The Big Red One

Called the future of digital and "guerilla" filmmaking as well as revolutionary, the Red One (named after Samuel Fuller's tremendous 1980 WWII film,The Big Red One?) is at the vanguard of affordable (at $17,500, it's comparatively cheaper) Hi-Res digital cameras for filmmakers. I discovered this lightweight (10 lbs.), all-in-one arsenal fairly recently perusing Amy Taubin's Film Comment article on Steven Soderbergh's upcoming features on the life of Che Guevara. Soderbergh, who shot both films using prototypes of the cameras, praises the results fulsomely. Wired has an article on their site giving readers a run-down of what this baby can do and the development that went into the technology. Scroll down for an excerpt.

International Che Trailer

WIRED
Analog Meets Its Match in Red Digital Cinema's Ultrahigh-Res Camera
By Michael Behar
08.18.08


A crowd has gathered in front of the Las Vegas Convention Center, where a security guard is about to unlock the main entrance. It's less than a minute before 9 am, the official opening of the 2008 National Association of Broadcasters Show—typically a sleepy sales and marketing event known more for schmoozing than buzz. But as the glass doors open on this April morning, a hundred people race toward a large crimson tent in the center of the hall.

The tent is home to Red Digital Cinema and its revolutionary motion picture camera, the Red One. Standing nearby is the man who developed it—a handsome guy with a neatly trimmed goatee and a pair of sunglasses perched atop his clean-shaven head. He clutches a can of Diet Coke in his left hand, an unlit Montecristo jutting from between his fingers.
Jim Jannard, 59, is the billionaire founder of Red. In 1975 he spent $300 to make a batch of custom motocross handlebar grips, which he sold from the back of a van. He named his company Oakley, after his English setter, and eventually expanded into sci-fi-style sunglasses, bags, and shoes. In November of last year he sold the business to Luxottica, the owner of Ray-Ban, for a reported $2.1 billion.

Jannard won't say how much money he has poured into Red, but his target market clearly appreciates the investment. Supplicants swarm the tent, many of them with offerings—fine wine, gourmet coffee, single-malt whiskey—all to thank Jannard for building the Red One. "I guess they just like me," he says with a wry smile.

It's more than that: His team of engineers and scientists have created the first digital movie camera that matches the detail and richness of analog film. The Red One records motion in a whopping 4,096 lines of horizontal resolution—"4K" in filmmaker lingo—and 2,304 of vertical. For comparison, hi-def digital movies like Sin City and the Star Wars prequels top out at 1,920 by 1,080, just like your HDTV. (There's also a slightly higher-resolution option called 2K that reaches 2,048 lines by 1,080.) Film doesn't have pixels, but the industry-standard 35-millimeter stock has a visual resolution roughly equivalent to 4K. And that's what makes the Red so exciting: It delivers all the dazzle of analog, but it's easier to use and cheaper—by orders of magnitude—than a film camera. In other words, Jannard's creation threatens to make 35-mm movie film obsolete. Read more...