Some tough decisions had to be made in preparation for the sixth installment in the 36 Parables DVD series, Lime. In order to ratchet up the quality of the series; as the Director of Photography I had to consider the different camera possibilities available to me, and as the Producer, how that would impact the budget. Of course there was always the option of film: high quality without a doubt and always tried and true. On the other hand, there was the RED ONE camera: cutting edge and so cool. After careful consideration, the co-Producer/Director and I finally decided to go with the RED ONE camera. While it is cheaper than film, there is no way around the fact you still pay a hefty price for quality images. Like film, the RED ONE camera makes breathtaking images with very little effort. This is because the RED ONE inherently fulfills the four most basic components of the cinematic look.
According to Mark Stock, the owner of Red Rocket Pictures(my chosen vendor for RED ONE camera needs), the four basic components are:
1. Aspect Ratio
2. Depth of Field(mostly shallow)
3. 24 FPS
4. Soft High Resolution( 35mm film fine grain look)
The RED ONE camera delivers all of these things right out of the box, sort of. You have to remember; the camera incorporates a modular design so you literally have to piece it together in order to have a fully functioning image gathering system. Thankfully Red Rocket Pictures has put a ton of time and loads of money into their camera packages so that anyone who uses one of their RED ONE cameras never knows how difficult the camera can be. Most of the horror stories you have heard concerning the RED ONE are from productions who had only invested the bare minimum in the camera’s available modular components and/or didn’t do their homework on workflow.
Pre-Production:
Workflow was the number one concern I had going into using the RED ONE camera. Thankfully I had a rock solid team who had worked with the camera many times and helped me come up with a plan of attack well before the first “roll camera!” was exclaimed on set. Red Rocket Pictures(Las Vegas, NV) provided the camera and DIT for production. Plaster City(Los Angeles, CA) will do our color correction and HD finish later this summer, they were also invaluable in the critical pre-production stage. We put all of our heads together, which mostly meant me listening to Red Rocket Picture’s and Plaster City’s combined expert advice, and decided the best bet would be to shoot at full 4K resolution, 16:9 Raster, and use the free program REDrushes to transcode all our .R3D files (the RAW file the RED ONE camera provides) at half-debayer into 1920×1080, 4:2:2 AppleProRes HQ HD work files. Those HD files would serve as our sources for editorial and color correction. We would never go back to the .R3D files after the transcoding. So really, REDrushes serves as a sort of “telecine” for .R3D files, your “negative”. If I have lost you in any of this technical jargon… it is about to get worse… just email me any questions you might have about the whole RED ONE workflow. I have had a ton of fun learning myself and would love to pass on what I have learned!
Production:
When it comes to how the camera performs on set one thing you have to keep in mind is the RED ONE, though it creates beautiful images, demands a lot of tender loving care. For instance, the RED ONE camera satisfies the second basic component of the cinematic look, shallow depth of field, with it’s 12-megapixel Mysterium Super 35mm sized CMOS sensor(4520x2540pixels). This being the case, a 1st AC is a must. Having a dedicated DIT(Digital Imaging Technician) is also crucial. When you hand off a drive or flash card with all the footage you have just shot you want to know it is immediately being verified and copied. Then, at the end of the day have 2-3 distinct drives with all your data on them sent to different locations in separate vehicles. We had two 1TB pro drive’s from Simple Tech by Fabrik and Red Rocket Pictures kept a third drive as well.
For me, lighting for the RED ONE was similar to my experiences with film, intuitive and driven by the story. So often with HD I feel I am lighting defensively, limited by what the technology can handle and trying desperately to fake the four basic components of the cinematic look. The RED ONE has a sweet spot for the ISO, 320, and when I stuck to that and kept my color temperature set at 5600K I felt liberated by the camera’s reliable images in optimum conditions. Now, there were a couple slow motion shots we captured where we had to go down to 2K in order to over crank the camera; and on a couple occasions I chose to shoot at ISO 500, both of these instances introduced more noise in the image. Which brings us to the wonders of the RED ONE in post-production.
