I recently had the pleasure to help out on a music video shoot here in the northwest, noteworthy not just because a great video resulted, but because we were shooting with two RED One cameras and a custom RC helicopter for aerial shots. It was interesting being behind the scenes and I thought I’d share a little of the fun. The video itself, for Mt St Helens Vietnam Band’s “Albatross, Albatross, Albatross,” can be viewed in HD over at Vimeo.

The opportunity to see a group of local freelancers and entrepreneurs coming together to make such an incredibly professional product was extremely valuable — technology has democratized and accelerated the independent film and music community to a degree I hadn’t realized. I was brought on because I had access to some special locations (most of the aerial and forest shots are near some family property in the San Juans) and so I could shoot a little behind-the-scenes video of the production. Go ahead and check out that video below.
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The big RED announcement from two weeks ago made quite a rumble, and it was only a few days afterwards that Jim Jannard announced things were changing yet again. Well, the revision has arrived. Jim says they’ve taken over “all aspects of electronic design and sensor fabrication,” apparently allowing them to do some stuff to upgrade the specs on a lot of the sensors. They’ve also announced a “reward” for their original customers with RED ONE units, saying they’ll get a really nice deal on a special setup if they want it, including a special sensor and bundled stuff at no extra charge.

Of note is the disclosure of 2K speeds up to 350fps on the larger sensors, 250fps on the smaller, and the pricing of the “complete” Scarlet with a fixed lens at $3750, which is pretty reasonable.

It’s another one of those “huge images stacked on top of each other” announcements so click on through to see everything.
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Image credit: Benni Diez at Reduser.net forums

For the last couple weeks, Jim Jannard of RED Camera has been teasing everybody on the REDuser forums with vague promises and outrageous claims of revolutionizing the industry. Skepticism would be the natural response, but after the original RED One camera turned the industry on its head in 2007, people learned that the company said what they meant and made what they said. Early adopters knew they were getting in the ground floor of something that would not only change the industry but likely completely metamorphose once things got underway. As it turns out, they were right, and RED’s announcement today represents the ideal of the RED camera system made reality. What does today’s bombshell mean for the hi-def video industry, and what does it mean for you and me?
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This, my friends, is a camera. Jim Janard over at Red has begun telling the world about his new modular camera system with its Mysterium-X sensor. There are a few upgrade paths for those who already own a RED ONE, the older generation including upgrading to the new sensor, trade in RED ONE for the price of an EPIC, or receive a sensor upgrade some time in the future. If the RED ONE costs $17,000 expect this one to be slightly more.
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You know, to be honest, I could probably get a less fluffy account of shooting on a RED ONE from my friend Mike, who has been shooting on RED for quite a long time now. But he can’t write, and I’m lazy, so in the meantime we have a pretty solid article here that describes the experience of shooting in 4K, the trouble they had, some of the strengths and limitations, and so on.

Since RED is in the process of revamping the prosumer-level Scarlet, knowledge of Redcode and the workflow may actually be relevant to some of us peons soon.

I’ve got a friend working on a few things with his Red One that will probably win a few awards as well (hey man lets hang out btw), but this film, made for a 168-hour film contest, is apparently quite good. It’s about “a merciless society that segregates its undesirables” — in other words, America — and I understand it is very well-done, having won about half the awards they were giving out: Best film, best actress, best drama screenplay, and more.

We’ve been hearing whispers about Scarlet for a few months now, and today she’s made her first appearance.

Scarlet is the code name of Red’s “professional pocket camera”, and that’s all we’ve known about it until today. Now, however, we know that it’s a fairly small digital still and video camera that can shoot up to 3k resolution, which is roughly three times the resolution of 1080p, meaning this could be considered a digital cinema camera.

It has many accessories already, and can be outfitted with a number of rail options. It supports dual simultaneous CF cards, USB 2.0, Firewire 800, and HDMI. Oh, and it looks insane.

No word on pricing yet (guesses are it’ll be under $3,000), but it should come in well under the $14k Red One from last year that everyone loves.

This is rad.

Take one Movie Stuff Workprinter XP. Now add a Red One. You now have an ultra-high-def Super 8 telecine system.

What does that mean for you non camera geeks? It means it’s a way of transferring analog Super 8 films into perfect, high-rez digital archives.

Why anyone would need that kind of quality from Super 8 remains to be seen, but this is a very awesome proof of concept.

Hit the jump to see our friend Mike and his Red in action. Why? Just because camera nerds love those photos.

Red One and Super 8mm at last! [On Super 8mm blog]

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Part of Macworld next month will be a thing called the Final Cut Pro group, just for you video guys. And we’ve been tracking rumors that there will be a special surprise on the 16th. We’ve done some digging, and we’re fairly sure that this surprise has something to do with the Red One camera and Final Cut’s integration with Redcode.

In reality it’ll be an update to the Final Cut Studio suite with native Redcode support, as well as support for third party video cards (yes, including nVidia).

For those not in the uber-geeky look, Redcode is the name of Red’s editing workflow software. Since the Red One can shoot at up to 4k, there needs to be a way to edit by proxy, as editing RAW 4k footage would be a task for even the largest grids out there. Redcode allows you to edit within Final Cut at a much lower resolution, and translates the edits to the final cut, if you’ll forgive the phrasing.

There’s also a possibility it’s related to Red’s new “pocket professional” HD camera, code named Scarlet. Rumor has that Scarlet would debut at NAB, but if working with Apple is going well, there’s a possibility that it will be shown off to pros at Macworld.

There will be a few other surprises, but these are the things the Red users have been salivating over, and we hope this really is what all the fuss is over.

I’m a lucky guy. As a technology journalist, Seattle is a great place to be. I get easy access to T-Mobile and Microsoft, among others. And due to the creative community in the area, there are always fun things to run into, like this Red One camera I caught up with last night on Capitol Hill.

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We love the Red One camera. We think it’s going to change the world of HD film making forever. What’s great is that as you read this, the first Red Ones have left the factory, and are now in the hands of cinematographers everywhere. HD for Indies has us hooked up with a sweet unboxing vid. It’s embedded as a self-playing QT movie, so hit the link to view it yourself.

So what comes in the box from Red? [HD for Indies]

There are those who think that the Red One camera is vaporware. I’m here to tell you it’s not. We just spent some quality time in the booth and saw four of the cameras in action, as well as 4k footage of biplanes dogfighting as shot by Peter Jackson. It was awesome. Sadly, we were told that if we took stills or video of the unreleased WWI short, we’d leave with broken arms. Jim Jannard, CEO and founder of Red, was there. And he’s a burly lookin’ dude with steel business cards, so we believed him.
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Theft Update [DVX User]

Red.

There is a possibility that this snatch and grab is in response to Red posting the first incredible public screen grab of footage taken from a Red One camera at its ideal 4k resolution. The photo, linked below (caution: HUGE download, even for broadband connections) makes pores seem like craters and vaporous particles like floating balloons.

If the digital cinema footage (which should be posted next week) is anywhere near in quality to what we see here, which Red’s been promising all along, then it could indeed be the catalyst for some serious OMFG freaking-out on the part of current HD camera manufacturers. The news that they’re still not done optimizing the sensor (according to the tech team) makes this even more likely, and, potentially, even more frightening to Red’s competitors.

Stay tuned here to see how this turns out, as it could change how we see movies in the future – good or bad.

There was a break-in at the RED offices [DVX User]

First Public 4k Mysterium Frame Grab [Red dot com]

Red One [Red]