In part one of this series, we took a look at a few of the common challenges in shooting digital, and we examined the very high-end solutions used in shooting such things as the Star Wars episodes, and others big features.
In this part we get down to some of the more cost-effective and flexible shooting options for HD, for those working in several media concurrently.
Rise of the Red One
Given that the big-screen camera is not appropriate for web-work then (see part one), what is the transmedia producer to do?
Well this is where the Red comes in. At $17k per unit, the Red is a lot more favorable in terms of ROI. Released in 2007, the Red saw popularity
rise through most of last year. The Red is a bit of a hybrid beast, in that it can shoot onto far less expensive non-volatile data cards and hard drives and uses PL lens mounts (which basically means that they can use 35mm lenses designed for film cameras). The most innovative thing about the Red is that it uses a 35mm sized imaging sensor, meaning that no adaptors are necessary to use 35mm lenses and no quality is lost. You do have to ask for the PL mount as an option though, which seems strange because I can’t see any reason to buy the Red without it. The Red uses proprietary compression algorithms on the video data (called Red format, not surprisingly) and can do resolutions of up to 4096×2160 pixels. But the Red is not without it’s challenges.
Entry cost for this camera is about $18k, but when you start to add up cost for options like viewfinders, HD monitors, matte boxes and such you begin running up the tab quickly. Don’t get me wrong, the ability to start low and scale to need is incredibly important to transmedia producers. You have the option of simply not paying for something you won’t be using, and that is a good thing. But it also means you have a lot to consider outside of the base purchase. For instance, say you purchase the Red and then realize that your computer equipment is incapable of handling the processing of it’s footage in a reasonable manner? The Red format is highly compressed, and the CPU of your existing system may not be up to the task. So you then have the option of shooting at lower formats (a waste of money) or upgrading your system (spending more). Anyone who has transitioned from SD to HD format will know something about the pain of watching your system chug and crash during editing, or of sitting through hours of video transcoding to something the computer can handle (again more time lost equals more money lost).
We had the chance to work with Red footage at Oddly earlier this year. At the time there was a proprietary tool in use to transcode Red footage to something that a mac pro could edit with ease and the transcoding time was considerable. Since then Red format has been adopted as a native format for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, but again that is of no help if your existing sytem can not handle the calculations fast enough to let you scrub with ease during editing. More on this in a bit.
Depending what mediums you intend to release your transmedia production in there exist other options. For some budgets, the Red may very well be overkill. This is where we get to one of the more interesting tools to emmerge in recent months.
In the next article, we’ll look at some of the options coming available in digital SLR cameras – lower cost options that have emerged from still shooting into full HD video in very high quality.