Rental setup

[dalemccready]

Hi All,

I wanted to guage opinion as to setups and requirements for rental. I may place my Red with an existing rental house to get it earning and still allow me to shoot my work on it (and they have all the accessories).

My question: Do you think part of the service that is offered with the camera is a MacPro back at the rental house that can convert the RAW files into editable files, offloading to drives that the client buy as part of the job?

As a DP the question other dps ask me a lot is will they get cut out of the loop with digital cameras, yet I think the DP is the perfect person to do the RAW transfer or at least supervise it. But would they want to spend the time doing this after a shoot? I personally would straight away, but if it was the next day it could mess the rental house around.

It occurs to me that part of the service for this camera is making sure that client's hands are held through the RAW-file output process so that they can get on with their edits.

Or will Redcine be more available than this? Can we shoot RAW, get the loader to transfer on set to back ups and walk away leaving the rest to the client?

I ask this since I would prefer to set up a facility myself and offer the complete service as part of the hire, but if I can only afford to put the camera in an existing rental house am I dooming the RED experience to be incomplete and frustrating for clients?

...thoughts?

[Clayton Harper]

If you think in terms of being analogous to shooting film it's pretty simple.

If you are getting commercial rates, then you are usually getting paid to sit on a telecine session. Thus, you get paid to make sure the RAW transfers look good. If you were hired for your expertise and your reel, this should be no problem.

If the job is a labor of love, then hopefully you love it enough to supervise the RAW file transfer without being paid.

If you are splitting the difference, maybe you get good at making these transfers yourself and do them yourself at home as part of your price. I can't imagine that a DP would want to stay willfully ignorant of REDCINE. Every young DP I know is becoming a photoshop tweaker.

The coolest thing would be if you could perfect your REDCINE settings at home on a few representative clips and have those applied elsewhere, loaded into another REDCINE station.

[Zakaree Sandberg]

i think with this whole new digital revolution the Digital DP will take on some new responsibilities... such as transfer and coloring..

[dalemccready]

I'm not worried about doing the Redcine myself, more concerned about how I might set it up ex a rental house for other clients to do, but from your replies it sounds like the consensus (of 2) would be that DPs should embrace the personal level of control to tweak their own footage for a "one light" pass through redcine then finish in a suite/NLE from there.

I guess I'm just tossing up how completely to set the camera workflow up, whether back at the rental house there is a mac with Redcine set up and output and archive drives ready for clients to dump at days-end, and whether I need to have a paid employee sitting there to guide them through that process or do the ACs and DPs do it themselves? There is overtime involved for some, not others. Unsupervised RAW transfer seems a tricky prospect (of course thorough training would make all the difference). A paid employee would put the camera rental up and I'll do anything to avoid the Genesis effect.

I'm also beginning to think about 'dark room' or truck transfers from the digital magazines. Perhaps a ruggedized (roadcased) laptop with a flash based drive (only needs to be stripped back for enabling file transfer and maybe be the truck jukebox also) with perhaps scripted apps to make the transfer and backup of magazines idiot-proof (and have a polished interface). This would be plugged into 2 drive setups for immediate backup (rental house to hold one set till RAW transfer goes okay?)

Lots to think through. I need to put my Red into a seamless TVC and drama workflow for DPs and ACs and somehow integrate it into an existing rental house. Would be better I can see to start my own facility with a more tailored service and personal assistance from me as another dp. But I want to move countries this year and still buy my camera (and eat my damn cake too!)

[Scott Webster]

Fancy meeting you here? :)

Feedback so far seems that the usual suspects are happy to set up Redcine stations.

As for us we will be running a Mac Intel for RedCine processing and drive duplication/offloading. My concern would be to what grade you would need your RedCine 'onelight' monitors to be at if you're doing initial colour correction there?

There maybe that demand at the beginning for the rental facility to provide the Redcine service but I can quickly see it moving back to the posthouse.
There is also the matter of time and access to a suite. The transcoding speed hasn't been released and I read somewhere that the drive transfer was close to real time(?) Let's say best case scenario 1hr of footage = 2hrs to offload and transcode? and that doesn't factor in any initial grading? In my mind it would seem better to clone the drives and hand it off to the posthouse so the tape room can deal with it.

Graeme has stated that RedCine hasn't been developed as a colour grading application. Maybe it could be as simple as a check list with the DOP of base settings for the onelight? Maybe sample footage could be offloaded to a Mac Pro laptop and the DOP could enter the parameters there for the full transfer?

A Red with a full cine kit including Cookes or Arris is going to be up there on a day rate and that type of client expects the leather couch and topless model serving fresh sushi for lunch during post :)

With the success of the HVX in NZ, shoots have been blooded into data management and backup onset so I'm expecting a fairly wide acceptance of the Red workflow.

I have made some expensive mistakes guessing what my clients want, I would rather have them tell me.

[dalemccready]

Yeah I'm sure we could talk about it more Mr Rocketeer (if that is your real name ;) ).

I think a DP doing spot settings or even establishing them before the shoot is a possibility

I just want to find a way of buying this camera so that it isn't just me using it, and ergo...not paying for it alone. Opposed to not getting it at all I mean.

Fancy a third body? Honestly I'm looking at partnering so that the accessories and lenses are at close hand, but with that come the lack of personal guarantee for people using the camera. I'd love to be there with them helping them through it (and myself of course).

[Scott Webster]

If you sell your Red without giving me first option...make that London ticket one way...

After sending the Red movie quote to the owner I got an earful for not reserving more cameras! From 'vapourware' to 'Why haven't we got 5?' LOL

[dalemccready]

Haha that's funny.

Yeah a few people are changing their stories now. Only natural I guess.

No I don't want to sell it, just want to enter into a rental agreement if Dave's not keen to run the camera for me from Carbon... It's very selfish I know, but I just want to get my sticky hands on that camera. I just did a key test on one of the CML tiffs... outstanding, and I'm no artist with that. The camera will suit every shoot I currently do, especially my music videos.

(But Scott if I don't manage to sort it out to keep I'll come talk to you and we could sort out some sort of consultation to get you going for the TVCs and dramas. I've been thinking hard about what a show would need to run smoothly. If you choose to step up to that market you won't be sorry, there's currently a service gap in NZ, but it would definitely require bold expenditure for accessories and glass)

What are everyone's thoughts about on set dubbing of magazines? Laptop with Express card ESATA adaptor and doubled drives?

Is there a footage/MBs chart around anywhere that I've missed?

[donatello b]

NAB will show us the BIG picture of the workflow ..
during pre-production a DP would create LUT's for the look of the project ..
those would be used during REDcine for the clips going to editor ..
the final CC could be with DP supervising if their schedule works out or DP could create another set of LUT's for the colorist to use ...

at the end of a 12-14hr day i don't have time to do redcine ...

[Scott Webster]

What are everyone's thoughts about on set dubbing of magazines? Laptop with Express card ESATA adaptor and doubled drives?

Is there a footage/MBs chart around anywhere that I've missed?

There was some discussion of FW800 transfer times in this thread
Transfer Rates