Digital Video - November 2008 - (Page 22)

Q& A DARK N INTERVIEW BY DOUGLAS BANKSTON RED ot the most common term tossed around the horror genre, “revenant” can be found in Webster’s as “one that returns after death or a long absence.” In the aptly titled comedic fright feature The Revenant, the titular paranormal being is a soldier (played by David Anders) who has returned home from war — in a body bag. After the shock of his tragic death, and then the shock of being undead, wears off, the revenant and his best friend (Chris Wylde) humorously decide to use this newfound invincibility to fight crime in Los Angeles. (More details, video and extensive photos can be found at www.therevenantmovie.com.) Coming off a stint of camera operating on the AMC series Mad Men, director of photography Peter Hawkins came aboard The Revenant to find that it would be shot using RED Digital Cinema’s RED ONE. While the Los Angeles-based cameraman has a number of narrative and documentary features under his belt — including Around June and End of the Century — this would be Hawkins’ first experience shooting with the RED. He needed a crash course in using the camera, and fast, as the production start was just a few weeks away. DV: With only weeks to prepare, what was your next step? Peter Hawkins: My next step was to get my hands on one and talk to people and experts who knew something about it. The first place I ended up was Kappa Studios in Burbank, where they have a RED User Group meeting about once a month. I went to one and met another DP, Brian Pearson, who owns a RED. He was prepping a larger-budget 3D film with the RED and was extremely generous with his knowledge. I didn’t really have time for tests, but Brian allowed me to come to his. Furthermore, he allowed me to go to a screening at Technicolor Digital to watch the results of his tests. I can’t tell you how valuable it was to see that process. It was encouraging to see the RED community. This was a new camera, and people really were sharing information with me. What did you work with, and who was your DIT? Production felt like we really should carry two cameras at all times. Hawkins (right) and 1st AC James Rydings check out their RED ONE rig. Although we shot primarily single-camera, almost all our shooting was at night. If something happened to a camera, it would have been difficult to get a replacement. We needed two full packages and the support of a rental house. We went to Indie Rentals in Hollywood. Shooting nights in low light, we really needed to get some glass that was faster than the RED lenses, so we went with an older set of Zeiss Superspeeds. The DIT, Dominic Estrella, was working at Indie Rentals and knew their gear well. Describe your workflow. We used both the RED Drives and the CompactFlash cards. We did a fair amount of car-mount work and full-load gunshots, which are quite loud, and we didn’t want anything like that disturbing the hard drives, so we used the cards in those instances. When we finished a scene, we would take the hard drive off, hand it to the DIT, and he started copying it. We ended up making three copies. We transferred one to a main drive for saving, one for the editor and one to another drive that went to a postproduction company — Plaster City in Hollywood — that transferred to LTO data storage tape for backup. We worked in very dark conditions with this camera. The director simply did not want any light. If I had questions about a scene, I could go to the DIT, and he would then make a QuickTime file, which often looked darker than the RAW, and he would put that in REDCine and let me view it. In dark conditions, were you worried about noise? I’d seen tests on exactly that. The director had the idea to set the camera at 1200 ASA, which introduced noise, and if you got too noisy, you start to get vertical streaking. I think the RED is better suited for what its specs recommend, which is 320 ASA or no more than 640 ASA. There was a bit of push and pull on that issue because I felt that for a comedy, albeit a dark comedy, a lot of noise in the image would not benefit the picture. Often, we found a compromise. DV You’ll find an extended version of this interview on our site. Visit DV online. THE RED ONE CAMERA IS PUT TO THE TEST WHILE SHOOTING THE NOCTURNAL INDIE FEATURE THE REVENANT. 22 dv november 2008 www.dv.com http://www.therevenantmovie.com http://www.dv.com http://www.dv.com

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Digital Video - November 2008 Contents AG-HMC150 Camcorder I-Cuff Eyepiece Protector Instant Expert Avid Media Composer 3.0 DT-B9L 1DU Monitor Flolight LCD500 Dark Red Close-Up: Chop Shop Socky Prime Mover Tools & Technology: DV Expo Toolkit Click to Play DV101 Production Diary

Digital Video - November 2008

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