Upated! Here's a rundown of the plot from one of the lucky attendees!
Quint! I saw the PJ footage at NAB. It looks amazing. The RED camera works wonders. The footage is crystal clear and the color is beautiful; what a breakthrough for indie cinema. Anywho, aside from the technical aspects, the story revolves around two guys, one infantry soldier, one airplane pilot. It begins with the pilot and the soldier preparing for battle. The pilot is fixing a small teddy bear presumably from a loved one and the soldier keeps checking on a photo of his girl before the charge is called. Once the whistle is blown the soldiers rush forward through explosions and gunfire and our soldier drops his photo. The pilot up in the plane gets into a dogfight with the bad guys. The rest of the short revolves around the soldier getting his photo back and the pilot dealing with the dogfight and losing his bear. The planes are related to PJ somehow because they are stenciled with his name on the side. This short was certainly not expected. It was full of special effects, aerial dogfights complete with tracer rounds being fired from machine guns on the planes, lots of extras, and even a tank! The crowd expected to see color charts and technical camera tests but were very pleasantly surprised to see a full scale world war two battle sequence complete with music from the King Kong soundtrack on loan from Universal. Apparently Jim Jannard, leader of RED Digital Cinema, asked PJ if anyone in the LA area could help them shoot some camera tests and he invited the RED crew down to NZ to shoot. Word on the street is PJ and crew ordered 5 of these new cameras. PJ sent his DP, editor, and sound guy to NAB to talk with fans of the camera and those who have ordered cameras. The world of hidef indie cinema looks to be heating up! Call me… -Zekk
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. We've been getting reports about this since late yesterday, but I've been out of commission until noon today. The reports were a little muddled, some contradicting each other, so I needed to get the skinny through Wingnut Films. Peter Jackson did direct a short film called CROSSING THE LINE, an experiment with the RED camera, a supposedly revolutionary HD 4K camera that is still in development, but promises to be the first consumer camera of its type. The rumor is that it'll hit the market at about $17,000. The RED people shot off to New Zealand with their two prototypes and Peter ended up making his short, a WW1 mini-epic. They shot for 2 days, spent 10 days in post-production (Weta digital and Park Road Post) and ended up with a short 12 minutes long. It is NOT Dambusters tests, which we've had reports about. DAMBUSTERS is WW2 and Peter Jackson isn't the director. This is its own thing. What I haven't seen talked about much is that Neill Blomkampf, the guy who was lined up to direct HALO, did some guest directing work on this short as well. It's currently screening in Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, in the Red Cameras booth. I hear it's also hitting the web at Red's website in the near future. I'll close with one of the reports that actually mentions what's in the footage. If anyone out in Vegas sees it, do write in and let us know what is super cool or not about it. Sounds sweet to me. Can't wait to see it! This came from Mike Curtis at HDforindies.com
BUSY first day in the booth, LOTS of new stuff to talk about in the Red booth, 7:30pm, dinner in 1/2 hour across the Strip, so a quickie update: first off, the fun gossipy stuff - As you may already know, Red was approached by a director who wanted to shoot some test footage - so Red said OK. That meant spinning up Jim's jet for a nonstop flight to New Zealand to drop in on Peter Jackson. Thinking he wanted to shoot some charts and stuff and maybe set up a scene or two, they showed up with Boris and Natasha, the two testbed cameras. Turns out he had a script and actors and extras and everything...and everyting included planes, tanks, shooting from helicopters, 'splosions, teddy bears, the WORKS. So they shot for 2 days with two alpha level dev cameras 2 1/2 weeks ago. Then they edited it in a pre-release Final Cut Pro (with the native 4K footage), did VFX, color graded on Weta's Pablo, and kicked out 4K files that are being screened in the Red booth in 4K on a projector in their own little 40 seat theater. And WOW, it looks GOOD. So there's a twelve minute short directed by Peter Jackson set in World War I showing in 4K in the Red booth with two storylines - one literally in the trenches (that was my cheating allusion the other day), and the other in the sky. They shot from a helicopter chasing two vintage WWI planes dogfight around the sky. If you're at NAB, COME SEE THIS.
