promising what they consider to be too much, or anything potentially revolutionary. I'm not entirely sure why, most people embrace new home technology quickly in spirit, if not in purchase. I mean everyone wants a Blu-Ray player, just not everyone can afford one. Should be the same with RED, but instead you got a lot of blowhards out there who are convinced they know everything about filmmaking and they don't need the RED, even though actually they're idiots who have been in the industry for a long time and learned approximately nothing of value except how to follow the lead and be slaves to whatever system was in place when they got there. Those are the people who history will never remember, so it's not really worth anyone's time to remember them now, either.

Just wait until another year or so, the RED will work its way into most medium and high budget productions because it's the camera that makes the most sense. Of course something like the HVX200 will dominate the lower budget market for the near future because there are still plenty, plenty of people out there who can't afford a camera that costs as much as the RED with all of the proper supporting technology.

[GlennChan]

Easy there lol... no need to be so inflammatory.

2- To answer the original question... some people may not be very excited about Red because there are some people who are cynical/wary of products that have a lot of hype behind them. And rightly so, because a lot of new film/video products that are released have flaws (e.g. bugs, missing features) and aren't quite as advertised.

As a responsible producer, you should cut through the hype and figure out the pros and cons with shooting with the Red for your particular project and needs. Not all features are enabled yet... do you need those? The workflow may still be a big question mark, especially since not all the pieces of the puzzle are there (Redcine not released yet). And the data-based workflow brings its own challenges / it could be really painful.

On the plus side, the technical quality of the images is excellent... IMO it looks better than the Viper stills on the Cineform blog (lower noise; and more resolution), better than Dalsa examples on their site (lower noise), better than Silicon Imaging (no aliasing and baer artifacts from insufficient OLPF).

[dino g]

I strongly suggest all doubter read "the speed of sound" (click here for a good review) (http://www.cinemonkey.com/reviews/bennett/soundbennett.html) - which documents the use of sound in movie making.

indulge me with a quote from the review...


"Perhaps it's a little easy, with the advantage of historical hindsight, to harshly judge the studio owners in Hollywood for their reticence in adopting new motion picture technologies in the silent era. Most of the major Hollywood studios didn't see the point of shaking things up. After all, don't we each crave stability and homogony in our lives?"

sound familiar...

scary the similarities to what we are coming up against. i echo blairs take on things, we too were at HD Expo and a lot of well established people asked some very good questions and seem to have an open mind about the camera and the future.

what the people that you are talking with are saying is exactly what people were saying to us shortly after NAB 2006. some of those same people are calling us for rentals because their future cameras have serial numbers with 4 figures and the first 2 are not zeroes.

get one of us to come to you to do a demo, shoot some nice footage, push it through fcp and you too will be a fan. as for the doubters, take a number and a seat.

ok one more quote from the review..

" In the space of about two years an entire industry was turned on its ear and forced wholly into a phoenixlike rebirth. The loss of the silent film, which had just developed its artistic vocabulary, is lamentable but the ultimate value of the development of the sound film is seen is each of the world's greatest sound era films."


review and copyrights to my quotes go to...Copyright © 1999 by Carl Bennett


FINALLY, to all those whom will say that the connection is too loose, i submit that the evolution of sound into the lexicon of film making is very similar to the aggregate effect that red, the sony 4k projector, the sony media block, FCP et. al, and the regal cinema's network (and others like it) will have on the motion picture industry. no one piece is truly tranformative to the extent that sound was/is, but the package herein described, taken as a whole, is revolutionary.

[CalicoIce]

We've seen this reaction all over again in the audio recording biz. The early adoption to digital recording whent quick, then the quality and warmth of the sound became an issue. People then tried to buy the most expensive stuff, and they still do just to get the feeling it will sound right, but in the end it just depends on who is in charge.
Anyway I've always tried to get a non conservative viewpont, and I definately
had to decide some day going all digital , because you just can't beat the workflow and the ease of use.

I agree go digital it's going to make life easier. Heck even the movie theater projectionist are loving it. No more splicing.

[Jonas Nyström]

Every "real cinematographer"* initial opinion is from "it will never, never work" to sceptical (anyway the DPs I talked to). Why? Is it a good sceptisism based on years of experience? Could be. Is it a way to keep the guild safe from harm? Could be as well.

But one thing for shure: If RED work as is it designed to - film has lost it - forever. If every good photographer could get a affordable camera with variable FPS, short Dof, high resolution, and a nice cine look - the competion on film/commercials will be changed forever, it will be entirely different. The same revolution has already changed the landscape in many different business: music, graphic design, advertising, photo, etc - why should it not do so in cinematography?

*working with 35mm

[mezmo]

Hey guys quick question. I'm really excited about this camera. I think it's awesome what red has come up with. But when I talk to filmmakers out there they seem to dismiss it. Isn't this pretty new technology? Or has it been around for a long time? Just curious.

Hi Denny,
As Glen said all pieces of the Red puzzle are not yet in place.
The camera is being used on features at the moment but by
people who are pretty close to the development team at Red.
A lot of post houses are reluctant to consider Red becaue a
common workflow is not yet in place and will dismiss it untill
there is.
If your busting to use Red now, people like Mark at Offhollywood
in NYC have a workflow already in place with Duart as a filmout
post partner.
Hope this helps. Mezmo.

[David Newman]

IMO it looks better than the Viper stills on the Cineform blog (lower noise; and more resolution), better than Dalsa examples on their site (lower noise), better than Silicon Imaging (no aliasing and baer artifacts from insufficient OLPF).

