Open RED Thoughts and Discussion

[Ed Moore]

I stand corrected. Shame, as it's criminal how much the AJA downconverter costs.

 

In other news, I'm shooting with the 750, Digiprimes and MB-19 now and I've actually had to wind a few turns _off_ the arm compared to the RED with no mattebox. So not quite that light after all :)

 

E

[Alec Jarnagin SOC]

" it's criminal how much the AJA downconverter costs."

 

In case you are unaware, the price has dropped almost in half. B&H now sells them for $1100.

 

Not bad when you consider it makes any rig HD ready.

[Jay Kim]

I just finished 3 day steadicam work for 50cent's new feature film in NJ wtih RED One. I was lucky enough to have Terry West's Red power cable, Bartech BFD Run/Stop cable, Element Technica's Topside Combo with light weight 15mm rods and SDI Breakout box, and AJA HD10MD3 downconverter.

 

Since we had one camera dedicate to mostly steadicam work, I build the camera with Element Technica's top side combo with cheese plate for low mode and bottom cheese plate for regular mode (both with light weight Element Technica's 19mm & 15mm rods).

 

We also used Ugrip for the Red Drive and it worked great. I didn't have much issue with the camera even we had very long shooting days with some hot and some heavy rainy weather.

Edited August 3, 2008 by Jay Kim

[Afton Grant]

Hey Jay,

 

Do you have pictures of the UGrip? Looks like you're shooting to cards in the pictures you posted.

 

...and tidy up those cables, boy!

[Jay Kim]

Hey Jay,

 

Do you have pictures of the UGrip? Looks like you're shooting to cards in the pictures you posted.

 

...and tidy up those cables, boy!

 

 

Wow! Those cables look quite messy! I cleaned the cables later for the shooting. Thanks for the advice, Afton.

 

Ugrip was really sweet accs for the steadicam work to mount Red Drive on the bottom Rods. However, it was a heavy rainy day when I use a Ugrip so the camera was covered by raingear and you cannot see Ugrip. I only use the Ugrip to mount the Red Drive since camera was powered from the sled and we had only Zeiss Ultra Primes with clip-on mattboxes ( I was lucky!) so balancing wasn't that much of issue.

 

We got the camera from ISIS New York, and those guys had very sweet accs and Matt Roeger from ISIS did a great job taking care the camera.

[Jay Kim]

If they asked me put the above-pictured camera on my sled, I rather just walked away than struggle to balance -)

[Mike McGowan SOC]

Curious as to why you would go to actual low mode with the RED? I'm assuming (I don't actually know what I'm talking about here) that you can just push a button and the camera will invert and flip the image?

[Afton Grant]

Negative, Mike. As of now, the Red does not have a scan-reverse feature.

[Charles Papert]

I did a music video (my first in years) with the RED today and had a thoroughly pleasant experience.

 

The setup was similar to Jay's; Superspeeds, AJA downconverter, Element Technica top cheese plate, rods, lower dovetail and baseplate. I opted not to use the onboard battery and used Terry W.'s power cable. We recorded to CF cards. Also had the Preston run cable (Terry again). I kept the onboard monitor in play so that the DP and the DIT could do their thing with menus etc. I'd like a bit more sophisticated way to mount it than the Noga arm (I found it in different positions as the day wore on, so it was likely slipping here and there) but the monitor is so light that it didn't seem to make much of a difference. I had it braced against the top rods initially but as can be seen in the pix, it ended up hovering a bit above these.

 

The camera was light but stable. As you can see in the pix there is a good amount of post showing above the gimbal but not too much by any means. I could have probably eliminated one of the three lower batteries to equalize the weight but it was good to have two dedicated to the camera as it does eat through them unless you power down a lot. I had to do a bunch of the typical music video all-the-way-through-the-song passes so it was nice to have the load reduced compared to 35mm.

 

We had some head-scratching with the run cable at first; with the HU3 set for Arricam (I figured the momentary pulse for that camera would be comparable to RED), the first press of the run button trigged camera run as expected, but the next press to turn it off did nothing. We then hit the run button a third time and the camera shut off (but the HU3 of course was now showing it running). Eventually we discovered an incorrect setting in the camera which was causing this: you can designate either of the two 4 pin ports on the back of the camera to interpret the GPI triggers as camera run or ramp. They were correctly set for run, but you also have to designate what the action of the first and second trigger will be. GPI 1 is the first pulse that is received, which we set to "high" for camera run. GPI 2 is the second pulse, which needed to be set to "low" which turns off camera run (they were both on "high", which is why GPI 2 did nothing).

 

Once we got that sorted out, we were in good shape. I had asked a few of my esteemed colleagues if they had run cables for the RED prior to this job and I kept hearing "no, I just reach down and hit the button". Having done it both ways on this one (until we got the GPI issue sorted out we just went manually), I have to say I really preferred having the assistant run the camera; it's what I'm used to with all of the other cameras I fly. I can spend the time before the shot doing my stuff (balancing, annoying the talent with notes etc) without having to think about starting the camera, and once the shot is done I don't have to remember to turn it off. Yes, it's only 1's and 0's and you can run it for however long you want before the shot begins but with the CF cards and long takes like I had today, it wasn't a good idea to waste card space. That's my take on it anyway.

