The Blog

As most of us have now heard, Philip Bloom has said thank you and goodnight to his RED Epic, terrifyingly shocking news! How does one of the most popular, talented and engaging cinematographers give up what is thought to be the peak of cinematic capture equipment!?

OBVIOUSLY HE’S BEEN HIRED BY CANON TO LIKE THE C300 MORE! OR THE SONY!! OBVIOUSLY!

No - if you read his blog post, you’ll understand that it was merely a choice to sustain an equipment list ensuring him maximum comfort and confidence when entering into a paid project. There have been all too many errors encountered, that many of us who follow his tweets are aware of, for him to show up and shoot… especially since he doesn’t own a second EPIC as a backup - another $60,000.00…. hard to see why not!

Imagine yourself as the proud new owner of the RED Epic. Holy wow, it would be a dream. Full frame sensor with 5k resolution at 120fps… it makes me laugh! BUT, now let’s imagine you go into a shot and the beast wont awaken, or the sound wont comply, or whatever general error that eliminates your chance of successfully completing your shot…. your done. You can’t have this happen on a paid shoot. You will look very unprofessional and enstill a low level of confidence in your clients, causing the remainder of the project to be quite on edge.

I’ve always looked at the crazy RED set-ups and wondered how complicated it would be to get them running, and how easily I’d have the workflow going through my macbook pro. This is really a camera that’s getting far too much attention from people who will NEVER be able to fully utilize it’s potential. Why is Uncle Joe looking to buy an Epic to shoot your aunties wedding next year?? Haha, it’s absurd. Especially considering most of the videos we watch now are on a computer monitor! The Epic is designed as a compact monster capable of bringing filmmakers (wanting to publish to theaters) a powerful high res solution with ease of digital format use. It’s rather ridiculous how many DSLR users are drooling over this camera, some even splitting on it with friends. Get real. You’re wasting your time, money and hard drive space!

If you’ve been like me, anxiously fantasizing over an opportunity to even hold the Canon C300, this may boost your affection to a whole new level. I love what Canon have done with the design of their first real cinema camera. It uses tried, tested and true media capture formats, in it’s 50mb/s 4:2:2 codec to dual CF cards…which are cheap, and everyone has them! I’m going to speculate and assume Philip Bloom will become a proud owner of the C300, as a lot of us will, and this camera will kick-ass right on through the whole production list. Canon is a quality brand. Their equipment is as much about performance as it is durability and dependability.

Why I love Philip Bloom? He’s unbiased (I believe) when giving his opinion on the cinema world, and rarely steers you in a bad direction. My career moves rely partly on his reviews and just following his inspiring work. It’s helped me understand what my next step should be, especially in a career that was, at the time, very new, big and scary to me! And it still is, and here we have Phil, years later, providing the same feedback and insight that has kept many of us going for bigger things than we ever thought possible. RESPECT.

B.