* 18MP APS-C CMOS sensor
* 8 frames per second continuous shooting
* 1080p HD video recording with manual controls
* 3.0 inch Clear View II LCD screen with 920,000 dots
* 19-point AF system (all cross-type)
* 1.0x magnification and 100% coverage viewfinder
* Wireless flash control
* Environmental sealing

Can’t wait to get my hands on this camera. A friend of mine just got this one, and I think I’ll be next. I really want to be able to build a rig for this one with a Redrock bundle and get out there and start shooting.

Check out Stew’s Blog and the Prolost Store for the ultimate the ultimate Canon 7D filmmaking setup!

I had the pleasure to work on this film with conceptual design for his powers and additional designs.

Synopsis

The film is set in a fantasy world where the four elements of earth, air, water, and fire can be controlled through martial arts called bending, and the ruthless flame-manipulating Fire Nation is waging war to control the other nations of the world. At the same time a young boy named Aang, the last surviving wind manipulator or Airbender and is also the Avatar, the physical incarnation of the world itself who possesses the ability to manipulate all four elements, is on a quest to stop the Firebenders and save the world, with his friends Katara, a water-manipulating Waterbender from the South Pole, and her brother Sokka. But the skilled and vicious Prince Zuko, the banished Prince of the Fire Nation, is on the trail of the Avatar, seeking to regain his lost honor by capturing him.

Stay tuned  for the latest from “The Last Airbender”.

I designed the teaser poster for this film which is out now and I’ve also worked on a very cool matte painting shot of a destroyed Los Angeles for the soon to be out trailer. I think this film will do well, and it may have a following just liek the harry Potter films. Regardless it was fun working on this movie.

Plot

A young boy discovers he’s the descendant of a Greek god and sets out on an adventure to settle an on-going battle between the gods. Based on the book by Rick Riordan.

Teaser Poster Design

Ignition Print

It has been great to see so many people supporting the project and becoming fans on facebook. I will be posting news related to the project now both on the facebook page as well as my blog. I have received a tremendous amount of emails about people asking about the making of this one day shoot as well as the set construction.  So hopefully as I have time I will share more of my experience of the EXPERIMENT RED film.

I am also currently looking for someone to help maintain the facebook page due to my busy schedule but I will certainly try to share most information here on my blog. Thanks to everyone again for all the email sand support !

It has been an amazing experience shooting on the RED camera for me, and it really  is all about the experience.  I was glad to have rented this camera for this test shoot of my film.  I was reading about this camera online just like anyone else, and here I was carrying the heavy monster on my shoulder for the hand held shots, which was really hard, since I was constantly moving up and down and I also wanted to make sure not to damage this rental equipment.

I did use the red drives to shoot on and we end up with about little over 300 gigs of data at 4k. I also had shot a lot of green screen footage and I did not think it was a must to get those at that high of a resolution, so most end up being at 2k, since they did nt have much motion to the filming. Each frame came to about 50 megs, and at 4k resolution I was shooting at 24p.

The most impressive was the low light condition and how easy it was to use.  Having the technical assistant Jameson Jordan who owned the rental company, showed me quite a bit and I was ready to eat it all up. We had a 21 inch monitor set up on set, which was very helpful since it was hard to see on the small external monitor, since I was also trying to reach out to the focal pull, changing my focus every 10 second.

Getting Started

Th RED is an extremely well put together piece of equipment, and very easy to assemble , the only thing is it’s weight which is a bit heavier (over 40 lbs.) then other HD cameras I’ve shot with especially the Panasonic HVX200. The interface controls are straight forward and easy to follow. I think setting up the camera and getting the lens on and up on a tripod took less then 30 minutes, but of course that is because Jameson had done this many times, but by watching someone who has already done it a few hundred times, certainly helps you pick it up quickly.

External Display

I have used an external viewfinder, but also had an external 21 inch monitor that I kept near by in front of my legs and kept moving around as I needed it to really see the sharp images of what I was trying to capture. Next time I will have an arm that will keep the external viewfinder as far from the camera as possible for hand help shots , since it was way to close on this setup we’ve had, and I had trouble seeing anything on there.

Workflow

The first few days I was asking everyone about the work flow with the RED, but I end up learning as much on my own since it was very easy to use both RED Alert and RED rushes, both provided on RED’s website, and I was amazed how much I could change the ISO by simply going higher or lower changing it. Also the color correction tools are impressive in RED Alert. By a click of a button you can export 2k or 4k tif or DPX files.

I purchased Final Cut a while back, and I am using it now to work with Pre-rendered qt files and doing the edit, which is really fast. And for the composting we will us e a combination of After Effects CS4 and Nuke. I have worked in the film Industry over ten years and it sure is nice working with 4k files, especially since I will be using some things I shot for reference, so I can use it to create texture maps for some of the 3D shots I have created for the film.

There is always a first time for everything, and let me tell you , it gets easier one;s you decide what composting package you will use. This was a great experience and I am looking forward shooting more on the RED.

Experience

It was a fantastic experience, and worth the rental fee, especially shooting with really fast Nikon lenses. I am certainly planning on shooting more with the RED and hopefully a Music Video project that is coming up soon on my schedule.