 

Overall, it was a nice day with the camera.

[Lawrence Karman]

curious to know why you chose to fly with the base plate, dovetail, and rods? I am assuming because they did not have a clip on matte box? (Do we really have to ask for everything?)

[Jaron Berman]

I can't speak for Charles, but I did the same thing and found it to be much more convenient than using the cheese plate. And believe it or not, the whole combo weighs about the same, and puts the CG roughly the same height above your dovetail. The red cheese plate weighs more than the element o'connor/arri plate, and the baseplates weigh about the same. One advantage is a quick switch to sticks, the other is that the arri style base gives you even more fore/aft adjustment for front-heavy setups when you fly without the battery.

 

Still no "perfect" way to fly it, but I personally found that particular base setup to work better than anything else.

[Charles Papert]

We did have a clip-on mattebox (I asked for it ahead of time) but the DP said he preferred not to use it if possible as it placed extra stress on the lenses which were Superspeeds, 2nd gen I think and his personal gear. Had it been a deal-breaker to fly the baseplate, I would have "strongly recommended" that I use the clip-on. However, the ET baseplate and dovetail were pretty light as Jaron noted (according to the ET site, about 3 lbs for the combo), certainly far more so than the traditional Arri versions, and the rods were the ET aluminum, much lighter than steel. I figured I'd build it with that setup and see what I thought. My next plan would have been to screw the XCS dovetail to the base of the camera, add rods into the dovetail and use whatever dogbones were necessary to support the mattebox (Chrosziel, and again notably more lightweight than the Arri equivalent LMB-5). And if that was a hassle, I would have just gone with the clip-on.

 

Right about that time the director described the day's work to me and it seemed like I wouldn't be doing too many long takes, and since the setup was flying nicely I decided not to dick around with it any more. I didn't give it another thought until you brought it up, Doc, and it turned out that entire shoot was done on Steadicam, including 15-20 full passes of the complete track with Steadicam, so probably in retrospect I might have liked to go lighter-weight on the deal. However there were a fair number of "finesse" type moves so it was probably a good trade-off.

 

I think the ET gang intend to make a Steadicam dovetail that will slide in to their bridge plate, which will offer a nice weight savings. This will also enable the quick changeover to sticks as Jaron mentioned.

[Lawrence Karman]

Wonder If Panavision plans to make a PV dovetail adapter like the did for the Arri 3's so we might be able to use a plate like the XL has and would interface with all their other dovetails?

Look, it's a light camera, but so is an Arricam LT and we are never asked to fly the baseplate, dovetail, and studio matte box (OK, once in a blue moon to fly the dreaded "Ring Light"). Suddenly it becomes necessary to quickly flip back to studio mode when using the Red? And as you pointed out the whole shoot was on the rig anyway.

[Charles Papert]

Like I said, it was my call not to bail on the rods and baseplate (and again, the ET setup is considerably lighter than the ARRI equivalent you would get with the LT). For all-purpose shooting, I think it safe to say that each of us have a preferred "sweet spot" of weight and mass that delivers a nice stable frame; much lighter than that and the rig can feel a tad squirrely, requiring more attention to horizon, lighter touch etc. Some prefer to jettison whatever possible, counting the ounces; others seem to like hoisting the maximum (in many instances, I wonder if this is more to do with macho bragging rights rather than actual operating preference) and therein lies the fascinating divergence of opinion that is the Steadicam world.

 

I liked where the RED clocked in with the exact setup I had. With a brawny Master Prime onboard rather than the dinky little Superspeed, I imagine I would have opted to mount my plate right to the base of the camera and use a clip-on (and had I known it was going to be a mini-marathon Steadicam day, I would have done the same).

 

As far as quick flips to studio mode, obviously a lot of RED shoots are fast paced and low-budget with minimal assistants and perhaps a single body, exactly the sort of recipe that requires a fast changeover between modes. Somewhere back in the early 90's I bought a Sony quick-release baseplate just to speed up that process on video jobs (and hey presto, here we are again!). When I am doing DP/Steadicam jobs on HD, I usually have the body configured so that we can make that swap with an absolute minimum of hardware; I opt to mount the MDR directly to the body and leave it there, for instance. Sometimes all we have to pull is the onboard monitor, and the camera pops off the head and onto the rig. Gives me that extra few minutes in the day to finish the 96 setups that someone thoughtfully scheduled.

 

One of the nice things that we will be seeing on more adequately budgeted RED jobs will be a virtual glut of camera bodies, which will allow us to have one in a given mode (studio, handheld, Steadicam, crane, crash housing etc) standing by and ready to go. Then again, we all know what that means--for action scenes, two squads of assistants will be asked to prep 8 different cameras with "unmanned" cameras suddenly appearing on the director, gaffer, PA's shoulders (probably because they own them)...that will be funky to say the least.

[Lawrence Karman]

Chaz, I read your previous post and got why you flew with all the hardware. With all the newbie "DP's" shooting with the RED I would just hate to see them come to think the norm is to fly that or any camera in full studio mode. Obviously you do what you want or need to do at the time. As far as speed goes, if you leave the ff/matte box, rods and dovetail together it's 3 screws to switch over. Short of a magic hour sequence, there's always time for that.