The Film Look

Since Daniel Wu linked me in his latest post regarding the RED camera, I thought I would give a little technical information about why something looks "good" and "like film" and why something else looks like "video" and "not as high production quality."

This is technical and has nothing to do with lighting style or color grading which makes a huge difference - but since were talking cameras I'm going to ignore those for now.  I will try to make it simple.

LATITUDE - big word.... but basically it means how many colors something has the capability to capture.  This really shows in the upper range where bright whites on video will "clip" (which means go pure white) while film, having greater latitude, will show more colors in those ranges.  This becomes really evident on skin outdoors when it will be bright.   The RED camera has a much higher latitude than video cameras - nearly as much as film, and thus - it looks more like film.

DEPTH OF FIELD - When one object is close and one is far... if you focus on the far object - how out of focus will the foreground object be?  That's what we mean by depth of field.  Now, here is something funny.... usually people like MORE... but with the case of depth of field, often less is better.  Maybe not when trying to capture news or sports, but if you're telling a story, it really helps to be able to limit the depth of field so that the audience is watching only what you want them watching in the frame.  It's a very useful shot design tool.  There are a few factors that control depth of field - aperture (which is how much light is let into the lens) and the zoom of the lens (the longer zoom, meaning the higher powered zoom, the LESS depth of field there is).  Video has more depth of field, so it's harder to guide the eye where you want it to go.  When I'm stuck shooting video I will very often shoot with longer lenses so that I can cheat to get more depth of field.  Now - what makes a difference in the camera is actually the size of the sensor.  The bigger the sensor, the shallower the depth of field.  Likewise, 16mm has a wider depth of field than 35mm film because the frame is physically smaller.  The RED was designed to have the same sensor size as 35mm so that it would have the same depth of field as audiences have become comfortable with for feature films.

So - there you have two major technical things which make the RED more cinema-like. 

Hoepfully I made this easy enough for anyone reading to understand.

I don't usually have many photos from the set, but here is a shot of me hand holding my RED camera - it's a random moment where I caught myself (intentionally) in a mirror.  When the production is finished, I won't be in the mirror anymore, but I can't tell you what will be.... yet.

:)