Jump to tips on BOOKING KIT, HAND-HELD ACCESSORIES, STUDIO ACCESSORIES, HARD DRIVE VIBRATION, ROLLING SHUTTER ISSUES, GREEN FLUORESCENT SPIKES, TUNGSTEN LIGHTING, INFRA RED FILTERS, SOUND RECORDING, PICTURE MONITORING, CODEC ERRORS, CREWING, BATTERY LIFE AND CHARGING, DATA MANAGEMENT AND BACKUPS
You may also be interested in our Guide to Lenses to use with Red
Booking Kit
Hand Held Accessories
The Red Base Production kit includes a combined shoulder/tripod plate. Note if you opt for the Arri Base plate this may supercede this. Make sure you specify you want both. However, even with the shoulder pad the Red is not very ergonomic for extended hand held use. If you are planning on doing a lot of hand-held work, think about adding on Ronford Moose bars with a remote start/stop button in the handle, a battery belt clip and perhaps a wireless follow-focus unit. A further step would be the Element Technica Mantis Shoulder Mount kit.
Studio Accessories
The Base Production kit includes the combined shoulder/camera plate from Red. This is adequate for most needs and has 19mm bar adapteres so can be used with all Matte Box and FF configurations. It does have several inches of balancing adjustment ability. However, people from a film background may prefer the firmer clamping and more variable sliding of an Arri-style base plate from Element Technica, with a matching tripod 12" dovetail. Please specifiy this as it is an additional cost. If you are using a long lens such as an Optimo, you will definitely need the Arri-style base plate and suitably longer bars and dovetail as well. Note that an actual Arri-made base plate has a different base off-set to Reds so will not line up with Matte-boxes. Thus it is "Arri-style" rather than Arri and is made by Element Technica for Red.
If you are using the Red on a crane, you should request the long cable remote start/stop button.
Shooting
Hard Drive Vibration
The Red Raid hard drive is fairly hard-mounted to the camera when used in its standard cradle. There is no shock-mount suspension and as hard-drives consist of very precise heads aligned with spinning disk platters, it is possible that vibration or knocks can result in dropped frames. In practise, we have found this not to be a problem in most hand-held situations. Also, there is immediate on-screen reporting if any frames are dropped so it is easy to see if this happens and go again. Simply decoupling the hard drive and suspending it in a piece of foam or using the Element Technica Drive suspension can resolve a lot of these problems. If however you are planning on filming in vibration situations (on vehicles or helicopters) or where loud music playback can cause vibration, you should really be shooting on solid-state media such as the CF cards. Shooting time is shorter of course, but not as susceptible to vibration.
For an demonstration of the susceptability of spinning hard drives to loud nises, have a look at this video.
Rolling Shutter Artefacts
Red's breakthrough was designing a CMOS sensor that can read fast enough from top to bottom to enable capture of up to 30fps of pictures. DSLRs have been available of higher resolution but cannot capture full resolution at this speed. The time that is takes to scan from the top line of the sensor down to the bottom is called the "Read/Reset" time. In current versions of the Red software this is down to approximately 9ms. Earlier versions were around 20 ms. Fast though it is, the fact that it does take a finite period of time to scan from the top of the image to the bottom has the following effects which need to be considered.
Flash or Strobe half frames
Unless a flash or strobe is actually synced by genlock and phasing to the camera's output signal, it is likely that a fast flash or strobe will not be captured over the whole duration of a frame, so would only cover a portion of the picture. This can look odd on playback. You will see a similar issue on other CMOS devices such as the Sony Z7. As with almost any shuttered device including film, it is possible to run into sync issues with in-vision imaging devices that may run at a high frequency with no persistence of vision, such as LED signage or displays. So you need to think carefully about how to handle any scenes that may contain
Often with testing these issues are avoidable.
Skewed verticals
If there is movement horizontally in picture, there can be a difference in position between the vertical elements in the time it takes for the rolling shutter to scan from top to bottom. This only happens on very fast pans, for example, where the pan would likely be blurred in any case so tends not to be noticeable to an audience. Similarly, a fast wheel travelling through shot could elipse slightly. In our experience, this is not visible enough to be a cause for concern or necessitate a change in shooting style at all. Panning in progressive film making has always been a careful task, compared to interlaced video which has double the number of temporal samples, and it is more that that will be of concern, as it is in film.
Green Fluorescent Spike
Some practical fluorescent tube lights spike strongly in the green area which our eyes do not notice but Red can be more sensitive to. Either you may need to relace these tubes or use secondary grading to compensate for this spike. Some actively seek this green fluorescent look of course. In a similar way, Red can pick up on magenta more strongly than the eye in some situations. All these things are immediately visible in all output monitoring, including the colour viewfinder, so it is possible to make immediate changes on-set.
