American Cinematographer - February 2010 - 59

Eminem pays the ultimate price for his transgressions in the music video for “We Made You,” directed by Joseph Kahn and shot by Probst with Red cameras (Build 20). The video won the 2009 MTV Video Music Award for Best Hip-Hop Video. image capture. Unlike Arri’s D-21 camera, the Red has no physical rotating reflex mirror; like many digital cameras on the market, it uses an electronic-shutter scheme to create an effective scan-rate at which a frame is looked at on the sensor. Problems arise with all electronic rolling shutters when the camera is moved very quickly, like with a whip-pan; or when the camera travels at a fast rate perpendicular to a stationary object; or if there is a very rapid momentary change in the exposure condition. In these instances, strobing, partial exposure or a skewing of the geometric lines in the frame can occur. Strobing caused by camera panning has been a consideration with film cameras for decades, but a rolling shutter can also create split frames of exposure with very fast changes in the frame. For example, I recently shot the video for Chris Brown’s “Crawl” in downtown Los Angeles using a Red and anamorphic lenses. In one scene, we had several paparazzi flashbulbs going off in-shot. Because still-photo flashes are very brief in duration, many of the subsequent exposed “frames” on the Red recorded half of the flash in one frame, and the other “half ” in the subsequent frame. I found this effect to be very distracting but was unable to deal with it on set. The Red has also exhibited sensitivity to heat, which can affect the image and camera in peculiar ways. The camera does have settings that allow you to control its fan functions, but even with the camera set to run the cooling fan continuously — which you cannot do if you’re also recording on- “I’d shot loads of digital imagery with other platforms, but I quickly found that many aspects of working with the Red were unique to the camera.” set sound — the Red has exhibited several problems in hot environments. This is due in part to the camera’s design: the heat-sink ventilation is www.theasc.com located on the bottom of the body. As we all know, heat rises. The main chassis of the Red is basically an aluminum-alloy cylinder, and when the camera gets hot, the heat rises inside this tubular body and literally cooks the electronics inside from the top down. As the sensor overheats, several hairline vertical “scratches” begin to appear in the image; these defects appear on the viewing output to the monitor and are also recorded to the “raw” .r3d files. I have witnessed this on many occasions with many different Red bodies. The only way to solve this problem is to take the camera into a colder environment and allow it to cool down. Once it cools, the streaks in the image will go away. So if you’re planning to shoot a big Western in Death Valley in the middle of summer, you should carefully consider whether to use the Red — or at least bring lots of ice packs to place around the body. I have also found the Red’s onboard-battery harness to be very temperamental. I’ve had dozens of Red cameras power themselves off after the slightest jostling of the onboard battery. The contact pins that engage the batteries are prone to intermittent failure, and when that happens, the camera shuts down. This is, of course, also a service issue for the camerarental house, but I have experienced February 2010 59

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American Cinematographer - February 2010

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