‘Crossing the Line’ With the Big Red One

Anticipated 4K camera scheduled to ship this summer

by Carl Mrozek, 06.13.2007

LAS VEGAS

When the Red Team pronounced during NAB2006 plans to deliver an operational 4 K/2K/HD camera within a year, they were cheered by some and lambasted by others.

(click thumbnail) Red Digital Cinema delivers Red One 4K camera, on display at NAB2007

Skeptics insisted that the Red camera would likely cost 10 times their projected price point of less than $20,000, which was lower than any 2/3-inch CCD HD camera, and much less than any 4K or 2K camera.

Also, they didn’t have the benefit of a manufacturing facility or an existing product line to build on. Moreover, their team was not stacked with top engineers and designers from leading manufacturers of high-end cameras, recorders, lenses etc.

To some their project seemed more like wishful thinking than a credible effort to revolutionize electronic cinematography. But not to Ted Schilowitz, whose title is Leader of the Rebellion at Red Digital Cinema. “Red is a project of passion, starting with the vision of Jim Jannard to create an affordable 4K digital movie camera capable of the same quality as a high-end digital SLR. Maybe we were too naïve to believe that it couldn’t be done, so we just went ahead and did it,” he said.

NOT JUST VAPOR

A year later, at NAB2007, the skepticism largely evaporated with the debut of “Crossing the Line,” a 12-minute film shot with Red One prototypes. This short feature, the first shot with a Red Camera, was the brainchild of Director Peter Jackson, renowned for “King Kong” and the “Lord of Rings” trilogy.

“Crossing the Line” was shot in 4K using two alpha versions of Red One nicknamed “Boris” and “Natasha.” The finished film was projected in 4K in the Red Theater at NAB with Sony’s 4K projector and made Red Digital Cinema’s exhibit one of the hottest booths at the show.

Waiting lines often encircled the 40-by-60-foot exhibit in Las Vegas Convention Center’s South Hall, and only grew longer as NAB progressed and the buzz percolated.

The plot line of the film was fairly simple—a soldier’s seemingly desperate but ultimately successful effort to retrieve a wallet photo of his beloved blowing across a World War I battlefield, always just out of reach, until the end. However, the cinematography is as complex, intense and impressive as in any multimillion dollar action film with plenty of aerials, crane, boom, vehicle-mounted, tripod and steadicam shots.

At the NAB show, viewer reactions ranged from mild to wildly enthused and impressed. At minimum, “Crossing the Line” shifted the discussion from whether the Red Camera was technologically feasible in the near term, to how soon it would be shipping with what feature set.

For the more than 1,500 early adopters who pre-ordered a Red One camera before NAB2007, when it would be shipping, was the critical question.

Richard Bluck, director of photography on “Crossing the Line” answered key performance questions during an ad hoc Q & A session after a screening.

Bluck said both prototype cameras were kept busy 12 hours a day on two consecutive days.

The cameras were mounted on everything from tanks to old biplanes and helicopters.

“The vibration aboard the chopper was so intense that it jeopardized recording to the Red Drive, so we detached it from the camera and kept it inside the chopper where vibration was less intense. We umbilicaled it to the camera and lens mounted outside. Both camera and drive worked fine that way and neither one failed us during the shoot,” he said.

The Red Drives are actually very compact external SATA raids. Each 320 GB raid records two-plus hours of 4K footage. All footage was captured at 4K native using the RedCode raw codec, at 27 MBps, with 12-bit processing.

According to Bluck, the efficiency of Red Code versus 35mm film was impressive. “We utilized over 500 GB of drive capacity but still had free space left after two days of shooting, even though I often kept rolling on the action much more than with film,” he said.

Operating was also fairly straightforward. “Recording raw, we didn’t have to do much tweaking after setting base parameters like shutter speed. We mostly shot at 24 fps in 12-bit mode. Occasionally, I had to change lenses and set exposure, but otherwise it was point and shoot,” Bluck said.

Bluck and Jackson used only film lenses.

“We used several Cooke primes and a short zoom, plus Angenieux’s long Optimo zoom depending on the application. The most time-consuming thing was mounting the cameras on tripods, trucks, cranes, booms, steadicams, helicopters, etc. The biggest challenge came from vibration in the air, and at the upper telephoto range of the Optimo, which is a large lens,” Bluck said. “Field monitoring was done mainly with a Marshall HD LCD monitor and with HDTV monitors via HD-SDI.”

Posting was surprisingly straightforward, he said. “We treated the raw 4K Red like film negative and edited in Final Cut Pro using the native 4K RedCode raw files, while looking at a lower resolution on the editing monitors. After making all our edit decisions, we reloaded it to a Pablo and reassembled it in 4K using our EDL,” he said. “We also color-corrected it in 4K on the Pablo,” a Quantel product.

They could have done the entire project in Final Cut Pro in Pro Res had itbeen destined for HDTV, he said.

COMING SOON

Schilowitz said the whole project materialized at the last minute. A few weeks before NAB, Peter Jackson told him he was interested in shooting “some test footage” with the Red camera.

