Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/11672
Red Spots Epic-X camera this summer during the “Tat- too” beta program. With higher resolution and a “super-small form factor” it remains to be seen “who will pay a little more to shoot with Epic,” Pederson muses.“But I know the high-end fashion guys will love it.There are probably more high-end still photographers in New York City than cinematographers in the US, so that’s quite a potential market.” “When Red first came on the scene there certainly was a lot of curiosity about it. Red Digital Cinema did an amazing job pre- senting itself to the industry and continues to do an amazing job working with experts and vendors to make sure any kinks are worked out, all your needs are met and the future is considered.” The agency has shot numerous com- mercials “to great effect” with Red, she re- ports, including a new Epiduo acne medica- tion campaign,Tylenol spots and a delightful PNC Wealth Management Christmas Price IndexWeb spot. “The main reason Red is attractive to us Deutsch’s Eve Kornblum: the agency has shot many spots in Red, including this one for Country Crock. AN AGENCY’S VIEW At leading advertising agency Deutsch NY (www.deutschinc.com), when it’s been determined that a commercial will origi- nate on video “Red has been the camera we’ve gravitated to more often than not,” says Eve Kornblum, executive VP/director of broadcast production. is the workflow, from start to finish,” says Kornblum.“We have it down, especially for projects with multiple media considerations like online and print. And we like Red for commercials with VFX because there’s so much latitude with the image size.”The PNC Christmas Price Index shoot, by New York’s Dancing Diablo,was well suited to Red “with video for the Web and lots of effects,” she notes.“We were able to pull images from the RAW files and create the robust Web- site content using those assets.” Although Kornblum expects the pace of Red spot production to increase — “in the HD shakeout it seems to have emerged as the format of choice in the industry,” she says — Deutsch NY “never dictates” camera choice.“The voices of the director and DP are always considered. Camera choice is a creative, production and fiscal conversation.” She notes that Canon’s EOS 5D Mark II and EOS 7D DSLR cameras are starting to make a name for themselves in commercial production, too. “Some of their broadcast images have been incredible. But there are still some kinks to work out and the flow isn’t as seamless as Red yet.” MORE THAN ONE OPTION Although Beast Editorial in San Francisco (www.beast.tv) still sees a significant number of Red-originated spots, executive producer Jon Ettinger says Red is no longer “the default name brand for digital acquisition.Now there are a lot of very able competitors out there — Canon’s 5D, Panasonic’s new P2 formats, Sony’s on-going developments — and it will be interesting to see how it all plays out.” Red has largely delivered “on its promise of high-quality production, post workflows and end products that potentially look like they originated on film,” he notes.“But where they fell short was in their messaging, which led agencies to believe you could go out and shoot Red then immediately go edit with it. It has taken a fair amount of time for edit houses to explain about transcoding and de- ciding what you want to do with R3D files, and a fair amount of pain on our end to deter- mine the best way to get what clients need.” Along the way there’s been something akin to a business-model shift with post houses becoming more consultative and in- Serious about DSLRs R ALIEGH,NC — Serious Robots (www.seriousro- bots.com), an editorial, design and finishing house,worked on Red and Phantom commercial shoots last year, but budget pressures and tight turn- arounds are causing a significant uptick in the number of spots being shot with Canon EOS 5D Mark II and 7D DSLR cameras, says editor Ian Krabacher. “Agencies and documentary filmmakers choose these cameras because of their price/perfor- mance, but are also finding that the size of the camera allows it to be nimble on set and cre- ate very personal, intimate images,” he ex- plains.“Add the lush depth of field, color and that there is a little less data management than a 2K/4K workflow, and you can see why people This Morgan Stanley Web spot was shot on Canon EOS DSLR cameras. are excited about the versatility of these cameras.” Among recent Canon EOS-originated spots cut and finished at Serious Robots are a WakeMed Health & Hospitals series shot by Unleaded/Dallas and a Morgan Stanley Web campaign from Strawberry Frog/New York, lensed by Chris Wilson Photography. “The big difference between Red and the Canon 20 Post • June 2010 www.postmagazine.com EOS cameras is RAW vs. non-RAW workflow,” Krabacher points out.“In post,we always look to man- age the H.264 compression of the Canon EOS footage. We transcode the material to a more rugged codec such as ProRes or DNxHD so the material won’t be degraded from any post processing of effects, like color correction, for example. Depending on schedule, this may happen on set or overnight prior to offline.Over- all, it’s easy to manage.” One caveat:“We’ve seen that the Canon EOS cam- eras can on occasion develop ‘dead pixels’ on the CMOS sensors and certainly that’s something we’ve had to address during post,” he reports.“It will proba- bly take a year for the market to know just how com- mon this is, but we’ve heard Canon has been good about servicing cameras.” Krabacher is “excited to see the development of cameras like the Arri Alexa, which offers both RAW and ‘direct-to-edit’ workflows.This flexibility will allow us to choose what’s best for the budget, schedule and for creative. It will be interesting to see how Red and Canon respond to this innovation.” — Christine Bunish