On Thursday 18th February, Directors UK hosted a discussion seminar at industry event The Production Show. Entitled Working with RED: The Directors' Take, the session saw David Drury and Aisling Walsh answer questions from fellow director Sarah Harding about their experience of using the RED, a digital camera they used to create The Take and Wallander respectively. They also took questions from an audience which included independent filmmakers and other production staff, keen to know how this new technology was affecting their industry.

Sean Evans and Tom Hardy in The Take: now available on DVD

Sarah Harding: So let’s begin with your thoughts on the RED...

David Drury: The glorious thing about this camera is its astonishing facility to free you. It’s lightweight and very good for camera operators because of that. An operator I’ve been working with recently said he much preferred the RED camera [to others] because it’s easier to handle. It does of course have 35mm lenses, so the transmission of light is really excellent. Very good!

Aisling Walsh: I went out and shot for a couple of hours in an afternoon with just Ken [Branagh], because I wanted to see what it did with him and what he looked like, because that helps me as a director, and I wondered whether I might have to be careful with certain colours. The reason I wanted to show the evening clip that I did was because there was no light [when we filmed it]. I was saying to David before we started, my DOP, Ken and I spent an evening driving around in Sweden with just the three of us. That’s the huge advantage of it – it allowed us to do that. And it does see everything, so you’ve got to be careful with that.

DD: As it was the first time I’d ever used HD – I’d only ever shot on film previously – I arrived as a complete innocent. As such, I treated it like a 35mm camera, and asked of it exactly the same as I would a 35mm or Super 16. I had no concerns and trusted the DOP.

What I tend to do in preparation is to look through a lot of paintings, and take the DOP around and we talk about colour palette in relation to art. I’ve done that before using 35mm and 16mm and it’s absolutely no different with the RED. It also has this astonishing facility where if you ask to see what you’ve shot played back, you can do it straight away. There is none of the paraphernalia or traipsing 43 people over to a monitor and leaning over your shoulder. It’s a fantastic tool.

SH: How does it actually affect the way you work with actors? How are they affected by it, if it’s so light hungry?

AW: I think it’s the same, really. I think what actors like about it is that they get to keep going. We get to just keep going with RED, and I think for actors who like that way of working - which Ken does and I would think Tom Hardy probably does – it’s fantastic. If you’re working with two or three cameras, which as directors we do now all the time because of the schedules and budgets, it’s a nice thing. For me, someone who’s not technical and quite small, 35mm terrified me when I first used it because of its size; it’s great to have this little camera that you can actually have a go at operating yourself. I did a couple of tests, which told me what I needed to know.

DD: I have about as much interest in technology as going to live in the South Pole – as far as I’m concerned it’s about the relationship between the story and the characters and the actors. So you can loosely get up a head of steam with this technology – and as Aisling pointed out, you can keep rolling and rolling. The vast majority of actors who I’ve worked with over the years join with that. They don’t have a downtime with that - they’re just right in the bubble, and you can look back at stuff really quite easily.

It sounds sort of nirvana in many ways, and I was completely shocked. The Take was screened at the Curzon in Mayfair, and I was slightly concerned about it because I wondered how it would translate, and yet I was astonishingly impressed – it played very, very well. Curiously enough, I’ve only had one person worried about the definition –and that was a man! There were no problems from leading ladies!

From the floor: So the RED camera is as good as the 35mm camera?

DD: Completely. It sounds so easy because all the questions are answered in one answer. It was no different from shooting with a 35mm Panavision camera.

AW: That first scene you saw [from Wallander] we shot that in 20 minutes. A lot of it’s to do with budget and schedule, and what you can achieve in a day. You’re running two cameras, but not compromising. I actually think I was helped.

From the floor: It’s hard to know from the clips shown on the big screen here, but it seems like there was a different quality to the colour. I didn’t see strong blacks – the tonality seemed different. There was a red overcast. There was one scene where there was a yellow, and there was a very different quality to the colour.

DD: That might’ve been a decision subsequently. I’m frankly a bit of a Luddite, and I was raised in film. But one of the things I discovered was the grading facility to shoot colour and tonality was remarkable. You can arrive at a position where you say, that is as close to a finished grade as you can possibly get at this point. And even then, you can play around with it. So there was this facility in that regard that was far broader than with film.

SH: That brings me on to my next question: are there things you can’t achieve on RED? I’m thinking of things like people standing against windows, or if you want to use depth of field a lot. Is that still possible, and do you change things in the grade? Do you have much control over the look?

AW: I’d say more over the look [than usual] in the grade. Nothing will ever replace 35mm film, and what I mean by that is there is a magic to 35mm, and it’s where we come from. It sees into the soul of something, and digital doesn’t quite get there. But it’s what we have to deal with as directors, we have to adapt. Sometimes you just don’t have the money to shoot on film; sometimes your £15,000 is better spent getting an actor that you want, or getting the right location. It [digital] can’t replace it [film] at the moment, but it’s very, very close. It gives it something else.

DD: That’s a really very interesting point. I did a thing for Paramount a few years ago which used 35mm Panavision. Two of the Paramount executives turned around to me and said, “have you ever worked on HD?”, and I said I hadn’t. They told me that they were now doing so much stuff on HD, which shocked me. I asked if it was an economic thing, and they replied, “absolutely not – there’s as good a facility all the way round”. Now part of that I suspect is to do with the market place: they can shift “the product” (horrible word!) across various mediums without any of the transfer costs you’d get with 35mm. But I was amazed, and they were very enthusiastic about it, rightly or wrongly.

