Live visuals are all about projection, but perhaps part of the reason visual work hasn’t become nearly as commonplace as music is that screens and projectors are tougher to come by than speakers and PAs. Naturally, the appeal of a really high-quality mobile rig is obvious – especially one that can work outdoors.

Yesterday, I got to meet with Open Air Cinema, a young Utah-based company that’s already made a name for itself running events like the TriBeCa Outdoor Drive-In and LA Film Festival Outdoor Screenings. Their products have typically run at the high-end. But they’ve got a new “consumer” line that could be just what VJs and visualists need to have an on-the-go projection solution.

I’ve stumbled across a real gem the other day. In researching 2 and 3 strip film processing techniques, color spaces, and projection systems (yes nerdy I know…), I came across a link to the Widescreen Museum Old Color page, which offers an incredibly interesting technical overview of old film color techniques like Technicolor, Cinecolor etc. If you are at all interested in how these films get their unique look, curious about reverse engineering a specific look, or simply enjoy a taste of cinema history, be sure to check it out, as there is an exhaustive amount of information contained in this site.

It seems that the wait is almost over for those wanting to shoot cinema-quality footage digitally with a camera that looks like a gun from Aliens. RED have just released their pricelist.

This was never going to be a cheap endeavour. Yes, the camera body is an incredibly affordable $17,500, but that won’t let you shoot a single frame. You’ll also need a power pack ($1,650) to give the thing juice, viewfinder ($2,950) or LCD ($1,700) so you can see what you’re doing, and a Red Drive (320GB, $900) or Red RAM (64GB, $4,500) to capture those frames. Oh, and you’ll want a lens, otherwise the frames you’re capturing may be a little fuzzy, the most affordable option would be a Canon or Nikkor 35mm adapter ($500)… HD4Indies has a big analysis, including comparisons with other pro options.

I don’t see myself picking one of these bad boys up for quite a while yet, but when I get the spare cash I’ll definitely be looking at Red first.

You go offline for a couple of days and what happens? Only the deluge of RED camera information since it was announced. The Red Digital Cinema website has been updated, and Mike of HD4Indies has been working Red’s booth at IBC and has been furiously blogging his experiences.

Red show their footage for the first time on a 4K digital projector: Red 4K footage - “I told you so” (presentation bootlegged on Youtube)
Addon hardware details released: New Red Hardware
Conversion tool for output of Red footage to your NLE: Redcine software
Red’s compression codec: Redcode 4K RAW

The camera still looks a little OMG IT’S TEH FUTUAR kitschy to me, but to be fair I don’t like the design of most Oakley gear, and if Oakley sales are anything to go by a lot of people are going to love the look of this thing. Not that it really matters, at the moment they’re delivering the quality they promised at the price they promised, so people would buy the thing if it was put together Mad Max style from rusted car parts.