-
Resources
NAB Video Podcast - Peter Jackson DP Richard Bluck Interview
Published by Matthew Jeppsen April 22nd, 2007 in NAB2007, News
Richard Bluck is the Director of Photography who shot Peter Jackson’s 15-minute short film with the Red Digital Cinema dev cameras. And we’ve got an exclusive interview with him. He talks about the challenges of the shoot, how the Red alpha-version cameras performed, and where he sees digital cinema headed. Check it out.
UPDATE: In the interview, Richard suggests that he saw about 9 stops of Dynamic Range in the camera. Graeme Nattress addresses that in this reduser.com thread, stating that Stouffer wedge charts show 11.3 stops of DR.
Framegrabs from the short film are shown below, courtesy of reduser.net. More images can be found at red.com, they will also be making the film available for download at 1K resolution in the near future.
-
About FreshDV
-
Sponsors
-
Recent Comments
- Matthew Jeppsen on Olympus LS-10 Digital Uncompressed Audio Recorder
- Colin Mcfadden on Olympus LS-10 Digital Uncompressed Audio Recorder
- Kendal Miller on Depth-Of-Field Calculator for iPhone and iPod Touch
- photocinema on Depth-Of-Field Calculator for iPhone and iPod Touch
- Russell Heimlich on RIP Don LaFontaine 1940-2008
-
Fresh Links
Hmmm… He isn’t too much impressed. What did he say about the latitude? Only 9 stops?
My understanding is that the latitude has improved since then, now rating closer to 12 stops. Alpha-version disclaimer, etc.
That’s what I was told by someone that would know…
-MJ
He sounded very impressed to me, and as far as the latitude I think the images speak for themselves.
-A
Hey Matt,
Kendall referred to clips from the movie Richard Bluck filmed. Do you have footage of that?
Brian
Hey Brian! We screened it at the Red booth, like everyone else. But out of respect for Jim and the Red crew, we didn’t shoot any of it. When they are ready to release the footage, I know they will. Probably at reduser.net or at red.com would be my guess. It was a very impressive experience screening it in a 4K theater.
-MJ
That’s kinda what I thought, Alex. It’s strange to me how people can watch the same interview (which was deliberately uncut, BTW), and come away with completely different conclusions. Funny…
-MJ
I gathered from Richard that he was very impressed with the camera but as far as implementing it into their workflow would be determined down the road. Will Red immediatly eradicate film? No. Will Red be a single step in providing a very viable alternative to film and allow filmmakers to provide high quality content at a relatively low entry price. One of the biggest thing Red has going for it, as Richard pointed out, was the price point. Few people I know are arguing that Red is the best camera in the industry, but rather most like myself see that at the price point it has 100% no competition and indeed competites with cameras at a much higher price point.
“Few people I know are arguing that Red is the best camera in the industry”
From what I see in the pics it may well be the best digital camera.
Richard Bluck was in fact impressed. David Mullen, ASC was also greatly impressed, as he says below.
I quote from HDforindies.com “For me, the RED camera was the highlight of NAB. The Peter Jackson short film shot on the two RED prototypes was an amazing achievement. I would describe the look as something like 5245 50D 35mm scanned at 4K — sharp & clean. Fine detail even in extreme long shots (of course, the demo also points out the beauty of 4K digital projection to show-off that detail.)”.
RED is not better than film, but it appears to be on the same level. It is not like regular video in that it is capable of shallow DOF, 11 or 12 stops of latitude, and all the other characteristics of film and yet it is not quite like film as it is extremely clean - no grain. However, it is worth mentioning that it can be made to look quite easily like film. That’s the thing with digital - the post workflow gives you more options (or so I’m told) in terms of adjusting things. Frequently the raw, straight out of the camera images don’t look the greatest but they can then be adjusted quite easily to achieve the desired look. The Viper is a good example of this. I saw some footage shot on a Viper shown by Technicolor and it was very green, not the nicest. However they then quickly did some changes and bam it looked great! RED is neither video nor film. However, it is quite arguable that it is the best digital cinema camera out there, especially at the price. It has 4-6 times the resolution of an Arri D-20 or Genesis, has greater modularity, an easier workflow in post and is cheaper, not to mention images from the camera are capable of looking just as good if not better. Also, the PJ film has been graded kind of flat but I’ve also seen more stills/footage of it that more closely resemble film, with grain and more contrast. Either way, I doubt Joe moviegoer will notice a difference regardless of whether it is the Genesis, the D-20 or the RED or film.
Bluck eh?
A little nepotism goes a long way in the Bluck family, especially in New Zealand…
Care to explain in plain english for those not from New Zealand, or friends of the “Bluck family”???