Tungsten Lighting
The Red's native colour balance is for daylight (cool/blue). Using it under tungsten (warm/orange) lighting is easy, but the white balance adjustment involves an electronic boosting of the blue channel. Under low-light conditions, this means the blue channel can become far noisier than the red and green channels, especially in shadows. For situations such as green-screen where a very clean key is vital, it is worth adding a blue filter such as an 80D in front of the lens and adjusting exposure accordingly, or switching to daylight rated lights such as HMIs or daylight KinoFlos. In day-to-day practise, most people are happily using tungsten lights.
Infra-Red Filtering
The Red sensor is capable of being stimulated by infra-red frequencies (IR) that we can't see. This is normally not an issue. IR contamination would exhibit itself as black nylon material showing as having a magenta cast. There is potentially an issue in bright sunlight where external ND (Neutral Density) filters are being used to reduce the visible light in order to open up the lens iris to achieve a shallow depth of field. The danger is that some ND filters may not block IR frequencies as much as they do the visible light. So the ratio of IR to visible light could mean greater contamination of the picture. If you are really concerned about this, ask for a hot mirror filter to add in front of the NDs which can cut the IR frequencies. However, as this is a mirror, watch out for reflections on set. It is interesting to note that it is mostly the manufacturers of filter "solutions" to the IR "problem" that are drawing attention to this issue. In practise, we have not found this to be a problem up to ND 1.2. and very few people ever request a Hot Mirror even for bright sunlight filming with ND.
Sound Recording
Red was designed as a direct replacement for 35mm feature film cameras which do not record sound and always have a separate recording system synced manually by in-vision clapperboard or slaved to a timecode generator. While Red can record 4 channels of sound, we still think treating it as an MOS camera and recording sound separately is the best approach. You can still send a line out from this separate system to the Red to make syncing and rushes checking easier. In response to criticism of the audio functionality on the Red camera, Red have designed a new audio board which should resolve most concerns and are sequentially recalling the cameras to fit it. If you do need to record sound to Red, make sure you state this when booking and request a camera that has been upgraded by Red to the new-style audio board (most of our cameras have been updated). Either way, we'd strongly suggest using an external location audio mixer with limiting and a dedicated sound recordist.
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Picture Monitoring
As standard our kits are supplied with an Electronic Viewfinder for the operator, plus a 5" LCD on-board screen. On lower budget shoots it is common for a director to look over the shoulder of the focus puller to see the 5" for confidence of shot.
For additional monitoring, there are a number of choices. Since the Red has only HDSDI outputs and an HDMI connector, there is no simple way to feed a Standard Monitor or Wireless system wihtout adding on a HD to SD downconvertor first (we use the AJA). If you are planning on using any such monitoring, remember to order this.
There are no reasonably priced HD wireless systems currently. Those that do exist are designed to carry fully broadcastable HD signals and so are very expensive, but if money is no object then that is a possible route.
For HD cabled monitors, the standard in use is the 17" Panasonic. Note that since Red has its own built in waveform monitoring tools, it is not necessary to have any such monitoring built into the external monitor. In fact, it is likely to be largely inaccurate as monitoring occurs on the processed "Look" output LUT, rather than on the raw sensor image which is where exposure judgements should be made.
A low-budget alternative to a full HDSDI monitor is to use the HDMI output to any HD-ready TV that has an HDMI input. The HDMI cable is rather thick though and cannot run without "sparklies" for more than 10 metres. Another alternative is the Blackmagic HDSDI to DVI convertor, feeding into an LCD screen. Given that the signal is 720p though, the actual pixel-for-pixel size on the LCD could be quite small depending on the resolution of the screen.
It is important to remember that the HD outputs of the Red are intended as a quick and dirty video tap for preview purposes only. The onboard processing performs a preview quality de-Bayer and downscale of the raw data captured. You will be able to achieve far better images in processing later on.
Very rarely, the camera may report a "Codec Error". This happens when a random combination of detailed picture information overwhelms the compression circuit on the camera and it is unable to succesfully process and record the image. While annoying, this is more and more infrequent as the camera firmware is updated. Since the introduction of camera firmware Build 17 and the "Max" quality button, it is highly unlikely that this will occur at all in an average shooting day. Think of it as "hair in the gate", regard that take as lost and go again.
Crewing
Again, Red was designed as a direct replacement for 35mm feature film cameras. If this is the background you are used to, allow for exactly the same crew. If you are from a video background and are used to "one-man-bands" be aware that focus is vastly more critical in Red, due to the 35mm depth-of-field, so you should really use an experienced 1st Assistant Camera/focus-puller. Configuring and setting up the camera, lenses and accessories such as matte-boxes, filters, follow-focus etc, is also similar to 35mm crewing and it is advisable to have a 2nd camera assistant/loader as well. This person, if experienced with Red, may be able to look after your data backups as well, in the same way a loader would have looked after your negative loading, changing and handling.
It is possible to shoot with the Red camera as a one-man-band, but don't expect to be as efficient or achieve anywhere near the same good-looking results as a full experienced crew.
