The purpose of this article is to discuss what won me over with the MX chip on a recent shoot. In fact, many of my articles will most likely focus on interesting scenarios I run into while I shoot and experiment with the Red One MX.
Mid-2009, I was cinematographer on a feature film entitled "Muttnik" which was my first time shooting a production on a Red One. On our first night shoot, we had to shoot outside of a gas station with two characters illuminated by the gas station's sign. I bopped up the ASA from the native 320 to 640 and I was welcomed to a storm of noise...yikes. Color correction didn't help much which was a pity since the lighting was great. The sign was a wonderful key light and would have been more than enough on a Panasonic DVX100a (one of my eternal favorites).
We ran into many situations when we wanted to use low lighting or simplified lighting but the noise of going above 320ASA held me back. 'Muttnik' is a horror film so we wanted to get a sense of limited lighting that still gave us an image that popped but the Red One's chip was limiting us a bit.
A New Experience; Restoring My Faith in The Red One MX
Fast forward to January 2011. I'm on a week long thesis shoot for an action movie entitled "Retrieval". I really wanted to go experimental on this. I wanted to play with all types of lighting trickery and to mix up various lighting methods - This would be my first fill blown investigation of the new MX chip on a legitimate film shoot.
The first day of shooting ended with an exterior scene in which the two leads just escaped certain doom and are having a tension filled exchange outside of an apartment complex. The director and I decided that our primary light source would be a lamp post along with a reflector for fill. Risky but I wanted to see what this chip could do so I popped it up to 800ASA. I was bewildered. The image was clean at 800ASA, On top of that, the lamp post gave me the proper exposure with a Nikon 50mmm wide open to 1.8 and if that wasn't enough, it might have been one of the more dynamically shot scenes of the film.
Exploring the Limitations; Pushing the Limits you've found
After this, I spent the majority of the shoot at 640ASA or 800ASA just to protect my highlights while being able to experiment with using more subtle lighting in certain areas. That goes into the dynamic range territory of the chip so I'll save that for my next article. I can't say that the MX chip has much on DSLRs when it comes to light sensitivity but we'll touch upon that down the road.
What I'm getting at is that it's refreshing to see a camera of the the Red One's caliber being pushed to point where more freedom is being give to the cinematographer and director. The less limitations, the better,and this is why 35mm and 16mm still have devoted followers who swear by it.
Thankfully, the digital options is becoming an amazing alternative for many, and a first choice for even more.
For more information on price and availability, or inquire further concerning the services they offer, visit Red Camera Rental New York or call Bill Milling at (212)-952-1800.
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