
Red: The Camera That Changed Hollywood - raphar
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/39225/
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ck2
Why is the Hobbit being filmed in 3D ?

If Red has made 3D more common then I regret that part happening, extra
especially if it changes the script or action just to appeal to the effects.

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krig
The strangest thing about the whole 3D cinema trend is that it seems to have
sprung out of some anti-piracy / anti-home-cinema idea among the studios. I
can't speak for everyone, but for me it is just another reason to wait and
watch the film at home. Why would I want to watch a blurry, dim version of the
film through a pair of glasses on top of my regular glasses? I did watch
Avatar in 3D, and I regret doing so. It's a pure effect, one that adds nothing
to the film and for me, detracts from the experience significantly enough to
make me wait for the DVD release.

I can't figure out if Peter Jackson is genuinely excited about 3D or if he's
in some kind of reality distortion field where 3D will save the art of cinema.

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JonnieCache
_> I can't figure out if Peter Jackson is genuinely excited about 3D or if
he's in some kind of reality distortion field where 3D will save the art of
cinema._

I imagine he has no choice, that the studios stipulate he must use and promote
3D to get the funding. The studios want it, like you say, because they think
it will encourage people to go to cinemas again.

If you saw Scorsese promoting his new flick recently on the Daily Show, he
opined at length about the wonderful cinematographical benefits of 3D, and it
didn't ring true at all. It definitely seemed like he was obliged, perhaps
contractually, to say it.

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AndrewDucker
I saw Hugo in 3D and Martin Scorcese made it look _amazing_. I have never seen
it look as good as he managed. I don't know how he comes across in interviews,
but he is clearly a virtuoso with it in practice.

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ghotli
I came here to say basically the same thing. It can be used as a subtle effect
to add a great deal to the depth of the setting. I feel like it's just another
added dimension of cinematography.

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GiraffeNecktie
Will that fabulous sensor in the Red camera make it to the consumer market
some day?

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rsl7
well there was the Scarlet at one time, a prosumer camera from Red. Look it
up, I've been out of that area for a while.

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Aqua_Geek
Scarlet was originally supposed to be a 3K sensor for $3k. After a while,
there were comments that $3k was no longer going to happen because of costs
and feature set, and it got upped to about $5k.

A few weeks ago, the entry-level Scarlet with a 7x fixed lens was canned
altogether. Red is instead focusing on providing a solid "professional"
camera. Their Scarlets now use sensors that didn't make the performance cut
for their top-of-the-line model, the Epic.

Scarlets now start at $9,750: <http://www.red.com/store/scarlet>

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jgw
Yeah - that was a pretty sorry tale of vapourware. I know a couple of indie
guys who were super jazzed about the Scarlet, and delayed buying equipment
because they were convinced it would come out.

It was hard to tell whether it was vapourware. They had defied expectations in
actually producing a real camera in the Red One, but they also had marketing
material advertising a sensor that was something like 17cm wide - which seems
to me utterly unmanufacturable today.

An odd company.

[EDIT: atrocious grammar]

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SeanLuke
Here's what I don't get. According to online videos about the making of the
Hobbit, the Epic cameras they're using have quite poor saturation,
particularly for (ironically) red, resulting in a muted, dull look. But
instead of grading the video in postproduction, Jackson's team is instead
adding bright makeup and oversaturated props to compensate.

If I were buying 30 cameras from Red, I'd demand better.

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cmdrreiki
I'm not really impressed with RED cameras either. They're cheaper than any
other higher resolution digital cameras because they traded spatial resolution
for bit-depth. Red returned to a bayer-filtered CMOS array, abandoning the
higher quality 3CCD sensors. RED has marketed to the higher ups that feel they
don't need to listen to digital video engineers about signal quality, and its
worked. About the limitations of bayer filtering:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3370690>

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revdinosaur
At the rental house that I use, I hear that the Arri Alexa gets more traffic
than their stock of REDs. It makes sense that a powerhouse in the industry
like Arri would be able to cater to moviemakers better than a newcomer that
showed up making a lot of promises that they couldn't always honor.

~~~
mashmac2
Well, also important to note that an Alexa is _rented_ more then a RED because
of the price jump associated with owning an Alexa...