Post-Production:
At the end of our three-day shoot we had 360 Gigs of Quicktime reference movies and their accompanying 4K full resolution REDCODE RAW (.R3D) files. This is where the fun really began. As I mentioned at the end of the last section, there were some nosier images I needed to deal with. By using another free program, RedCine, I was able to adjust the ISO, exposure, saturation, and much more from the data rich .R3D files. Then I used REDrushes to output our HD work files for editing in Final Cut, as well as color correction, and our finish at Plaster City.
Ultimately the RED ONE camera provides a tapeless workflow for anyone who has a moderately fast MacBook or Tower, a few free downloads, and Final Cut Studio 2. I can’t say enough about Red Rocket Pictures and Plaster City; they’ll make working with the RED so easy that all you’ll have to focus on is telling a great story, which is exactly what I was able to do.
An Example from 36 Parables LIME:
I have included two images below from “Together”, based on the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds(Matthew 13:24-30). On top is a still image from the footage after it has been transcoded from the .R3D source into HD. Beneath it is the same still image with my personal color correction I applied in Aperture. I’ll use stills like these to guide our coloring at Plaster City.
As you can see, the top image is rather low contrast. This is part of what happens in the debayering process when you use REDlog as your gamma space in REDrushes. Take a look at the bottom image and you see there is nothing to fear, there is a lot of informatino there to be worked pulled and pushed in post. In Aperture I punched the contrast back up, shifted the white balance slightly cooler, and desaturated a scosh. And that is just a start. Since there is so much information captured in the original 4K image, even working with these HD files you reap the benefit of starting with a high resolution “negative”. I could go on and on about how incredible the RED is, but if the stories I told with it aren’t any good then what is the point? So I am looking forward to you being the judge when the 36 Parables Lime DVD hits the shelves in February 2010 as a YouthSpecialties/Zondervan product.
Feel free to contact me and ask any questions about the RED ONE camera, workflow, my experience with the camera, and of course the contact information for any members of the amazing team I worked with to make my first experience with the RED ONE so extraordinary!
(this article was published in the May 2009 issue of Christian Video Magazine)
RED ONE: 101
Some tough decisions had to be made in preparation for the sixth installment in the 36 Parables DVD series, Lime. In order to ratchet up the quality of the series; as the Director of Photography I had to consider the different camera possibilities available to me, and as the Producer, how that would impact the budget. Of course there was always the option of film: high quality without a doubt and always tried and true. On the other hand, there was the RED ONE camera: cutting edge and so cool. After careful consideration, the co-Producer/Director and I finally decided to go with the RED ONE camera. While it is cheaper than film, there is no way around the fact you still pay a hefty price for quality images. Like film, the RED ONE camera makes breathtaking images with very little effort. This is because the RED ONE inherently fulfills the four most basic components of the cinematic look.
According to Mark Stock, the owner of Red Rocket Pictures(my chosen vendor for RED ONE camera needs), the four basic components are:
1. Aspect Ratio
2. Depth of Field(mostly shallow)
3. 24 FPS
4. Soft High Resolution( 35mm film fine grain look)
The RED ONE camera delivers all of these things right out of the box, sort of. You have to remember; the camera incorporates a modular design so you literally have to piece it together in order to have a fully functioning image gathering system. Thankfully Red Rocket Pictures has put a ton of time and loads of money into their camera packages so that anyone who uses one of their RED ONE cameras never knows how difficult the camera can be. Most of the horror stories you have heard concerning the RED ONE are from productions who had only invested the bare minimum in the camera’s available modular components and/or didn’t do their homework on workflow.
Pre-Production:
Workflow was the number one concern I had going into using the RED ONE camera. Thankfully I had a rock solid team who had worked with the camera many times and helped me come up with a plan of attack well before the first “roll camera!” was exclaimed on set. Red Rocket Pictures(Las Vegas, NV) provided the camera and DIT for production. Plaster City(Los Angeles, CA) will do our color correction and HD finish later this summer, they were also invaluable in the critical pre-production stage. We put all of our heads together, which mostly meant me listening to Red Rocket Picture’s and Plaster City’s combined expert advice, and decided the best bet would be to shoot at full 4K resolution, 16:9 Raster, and use the free program REDrushes to transcode all our .R3D files (the RAW file the RED ONE camera provides) at half-debayer into 1920×1080, 4:2:2 AppleProRes HQ HD work files. Those HD files would serve as our sources for editorial and color correction. We would never go back to the .R3D files after the transcoding. So really, REDrushes serves as a sort of “telecine” for .R3D files, your “negative”. If I have lost you in any of this technical jargon… it is about to get worse… just email me any questions you might have about the whole RED ONE workflow. I have had a ton of fun learning myself and would love to pass on what I have learned!
