RED - field test in Monaco

Up until now film has been the quality to strive for when it comes to moving images. Both in terms of color depth and depth of field. However, it’s rather knotty to work with - you have to change film mags repeatedly, it is expensive and the post process is cumbersome.

Now, with the RED camera, you get the best of both worlds. Edithouse’s been using their RED camera for about a year now, but used it in controlled conditions, mostly in the studio environments. Time to put the RED through a field test.

“We were about to shoot Running footage of the new Volvo S80 in Monaco,” says Niclas Bergman. Volvo has previously expressed its approval of the RED camera, partly because you can shoot high-speed, and get an incredible quality. So I wanted to use it in Monaco.

When you shoot high-speed with the RED camera, and crank it down to the correct speed you will get … it is difficult to describe in words, but … still images that moves. Crunchiness, color and depth, that you normally find on a slide, although it is moving images. So, we’ve used the RED a lot. But before Monaco, it has been under calm, controlled conditions. To film a secret car in Monaco is anything but calm. …

Running Footage is, simply put, a car driving on a road. But to get variation in the pictures you’re shooting from helicopters, from a platform on a camera car, from a tripod - in short, filming is anything but calm. Would RED camera ready skaket on the platform at 80 km / h on the roads of France and Monaco?

We arrived in France 10th November. You normally have a “weather-day”, ie you can skip a day if it should rain. This was the opposite, we had one sunny day … The worst storm in living memory came from Italy to Spain. The Riviera was without electricity for several days because of the rain. But the RED camera survived it all. So we had to be creative on the spot; we started to film the raindrops in high-speed, which actually turned out nice, and we used it in the final production.
RED camera is hard disk-based. And here it was, well, a big minus for the RED camera. The helicopter generates vibrations that made the hard drives skip and generate errors. So we used flash cards in the camera instead. The disadvantage of flash cards is that they hold so little information. So we had to change cards very often. You hang the camera diagonally, in a helicopter with an open door, above the sea in France, so it is important to not drop the little card when one is handing it to the photographer …

A camera is exposed to different types of vibrations. The vibrations did not work for the RED camera. But it had no problems with road vibrations, even holes in the road. No problem, at all.

So in summary: We filmed 12 hours a day, for seven days in row under extreme conditions. The RED handled rain, snow, road bumps, all but helicopter vibrations. For that we have a bag of Flashcards. A minor setback, compared to the great advantages of the RED.