"UPDATED- PIX POSTED" Recap: Inaugural Chapter Meeting / RED Digital Cinema Event

[Simon Sommerfeld]

Recap: March 1st NorCal/Pacific Northwest Chapter Meeting / RED Digital Cinema Event

Wow! What a great turn-out for our inaugural Chapter meeting! We had around 120 DCS members come from near and far on Saturday to meet at NetApp, in Sunnyvale CA., to hear the latest word on RED Digital Cinema. We've had a lot of positive feedback about the event, and we're proud to have provided such a valuable informational resource to our DCS members.

Overview of event coverage:

DCS President James Mathers covered a lot of ground with his production presentation and general overview of the camera. James screened RED ONE demo footage and then fired up RED 30X to demonstrate a basic production workflow via RED ALERT! As always, James did a great job of giving an holistic and honest opinion of the RED ONE camera and workflow, backed by his real-world experiences.

Torrey Loomis of Silverado Systems gave an overview of RED post-production and demonstrated REDCINE and Assimilate SCRATCH software, via an early RED project titled Paranoid. Torrey went on to discuss how his current production and post workflows are so tightly integrated, that his post team are on location and assembling a rough cut as the cameras are rolling. Torrey's' D.P. Brian Hamm also talked about his experience shooting with the RED ONE.

DCS Panelists Leigh Blicher, of rental-house Videofax, Filmmaker Adam Wilt, and D.P. Art Adams, helped steer the Q&A sessions from differing perspectives. The questions and comments coming from our DCS audience members were particularly impressive, and demonstrated the depth and level of experience within our DCS ranks.

The afternoon's agenda was moderated by Chapter President Simon Sommerfeld, who was lucky enough to have a talented team of DCS volunteers managing the event infrastructure. Special thanks go out to Leonard Levy, Luke Seerveld, Alan Hereford, Conrad Slater, Rob Weiner, Joe Turrentine, Don Starnes, Art Adams, Adam Wilt, Leigh Blicher, and newly appointed DCS Chapter Vice President Trudi Melohn, who in addition to organizing the venue, the refreshments, and running audio, did a great job of keeping the raffle honest!

A special thank you to our main sponsor, NetApp: In addition to providing our awesome venue and helping to run the show, NetApp laid on tons of swag for our raffle winners and everyone attending, alike.

Our lucky DCS raffle winners were:

Steve Speers, Camera Operator, who came in from Minneapolis and won a DCS Lifetime Membership and a DCS fleece (perfect for the MN climate)
Cliff Traiman, Shooter, who won a Caldigit 320VR plus $200 off a Caldigit ProHD Hardware RAID box - from Caldigit
Steele Douglas, D.P., who won a one-day full RED Rental Package - from Videofax
Rob Rameriz of Crush Pictures who won a one-day full RED Rental Package - from Silverado Systems
David Ronan, also of Crush Pictures!, who won a Zacuto Zdapter Kit for attaching the RED monitor (and other monitors) to 19mm rods - from Zacuto
Rob Weiner, Video Engineer/DIT, who won an AJA GEN10 Blackburst and Tri-level Sync Generator - from AJA

Congratulations to all our winners and our thanks to everyone who bought raffle tickets, keeping our event costs in the black.

Our gratitude goes out to our event Sponsors: NetApp, Silverado Systems, Videofax, Caldigit, AJA, and Zacuto for their generosity and support.

The combined contribution of everyone present made for a very successful DCS event! Extra special thanks goes to Nicole Sommerfeld, who ran behind the scenes operations at our Chapter HQ, and kept us on track for event day. Thank you Nicole!

Recorded Coverage:
For those of you who couldn't make it on Saturday, we recorded the session on video, and a condensed program will be available for viewing on the DCS website in a couple of weeks. Right now, you can watch coverage from our previous RED sessions, and read an extensive on-set write-up of the camera by James Mathers via our home-page: http://www.digitalcinemasociety.org - Look for the RED content under “RED ONE Rollout”. We record most of our events and they are available for viewing on our DCS home site.

Keep an eye on this forum and in DCS newsletters for word of our next NorCal/Pacific Northwest Chapter event. I look forward to seeing everyone at our future meetings!

All the best,
Simon.

[Simon Sommerfeld]

Here's a few pix from our Northern California / Pacific Northwest RED Event on March 1st.
Images courtesy of Adam Wilt.




DCS President James Mathers sets focus on volunteer camera model Anne-Marie Cook.
RED # 30X, Angenieux 17-80mm T2.2





James highlights some of the camera menu items.




Torrey Loomis demonstrates Scratch workflow using footage from his RED project Paranoid.




DCS members get to play with the toys!