“We organized quickly and flew out to New Zealand a few days later... We had no idea that the ‘test footage’ would be two intense days on a large action movie set. Peter’s crew was amazing, rigging everything up to shoot 4K, and we had some key Red team members there to work with them,” Schilowitz said. “When they arrived, Jackson and his crew were ready to roll, with a script, actors, period costumes, makeup, a set, and an arsenal of props including old army tanks and jeeps, antique fighter planes… plus all the big support gear for a big feature film. It was quite impressive,” he said.

“Both cameras performed well under pressure and captured the action as raw data. The editing also came right down to the wire. We got the final 4K cut just before NAB started, but it all worked out,” Schilowitz said.

Partly due to the lessons learned in making “Crossing the Line,” the target delivery date for the first batch of Red cameras has been shifted from May to mid-summer.

“We decided to make some final modifications before shipping the first batch of cameras. We are using a different development model with Red than most camera manufacturers. We work to real engineering targets rather than arbitrary shipping dates. When we reach those benchmarks, we’ll start shipping,” Schilowitz said. “Developing this 4K camera, and its workflow, has been an amazing rollercoaster ride. We’re just getting started and it’s going to be fun to see what develops when a lot of folks start shooting 4K with their Red One cameras.”

Hollywood Plots End of Film Reels

Xeni Jardin 07.28.05

Representatives of Hollywood's top movie studios say they have agreed on technical specifications that will make it easier to distribute and display movies digitally.

Digital Cinema Initiatives, the industry consortium created in 2002 to unite studios, theater owners and tech manufacturers in planning the shift to digital, released version 1.0 of its requirements and specifications for digital cinema Wednesday.

The document represents three years of testing, planning and debate that united the studios, which are more accustomed to competing with each other than collaborating.

The motivation behind that unity, as with many things in Hollywood, is money.

Studios spent more than $631 million in 2003 on film prints for the North American market alone, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Subtracting reels from that equation could reduce total distribution costs by as much as 90 percent, according to U.K. digital cinema analyst Patrick von Sychowski. Add in costs for overseas distribution and exhibition, and the move from prints to digital files could mean an eventual annual savings of up to $900 million.

Advocates of the shift to digital exhibition say theater owners also would benefit from new flexibility: If a movie sells out in one theater, an owner can quickly switch other screens to that feature to accommodate the unexpected demand. And if a supposed blockbuster turns out to be a bomb, it can be yanked from screens just as instantly -- no new prints from the studio, no reel swaps.

Proponents say there's something in it for moviegoers, too -- digital in-theater display means no out-of-focus projection, no out-of-order reels, no scratches and pops on film that's been played too many times on old projectors. And digital systems could make other kinds of content possible in theaters, including live, high-definition coverage of sports events, Broadway plays or group games.

The 176-page DCI document (.pdf) outlines a wide array of technical details -- including file resolutions, compression formats and security requirements -- but leaves one huge barrier unresolved. Who will foot the bill?

Studios don't want to pony up because they don't own the theaters; theaters don't want to invest in costly servers and $50,000 to $100,000 projectors that may become obsolete in a few years.

One often-discussed economic model would have studios divert funds they now spend on film prints to fund equipment and installation costs for theaters. Those theaters would, in turn, promise to show digital features from the studios.

Filmmakers who issued statements applauding Wednesday's announcement include George Lucas, John Lasseter, Robert Zemeckis and Robert Rodriguez.

Another supporter, longtime digital cinema advocate James Cameron, is among directors pursuing projects that use stereo 3-D techniques created specifically for digital projection. Cameron's CGI/live-action feature Battle Angel, based on the Yukito Kishiro graphic novel Battle Angel Alita, is designed for 3-D and is slated for a mid-2007 release by 20th Century Fox.

"I want people to experience movies as vividly as possible, and it may become possible to project at thousands of frames per second, because with digital you are no longer moving something in a solid state," Cameron said in a recent interview. "The physics of the medium haven't been maxed out, as they have with film. The limiting factor now becomes not the system, but human perception itself."

Security provisions in the DCI spec deal mostly with what happens in theaters, and detail an open security architecture that allows a variety of tech vendors to compete and hone their technologies over time. The system proposed by DCI relies on digital rights management, watermarking, content encryption and key management. Digital movie files are to be encrypted for transport and receipt by theaters, which then would use decryption keys to unlock the content.

The system is also designed to generate a data forensics bread-crumb trail, with the intent of tracing piracy incidents after the fact back to the theaters in which they occurred.

Outside Hollywood, analysts' opinions on the feasibility of the DCI security specs were mixed.

"The devil is in the details," said security analyst Bruce Schneier, "and this document doesn't contain the details."

"Tracking it to the theater won't help, because attackers with camcorders could just make their visits to theaters random," said security analyst Jacob Appelbaum of LogicLibrary. "It means that the camcorders just have to fit into the crowd, and then the theaters have a reason not to adopt this. It's already against the law."

Studio representatives acknowledge that the DCI security specifications do nothing to prevent in-theater copying of movies, which remains a top piracy method.

"These technical solutions won't solve internal theft by camcorders," said John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners. "But we're working on human-resources solutions and incentives to help address that part of the problem."

Others cited the difficulties involved in the plan's "forensic watermarking" provisions.

