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by Keyframe 3486 days ago
One really has to witness the production. Pre and post are different beasts.

I just came off a shoot last week where we had an extremely tight schedule and I was directing and DP-ing (small shoot of 5 days, but with full everything - gear, people, sets..). I had a great plan to shoot some things on RED and most on Alexa cameras. I had both at hand. I did that, but during the one of the setups where I wanted to use the RED, camera was starting to weird out on me. I had to play tetris and get past level three on its small screen in order to get to the menu I wanted in order to set something up, and then it was showing one thing while idling and other while shooting. Not even my ACs knew what's up and I ditched the camera in favour of Alexa right then and there. People started to wait on me on set. That's a big no-no, since overtimes and everything stands still. Otherwise a fine camera, but set was being held up. I did a few setups with it that were great and all, but from now on I will avoid RED just because of that experience. Maybe on more lax productions I will consider it again. That's how these practices are forged. When 30+ expensive people are waiting for you, while you're tight on time. That's how everything in this business evolved.
1 comments
skepticaldrunk 3486 days ago
Yeah, tell me about it. I can recall one shoot where we started using our medic's ice packs to cool down the REDs (shooting in death valley) and another movie we shot in 3d with two REDs timecode synced with a prism system. I'll let you guess how much fun it was to keep 4 REDs working at one time and properly synced.

I hate to say it, but it's not surprising given someone like Jim Jannard came along and said "This business is backwards! I can fix this!" without completely understanding the requirements. Move fast and break shit doesn't work for every industry.

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Keyframe 3486 days ago
Also, what's up with those connectors on RED? Back on Red One they also had a genius idea to put the camera controls on the back of it!! So you had to dangle your battery to the side or top. It's as if they hadn't seen a movie camera before :)
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