One of the things that I really found was that post-production was an absolute joy. I did quite a lot of stuff in The Take in slow-motion, which you can do very successfully with the right camera. Other stuff that I did in post-production had no noticeable loss of quality. I think Aisling’s point is absolutely correct: it will not, in real terms, replace 35mm film. But the point is that so much stuff that’s happening in the world is market-driven, and there’s an increasing market across all these mediums – theatrical, television, DVD, online – and this collection of software through the RED camera can service that stuff very, very well.

SH: Just picking up from that, can you think of any circumstances where you would choose film? Any particular story where you would choose not to use the RED camera?

AW: I would choose film all the time!

DD: There’s a theatrical film I’m making later this year, and the debate has not arrived yet over whether it will be 35mm film [or digital]. But I’m sure financial circumstances will mean a choice will have to be made, and then we’ll make that call. I am of a school, rightly or wrongly, that I do believe that the story and the actors are the thing that carries us along. I think the look is a wonderful thing without a shadow of a doubt – one strives for beauty all the time – but beauty is simply not enough in my view. RED is the next best thing, and if you’ve got financial concerns, and by choosing to forego film to get the actor you want, then so be it.

SH: There was a question I wanted to ask David. I remember, I think it was in The Swap, you used a lot of steadicam. In The Take, there was a different style. If you wanted to use steadicam with the RED, could you?

DD: I used the steadicam in The Swap because I was going through my blue period! I just felt for that programme it was the right thing to do. But the interesting thing about The Take was that there was no problem about steadicam at all. If you have it in the back of the van, or you can book the days you really feel you want it, the steadicam will adjust really quite simply.

From the floor: I wanted to ask about the RED in low-light situations. As an indie filmmaker with little money, I found it interesting to hear about the stuff you shot at night. How far could you push it, if you were an indie filmmaker?

AW: I would say all the way. The beauty of it is, you could go out with two mates tonight, sit them on a bus, and turn over. And I’ll tell you what, it’ll be lovely! This is what I meant in the beginning when I said about being free. I could go out and do that; I don’t have to lug 16 people with me. For us, as filmmakers fortunate enough to work in television and movies, it’s great. With independent movies I work on, my money is going on the screen; if I can get a crew down to 20 people - which is what you’re talking about - believe me, that is brilliant.

DD: I think it’s the future. It allows us to tell and record stories without all the dreadful paraphernalia of scores of executives, and should be encouraged. I completely agree with Aisling.

From the floor: So if you’d been nominated for a BAFTA, what work would you prefer to be shown: something filmed on RED or on 35mm?

AW: I just want people to be emotionally moved. I don’t give a curse about format to be honest! It’s like asking do you want to use oil painting or do you want acrylic?

DD: I couldn’t give a damn. I personally would like to be remembered for the story, performances etc ,etc. I’ve shot some commercials in the past, for my sins, and learnt some of my trade doing that, and they may look wonderful but I really don't care. I care about whether people were moved, whether we told a good story, and whether we pulled it off.

AW: My brother’s a musician and I used to say to him, “you’re really lucky, you have a guitar and you can just go and busk. You can go underground and play and somebody might hear you”. This is actually where we’re at now in terms of filmmaking. This is as good as it’s ever going to be.

From the floor: Aisling, you said you went around Sweden with Ken and your DP in a car, and shot some stuff: that’s very indie...

AW: That’s what I mean: in the back of a car, lighting from a dashboard, and Ken is driving and being filmed. It’s a whole revolution, and it’s an amazing thing. I also used a stills camera called Lumix, which has proper 35mm lenses.

DD: The notion of guerrilla filmmaking, getting out there and doing it: it really can’t be better. The other thing is, taking your point about Ken Branagh, in many ways it’s freeing for the actors and us directors. There’s an emotional immediacy about it.

AW: If you’re working with non-professional children, it gives you great freedom to try things out and be bold, which you can’t normally afford unless you’re working on some huge movie.

DD: Also it’s hard work shifting all the equipment you get with film. On a simple physical level, something like the RED camera, the body or the operation can actually move quicker and more efficiently. It’s just more and more efficient all the way down the line. And yet it still delivers everything you’d ask of a 35mm camera.

However, if you’re absolutely given the chance, I’d shoot on film and I’d shoot on 35mm. But if there’s a vast amount of stuff you want to do, then you tackle it in an entirely different way. The market is increasingly pushing towards HD – but I have no fear about it. The future is going with the internet and DVDs. I think as filmmakers we have to embrace all those things. The facilities available in post-production, whether with 35mm or RED, are remarkable. The only thing about the RED is the sound is no longer celluloid but digital.

AW: Money’s tight for independent filmmakers, and it’s about how you invest your money to achieve what you want to achieve.

DD: I’ve got friends in Los Angeles who are making garage movies for $50,000 that are bloody good. I just think it’s such a wonderfully optimistic view for the future. We’ve got Avatar released for millions of dollars, but does that mean we’ve got to suddenly stop? No: let’s go and tell stories.

SH: On that note, we’ll end. Thank you very much, Aisling and David.

The Take and Wallander are both now available to buy on DVD.