"There's no such thing as a watermark that is both invisible and hard to remove, because by definition, a watermark that adds no perceptible information to a signal leaves no perceptible change behind after it is removed," said Cory Doctorow, European-outreach coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (Editor's note: Doctorow and Xeni Jardin are co-editors of the Boing Boing weblog.)

Doctorow believes that provisions in the document that detail logging, checking and revoking the right to exhibit could mean that network problems at digital cinema facilities could impair exhibitors' ability to show movies for which they've bought rights.

"A theater's ability to screen a movie could become dependent on the reliability of their internet connection at the moment they plan to screen it," said Doctorow. "A widespread flash-worm attack that brings down or slows large chunks of the internet, or a targeted attack on the license server, could theoretically darken every movie screen in America -- or the world."

Read More http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2005/07/68332?currentPage=2#ixzz0kzEfHHTM

Read More http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2005/07/68332#ixzz0kzEUNLZG

RSS Analog Meets Its Match in Red Digital Cinema's Ultrahigh-Res Camera

WIRED MAGAZINE: 16.09

Entertainment : Hollywood

By Michael Behar 08.18.08

The Red One, an ultrahigh-res digital camera, is ready for its close-up.
Photo: Christian Stoll

A crowd has gathered in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center, where a security guard is about to unlock the main entrance. It's less than a minute before 9 am, the official opening of the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters Show—typically a sleepy sales and marketing event known more for schmoozing than buzz. But as the glass doors open on this April morning, a hundred people race toward a large crimson tent in the center of the hall.

The tent is home to Red Digital Cinema and its revolutionary motion picture camera, the Red One. Standing nearby is the man who developed it—a handsome guy with a neatly trimmed goatee and a pair of sunglasses perched atop his clean-shaven head. He clutches a can of Diet Coke in his left hand, an unlit Montecristo jutting from between his fingers.

Jim Jannard, 59, is the billionaire founder of Red. In 1975 he spent $300 to make a batch of custom motocross handlebar grips, which he sold from the back of a van. He named his company Oakley, after his English setter, and eventually expanded into sci-fi-style sunglasses, bags, and shoes. In November of last year he sold the business to Luxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, for a reported $2.1 billion.

Jannard won't say how much money he has poured into Red, but his target market clearly appreciates the investment. Supplicants swarm the tent, many of them with offerings—fine wine, gourmet coffee, single-malt whiskey—all to thank Jannard for building the Red One. "I guess they just like me," he says with a wry smile.

An example of video shot on the Red One. For a better look, watch it in HD.

Video by opus magnum prod.
More Red One video at Vimeo.

It's more than that: His team of engineers and scientists have created the first digital movie camera that matches the detail and richness of analog film. The Red One records motion in a whopping 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—"4K" in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical. For comparison, hi-def digital movies like Sin City and the Star Wars prequels top out at 1,920 by 1,080, just like your HDTV. (There's also a slightly higher-resolution option called 2K that reaches 2,048 lines by 1,080.) Film doesn't have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K. And that's what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it's easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard's creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete.

Two years ago, Jannard brought a spec sheet and a mock-up of a camera—not much more than an aluminum box about the size of a loaf of bread—to NAB 2006. Even though it wasn't a working product, more than 500 people plunked down a $1,000 deposit to get their names on a waiting list. For months, industry watchers wondered if the company was for real. Today, there's no question. The Red One is being used on at least 40 features. Steven Soderbergh, the Oscar-winning director, borrowed two prototypes to shoot his Che Guevara biopics, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, and later purchased three for his film The Informant. Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings himself, bought four. Director Doug Liman used a Red on Jumper. Peter Hyams used one on his upcoming Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. Digital cinema that's all but indistinguishable from film is finally coming to a theater near you.

The Red headquarters is in Lake Forest, California, a sprawling Orange County exurb consisting mainly of strip malls and office parks. The 32,000-square-foot facility, which Jannard recently bought for a reported $7.7 million, has a stark white exterior unbroken by windows except at the entrance, where a winged human skull is painted on the glass. Jannard, wearing blue jeans, black slip-on sandals, and a lime-green short-sleeve shirt, greets me in the lobby and ushers me through a set of gray metal doors. On the way into the workspace, there is a sign:

Jim Jannard in his Red screening room.
Photo: Amy Crilly

1) Please knock.
2) Take two steps back.
3) Kneel.

Since I'm getting a tour from the wizard himself, I'm apparently excused from genuflecting.

Behind the doors, the walls are festooned with camouflage netting—a nod, perhaps, to the postapocalyptic design of the steel-clad Oakley headquarters half a mile away.

"I had been thinking about this project for a long time," Jannard says. "As a camera fanatic and a product builder, this was something I seemed destined to do." When businesspeople talk destiny, it can sound like bullshit. But at Oakley, Jannard not only ran the company, he personally shot one of its two TV spots and all of its print ads from 1975 to 1995. He owns more than 1,000 cameras, both still and motion picture, several dating back almost a century. "I have a Bolex, Aaton, Arriflex, Eyemo, Filmo, Mitchell, Photosonic, Beaulieu, Keystone—just about every movie camera you can think of."

Why The Red Rocks, Part I

The Red One camera gives moviemakers the best of both worlds. It delivers the ease of use and editing flexibility provided by digital cinema cameras. At the same time, the Red's resolution and color fidelity rival that of 35-millimeter film, and it allows the same kind of control over focus. Bonus: Like HD and 2K digital, it's cheap.