Battery Choice
While it is possible to use any V-Lock battery with the Red, we think it is best practise to use Red brand batteries. These have intelligence in them that communicates with the camera so you have an on-screen readout of the percentage left. More crucially, in a low power situation you will get a final 20-second countdown where the camera will know to stop recording, close all files and shut down gracefully.
If you use non-Red drives, the camera presumes that a DC power source is connected. In this situation, if you do not monitor the battery level carefully yourself, the power may drop below Red's threshold in the middle of a take, and you could potentially lose some or all of the take you were in the middle of filming. So stick with the Red batteries.
Red Battery Life and Charging
The Standard Red 140wh LiIon battery lasts for around 90 minutes with a standard load. Our kits are supplied with four of these batteries. The standard charger can charge two batteries sumultaneously. However, for safety reasons, if you run the battery completely flat, the charger will start with a trickle charge first (lights yellow/green fast) before going into high speed charge mode (steady yellow). So for a faster recharge (80% in 2 hours) try not to run your batteries below 20%.
Red Charger Thermal Protection
The Red charger has an overheat protection circuit. If you take a battery off a camera and it is quite hot, there is a chance the charger will detect this and not start the charge process. You should check that charging starts (yellow/green for trickle, steady yellow for fast charge), and if not (steady red or red/green flashing), leave the battery off the charger for 10 minutes to cool down then put it back on again.
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Data Management and Backups
Storage requirements
Shooting in 4K, the Red Raid drives supplied with the camera hold around 2 hours of material on 320 gigs. Most people shoot no more than an hour a day (unless of course you are shooting interviews, events etc) which would mean needing about 160 gigs of backup drive space to offload to per day.
Backup Drives
We currently suggest buying external 1 TB Gtech single drives with a FW800 interface for greatest backup speed. 1 TB is the sweet-spot at the moment of capacity/price. If money is no object and you are not going to be near mains powering you could invest in bus-powered drives, but these are more expensive and have lower capacities. Lacie D2 Quadras are more readily available in high street stores than Gtechs and have FW800 interfaces but we have had issues with daisy-chaining them with the Red Drives.
If you are in London we like Yo-Yo Tech in Windmill Street as a great bunch of guys for computer supplies. Tell them we sent you.
Do not bring a USB only drive to set. You will be spending way too much time doing backups.
Backup procedures
You will hear a lot of different advice concerning this. Some people are very risk-averse to the point where practicality is compromised in the face of minor statistical risk. This summary below is a guide to what we think is acceptable best practise currently. It is best to liase with your editing facility as to how they would like to receive the Red footage and on what format drives before you start filming.
Generally, you shoot onto the Red Raid drives or CF cards, then backup at suitable intervals onto your own standard computer drives. On an average shoot you may film for the morning say, then swap to another Red drive while the first is being backed up. With an hour to go before the end of the day, swap back to the first drive so you can backup the second. This means that your final backup will hopefully be fairly quick. You need to allow for time to complete these backups to your own drives before you return the camera at the end of the shoot.
On a high budget shoot with a dedicated backup person, it is more likely to rotate the drives and proceed with backups at every battery change (say 60 to 90 minutes). So in the unlikely event that Red drive did die, less shooting time would be lost. (Note: we have not experienced a Red Raid drive failure in over a year of having many cameras, but it is possible for the data interfaces on the drives to be blown by firewire power surges when plugged into backup computers. The actual data has not been lost in this situation, but it is harder to retrieve. If this happens to you in the field, try a USB2 cable before panicking. If that doesn't work, we have a special computer setup in our workshop to access the drives directly)
On a lower budget shoots it is fairly common to shoot all day on to 2 Red Drives and do backups at the end of the day. But don't forget to allow plenty of time for this if you are travelling or returning the kit
The data on the hard drive is your negative and should be treated as such! You should backup to at least 2 hard drives (preferably more) to avoid physical loss and/or data corruption. The plus side of this is that you can immediately send a first generation copy of your negative to an edit facility, a promotions department, as many people as you want, and have as many copies as you care to make for purely the cost of the hard drives, which get cheaper and larger every year.
Mac or PC?
The Red Raid drives as they come from the camera are formatted to be readable on both Mac and PC. We recommend formatting your backup drive according to the destination computer for processing in post that you are using. If you only use your backup drives for backup (you don't plan on adding anything else or adding any files over 2gb) then it makes sense to format them as FAT32 which will work on both Macs and PCs. We can supply Macbook Pro Laptops for use on set for backups and checking your Red pictures, or you can provide one yourself. We prefer to use a parity checking backup software such as R3DDataManager and while this takes longer to backup, it is will report any errors in transfer and so is better practise than simply drag-and-drop.
Tape Backup
For high budget features it is likely that the Bond company will insist on the rushes being backed up onto LTO3 or LTO4 backup tapes. This is generally done back at our edit facility and not in the field. As this process is not as cost effective as having multiple hard drives, for lower budget projects we would suggest only doing this at the end of your project, and only copying the actual used selects, rather than all the rushes.