At last, I have obtained the tracking numbers to our 1st RED ONE and tomorrow I will be waiting patiently to take delivery TOMORROW! I went ahead and activated my insurance a few weeks back in case the FedEx truck gets held up on a bridge and taken over by terrorist…must protect the precious cargo.

48 hour film competition is right around the corner so we might as well double it as a our RED camera test. I just hope the workflow does not slow us down considering we only have 48 hours to complete the short film. I have been experimenting with Final Cut Studio’s log and transfer tool which encodes the R3D (raw RED file format) into a 2k ProRes format which I feel is more then enough to deliver in. The results are stunning and this was all done on my laptop.

If you live in the NYC area and are interesting in participating in a 48 hour film festival then drop us a line with you name and contact and include “48 hour crew” in your subject line.

“Everything in life changes… including our camera specs and delivery dates…”

This is why my post titles ends with “maybe”, but I feel pretty confident since they released the image above showing camera numbers 1751-2000 being prepped for shipping. You can not argue Jim Jannard’s honesty, not to mention the man is a hype master with his recent thread titled “PREPARE”, which is a brief post on the new firmware build 16…an example of how RED can improve system specs overnight. RED is controversial for stirring up a fire in not only the RED community, but the film industry in general. As a RED technician, or what I call a REDTek… I have worked with film crews who I find very bitter over all this RED hype and I can imagine it gets out of hand but what can I say…so far RED lives up to all the hype. After the break you will find where the RED delivery schedule currently stands in case your interested…

501-1000 begin shipping in February
1001-1500 begin shipping in March
1501-1750 begin shipping in April, through May
1751-2000 begin shipping in June
2001-2400 begin shipping in July
2401-2900 begin shipping in August
2901-3400 begin shipping in September
3401-3900 begin shipping in October
3901-4400 begin shipping in November (current orders)

This is a snippet from this thread here http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7464 and while I am at it, here is a recently updated RED FAQ.

I feel exhausted, have been working insane hours all through the holidays and I just have not had time to post on the GothamGuerrilla, still digging myself out of debt and just happy to get any work this F@&#*d economy. I am going to update some of the previous post now and play a little catch up so there is lots of content coming to the Gotham Guerrilla soon! Thanks for sticking around.

So I just got a phone call from one of my partners in Crime, Kendall Smith, who just informed me that it was official…we are registered as Team Lurkers for the 48 Hour Film Competition. Thank you Mr.Smith…I always manage to miss this deadline, not this time. Here is a blurb from the official 48 Hour Film Competition site…

The 48 Hour Film Project is a wild and sleepless weekend in which you and a team make a movie—write, shoot, edit and score it—in just 48 hours. On Friday night, you get a character, a prop, a line of dialogue and a genre, all to include in your movie. 48 hours later, the movie must be complete. Then it will show at a local theater, usually in the next week.

A friend and filmmaker form my home town Richmond VA, Lucas Krost, called me down to work on one of his 48 hour films, Terminus, when he competed in the previous 48 hour show down, and all I can say is its insane film production on steroids…little time for sleep. Lucas reached out to the city for help and had an incredible response from Richmond which certainly paid off as his film was ultimately selected for the Cannes film festival and screening in about a week…Congrats to Lucas and his crew. While there was much to gain from Lucas’s approach, New York is another story….our budget is very low, competition is very high, but either way we are going try and have fun doing it.

I got a job from an established Museum out of Denver who hired me to document their experience into the depths of Black Rock city for last year’s 2007 Burning Man festival, if thats what you want to call it….either way, I was completely ecstatic to score this gig and hoped it would a good opportunity to further my career. I don’t want to stray too far off topic but for more information on Burning Man then cruise the official site HERE. This is where that old saying comes to mind, “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong”…lets just say this was the most challenging project I have ever participated in my life (mainly due to the harsh conditions of the environment), but what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, right?

6 months of post production and just now am I seeing the light at the end of the tunnel…what went wrong? When I wrapped the production, I left the festival with my head down, knowing very well that while everyone was packing up getting ready to go home having completed their mission, my job was only beginning…the world of post-production.

