Editor's Note: The following is part of a two-week series of guest entries authored by Mark Pederson, Owner and Executive Producer of Offhollywood Studios, about his experiences with the very first two RED cameras to hit the public market. The RED is a boundary breaking technology that offers unparalleled HD imagery in digital format at a price point 1/10th that of similarly equipped cameras.
Things are moving very fast. EVERYBODY wants to see footage. EVERYBODY wants to "play" with the cameras. I try to post an update or two on www.REDUSER.net - which is THE web forum for camera reservation holders and people closely following the RED project - but I am quickly realizing that having the ONLY Red cameras on the East Coast may require a few more hours in the day than exist. I am wondering what I was thinking when I agreed to write blog entries every day for two weeks on zoom-in. Be careful what you wish for. I am fantasizing about a personal assistant. I am very tired, so I am not sure how much since this post is going to make and I sure hope they spell check it!
There is an electricity in the air at Offhollywood. We are testing and testing. Getting to know the camera and finding the "sweet spot" and our own "bag of tricks" for getting the best image from the RED One. Our Director of Operations - John "Pliny" Eremic - is doing a battery of tests on encodes, transcodes and work flows - while Aldey researches various components and accessories to build out our RED TECH KITS - all the things we want to have on set to work with the cameras and Red workflow. He is looking at various ways to create DVD dailies on set from the camera and things like that. Mike Curtis from HdforIndies is still here helping us test stuff and that has been great - we keep doing "brain dumps" - trading discoveries, test results and ideas.
Tomorrow I am switching gears. I need to focus on picking some material to use in various meetings and presentations with new potential clients who want to shoot on the Red. I need to get my "dog and pony show" organized. It's time to SELL.
We are going to leverage our RED expertise and "first-to-market on the East Coast" advantage to specifically target commercials, fashion and corporate work. Most of the work we do is in independent film and we are anxious to start applying our technology driven indie approach to high-end spots.
I am so anxious to bring shots into our SCRATCH color grading system - but there is a client in there for the rest of the week, so that will be Monday. I'll talk about Scratch in more detail in a future post - it is really incredible - and a KEY part of what Offhollywood sees as the optimal workflow for high-end finishing projects shot on RED. One of the best investments we have made to date.
It's very, very hard to comprehend that with this camera you can shoot 4K moving images to a COMPACT FLASH CARD. A tiny little card that you can pinch between your fingers. That you can slide into your shirt pocket. A $200 8 Gig flash card!!! No can of film to process. No tape.
A tiny card.
Images with MASSIVE detail and higher resolution than 35mm motion picture film. This is ground-breaking, tipping point stuff. It is simply amazing to be RIGHT THERE, standing on the front lines ... of a REVOLUTION.