C A M E R A	Film (Example: Panavision Millennium XL-2)	2K and HD Digital (Example: Sony F23)	4K Digital (Example: Red One)
R M E E C D O I R U D M I N G	Film	Tape deck or disk	CompactFlash and RAID
I C M A A P G T E U R E	Silver halide emulsion on plastic	3 sensors with colors split by prism	1 propietary sensor
L R I E N S E O S L U O T F I O N	No lines, but comparable to 4k	HD: 1,920(h) x 1,080(v) 2K: 2.048(h) x 1,080(v)	4,096(h) x 2,304(v)
R N E E L G A A T T I I V V E E S I Z E

Icons by Jason Lee

In 2004, Jannard bought a Sony HDR-FX1—the first hi-def videocam for consumers. When he found he couldn't use the files it produced without translation software from a company called Lumiere, he telephoned Lumiere's owner, filmmaker Frederic Haubrich. "I told Frederic that I couldn't even view my footage on a Mac and that this had pissed me off enough that I wanted to build my own camera. And he said, 'Jim, I know guys in the industry who can help.'" Haubrich introduced Jannard to interface designer Ted Schilowitz.

Schilowitz, Haubrich, and Jannard spent a year trying to design that dream camera, one that would combine the practical advantages of digital moviemaking with the image quality of analog film. They recruited mathematicians, programmers, digital imaging experts, hardware engineers, and physicists. "We needed a bunch of guys who were inventors to come up with entirely new ways of getting to the finish line," Jannard says. He kept the project quiet until his team could determine whether building the device was even feasible, but rumors swirled through Hollywood about some kind of mysterious supercamera in the works. "I didn't know who Jim was," Soderbergh says. "But I heard about Red because they were canvassing filmmakers and cinematographers, asking, 'If you could wave a magic wand, what camera would you design?'"

Most of the work took place in what employees call Jim's garage, a 20,000-square-foot warehouse across the street from Red's massive headquarters. The team quickly concluded that existing technology was inadequate. The guts of the camera—the image sensor and all the accompanying circuitry—would have to be created from scratch. It was a daunting challenge, but the fact that Jannard's management style falls somewhere between Mr. T and Steve Jobs on the autocracy scale helped. "What separates us from other camera companies is that the vision guy is the decisionmaker," he says. "That was one of my biggest advantages at Oakley, and it's the same at Red—I'm in the trenches, in the product development, and I make the final call. Red is a benevolent dictatorship."

The video revolution has been on pause in Hollywood. Just as digital still cameras now rule the photography market, hi-def digital movie cameras were supposed to replace film. But moviemakers never fully bought in. Typical digital videocams use prisms to split incoming light by color and send it to three separate sensors, which tends to soften images. Onboard software sharpens the footage but also introduces halos and exaggerated edges. Worse, the small sensors put too much of the picture in focus, giving it a canned look. Cinematographers hate that; the ability to guide the viewer's eye by selectively blurring focal planes is one of their favorite techniques. "That's a storytelling tool," says Pierre de Lespinois, a producer and director who spent three weeks in April filming a feature in the Mojave Desert with two Red Ones. "In HD, what's right in front of the lens and what's 20 feet away are both sharp, so the image looks flat."

To compete with celluloid, a digital cine-camera would need an image sensor identical in size and shape to a single frame of 35-mm motion picture film. Without that, the Red couldn't give filmmakers the control over depth of field, color saturation, tonality, and a half dozen other factors that 35-mm film provides.

Why The Red Rocks, Part II

C A M E R A	Film (Example: Panavision Millennium XL-2)	2K and HD Digital (Example: Sony F23)	4K Digital (Example: Red One)
C O S T	Rents for about $25,000/month	$150,000	$17,500
L E N S E S	Proprietary or standard mount	Proprietary mount	Standard mount
C D O I S G T I T T I O Z E	$300,000 and up	$0 (already digital)	$0 (already digital)
E S D O I F T T I W N A G R E

Icons by Jason Lee

You'll find that kind of full-frame sensor at the core of any high-end digital single-lens reflex camera. But they're designed to shoot no more than 10 frames per second. That's warp speed for still photographers but barely first gear for filmmakers. Movies are shot at a minimum of 24 frames per second, with some scenes topping out at 120 fps for slow-motion effects. The Red's sensor would have to do everything a DSLR sensor does—and do it significantly faster.

The camera also had to be able to record in the same bulky file format that DSLRs use—called raw. The format preserves picture data in essentially unprocessed form, which gives photographers more latitude to tweak images with software the way they once did in a darkroom. (Cinematographers do the same thing with 35-mm film, but it's a complicated, expensive process: The film must be scanned into digital to be manipulated, then converted back to analog for projection.) Since a movie is just a long sequence of still pictures, using the raw format presented bandwidth and data-storage problems. A two-hour feature could run up to 7 terabytes. The Red engineers built a workaround, a lossless compression codec they call Redcode Raw.

