I was picked up in this van pictured to the left here only 24 hours ago and from the looks of it I was not quite sure if I was going to wake in a bathtub full of ice. As it turns out director David Rosfeld is actually the real deal, not on the black market for organ donors. The screenplay “Coal” written by the director is simply good…always refreshing to work on some original content in the (very challenging) short form. Low budget? Of course. Constant changes being made to schedule? You know it. Looks like a million dollars? Yes.

We are shooting with Ziess Superspeeds and the images coming down the pipe are pleasing everyone, I will share some frames as soon as I get authorization.  I plan to make these daily updates from the POV of a Red tech since that is what I am doing here.  One thing I wish I did better before the shoot started was really anticipating how much drive space will be needed for backing up on location.  We are shooting 4 to 8 takes of each shot and after a pretty full day I have used already over 70gigs. A 500GB drive should cover a short film (15min to 20min) no problem but remember you need two of them for making a protection copy. I recently found this footage calculator, very useful (which I am sure will be released in a iphone app format soon) thanks to the creators.

RED experiment of the week will concern the Nikon user, I plan to do some side by side comparisons with the Zeiss Superspeeds vs Ziess ZFs which I recently had modded for cinema use by Peter Sensor of www.rplens.com, those puppies should arrive tomorrow via fedex…pretty excited.

Stay tuned, more to come as I attempt a daily update of the 6 day production…consider this day numero uno.

Cheers.

Click HERE to watch the Gotham City RED ONE time lapse test

Last night of the “Musicbox” short film thesis production I decided to take advantage of the incredible view and had the opportunity to set up the RED to test one of features I have been meaning to get to, time lapse. Most pros will tell you a high end professional digital SLR will yield the best time lapse results since you have more control over exposure times, larger sensor etc but after doing this test I know now for sure RED can handle the task of time lapse. Sorry for the watermarks, got to protect your investment as I plan to sell this as stock footage.

Hit the jump for more info on this test. Read more

Returning home from a week long PBS shoot on RED to Grand Central station while hustling the precious cargo back to Brooklyn…hundreds of gigs in Digital Mags. I stuck around for the wrap party to do a little networking, met up with the lead talent, Jamie Hector, who delivered an incredible performance and as it turns out he is a neighbor so I look forward to working with this cat.

I am spent, tomorrow the RED digital mags are Offhollwood bound to Mark and Aldey for some LTO backing up…saftey 1st. I have no idea what’s on my plate for next week, but I do know that tomorrow the Gotham Guerrilla has a special date with Doctor Jones…Indiana that is.

Let it be known that your resident thieves and clever crack heads are often aware of any film production that is taking up any portion of your town or city and they are watching, waiting to strike. Its not hard to spot a film production, nor is it hard to spot the rental truck loaded with pelican cases carrying precious cargo often guarded by the least paid intern on the set. Do yourself a favor and obtain an policy on your gear today, specially if you have over 5,000 dollars in hardware. Many independents often overlook the importance of obtaining a policy on owned equipment and although I am fully aware you need to save pennies…this is not a corner I would recommend cutting.

I know this cause I was one of those high risk filmmakers and I learned the hard way. Obtaining a policy that is best for you is not that difficult and can be done online in less then half an hour. My associates and I who are investing in RED agreed that we would not take delivery of the RED ONE until it was completely insured.

I was not exactly sure where to look so I turned to the RedUser.net community for recommendations and sure enough generated some solid feedback that ultimately landed me an insurer, thank you RedUsers! Click here to view my “NEED INSURANCE POLICY FOR RED ONE” thread.

This is the subject of an email I received from RED today, and that makes me feel warm and happy inside. I am pretty speechless, everything is coming to place and this could not be more timely. Dan is my appointed Rep so I am going to head down to the RED booth today and see if I can hunt him down…watch out Dan! UPDATE: Dan was sent back to the ranch yesterday so you lucked out this time!

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.

DP/programmer Ion Bloom is currently giving a presentation on his very own Crimson workflow, this almost makes the party worth it alone. Ian is an honest guy has he did his best job at not selling his software which he only updated this evening. I spoke with him briefly about it and he simply was trying to be clear that he is not a large company with tech support…no, quite the opposite really he is just one “dude” as he put it. So if you are interesting in his workflow then you should scope it out.

UPDATE: The Vegas update version 0.9.0 is available as a free download.

UPDATE: What I liked about this party the most is I can actually put a face behind the avatar. All this time I thought I was actually speaking to the Hoff in a spedo when its actually Finner, a nice fellow RED user from Canada. LordnumberZero, he is not a lord after all! The party was great, it was a pleasure meeting all of you guys and let me say thanks to Steve Sherrick and gang for organizing and Ketch for bringing desert!

The game is certainly changing in every aspect and not only are your fellow RED user coming up with solutions but this party confirmed for me that there are major players working hard to pave a path for your RED work-flow, there is a light at the end of the tunnel!

Just landed in the city of Sin. Yes, Its that time again, NAB 2008. Over 100,000 visitors flock from all over world to snoop the latest offerings from just about anyone and everyone in the broadcast and motion picture industries. Yes, NAB is a mad house but this year is a crucial year for RED who have come a long way so I could not skip out.

RED has 3 big secrets up their sleeves and plan to unveil tomorrow! My associate producer Andrew Lubetkin booked me a room at the Luxor…basically a pyramid shaped motel 6 but impressive architecturally speaking. I will be checking out tomorrow and heading straight to RED booth SL3820…then I got to find a room, but this is Vegas….should be easy right?

One year ago from today I decided to dive head 1st into the realm of digital cinema when I took the plunge with the RED and placed my reservation for a RED ONE™. I have been following the RED development since the very beginning but I did not personally bite until NAB 2007 when RED screened the Peter Jackson test footage which was a short film called “Crossing the line”. What’s that old saying, “Seeing is believing” …lets just say the the image results from the show were jaw-dropping and sent a ripple into the community. I do not care what the specs are, I need to see it to believe it…and RED, I am a believer!

Mr. Peter Jackson’s short film was the result of a camera test on two limited beta model RED ONEs (Borris & Netasha) with only one feature enabled, Record Run/Stop. After only watching 30 seconds of his WWII short film I was sold immediately and placed a reservation for RED ONE build #1781. You can read all about the RED, poke and prod for hours on end but nothing taste better then the proof thats in the pudding.

I am not alone, an army is brewing… so let the waiting games begin.

One giant leap for Indie filmmakers! Ground breaking digital cinema has arrived, forged in the fires of revolution. Jim Jannard, CEO and leader of RED

“We have come a long way since we were considered a scam.”

One year ago Jannard put together his dream team of engineers with the aspiration of building a digital cinema camera of the utmost quality while remaining affordable to the indie filmmakers, the result is the RED ONE™. Under the hood lays the heart of the beast, the MYSTERIUM, a 12-mega-pixel CMOS super 35mm sized sensor capable of capturing in 4k (4520 x 2540) up to 60 frames per second. What does that mean? It means open the door cause an alternative to film is finally home!

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