May 3, 2014 |
RED CAMERA
I’ve been trying to find out what exactly the Red Camera is and why it’s “SO bloody amazing, gorge” (Antony’s words, for those of you who are not regular readers) on – where else? – Wikipedia. Giving it a Wiki seems fair play as, if you’ve failed to notice by this, the almost-last page of the issue (really? Seriously?), the whole thing has been digitally themed.
It’s funny, then, that you’re reading this in print, but maybe not so funny, as trawling through the endless codes, explaining to those with a capacity for understanding all of the specs that make Red Cam so revolutionary (us neither), we’ve also uncovered the innumerable magazine covers the technology has been used for in the past few years. You see, the beauty of Red Cam is that it functions for both motion capture and stills. Now that fashion films (no longer in their rhythmic, repetitive infancy) are worthy of the term, this combo-deal device is the logical next step for fashion photography. If you needed further selling of the idea, the site will have you hook and line at Lara Stone, masked and grabbing her abundant naked cleavage on the cover of Vogue Paris’s 90th-anniversary edition, looking like some sort of fabulously well-endowed character from a Fellini masterpiece. Who wouldn’t want to see such beauty in motion? Naturally, the issue launched alongside a new edition of the Vogue Paris app, for which contributors including Steven Klein, Inez & Vinoodh and Mario Sorrenti made the filmic quality of their work literal. Despite all that’s cutting edge about Red Cam (it shoots several times higher than HD), what also must appeal to this generation of names is the fact that it’s fully manual, with no autofocus, no auto iris, no auto white balance. This reinvests the digital process with an old-school sense of mastery. Talking of which, there’s also a kind of reassuring clunkiness to the Red Cam’s look. Remember when George Michael tired of starring in his own videos, but didn’t mind being in them fleetingly, pretending to be, say, the cameraman? Well, you’ll look like him in the video for Too Funky when you’re holding one. If you can’t remember the video, in it a troupe of supers is deployed in teeny-tiny designer creations to lip-synch for their lives, while the pop god plays the voyeur. How best to describe the concept? It’s sort of porn-y with a high-end twist, and is almost as established in the world of glossy mags as shoving a cigarette in between a pair of freshly lacquered lips. Cast your mind back to the controversy of the Calvin Klein Jeans campaign of 1995, seemingly shot in some Middle American basement. Or think Dolce & Gabbana’s s/s 2007 ads, in which a well-oiled cameraman becomes the model. It sort of gets us thinking: who says looking smoking hot is strictly reserved for those in front of the camera? Not us. We’re buying the latest Red Cam model for our favourite lensman’s next birthday. And maybe a bottle of baby oil – if he’s lucky.
By Vincent Levy