Finally, in August 2006, Jannard's team flipped the switch on Red's first prototype, codenamed Frankie. It wasn't really a camera at all, just a mechanical test bed containing the new sensor. "Our whole business was predicated on this sensor," Jannard says. "If it didn't work, we'd be cooked. When it did, it was like giving birth and counting all the fingers and toes to make sure everything was there. It was phenomenal. Everybody went nuts." Schilowitz remembers that moment, which camera makers call first light, as mind-blowing: "Everyone started screaming like little kids, 'First light! First light! It's alive!' The thing actually worked."

Two weeks later, at an industry event in Amsterdam, Jannard showed test footage taken with Frankie—a clip of two perky women in '50s garb chugging milk from glass bottles—on a 60-foot screen. "People were stunned," Schilowitz says. "They were standing around scratching their heads. That moment made a lot of people into believers." Filmmakers didn't care how the Red One worked, but they liked what they saw. "The Red camera is the closest thing to film I've seen," says Tristan Whitman, a cinematography lecturer at USC.

The Analog Advantage

Typical 2K and HD digital movie cameras keep everything in focus. The 4K Red One is more like an analog camera, allowing depth of field control, which blurs the foreground or background.

Analog film lets moviemakers control the depth of field.
Photo: Lisa Wiseman

2K and HD cameras force everything into focus.
Photo: Lisa Wiseman

By March 2007, Red had assembled two additional prototypes, named Boris and Natasha. But now, with three weeks to go before NAB 2007, Jannard wanted new footage to show what the camera could do. He emailed Jackson, asking if the director could recommend a good cinematographer in Los Angeles to help create a Red promo spot. Not long after, Jackson telephoned. "Jim, why don't you fly down here to New Zealand, and I'll shoot the footage for you," he said.

"Don't tease me," Jannard replied.

"No, I'm serious," Jackson said. "Bring the cameras down."

Jannard packed up Boris and Natasha, still crude machines with no features other than a run/stop button and a shutter, and headed south. When he got to Wellington, Jackson was ready. "Peter had put together an army," Jannard says. "He was going to shoot a mini-movie to put the cameras through their paces, using them on helicopters and Steadicams, crawling on the ground with them—and I'm thinking, 'Oh my gosh, I just hope they keep working through the weekend.'" Boris and Natasha performed flawlessly. "We stayed at Peter's house, and he was just beaming because he was having so much fun." Jackson delivered his 12-minute featurette, titled Crossing the Line, the night before the NAB Show opened.

Jannard shows me the film at Red headquarters. His desk is in an open workspace that he shares with six staffers and his puppy. Next to his computer there's a box of the Montecristos he favors and a pinewood crate from Napa Valley Reserve, the world's most exclusive wine club. Members reportedly pay up to $145,000 to join, in exchange for which they can partake in grape harvests and create their own blends. There's something oddly honorable about a billionaire with insanely expensive taste in wine but no office.

I watch Crossing the Line on Jannard's 30-inch HD display while he stands behind me. The film, set on the front lines of World War I, alternates between aerial dogfights and bloody ground combat. The screen resolution is about half what it would be in a theater. Nevertheless, it's like looking through a window onto a battlefield. I can barely discern a single pixel. The detail is stupefying; the colors are rich and sensual.

After NAB 2007, Jannard showed Crossing the Line at the Directors Guild in LA. "I rearranged my travel plans to be there," Soderbergh says. After he saw the film, he called Jannard.

"Jim, I'm all in. I have to shoot with this."

"OK, great," Jannard said. "But what does that mean?"

"I'm making two movies with Benicio del Toro. Come to my house, and we'll do a test. If it looks as good as what I saw in Peter's film, I want these cameras for my movies."

Soderbergh took two prototypes into the Spanish wilderness. "It felt like someone crawled inside my head when they designed the Red," he says. What impressed him most was the cameras' sturdiness. Movie sets are often a flurry of crashes and explosions, which can vibrate sensitive electronics, introducing visual noise known as microphonics into images. "A lot of cameras with electronics in them, if you fired a 50-caliber automatic weapon a few inches away—which we did—you'd get microphonics all over the place," Soderbergh says. "We beat the shit out of the Reds on the Che films, and they never skipped a beat."

Then there's the economics: The Red One sells for $17,500—almost 90 percent less than its nearest HD competitor. The savings are even greater relative to a conventional film camera. Not that anyone buys those; filmmakers rent them, usually from Panavision, an industry stalwart in Woodland Hills, California. Panavision doesn't publicize its rates, but a Panavision New Zealand rental catalog quotes $25,296 for a four-week shoot—more than the cost of purchasing a Red. "It's clearly the future of cinematography," Peter Hyams says. "You can buy this camera. You can own it. That's why people are excited."

Even so, traditionalists cling to film's reliability. Film is tangible. Hard drives crash; files get corrupted. "You put film in a can and stick it on a shelf, and it costs $1,000 a year to store," says Stephen Lighthill, who teaches cinematography at the American Film Institute. "With a project that starts as data, you have it on a hard drive, which has to be nursed and upgraded. It's an electronic, mechanical device that can't be left unplugged." Preserving a 4K digital master of a feature film would cost $12,000 a year, according to a report by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. And that doesn't address the reliability of the camera itself. "In the slammin', jammin' world of production, you want a really tough machine that takes very simple approaches to problems," Lighthill says. "I'm not sure Red is the way to go. It's a supercomputer with a lens on it."