I run and operate a Final Cut Pro, Mac based editing suite for High-Definition content delivery and from previous experience I could make a decent living off of post (edition etc), if managed properly. However, if you don’t plot your course to take you all the way home then you are setting yourself up for disaster. Ever find yourself with all the right ingredients but cant quite bake the cake? Try and take a step back and see the big picture and avoid spreading yourself too thin as I did. Film production is a collaborative effort so dont be afraid to staff up and bring some fresh perspective to the table.

Often times Indie directors like to cut their own material and while there is nothing wrong with that, your decision making is some times clouded by your marriage to the project…saying to yourself for example, “I can’t cut this sequence out because it took an entire day to shoot this material” when a third party editor has less emotional involvement with the material and therefor has no problem tossing shots away that do not actually benefit your story.

Fortunately Burning Man is all eye candy so that is not the precise case. I would like to thank Patrick Sarni, writer producer, for stepping in on this project and helping me wrap things up with have a fresh take on an old project.

Like the tv show, Tim and Eric’s character driven skits may be a knee slapper for some, but in the subtext these guys are tapping into some dark corners of human nature.

I can not help but compare it to the sick and demented universe of Paul Mcarthy’s twisted video installations which watching live could be hard to stomach.

From what I saw, the 3rd season is going to be incredible. If your looking or some solid live contemporary performance art…the Tim and Eric tour is 15 dollars well spent. REST OF REVIEW BEING UPDATED.

The RED Bomb Squad was created to manage the reservation holder’s accounts, when your number is up you should expect this email and identify who your contact is. To find out what serial number batch is currently shipping check the www.RED.com home page. I will warn you, when this email arrives you may want to keep a clean pair of underwear near by. I will not further disclose info about this sacred email as it is prohibited, but in a nutshell it means now is the time to finalize my order.

To say its ground breaking would be an understatement. I checked out of my pyramid shaped motel and headed to the convention center where I have been lingering the RED booth all day. I am speechless, RED showcases their next generation in digital cinema and its EPIC, no pun intended. 5k 1-100 fps, full frame S35MM MYSTERIUM X Sensor with WI-FI control to boot. WTF! I know many RED users and RED ONE owners and reservations holders are beside themselves, I certainly am.

I spoke with Big John who many know from the REDUSER.net forums and he gave me the lowdown and said that this was essentially a conversation starter, the breadbox style design weighs in only at 6 pounds and the technology is here to make it. I say one hell of a conversation starter that plans to deliver in early 2009.

Many RED ONE owners and reservations holders including myself were not expecting a next generation RED so soon so I can not yet imagine how the RED community will react to this next gen RED. At 40,000 dollars, EPIC is apparently aimed at a different market with deeper pockets. My initial reaction was one of concern considering I take delivery of RED ONE in only 2 weeks but then I was informed that RED is offering full credit of your RED ONE, that is 17,500 dollars towards the purchase of EPIC, not bad at all…now I am interested.

RED currently has one camera actually available today and thats the RED ONE so if you want to get in line for EPIC then the only unofficial way to do so is by dropping a deposit for a RED ONE today and take delivery for EPIC some time late 2009 if your lucky.

Ted Schilowitz, voice of the RED rebellion

“From soccer mom’s to indie filmmakers, docs, episodic tv, commercials and big studio features, no boundaries of what Scarlet can do.”

RED continues to break all the rules, continues to change the industry and make the best tools possible for everyone. The SCARLET will be compatible with RED ONE accessories as seen here and support WI-FI control. Indie filmmakers worldwide rejoice, affordable high end filmmaking just got better so keep an eye out for Scarlet 2009 delivery.

RED RAY. Although slightly hidden under the hype of Scarlet and Epic, the announcement of Red Ray has me very excited. In a nutshell this is a RED deck of sorts and when connected to a display, projector or HDTV it will auto scale for screening dailies directly from the CF card or a hooked up RED drive…but that’s not all! This box is capable of playing back 4k, 2k, 1080P, 720P or SD on a standard DVD.  From what I told it can store two hours of 4k on a 9gb DVD and 1 hour of 4k on the 5gb DVDs.  Imagine if film festivals that are already adopting in high end and expensive digital projectors would consider shelling out an extra grand for the ability to screen 4k, a RED READY festival if you will.

I will do a follow up when I gather my thoughts and have time to reflect on what is all going down in the world of RED Digital Cinema.