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Filed under: Cameras •NAB 09 •

NAB 2009 - Saturday Workshop

The calm before the storm: the Las Vegas Convention Center on Saturday evening.

NAB holds several pre-show conferences; I arrived midafternoon on Saturday and sat in on two presentations in the Director of Photography Workshop, one on Red, and one on the Arri D-21.

Ted on Red

Red Digital Cinema Camera Company’s Ted Schilowitz gave an update on Red’s current and future plans. If you’ve been following the saga over on http://red.com/ or http://reduser.net/ there wasn’t anything new or unexpected; The Epic and Scarlet cameras are still on track for Summer/Fall 2009 or 2010 releases, depending on model… but Ted emphasized that anything and everything is subject to change.

Ted didn’t show any radical new hardware; he just brought a box-stock Red One with 18-50 zoom, EVF, and carbon-fiber rods. But he did show some images of the proposed new gear (which you can find on red.com by following the Epic and Scarlet links); here’s a small sample I shot off-screen:

Possible configuration of an Epic (or Scarlet) with various accessories.

The Epic 617 Pro—Ted called it a “digital view camera.” (Note: there is no “Epic 617 Amateur.”)

Relative sizes of the sensors Red expects to ship (I’ve added large-text annotations as the slide may not be very readable at 619 pixels across).

Ted said that the key to understanding the Red cams was to think of them as digital still cameras (Bayer-mask CMOS sensors, raw data recording, 12 Megapixel resolution [for Red One]) that just happen to record motion pictures. If you think about them as fancy video cameras, you’ll constantly be fighting misconceptions about how to get the best out of them.

Ted screened a variety of demo clips collected from Red productions worldwide, using an HDCAM-SR deck hooked up to a Christie 12K cine projector. What can I say? It all looked fine. Once in a while some highlights were a bit flatter than I might expect had the clips been shot on film, but there were plenty of shots of welders, fires, fireworks, and other overly-bright things that the Red One handled with aplomb.

next: the Arri D-21…

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I have to say the DoP Workshop has been a very disappointing experience to say the least. It’s been no more than sales pitch after sales pitch by camera manufacturers. I was hoping for a more hands-on experience (as the name of the WORKSHOP implies), rather than just going over spec sheets.

Posted by Salvador  on  04/19  at  01:10 PM

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From the two sessions I attended, I got that impression, too. Have the rest been like that? I’ll pass the message on to Gary Adcock, and maybe next year’s sessions will be better… what sort of workshops would you like to see? (I have my own ideas, too…)

Posted by Adam Wilt  on  04/19  at  02:17 PM

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Until now yes. I would’ve preferred a shoot-out, for example. Explore the different workflows. Or rather have a DP presenting, Silicon Imaging did have a DP for Q&A;.

Posted by Salvador  on  04/19  at  02:56 PM

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Salvador.

The DoP workshop was never intended to be hands-on, and I am truly sorry that you disliked some of the preso’s. If your still in Vegas come by the aja booth and talk to me.  We have had a number of cameras as part of the sessions, the RED, Arri, BandPro/ SI/ Steadycam / Phantom all had cameras and gear that could be looked at and touched.( Panny had camera gear but that was by far the hardest sales pitch)

DP’s like Dave Stump, Mark Weingartner, Robert Starling, Yuri Newman were speaking and available at multiple sessions with other industry luminaries like Adam, Mike Bravin, Ted Schilowitz, Ted White, Mark Choilis, Bill Lovell, and Tom Fletcher.

What about being able to view the First showing of RED’s O9 reel or Arri’s clips via HDCamSR or Thomson showing an uncompressed extended version of the Benjamin Button trailer played from the Stwo OB1 recorded on that Christie 12K DCI projection? you have to admit it looked good.

Come see me- comments are welcome.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  04/21  at  07:36 AM

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Hi Gary!

Thank you for your response. I agree, not all was bad. I enjoyed some of the sessions, mostly yours. And I’m not kissing up. The sessions I enjoyed the most were those that gave us useful tips, like best practices on the set or field: Manipulation of Time, DIT OnSet/AJA, VFX Techniques, RED OnSet. I’m just speaking for the first two days, I ended up skipping most of monday’s sessions.

The reels were actually nice. But when you’re paying around $600 (that’s almost half a workshop at the Maine Media Workshops) for a DoP workshop you don’t want presentations like Panasonic’s or RED’s Update, to name the two worst. We can always look up the specs or models, there are tons of brochures on the exhibit floor.

Rather than just talk about the workflows, having had the equipment there it would’ve been nice to actually execute them.  Will drop by the AJA booth tomorrow.

Posted by Salvador  on  04/21  at  10:14 AM

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