Proponents dismiss such criticism as Luddite drivel. "Hollywood is just used to shooting on film," says Bengt Jan Jönsson, cinematographer on the Fox TV show Bones. "Honestly, if you proposed the film work-flow today, you'd be taken to the city square and hung. Imagine I told you we're going to shoot on superexpensive cameras, using rolls of celluloid made in China that are a one-time-use product susceptible to scratches and that can't be exposed to light. And you can't even be sure you got the image until they're developed. And you have to dip them in a special fluid that can ruin them if it's mixed wrong. People would think I was crazy."

As Reds infiltrate Hollywood, the typical filmgoer might not notice much difference at first. After all, once they're projected onto a cineplex screen, movies shot with Jannard's camera will look like the analog movies audiences are used to. But the camera's ease of use and lower cost are sure to change the industry. "There's talent on the streets, kids with ideas who have stories to tell and never get a chance," Jannard says. "Up to now, they've been limited to tools that confine their stories to YouTube." Access to this kind of tech will make it easier for aspiring auteurs to break in and could ultimately expand the range and variety of films that get made.

Of course, most theaters still show movies the old-fashioned way, running analog film in front of a bright light. For now, pictures shot with the Red must be transferred to celluloid for distribution. It's a cumbersome system: A full-length feature might take as many as five (heavy, expensive to print) reels. A major release goes to at least 3,500 theaters. Plus, the celluloid stock gets damaged and dirty and has to be sent in for cleaning and repair after every few dozen screenings.

Luckily, analog projection seems to be on the way out. In March, four big Hollywood studios announced plans to retrofit 10,000 screens—about a quarter of the US total—for digital projection at 2K. Movies shot with Red's 4K camera will look every bit as good as those shot on film, and they'll all be ads for the company's next camera, the Epic, with more than 5,000 lines of resolution. That's a knockout pixel punch. I ask Jannard if Red plans to develop a 4K projector or perhaps even a 5K that it would market to theater owners. He's cagey. "I will say that the future of motion-capture will be digital," he says, "and I think you can extend that to say the future of presentation will be digital."

Jannard is doing his best to fulfill that prophecy. He spends nights on the company's Internet user forums sifting through customer feedback, answering technical questions, and addressing rumors about upcoming products. "I'm passionate about this because I'm building the camera I've always wanted to shoot with," he says. "When my grandkids and great-grandkids look back, they're going to say I was a camera builder. I did handgrips and then goggles and then sunglasses to prepare myself. But cameras are magic."

Michael Behar (michael@michaelbehar.com) wrote about computer graphics guru Jos Stam in issue 16.01.

Read More http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16-09/ff_redcamera?currentPage=all#ixzz0kzDUBlQX

Film vs. Videotape

Ultimately, digital image acquisition will definitely replace film for TV production. You don't need a crystal ball to know that. -Ed Nassour, senior VP of postproduction, 20th Century Fox Television

New Insights in an Ongoing Debate -

Which is better: film or videotape?"

The fact is, each is superior in a number of ways; it depends on your needs.

At the same time we need to acknowledge the fact that much of the information about the "inferiority of video" is no longer valid. Even so, old beliefs persist.

First, let's look first at the advantages of film.

Advantages of Film

The TV Production modules concentrate on television, so here we tend to emphasize the advantages of video. Even so, film has some advantages.

After more than 100 years of film production, a rich and highly sophisticated tradition has grown up around film. Unlike video production where newcomers may quickly find themselves functioning as camerapersons and even in some cases as directors, the feature film tradition typically involves long, highly competitive apprenticeships.

Less motivated people tend to drop out in favor of those who are more talented, persistent, and dedicated.

Because of rich heritage of film, the production and postproduction processes have not suffered from a lack of talent or supporting industries. In Southern California alone there are thousands of companies that specialize in various aspects of film production.

We have a big industry and a lot of vested interests, and it takes a long time to adapt.... I don't think we will be doing much of anything on film very soon; most of the things that used to be the advantages of film are gone. -Dean Delvin, Director of Photography

Comparing the closing credits of a major film feature with those of a typical video production provides some measure of the differences that still exist between the two media. (Try sitting through the closing credits of Pearl Harbor or Ratatouille!)

For decades, film has enjoyed rather consistent worldwide standards. A 16mm film can be broadcast on any of world's broadcast systems, regardless of the broadcast standard, and a 35mm film can be shown in almost any theater in the world.

Video, on the other hand, has not only progressed through numerous tape formats, but there are now a half-dozen incompatible broadcast standards being used in various parts of the world. For producers with an eye on international distribution, film has for decades been the obvious choice.

The line between the two production approaches has now become a bit blurry. Today, many productions start out on film, and using a DI (Digital Intermediate) step the film is immediately transferred to video for subsequent postproduction work. Assuming that the production has to end up on film, the video is then converted back to film as a final step. But as theaters continue to convert to digital projectors, this "final step" is no longer necessary in many theaters.

Relative Equipment Durability

It is commonly assumed that film equipment is more durable than digital video equipment -- primarily because film cameras are mechanically much simpler.

Although this may be true, professional video equipment--especially with the new solid-state recording media--is now being successfully used under the most extreme conditions.

