(Executive Producer John) Wells went to a party and got into a conversation with director Steven Soderbergh, who had just shot the four-and-a-half-hour Che with the Red One camera. “He was raving about it, and that piqued John’s interest,” says associate producer Dieter Ismagil. When Wells shot the pilot for his upcoming series Southland, they used the Red camera to shoot a test for interiors and exteriors. “They liked the image, and they liked what they could do with it handheld, so they used it for the Southland pilot,”. “They were happy with the results and with not having the added expense of film processing.” The decision was made to give it a try for the last few episodes of ER.

Next was a cryptic, yet intruging post on REDUser.net from the man himself, Jim Jannard, CEO and Founder of RED courtesy of Studio Daily and Pro Video Coalition blogger Scott Simmons via twitter:

We have just made a number of final changes to our program. It has become clear that our competition is finally paying attention to what we are doing so this time we will NOT announce what the changes are.

I will say the following:

1. No negative price/performance changes.
2. Only positive feature and system changes.
3. No additional slip to the target schedule.

If our competition is shooting at us, they will be shooting at where we were and not where we are going to be.

Speculation is dangerous because people post what they think or hope and others read it as fact. Just know that every time we change something, it gets better.

See you in Las Vegas.
Jim

Looks like it’s shaping up to be an interesting spring in the digital cinematography world.

From Digitalfilms.com

Ever since the RED Digital Cinema Camera Company started to ship its innovative RED One camera, producers have been challenged with the best way to post produce its footage. Detractors have slammed RED for a supposed lack of post workflows. This is in wrong, since there are a number of solid ways to post RED footage. The trouble is…

Alex Proyas has never shied away from utilizing the latest digital technology to make his films. I remember getting a call from him back in 1994 when I was cutting “Civil Wars” for Steven Bochco Productions, one of the first network shows to be edited digitally on the Avid. The company had given the director my name to give him some feedback on what is was like cutting long-form on the Media Composer as he was considering using the system on his first American feature, “The Crow”.  So it came as no surprise to me when I heard he and his cinematographer, Simon Duggan were shooting his latest film “Knowing” with the RED ONE digital cinema camera. The film, which opened last week, is the largest budget film to date to shot with the RED.

From Wired

Alex Proyas has made plenty of films in traditional fashion, shooting Dark City, The Crow and I, Robot on old-fashioned celluloid.  For his new sci-fi thriller Knowing, the Australian director decided to go digital for the first time and put the ultrahigh-resolution RED camera to the test.  Now that he’s worked out the kinks, Proyas says, “There’s no going back.”

ASL Gear is a company that designs and manufactures accessories for the Red ONE and other HD camera systems. The Remote Interface Box, or RIB Kit is comprised of two of the company’s products, RIP and RIB (remote interface breatkout box) designed to provide crews using the RED some more robust interface options for getting video, audio and timecode signals in and out of the camera.

From the company’s website.

Now you can finally plug full size XLR’s and BNC cables directly into your RED ONE® without the need for adapters. You also get Genlock and Timecode functions via the BNC panel. The ‘RIP’ provides quick and easy access to the RED’s I/O interface. The RIP easily attaches to the connector side of the camera and can be used in Stand Alone Mode, or with the ‘RIB’ Break-Out Box

In the video above RED user Jay A. Kelley reviews and explains how this product came about and how it can be used to make camera crews lives a bit easier when shooting with RED  in the field.

AMA is an entirely new protocol for getting media into Avid. It has been described as a “plug-in” type architecture. As of the initial release in Media Composer 3.5 (as well as Symphony) AMA currently supports Panasonic P2 media and Sony XDCAM, including XDCAM EX. To sweeten the pot Avid can now write XDCAM media as well, in a number of different bit rates. To sweeten the pot even more is the promise of what Avid Media Access might offer. RED R3Ds, AVCHD, AVC-Intra, Canon 5D Mark II H.264 files … the possibilities seem endless.

Read the rest of the 2-part series over at Pro Video Coalition.