Production:
When it comes to how the camera performs on set one thing you have to keep in mind is the RED ONE, though it creates beautiful images, demands a lot of tender loving care. For instance, the RED ONE camera satisfies the second basic component of the cinematic look, shallow depth of field, with it’s 12-megapixel Mysterium Super 35mm sized CMOS sensor(4520x2540pixels). This being the case, a 1st AC is a must. Having a dedicated DIT(Digital Imaging Technician) is also crucial. When you hand off a drive or flash card with all the footage you have just shot you want to know it is immediately being verified and copied. Then, at the end of the day have 2-3 distinct drives with all your data on them sent to different locations in separate vehicles. We had two 1TB pro drive’s from Simple Tech by Fabrik and Red Rocket Pictures kept a third drive as well.
For me, lighting for the RED ONE was similar to my experiences with film, intuitive and driven by the story. So often with HD I feel I am lighting defensively, limited by what the technology can handle and trying desperately to fake the four basic components of the cinematic look. The RED ONE has a sweet spot for the ISO, 320, and when I stuck to that and kept my color temperature set at 5600K I felt liberated by the camera’s reliable images in optimum conditions. Now, there were a couple slow motion shots we captured where we had to go down to 2K in order to over crank the camera; and on a couple occasions I chose to shoot at ISO 500, both of these instances introduced more noise in the image. Which brings us to the wonders of the RED ONE in post-production.
Post-Production:
At the end of our three-day shoot we had 360 Gigs of Quicktime reference movies and their accompanying 4K full resolution REDCODE RAW (.R3D) files. This is where the fun really began. As I mentioned at the end of the last section, there were some nosier images I needed to deal with. By using another free program, RedCine, I was able to adjust the ISO, exposure, saturation, and much more from the data rich .R3D files. Then I used REDrushes to output our HD work files for editing in Final Cut, as well as color correction, and our finish at Plaster City.
Ultimately the RED ONE camera provides a tapeless workflow for anyone who has a moderately fast MacBook or Tower, a few free downloads, and Final Cut Studio 2. I can’t say enough about Red Rocket Pictures and Plaster City; they’ll make working with the RED so easy that all you’ll have to focus on is telling a great story, which is exactly what I was able to do.
An Example from 36 Parables LIME:
I have included two images below from “Together”, based on the Parable of the Wheat and the Weeds(Matthew 13:24-30). On top is a still image from the footage after it has been transcoded from the .R3D source into HD. Beneath it is the same still image with my personal color correction I applied in Aperture. I’ll use stills like these to guide our coloring at Plaster City.
As you can see, the top image is rather low contrast. This is part of what happens in the debayering process when you use REDlog as your gamma space in REDrushes. Take a look at the bottom image and you see there is nothing to fear, there is a lot of informatino there to be worked pulled and pushed in post. In Aperture I punched the contrast back up, shifted the white balance slightly cooler, and desaturated a scosh. And that is just a start. Since there is so much information captured in the original 4K image, even working with these HD files you reap the benefit of starting with a high resolution “negative”. I could go on and on about how incredible the RED is, but if the stories I told with it aren’t any good then what is the point? So I am looking forward to you being the judge when the 36 Parables Lime DVD hits the shelves in February 2010 as a YouthSpecialties/Zondervan product.
Feel free to contact me and ask any questions about the RED ONE camera, workflow, my experience with the camera, and of course the contact information for any members of the amazing team I worked with to make my first experience with the RED ONE so extraordinary!
(this article was published in the May 2009 issue of Christian Video Magazine)