Hello world, again. It's been a few months since I last posted anything. Life has been so rush rush rush, crazy times.
7x7x7 has a draft that I'm fairly happy with, note I said "I'm", as I still haven't released it to the critical savants yet (Yikes!!). It's been cooking in the oven for a while so we'll see.
So what have been up to, just been working on a few things, finally got to camera assist RED, and I'll be honest, 4k is what it's cracked up to be, it's one thing say a camera is more reliable or not, but the image looks fantastic, so all those head aches are worth, and to be honest, if you're a "geek" going through the menus aren't too bad, and as a camera assistant, it's
Whether or not I was "ready" to be assisting on a music video, I don't really care, we had good fun, I learnt a lot, and we didn't have any major hiccups. Baptism of fire is the word that comes to mind.
Worked with crazy good director Nate Camponi. And super cool DP Percy Dean. Both really nice guys, who know what they want and how to get it. It was a non stop shoot from the morning to the late of night when we finished. The entire cast and crew were amazing and everyone did a great job.
Some great use of polyboards, it seems really basic, but it just works for a great soft light.
The Red One, hmmm, it's a nice camera. A bit temperamental, but the image, is just great. Menus on the other hand, not so great. It is literally a Windows 95 computer with a super processor, but it works. It's heavy as well. I think the thing people forget, or just don't know, is that this camera weighs an absolute ton. I don't know whether I'd call it "Solid" design/engineering, when it weighs more than an Arri SR3 for no apparent reason other than it needs to feel expensive. I know I'm wrong and and there is mini super computers in there and loads of heat sinks keeping it from catching fire, but still couldn't they have made it lighter (well they have but I'll get to that later).
If you ever shoot on a Red One, remember the grip equipment. As the camera is so heavy everything else needs to be able to support that weight. So it's not something that you can go in half minded into. Tracking shots give an expensive look because they are actually expensive, that track and dolly plus experienced grip, costs a lot.
But it's an interesting camera, and from more experienced people who I've spoken to, appreciate what it has done to the camera industry, it brought the cost of cameras down a whole lot. Yes £30,000 is still a lot, but when you consider at one point to buy an Arri 35mm film camera it was upwards of £100,000. So it helped bring cost down, and even though it's a bit tedious to use compared to say the Arri Alexa. But you can't help but feel if Red didn't disrupt things, cameras would still be ridiculously priced.
But anyhow. Fun Shoot. Fun People. Just Fun.
Things have gotten a little interesting to say the least. A good friend of mine Mark Kuczewski (www.markkuczewski.com go visit there after you have read this blog post) has recently purchased a Red Scarlet. Things are definitely interesting, and we were playing with it around the office after work. We did a "test" just to see how the camera performs in straight out of the box.
Essentially the Scarlet is like a Mini Red One, minus the 100+ FPS capabilities. It's small light, and boots up in about 10 seconds (oh that's something about the Red One, you have to leave it on constantly, none of this switching off to conserve the battery, it takes 90 seconds to boot up, when the director is setting up it seems like the longest 90 seconds of your life). It seems like a natural step up of people who shoot drama on their 5d, and want to move up to something more "future proof".
I must say the RAW workflow stills seems to good to be true. The ability to change colour temperature, iso, and gamma curves without affecting the original image. If you ever editied a RAW still photo, imagine that, but with video. CRAZY . You should still shoot it right the first time, but having that range is amazing. And 4K.... I know not many applications support it yet, and most displays outside of a cinema aren't anywhere near 4K, but it looks fantastic. The idea that you can take a still frame from anywhere in your video, and that looks as good as a high resolution photograph, it doesn't seem right. Whether or not it's fake 4k or not, whatever it is, it looks great, and crisp.
Great thing about the Red Scarlet is that it comes in either an EF or PL mount. In this case as you can see on the photograph, Mark has an EF mount version, so all that lovely L series Canon Glass is fully supported, even down to the autofocus (although we didn't test that). So you control the aperture in camera (like a Canon DSLR). So it seems like a natural progression.
For memory it uses a large proprietary memory card that is more like a solid state hard drive, called a RED Mag. It's simple enough to use, just remember to eject your media in camera before you take it out physically.
Anyways it's fun times, and I hope to learn more about the technology in the future, and how it can it can "enhance" my film making. It definitely makes you think about everything more before you press record, with the files being so massive and all.
I'm looking forward to shooting more in general, and watch this space for more "4k" content from Mark and myself.
(ps yes I know 4k won't make my films any better, but they sure will look a lot more crisp).
Speak soon
