French new wave master Jean-Luc Godard once pointed out that there’s nothing like ‘a girl and a gun’ to grab your attention, although a girl and a camera run a close second in Red One boot camps.

Case in point was a Red boot camp at Ryerson’s Rogers Communications Centre in Toronto, where a blonde in a mini-dress under klieg lights was being fussed over by a group of buff young men. She was the muse during an intensive training workshop – events which attract droves of camera operators keen to stay on top of the latest camera technology.

And to put the speed of this digital revolution in context, the 4K Red One camera has been upgraded three times in the past few months alone.

‘The Red One camera, and supporting software such as Redcine, is an evolving system,’ explains Ian Sun, director of Toronto Red, an independent user group, and ongoing Red One boot camps. ‘The camera is being upgraded regularly by firmware downloads from RED.com.

‘When we held the boot camp three months ago, we used Build 16, which was a landmark achievement for the camera, as it increased the camera’s usable dynamic range by improving its noise characteristics in low light, producing a much more organic and film-like grain structure,’ Sun elaborates.

Today, Build 17 is considered stable enough for real productions (still largely music videos and commercial shoots) and Build 18 – which allows for anamorphic recording – is already available. For the uninitiated, that means that Red’s images are more and more comparable to 35mm film, and that more of the camera’s earlier technical glitches have been fixed, while other problems are being addressed this very minute.

The Red camera is being upgraded so regularly and so quickly that additional resolutions of 5K, 6K, 9K and 28K are in the works for this year, the latter under a new name, Epic (see sidebar on p. 13).

But first, a little history.

Building a mystery

The Red camera phenomena began in 2004 by Oakley sunglasses founder and billionaire Jim Jannard when – as a rabid camera enthusiast – he’d purchased one of the new HDV cameras on the market, but was disappointed to find that he couldn’t edit the footage on Final Cut Pro without an additional software solution, called Lumiere HD.

He rang up the co-developer of the software, Frederic Haubrich, and eventually discussions turned towards what it would take to make a new kind of digital movie camera. Haubrich talked to Ted Schilowitz, then a product manager at AJA Video, and told him about the mission.

‘The primary goal wasn’t, ‘Let’s see how much money we can make,” says Schilowitz, today’s self-appointed ‘leader of the rebellion,’ who also bills himself as ‘Red Ted’ instead of having a ‘normal’ title at Jannard’s company. ‘It was to see if we could make something that would change this portion of the industry for the better,’ says Schilowitz.

‘So we started on this investigative phase for a while, and once we knew we could get it there, Jim pulled the trigger,’ and the real Red One adventure began in earnest in 2005.

Today, the high-end 4K digital camera not only delivers resolutions of 2304 vertical by 4096 horizontal pixels, it does so from a computerized body that only costs US$17,500, uses existing lenses and can upload new versions on a daily basis.

Indeed, in a world where top-of-the-line 2K and HD cameras can cost up to US$200,000, the idea of 4K resolution (a level comparable to 35mm quality) available for under US$20,000 is somewhat unfathomable. So is the idea that the camera body is updated so regularly that owners often get a new ‘Build’ (for free) when an updated model is available.

However, from the outset, bucking the trend towards obsolescence by providing regular firmware updates was part of the mandate, so new models, called Builds, are devised with knowledge gained from Red users’ feedback. Updates have inspired camera frame rates to leap from 75 fps in 2K mode (when it first shipped) to 120 fps. Audio recording capability was introduced with Build 12.

Meanwhile, DOP David Geddes used Build 15 to shoot Sanctuary, the first TV series to be shot entirely on the Red in Canada.

‘Honestly, at this stage of the game, I’m still a film person,’ says Geddes. ‘It’s still the best technology for image capture. But for Sanctuary, Red was the right system to use because so much of it was virtual reality. It made sense for the visual effects company (Anthem) for us to use a digital format.’

Veteran DOP Hal Swann uses the expression ‘disruptive technology’ – first coined by Harvard Business School economic thinker Clayton M. Christensen – to describe this technology.

‘Like Christensen’s ‘new market disruptors’, the Red One fits an emerging market segment not being well-served by incumbent technologies,’ says Swann.

‘The results, as Peter Jackson, Steven Soderbergh, Ron Howard and Doug Liman have shown, are absolutely big-screen worthy,’ he notes. Soderbergh has shot two features with it already, including the two-part Che Guevara biopic Che, and is developing another.

Some Canadian DOPs have also substituted the Red and not looked back.

‘I love the Red camera,’ says Miroslaw Baszak, who shot Bruce McDonald’s feature Pontypool and the Shaftesbury MOW Diverted on the Red One.

‘I never shot HD,’ explains Baszak. ‘I went straight from film to Red. Obviously, it’s not film yet, and it has its limitations – mainly the contrast, how it handles contrast – but it’s as close to film as it gets. It’s comparable to 35mm. After the initial learning process, I didn’t feel that in any way Red limited my choices or limited my process… I was really, really impressed.’

But not every encounter with Red has been smooth. Frank Samson, who campaigned for his ET Canada show to use Red for the opening segments of the Casa Loma TIFF shoots last autumn, ran into problems using a zoom.

‘I shoot everything on a jib,’ says Samson. ‘And the Red One isn’t meant to be put on one. You’re supposed to control the Red from the lens, not from 18 feet away in the back of a truck. I need to change shots rapidly. I can’t be resetting, changing lenses on a jib, because every time you do that it takes 15 to 20 minutes to rebalance the jib.

‘We ended up building a cable, a nine-pin one, and ran it from the Red lens down the jib to another camera – an HD one that happened to be there. That powered the lens and allowed us to zoom.’

And then, of course, there are young filmmakers who are hard-core Red One advocates.

‘I’d be happy if I never have to touch film again,’ says producer Eric Sim, son of Sim Video founder/owner Rob Sim, at a recent company open house in Toronto.

‘We’re young,’ he continues, building a case like a lawyer. ‘I can understand that it’s complicated for some of the older guys, but once you get used to the Red, it’s easy.’

Sim has produced director Aaron A.’s music videos for artists including Jarvis Church (lead singer from Philosopher Kings) and twin rapper duo A-Game, and the Red system provides them much independence.

‘We do everything ourselves,’ Sim continues. ‘We shoot. We transfer. We cut [on Final Cut Pro], and we do everything at home. It takes a bit of time, but if you have a decent computer, it’s easy.’

With files from Barry Walsh