Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Red

The top dog, the head hancho, the Camera of Cameras. The Red.

I'm not super saavy on the technical aspects of the camera, but I can tell you how it worked on the set of "The Intruder." For starters, it has the ability to shoot at 4K, which is unbelievable considering that HD is just over 1K (1080). The picture is simply amazing.

Before the shoot, the production team decided to use 8 gigabyte cards instead of a 350 gigabyte hard drive. Seems like an odd choice, but they have their reasons. First of all, if by some chance the hard drive becomes corrupted, the entire days footage is lost. Is it likely? No, but nonetheless I can understand the argument.

The other reason is because of downloading time. It takes forever to download a gigantic hard drive at the end of the day, while doing smaller cards is done throughout the day at a much quicker pace.

These are just a couple of the features I got to witness while on the set of the film. The Red Camera is said to retail at about $18,000, but I have seen prices from everywhere from $15,000 to $60,000

There was one delay. Apparently there is a setting on the camera that shows more than is actually seen in the viewfinder. This almost plagued the shoot because of lights and equipment being seen in several shots. With the 4K recording ability, however, the editor was able to simply crop the image and knock the resolution down to 2k. Basically, no one would know the difference. The picture is that good.

Maybe someday I will work with one...

DM


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