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Filed under: Cameras •Editing •Post Production •Production •Training •

More Fun with RED

(top image graded in Magic Bullet Looks, bottom image processed without correction through RedRushes, Rec 709 gamma and color)

This setup was a lot of fun, mostly because the two talent are the director (Hugh Campbell) and our makeup person. The shot is supposed to be two parents discussing the high cost of their energy bill and Hugh really got into it. The audio is hysterically funny.

We lit this with a 1200 PAR through a window to the right, with a little return onto Hugh’s face via two mirrors: one caught the light from the PAR and sent it to to a mirror located just outside the upper left of frame. The window had a green tint in it, as most windows do, so we added 1/4 minus green to bring it back to normal. The RED is very sensitive to green so it’s important to correct unwanted green/magenta casts wherever they appear.

When I graded this image I brought the gamma way up to see where the noise floor is, and it’s on Hugh’s jeans. They’re a snow storm if made any brighter. Considering, though, that we held a substantial amount of detail outside when it appeared to be clipping on the histogram, I don’t think I can complain.

This was one of a couple of handheld shots I did with the RED. I don’t recommend handholding the RED as it tends to be massively heavy and the only way to really grab onto it is by the rods running along the top.

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(top image graded in Magic Bullet Looks, bottom image processed without correction through RedRushes, Rec 709 gamma and color)

It’s almost impossible to get a good puff of exhaust out of a modern vehicle. Our editor, Craig Thomas, is also a 3D animator (or, as he’d put it, he’s a 3D animator who also edits) and he’s going to add exhaust digitally. This was lit with a bounce card underneath the truck and a mirror off to the right to backlight emissions that weren’t there.

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(top image graded in Magic Bullet Looks, bottom image processed without correction through RedRushes, Rec 709 gamma and color)

This was a fun shot. I crammed the RED into the front seat of our editor’s pickup truck to get the right angle on the mirror. I had it rigged on a sandbag on top of an apple box and during rehearsals I tried rolling the camera left and right with the action. It worked out pretty well.

The lighting consisted of a 1200 PAR about six feet from the rear passenger side door through two frames of 216, with a 4x4 bead board bounce placed in the rear driver’s side door. The hand on the mirror was lit by sunlight through a 4x4 frame of 216 rigged just out of the shot. Our hand model had a hard time doing the shot as she couldn’t see the mirror and we didn’t have an extra monitor she could watch. She just had to hit the right spot by sheer muscle memory. After a few tries she nailed it every time.

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(top image graded in Magic Bullet Looks, bottom image processed without correction through RedRushes, Rec 709 gamma and color)

We raced the sun to get this shot. Normally I’m very good about making sure my body is clear of the pan handle or wheels during a shot but in this case I skipped that step in order to shoot faster. Wrong! I hit my leg with the pan handle during the first go-round so we sent the car around again while I readjusted myself. I felt this shot needed something in post so I added a fairly strong vignette and warmed it up some.

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(top image graded in Magic Bullet Looks, bottom image processed without correction through RedRushes, Rec 709 gamma and color)

Even though this shot appears after the previous one we actually shot it just before. Tasked with getting a shot of the company sign, I couldn’t bring myself to just slam one out. We backed off on the 135mm and framed a nice shot with the sign, the street lamp on the left and the company Prius. Just barely out of frame is some of the ugliest barbed-wire fencing I’ve ever seen. I warmed this shot up a bit in post as well. I love how the son catches the hubcaps as the car rounds the corner.

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(top image graded in Magic Bullet Looks, bottom image processed without correction through RedRushes, Rec 709 gamma and color)

My camera assistant had gone to fetch his van when the director spotted this shot nearby. I wheeled our camera Magliner to what looked like an auspicious spot, slapped a lens on the camera (probably a 35mm), leveled the camera on the Magliner shelf (it was on a high-hat, so I fished some camera wedges out of my assistant’s toolbag) and started rolling just as this sailboat came into view. I was quite surprised at the time with the colors I saw in the RED’s viewfinder, and they only became more striking when I moved the ped lower and the gains higher in post.

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(top image graded in Magic Bullet Looks, bottom image processed without correction through RedRushes, Rec 709 gamma and color)

We shot this much earlier in the day than the previous shot. I matched them somewhat by adding a digital grad in Magic Bullet Looks and adding a vignette across the bottom of frame. I think I also colored the ped blue.

I love the RED. It’s so much more interesting than most of the cameras I work with on a regular basis. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we don’t have many fancy uncompressed 4k cameras to play with. I started out as a skeptic, but now I’m a big fan. I like change, and the RED is a welcome one.

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Looks great Art. I know I asked you this before in another blog post, but have you tried Camera RGB or Redspace colorspace and compared to REC709? I find REC709 does funky things to colors. I do use the REC709 gamma setting but I have found I generally use Camera RGB or Redspace for colorspace. I’d be curious about your thoughts on this.

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