Red camera in Mumbai, India

Ted Schilowitz, of Red camera, the 'Leader of the Rebellion' as his card says, and like the main spokesperson for Red was in Mumbai yesterday. As was Nacho, Vice President of Scratch. They launched Red for DOPs and film-makers in India.

It was a small party The Club, Andheri West. A collection of film-makers, Cinematographers and others gathered on a rainy day. I was possibly the only editor around. No wait, Rajesh Choudhary was there too.

Among the cinematographers were very old friends Anoop, Vijay, Murli, Mahesh, Chiang, Rao saab, and lots of others. Names on the tip of my tongue but not 'coming out'.

Benchmark is their (Red and Scratch) representative in India. They have one camera now that they'll use for promotion and plan on bringing in about 50 more in maybe a few months now. So the first step for Red camera feasibility in India seems licked if even half of these many can be made available by year end.

Not many film technicians seem to have heard of Scratch. This is a Windows based DI software. Scratch can conform EDLs to scanned material, grade rather well, and then output to film or HD/SD tapes.

Assimilate is the company that makes Scratch and there are already 16 in India. If someone tells me the last Hindi movie graded totally on Scratch, I'll put it up here.

I'll write about post with Red in a bit. It starts with editing natively on FCP.

For Red finishing workflows, there's a low-cost product called Scratch Cine. This can open and conform Red R3D files, but not other formats. It can play back, at 24fps, Red files at 1k and 2k (not 4k) There's no info on how many sound tracks it can play and how good it stays in sync.

So, for now, Red has made an official entry into the Indian film production industry. Soon more and more cameras will become available. Cinematographers will start using it, Sound recordists will love it for the zero noise, but will need to get used to the connections and recording system.

Editors will have to get used to 'rushes' with cryptic alphabet-number names, folders within folders, a good storage and backup regimen, but no more keycode-timecode-telecine log grappling.

Post and DI houses and systems will need to come to terms with workflows that involves FCP, Scratch and others. And DI houses geared only to film and DPX, will have one more reason (after HD) to get real and equip themselves to handle non-film shooting for film release.

There will be many who will scoff at this whole new digital film thing. But then, it was another rainy day almost 8 years ago when Apple launched Final Cut Pro here. Many scoffed, some still do. And even before, on a not so rainy day six years before FCP, when Avid launched editing on a computer. The Steenbeck crowd laughed heartily then.

Will Red be a revolution in the way we make movies here? I doubt if we'll take 5 years to find out. Ask me around this time in 2009.