Post Magazine

June 2010

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Red RAW files is very close to shoot- ing film reversal with nice latitude. Di- rector David McNamara of Collec- tive/NY, who shot the Robin Hood PSAs, is a still photographer whom I’ve known for a long time.The price of Red has allowed him to buy his own camera, he can play back what he’s shot on the set, and he gets the kind of latitude not obtainable with other digital acquisition formats. And his Red footage looks amazing.” When Red debuted, Nice Shoes often received footage from external emotional immediacy pushed in pro- duction through lighting and expo- sure, and enhanced in post, where Ryan established a cool blue-gray color palette. Film Conexion/NY director Xavier de la Cueva’s Continental Karaoke spot demonstrates Red’s low-light ca- pabilities in the nightclub sequence. “He was interested in seeing how much detail he could get out of the blacks,” Ryan recalls. Nice Shoes color corrected and finished the Spanish- language campaign. CTO Robert Keske says the company “continues to work with FilmLight to make sure we get the workflow we need. All manufacturers are making a tremendous effort to ensure you have the required toolsets. We spend a lot of time translat- ing our experience to Red and digital workflows in general.” By bringing RAW files di- While he sees a lot of Red work, Beast’s Jon Ettinger says Red is no longer “the default name brand for digital acquisition.” digital labs after the RAW footage had been converted, and often the external conversion process compro- mised the footage. Soon Nice Shoes decided to insist it get RAW files on a drive so it could drop them into Film- Light’s Baselight system and access the files without any conversion. Today, the company typically cre- ates a 4K Red project and 2K DPX HD project simultaneously. “I can work in 2K for throughput and speed,” Ryan explains, “but I scan in 10-bit log for the full dynamic range. If I need a huge blow-up in a scene, I can open the 4K, go in and do the blow-up or change exposure, then that converts into the other project automatically with no rescanning, re- loading or reconverting.” Creatives are “still discovering” the range of looks Red spots can achieve, he notes. Ryan color corrected the Country Crock spot, directed by Baby of Rebolucion/Buenos Aires, which he believes most viewers would say was shot on film.“It has beautiful depth of field, lighting and exposure, and a real soft quality to it.” McNamara’s Robin Hood PSAs have an entirely different look with an rectly into the post process at Nice Shoes the company saves clients money and maintains continuity through editing, color grading, finishing and VFX.“We know how the files were processed so we can manage them at every stage,” says Keske.“It gives us a leg up.” By establishing its unique Red workflow, which Ryan calls “really foolproof now,” Nice Shoes has been able to move fairly effortlessly to set up Phantom, Arri and Genesis digital workflows, too.“Every format is pro- prietary, but once you break the code you can apply the same work- flow to all,” he says. A DIT’S PERSPECTIVE LA-based DIT Brook Willard (www.brookwillard.com),who worked on TV’s Red-shot Southland TV series, reports a “dramatic increase” in Red spot shoots since the debut of the Mysterium-X sensor following a six- to eight-month period when Red was challenged by the Sony F35, Canon EOS and Genesis cameras. “As soon as Red introduced the new sensor it was unbelievable how busy Red cameras became,” he ex- plains. “Red has gone from being a camera that was beginning to feel its continued on page 39

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