I recently worked on a short film by Amy Puzia called, “The Gift”.   The shoot was actually just an editing exercise for class at De Anza College, but in order to edit something, you have to shoot something, so we ended up doing this piece.  We had a very minimal crew, and did very minimal lighting.  In fact most of it was natural, or the ambient light was enhanced with a single HMI 400 Joker. It’s a silent film, so there is no audio. If anyone wants to put music to it, let me know.  The camera settings were tweaked to reduce the contrast of the 5d Mk II or 5Dii as I like to call it.  The contrast was reduced to

Amy edited the film in 1 day, and then it took another 4 hours of color correction inside apple color. Here you can see the difference between the two versions:

The new “Lowry Theater Company” is a massive space. A huge theater, big stage, large prop and wardrobe rooms, and a large black box theater, left us in need of more lights. Luckily Prompter People came through. We were able to use several of their new LED lights, called Flolights. We use three LED 500′s and five LED 1000′s

These lights provide a broad and long throw without the heat. The barn doors allow us to control the spill of the lights as well. The first thing you will notice is that on close ups, we finally have the lights to properly accomplish 3-point lighting. You can see in episode 8 how that tool changes the look of the show. With all of our lights, we now have enough light to accomplish the 3 point lighting for multiple cameras. And we no longer run the risk of throwing the breakers! These lights use considerably less power than equivalent “hot lights.” In fact the lights consumer just one-tenth of the power.

If you notice the credits to Episode 8, you will see that Chris Faulkner is listed as the Director of Photography. Chris has been shooting with us since we moved to the new location and has been handling a lot of the gaffer duties during these shoots. I had a job that required me to travel to Germany for a week, and during that time, EXIT Stage Left had 2 shooting days. Chris took charge of the camera department during that time, and used the new LED lights to great success. Those two shooting days resulted in footage for all of one episode and most of the next one.

I resumed my duties as the Director of Photography a few weeks ago and have been delighted with the LED lights. These lights, when diffused with frost gel provide some extremely smooth and powerful light. The built in dimmers give us the infinite control of the light. The throw from these lights are several times more than fluorescent light fixtures as well, and are an excellent replacement for both Hot Lights and Fluorescent lights. This allows us to move the lights back from the actors and give them more space to move around. This is extremely important when we are doing the improv elements to the show.

http://www2.panasonic.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/prModelDetail?storeId=11301&catalogId=13251&itemId=342748&modelNo=Content04162009020504436&surfModel=Content04162009020504436

Maxell has also announced that it will be creating P2 cards. http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20090420/NY0091020042009-1.html

I remember a new NAB’s ago that Hoodman also made such an announcement which never came to fruition.

We use Panasonic HVX-200′s and P2 cards for our web series, EXIT Stage Left

“We spent many hours of trial and error working with this new Red format before we got into jobs like Eric’s, so we knew exactly what to expect and how do deal with any challenges that could arise. As with any new format, there are going to be hiccups but we knew what to expect and we were able to work through them” explains Slinger.

That is the basis of all post workflows, be it, HDV tape, P2, Film, or RED. This is how we were able to have a successful 48 hour film project.

Thomas A. Koch

When I arrived stateside a week later, he asked me again and I said, “Yes.” (I ended up not being the DP on the film) After discussing the project and all that it entails, I made the call that we had to shoot RED. My HVX-200 with the Redrock Micro M2 cinema adapter would just be too difficult to work with in such fast and furious shooting. People have done it, even me, and I’ve found it takes time to get the unit to work at its best. I wouldn’t do that on such a short notice and such a small time frame.

Luckily, I know a guy.

Mike Epple and I met on a shoot way back in 2005. He was the Director of Photography and I was the Production Sound Mixer. We’ve worked on a few projects since then, some of them paid. I sent him an e-mail and after a few weeks of talking and making sure his schedule was clear, he agreed to work on the film. Mike owns a RED and is an extremely talented cinematographer so we were very lucky to have him on board.

We’ve all heard about the RED and there are a lot of people complaining about the workflow. I often hear about people that don’t know there is a quick way to do it. If anyone has any reservations, they should watch the [url=http://www.red.com/red_mythbusters]RED Myth busters video[/url/. It’s real, and it’s true. It is easy.

Mike (The DP), Sinohui, (The Director) and Joel (The Editor) all met at a coffee shop in Mountain View and shot some test footage on Build 16. I then took that footage back to my edit suite and began to find the best workflow for the 48-hour film festival. Really we were looking at speed and quality, with speed being more important.

I timed a lot of different ways, including rendering clips out of REDCine to Prores, and also the QuickTime proxies directly in Final Cut. I could playback the Medium Res files in real time, but not the High Res proxies. The editing was quick, but the image wasn’t as good as I had hoped in this resolution. I installed 8 Gigs of RAM for the 8-core Mac pro and that made all the difference. High res proxies were playing back in real time. On build 15, I was able to play back the High res proxies in real time with 2 Gigs of RAM, but with build 16, it requires more RAM. I expect the build 16 footage to play back more easily as they get out of BETA on the build.

After, editing the clips and exporting different settings out to a Standard Definition file, I realized that I had to add some softening to the clip in Final Cut to avoid any problems from taking a 4K image down to SD. This was quick and easy, and required a render, but the export looked fantastic. I’ve heard stories about how horrible it is taking 4K down to Standard Definition, but I did not experience that at ALL. In fact, with a little softening, it was awesome! The actual filter in Final Cut was the “Soft Focus” filter with “Amount 1” and “Strength .21”.

With our Workflow in place, it was time to get ready for the shoot.

-Thomas A. Koch
The Last Job – RED Workflow Manager, Assistant Director