David Knaggs

I went to a RED event last night (my DP brought me along as his guest) which was held at Lemac (a local camera rental house) by the local branch of the ACS (Australian Cinematographers Society). It was held on less than 24 hours notice, yet the auditorium was totally packed out with extra seating having to be brought in - such is the interest in RED by the local DPs! There was a terrific briefing on RED from the owner of Lemac (who is an ACS). The briefing was so good that I found myself thinking, "Why have I bothered following the progress of this camera for the last 2 or 3 years? Almost everything I know has just been covered tonight!" He gave a totally balanced appraisal of the camera from a totally pro viewpoint and was very complimentary. I got the drift that shooting digital RAW impressed him a lot and put it in a rank above the other "video" cameras (such as HDCAM and Varicam). My own DP told me later that, to his mind, the concept of shooting RAW is just like shooting film neg.

One interesting thing that Lemac has done is adapt the battery mount to hold two batteries, one for the camera and one for all the accessories (as they found that just one battery gets depleted too quickly). They also had a video break-out box by the Element Technica company which converts the RED One's mini-coax connectors to industry standard HD-SDI BNC connectors.

One interesting thing mentioned (that I did not previously know) was that a top-notch EVF can cost $30,000 and that a guy in California who made these was actually hired by Jim to make the RED EVF which, in the speaker's opinion was a far better EVF (and at only $3,000). So my opinion went from, "Why does the EVF cost so much?" to "Bargain!!!!"

Another thing mentioned which I didn't know was that the RED camera also shows (on the monitor, EVF, etc.) the area immediately OUTSIDE what is recorded on the sensor. That way the DP can see a boom mic or dolly track or whatever BEFORE it gets into the frame and adjust his movements accordingly.

They showed us some film-outs from some local RED productions and then introduced RED's Field Ops Engineer Jeroen Hendriks, who basically travels around assisting certain productions to get rolling (with their cameras and workflow) during their first two weeks. He gave a lot of really good, simple advice (he was very level-headed) such as, "expose to protect your highlights," and stressed that the camera has excellent dynamic range, so you can always pull a lot of information out of the darker areas.

Then he introduced a fellow who'd been acting as his data wrangler (not sure if he was also a RED employee or not) and he spoke for a while about his duties. The two things that stuck with me were:

1/ Make two copies of the footage before you wipe the drive or CF card.
2/ On insured productions, you have to make the two copies every 20 minutes of footage shot. Otherwise the insurers totally freak out. Even though the RED drive can hold a day's worth of footage, it's too big a risk in the eyes of an insurance company. So back-ups for every 20 minutes shot.

He then went over other duties which he performs (maybe one of them is to check each frame for drop-outs??) but I'm a bit hazy on them. The next speaker also made an analogy between a data wrangler and the film loader. (And mentioned that a film loader might not make a good data wrangler unless they also possessed an affinity for computers and codecs, etc.)

Anyway, afterwards in the car, my DP told me about a recent shoot he had to do on P2 cards. They didn't provide him with a data wrangler and he wound up having to try to cope with it himself, while also trying to shoot the darned thing. He was so stressed by the extra duties that at one point he almost wiped some footage without backing it up.

And that got me to thinking. Even if you know you have to get a data wrangler to work with your DP on a RED production, where on earth do you get one from? Data Wranglers'R'Us?

As the RED cameras proliferate I can really see this being a growth industry (Data Wranglers). And being able to hand an untried (but very willing and computer/codec-literate) data wrangler a concise list of exact duties might be one way to get the ball rolling on a RED shoot. (At least until experienced RED data wranglers start growing on trees!)

Do any of our RED owners/shooters have any hard-won tips (and warnings on any pitfalls) concerning their personal data wrangling experiences that they'd like to share?

Igor Ridanovic

The basic advice:

Make copies and store them in separate locations whenever possible. But be realistic too. Hard drives fail sometimes but not that often.

You wouldn't open a can of exposed film. Nor would you mistreat a hard drive. Get some foam padded hard cases for the drives.

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Brian Drysdale

I believe the RED EVF has part of its electronics already inside the camera, so it's not a stand alone unit compared to the Accuscene V/F you'd buy for say an F900. I guess the production volume then bring down the unit costs, plus you're basically buying direct from the manufacturer rather than a dealer.

There has been some debate over the current RED noise levels when shooting in tungsten. So, I gather some people would disagree with being able to pull "lots of information" under those lighting conditions.

I don't know why RED decided to put non standard connectors on the camera.

David Knaggs

Thanks, Igor.

Good point, Brian. I noticed in Meryem's thread this morning that she'd had problems with noise when trying to pull the information out of the darker areas.

Build 16 seems to be shaping up as a landmark build in terms of improvements to image quality. The point I'll now be watching most closely (in terms of feedback on Build 16 from RED shooters) is whether there'll be any improvement to the noise levels when extracting info from the darker areas.