Several interesting RED stories on my radar in the last few days. First is Debra Kaufman’s excellent coverage at Studio Daily of Warner Bros. long running show ER and their decision to shoot the last seven episodes of the series with the RED Digital Cinema Camera.

(Executive Producer John) Wells went to a party and got into a conversation with director Steven Soderbergh, who had just shot the four-and-a-half-hour Che with the Red One camera. “He was raving about it, and that piqued John’s interest,” says associate producer Dieter Ismagil. When Wells shot the pilot for his upcoming series Southland, they used the Red camera to shoot a test for interiors and exteriors. “They liked the image, and they liked what they could do with it handheld, so they used it for the Southland pilot,”. “They were happy with the results and with not having the added expense of film processing.” The decision was made to give it a try for the last few episodes of ER.

Next was a cryptic, yet intruging post on REDUser.net from the man himself, Jim Jannard, CEO and Founder of RED courtesy of Studio Daily and Pro Video Coalition blogger Scott Simmons via twitter:

We have just made a number of final changes to our program. It has become clear that our competition is finally paying attention to what we are doing so this time we will NOT announce what the changes are.

I will say the following:

1. No negative price/performance changes.
2. Only positive feature and system changes.
3. No additional slip to the target schedule.

If our competition is shooting at us, they will be shooting at where we were and not where we are going to be.

Speculation is dangerous because people post what they think or hope and others read it as fact. Just know that every time we change something, it gets better.

See you in Las Vegas.
Jim

Looks like it’s shaping up to be an interesting spring in the digital cinematography world.