However, when stored and used in extreme temperatures, color film stock will suffer problems such as color shifts.

Technical Quality Compared

It is commonly believed that the quality of 35mm motion picture film as viewed on television is better than video. If we are talking about the artistic differences, then film may still have an advantage for the historical reasons we've noted.

Although artistic differences between film and videotape are difficult to measure, purely technical differences are not. This brings us to the following statement.

If production conditions are controlled and if comparisons are made solely on the basis of sharpness and color fidelity, the best 35mm film will be slightly inferior to the best video, assuming the latest professional-quality video equipment is used and the final result is broadcast.

As controversial as this statement might be with some film people, the reason becomes obvious when the production process for each medium is traced.

First, it is important to realize that if a signal from a video camera is recorded on the highest-quality process, no discernible difference will be noted between the picture coming from the camera and the picture that is later electronically reproduced.

With film intended for broadcast the process is far more complex.

First the image is recorded on negative film. Typically, the original negative film is then used to make a master positive, or intermediate print. From the master positive a "dupe'' (duplicate) negative is created; and from that a positive release print is made. This adds up to a minimum of three generations.

At each step things happen: color and quality variations are introduced by film emulsions and processing, there is a general optical degradation of the image, and the inevitable accumulation of dirt and scratches on the film surface starts.

After all of these steps, the film release print is projected into a video camera to convert it to an electronic signal, which is where the video signal started out in the first place.

There is also this: Unlike video, film is based in a mechanical process. As the film goes through the gate of a camera and projector there is the inevitable loss of perfect registration. This is easy to see when you sit close to a large motion picture screen the note ever-so-slight variations in the placement of sharp (primarily) horizontal lines. This is often referred to as judder, and it results in a slight blurring of projected film images.

To understand more of the film-video sharpness difference we must bear several other factors in mind. Film is theoretically capable of resolving several times more detail than standard video.

But, since it looses much of its sharpness in its route from film camera to television camera, when the film is converted to video electronic image enhancement is routinely used to restore lost sharpness. Although image enhancement sharpens the overall look of the film image, once lost, subtle details cannot be enhanced back into existence.

At the same time video is becoming capable of resolving ever-greater levels of fine detail. Eastman Kodak has announced a CCD chip capable of holding 16,777,216 bytes per square inch, which is double the resolution of standard 35mm film.

But the sharpness of video isn't necessarily a plus.

Many people think the slightly softer look of film is actually one of its advantages. For one thing, the soft ambiance surrounding the film image is subconsciously if not consciously associated with "Hollywood film making.''

There are also subtle tonal and color changes with film, which, while not representing the true values of the original subject matter, are subconsciously associated with film and it's historical heritage.

At the same time, the slightly sharper image of video is associated with news and the live coverage of events, subject matter that is very much in contrast to the normal fare of feature films.

Coping With Brightness Ranges

Until recently, video cameras simply could not handle the brightness range of film. (Remember ▲30:1 is the maximum brightness range for many home receivers.)

If film exposure is carefully controlled, a bright window in the background of a scene, for example, will not adversely affect the reproduction of surrounding tones.

As a result of early experience with professional tube-based video cameras, many producers concluded that film had a major advantage over video. And, at that point, it clearly did.

But times have changed. One video camera (the Phantom 65) demonstrated at the 2008 NAB convention can handle a 10,000,00:1 contrast ratio -- or 23 f-stops of exposure latitude in the same scene.

In a demonstration the camera was able to clearly see the burning a filament in a clear lit 500-watt bulb and, at the same time, reproduce background objects.

As we note here "The Red One" video camera (shown here) from the Red Digital Cinema Camera Company has a resolution of 5,000K, exceeding the best broadcast HDTV.

Other digital cameras being used in production are Sony's F35 and F23, Panavision's Genesis, and Arri's Arriflex D--21.

This graphic shows the relative pixel resolution of several ultra-high definition formats.

---

There is also a less obvious difference between film and video.

With NTSC television the film-to-video conversion process requires some technical "fancy footwork" that results in the introduction of almost subliminal effects associated with the film image on TV.

NTSC video is transmitted at 30 frames per-second and the frame rate for film is 24 per-second. (The machine shown on the right converts film images to video.)

Because there is no nice, neat math associated with dividing 30 by 24, the only way to make the conversion is to regularly scan some film frames twice.

This results in a subtle high-speed jitter, a type of artifact that has become associated (if only subconsciously) with the film image on TV.

With the SECAM and PAL broadcast standards used in non-NTSC countries the conversion process is easier. Both of these video systems operate at 25 frames per-second-very close to the 24 fps used in film. The 1 fps difference is almost impossible to detect, so adjusting the film camera or projector rate to 25 fps is a common solution.

DI - the Intermediate Digital Step

By 2005, major motion pictures were using the advantages of digital imaging (DI) as an intermediate step between the color negative film shot in the camera and the final release print copied for use within theaters. (Here, we are talking about films made for theatrical release.)

Scanning the film into digital form provides much more control over color correction and artistic color changes.

Of course once in digital form special effects with video are much easier and less expensive than with film.

Uncompressed Video

One of the quality compromises involved in HDTV has been the need to compress the signal.