I saw the CineForm reference so I had to reply. Regarding lower noise, both the Dalsa and Viper images are either uncompressed or very lightly compressed around 4:1. 12:1 wavelet compression softens noise visibly (not always a bad thing,) so you haven't seen the true noise floor out of Red yet, so you can't directly compare noise levels (once the RAWPort exists then you can compare Red to Dalsa directly.) Many early posted SI-2K images used a low quality demosaic algorithm, the OLPF has always been fine in my experience.

The related blog is here http://cineform.blogspot.com

[Greg Syverson]

Red has set the standard. Other camera makers will now do what they need to do to compete. This may include step ups in features, price reduction or just find their own market. One thing for sure Red will force them to offer a heck of a lot more for the money.

[Álex Montoya]

You have to think as well that the RED has still a pretty long way to go: firmware updates, new software...

Think alone that we haven't seen the whole resolution this camera has to offer. Right now it gives 4096X2048... that's around 27% less pixels than the final resolution ( 4520 X 2540 )

[GlennChan]

David you raise some good points.

so you haven't seen the true noise floor out of Red yet, so you can't directly compare noise levels (once the RAWPort exists then you can compare Red to Dalsa directly.)
There are some images in the CML comparisons, comparing with and without Redcode (this is an early version of Redcode RAW... and the FPGA implementation may slightly differ e.g. the split frame bug got fixed).
http://www.cinematography.net/Red/comp-matrix.html


Many early posted SI-2K images used a low quality demosaic algorithm, the OLPF has always been fine in my experience.
What I've seen in the past anyways are colors where there shouldn't be any (e.g. black and white objects, text) and on specular highlights. I'd be curious if there are examples which don't show those things.

e.g. at this page:
http://www.siliconimaging.com/DigitalCinema/gallery_stillimages.html
All 4 examples show those artifacts.

One of the video clips (SOC) that I looked at don't show those artifacts, but it could be the compression hiding them. e.g. compressing the stills to low-quality 4:2:0 JPEG will hide the color artifacts (by that I mean color where there shouldn't be any).

[jbeale]

Think alone that we haven't seen the whole resolution this camera has to offer. Right now it gives 4096X2048... that's around 27% less pixels than the final resolution ( 4520 X 2540 )

Is red planning to make the 4520 resolution recordable via Redcode (as opposed to the RAW port)? I thought that was always planned as the extra "look around" resolution showing on the viewfinder only, not part of the recorded data.

[David Newman]

David you raise some good points.

There are some images in the CML comparisons, comparing with and without Redcode (this is an early version of Redcode RAW... and the FPGA implementation may slightly differ e.g. the split frame bug got fixed).
http://www.cinematography.net/Red/comp-matrix.html

I agree, I wouldn't use those to analize the noise floor for a shipping camera. They do demostrate that compression is changing the noise signature, as expected. As for split frame issue (bug or design specification) the top and bottom of the image is still compressed separately in recent samples I've seen--the compression is using two image tiles, cause a mismatch is the noise signature at the middle point the screen. Has that changed in the last build? The two tiles are likely used to improve decoding thread-ability (more speed), or overcome a hardware limitation (less likely.) I'm only guessing for the reason. Most will not notice, plus we used to a world that divides image is 8x8 tiles, so two tiles is better than many (a single tile is still best.)


e.g. at this page:
http://www.siliconimaging.com/DigitalCinema/gallery_stillimages.html
All 4 examples show those artifacts.

Those are some of the samples I'm talking about. There is fast demosaic that is used for preview, that is not used for the final rendered export. Unfortunately, back then if the images were gathered using the frame grab mode within Premiere, it uses the preview demosaic (as you see here.) All that was fixed about 6-9 months ago. They have so many projects under their belt now, they need to update their samples. I've see much better, although still 2K. :)

[Mark L. Pederson]

You have to think as well that the RED has still a pretty long way to go: firmware updates, new software...

Think alone that we haven't seen the whole resolution this camera has to offer. Right now it gives 4096X2048... that's around 27% less pixels than the final resolution ( 4520 X 2540 )

I am shooting 4096 x 2304. Playing it in Scratch.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Tried to beat a free copy of Scratch out of Lucas at HD Expo but no luck :weight_lift:

Seriously jealous of that Scratch seat bro. Rock on.

[Mark L. Pederson]

Tried to beat a free copy of Scratch out of Lucas at HD Expo but no luck :weight_lift:

Seriously jealous of that Scratch seat bro. Rock on.

you gotta pay to play - some of the best things in life are free - our Red cameras and our Scratch seat were not - but ... both worth ten times the price.

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Please do not tell Lucas that a Scratch seat is worth more than he is charging :gun: or he will raise the price and I'll never be able to afford one.

[Kholi Hicks]

There are a lot of excited people. The director that we worked with this past week said that it felt like he was waiting for Jessie James to step on set when referring to the Camera.

He was even more ecstatic when the second cam came around.

That said: It's still another tool. A great tool. A tool that needs updating. A tool that pulls virtually noiseless images. A heavy tool doing handheld (boy was that fun). A tool that's become more and more professional with each new update (freezing on set is not pro, IMO. Tear me apart if you want.). But once the initial AWE is over, it's another camera.

It won't get you a distro deal, it won't make your script or content better.

But it sure is a nice camera. Hats off.