American Cinematographer - August 2010 - 80

Filmmakers’ Forum
I
Consider “Red” Another Paint in Your Palette By Steven Fierberg, ASC I recently found myself in a situation that says a lot about cinematography today. Over the course of a few weeks, I was doing postproduction on two features at three different facilities, working with a mix of digital and film technologies. I color-corrected Twelve, which I captured on the Red One, in Technicolor’s DI suite in New York, and then flew to Los Angeles to adjust the answer print at Technicolor Hollywood; then, while in L.A., I went to EFilm to colorcorrect the digital P3 preview master of Love and Other Drugs, which I shot on 35mm. It was a blur of color spaces and formats, and the collective experience taught me a few things about the Red that could serve as an interesting postscript to Chris Probst’s excellent recent article (“Working with the Red,” AC Feb. ’10). Specifically, I learned some things that might be helpful to you if you’re shooting with the Red with a goal of cinema projection. Twelve was actually my second feature with the Red. My first, Alex Cox’s Repo Chick, was shot entirely against greenscreen on a single soundstage, and I was very happy with how it turned out. I was able to choose our camera — a rare opportunity — and I chose the Red because I’d seen tests and knew it was exceptionally well suited to greenscreen work. It did not disappoint; I liked the color, and the fact that the image felt more film-like than other digital imagery. But I did encounter some of the issues that Mr. Probst and other film-trained people have found frustrating. Minor irritants, or “teething problems,” included the somewhat naïve placement of buttons that could be too easily pushed by mistake, and a batteryattachment system that frequently failed, causing surprise powerdowns that required a two-minute reboot of the camera. (We ultimately worked around this by using traditional batteries and a cable.) A more innate issue, which the Red shares with other “full frame” digital cameras, was the surprising lack of depth of field, which made focus harder than with 35mm. Subjects popped sharply in and out of focus, with no smooth transition. Because digital sensors have a fixed array of uniform pixels, the circle of confusion “jumps” from one row of pixels to the next; film, on the other hand, has randomly placed, variably sized microscopic grains, resulting in a smooth, gradual focus transition. To mitigate the focus difficulty, we increased the light level; if I shot masters at f2.8, I sometimes shot tight close-ups at f4.
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“You have to see tests at full cinema resolution and scale and remember how they looked.”

We also collaborated with an excellent makeup team to foil the Red’s proclivity to reveal every blemish and flaw on an actress’ face, even nascent blackheads lurking just below the skin. It’s important to use full base makeup with extremely soft light. In order to avoid a harsh, “crispy” look, we bounced off 12'x12' muslins or projected through Full Grid Cloth. We used only subtle diffusion filters (1⁄8 or ¼ Schneider Classic Soft) because the Red image is not that sharp when enlarged to cinema size. (I test this by looking at an actor in a “cowboy” shot or a head-to-toe to see how much of their eyes I see; all cameras look sharp in a close-up.) The on-set monitor can be misleading; it’s only 720p, and although it’s useful for previewing contrast (using rec 709) and might keep you from adding that last, unnecessary fill light, using it to make guesses about ultimate sharpness and filter strength is treacherous. You have to see tests at full cinema resolution and scale and remember how they looked. I kept my light meter set to 200 ISO. As the astute AC reader may know, shooting 200 ISO at f4 with bounce light or through Full Grid takes a lot of light. Because we were on a stage, this was quite doable with Ninelights or 20Ks, but it would have been harder to accomplish with smaller lights on location. The next film I did with the Red would be a different challenge altogether. I was very excited to work with Joel Schumacher on the dark drama Twelve, which follows ultrawealthy youths from Manhattan’s Upper East Side who are making that uneasy transition from high school to college or, for some, to the cold night streets. Joel had directed many studio films, but this one was on a tight budget and had to be shot in 23 days. I knew I could save time by using my beloved Angenieux Optimos, the 15-40mm, the 28-76mm, and the magnificent 24280mm. For when we really needed the f-stop, we carried a few Zeiss Superspeeds, which were not only cheap to rent, but also tested extremely well with the Red. Like most digital cameras, the Red craves contrast more than absolute resolution (read about Nyquist sampling if you want to know why), so Superspeeds are, in some ways, a better match for the camera than Cooke S4s. (This did not turn out to be true with the Red’s new chip, the Mysterium-X, which I used on the romantic comedy The Oranges. More on that later.) On Twelve, as with many projects today, the Red was presented to me as a fait accompli. Why not? It was advertised as lightweight, small and sensitive to light, so shooting night exteriors on Manhattan streets should be easier than with film. Of course, I knew that with the same lenses and accessories, the Red was no

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American Cinematographer - August 2010

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