However, as the cost of digital recording and storage has decreased we are seeing some production facilities move to uncompressed (4:4:4, 10 bit) video recording and editing. Silence Becomes You, released in 2005, was billed as the world's first uncompressed 4:4:4 feature production--shot with a video camera and later converted to film.

Once this approach is more widely adopted, we'll see a major jump in image quality and post-production speed and economy, making the switch to HDTV even more attractive.

Digital Cinema

So-called digital cinema or e-cinema (electronic cinematography) is rapidly gaining ground, especially since it is becoming almost impossible for most theater patrons to distinguish between it and film.

E-cinema is now preferred by many independent "filmmakers," and major "film" competitions now have more entries on video than on film.

The major weakness in the move to digital cinema has been with projectors. But, the latest generation is based on projector imagers with a 4-megapixel resolution--twice that of the previous generation of projectors. The detail possible with these projectors exceeds that of 35mm film projection.

Now the major stumbling block for digital cinema is the great initial investment in equipment--the projector and the associated computer. However, once this investment is made, major savings can be realized.

Directors of Photography in film often resist moving to video equipment because "everything is different." It can take decades to move up to a Director of Photography position, and old habits and patterns of thinking are difficult to break.

For this reason, video camera manufactures have made some of their cameras resemble the operation of film cameras.

The video camera shown here uses standard 35mm motion picture lenses.

This means that directors of (film) photography do not have to abandon all that they have learned about the lenses.

Previously, we mentioned the almost subliminal effect that the NTSC film-to-video process creates. To make video look even more like film, even this "double-step" effect (resulting from the extra film fields being regularly added) can be electronically created. In fact everything, right down to electronically-generated random specks of "dust" can be added to the video image! (For a time -- and for questionable reasons -- video was being made to look like film -- bad film, in fact, -- by adding a host of electronic scratches, dirt, and even flash frames.)

This extreme step aside, the first practical step used in creating a "film look" with video is through the use of filters. This link lists filters that are often used to make video look like film (if that's your goal).

Film also can have a more saturated color appearance. With sophisticated video equipment this can be simulated by adjusting the color curves in a sophisticated video editor. This can also be addressed in post-production by channeling video through computer programs such as Photoshop CS3, After Effects, or Chroma Match.

By softening the image to smudge the digital grid of video, and reducing the contrast, you can take additional steps to make video look like film.

Of course, the question is why would you want to degrade the quality of one medium to match another?

Possibly it's a matter of what people get used to. When people first heard high-fidelity audio, they didn't like it. After listening to music and voice for decades on low quality radio and phonograph speakers, they had become used to this as "the standard" in audio quality, and anything else--even something much better--didn't sound right.

The feature film, 28 Days Later, released in mid-2003, did very well at the box office and was shot with video equipment. By 2007, a number of feature films had been shot in high-definition video and then transferred to 35mm film for release in theaters.

Single-Camera, Multiple-Camera

Production Differences

Purely technical considerations aside, the primary underlying difference between film and video lies in the way it's shot.

Film is normally shot in a single-camera style, and video is normally shot in the studio using a multiple-camera production approach.

In film each scene can be carefully set up, staged, lit, rehearsed, and shot. Generally, a number of takes are made of each scene and the best one is edited into the final production. As they strive for perfection in today's high-budget feature film productions, some directors re-shoot scenes many times before they are satisfied. (Possibly the record is held by one well-known film director who reportedly shot the same scene 87 times.)

Quite in contrast, video is generally shot with several cameras covering several angles simultaneously. Instead of lighting being optimized for one camera angle, it must hold up for three or more camera angles at the same time. This means that it's generally lit in a rather flat manner, which sacrifices dimension and form. And, with the exception of single-camera production, multiple takes in video are not the rule.

By replacing film with videotape and speeding the production process George Lucas saved at least $3-million on the 2002 Attack of the Clones. --Larry Thorpe, Senior VP, Sony Electronics

Film and Videotape Costs

The minute-for-minute cost of 16mm and 35mm film and processing is hundreds of times more than the cost of broadcast-quality video recording.

And, unlike film, tape is reusable, which results in even greater savings.

Offsetting the savings with video is the initial cost of video equipment.

Depending on levels of sophistication, the initial investment in video production and postproduction equipment can easily be ten times the cost of film equipment.

The cost of maintaining professional videotape equipment is also greater -- although this is changing with the adoption of computer disk and solid-state recording.

On the other hand, there is a substantial cost savings in using video for postproduction (special effects, editing, etc.). As we've noted, for these and other reasons film productions intended for television are routinely transferred to videotape. This transfer can take place as soon as the film comes out of the film processor.

Reversal of the negative film to a positive image, complete with needed color correction, can be done electronically as the film is being transferred to videotape or computer disk. From this point on all editing and special effects are done by the video process. The negative film is then locked away in a film vault and kept in perfect condition.

Even for film productions intended for theatrical release, major time and cost savings can be realized by transferring the film to videotape for editing. Once edited, the videotape is then used as a "blueprint'' for editing the film.

Will Video Replace Film?

So will video or digital imaging soon replace film for primetime TV production?

Yes, eventually, just as it will eventually replace film in motion picture work. The move is well underway in both areas. Aesthetic issues aside, the transition is being driven by pure economics.

In 2009, the majority production done for TV was shot digitally.

---