Everybody on our team is a "film freak", meaning that we prefer to shoot on film. All of our previous projects have been shot on that medium, which include the shorts made in the film program at our university. For example, Paparazzi was shot on Fuji's F-stock in Super 16 and My Struggle on 35mm Kodak Vision2 stock. It's a wonderful medium and still by far the best way to put impressive images on the big screen.

Unfortunately film has several disadvantages, the biggest one: shooting on film is extremely expensive. There is not only the cost for buying film stock but of course development. Then there is another costly step, the telecine process (transferring film to video for editing) in addition the so-called grading (color correction) at least to a "best light" grading, timing the image to a standard.

Disadvantage number two is wait time. Especially for a smaller production with a limited budget, development and transfer can take up to a week. So if there was a problem with the picture you'll get the news about a week into the shoot. During the shoot of My Struggle we encountered exactly a problem like that.

There was a light leak in the camera and for a week we shot not thinking that there could have been a problem. Then we got one of those awful calls from the lab "there is a problem with your footage". About 20% of the film we shot was unusable (picture above). This could be very well the end of production for smaller budget films. Fortunately we were able to save the situation by reshooting the shots still needed.

And lastly, number three: weight. 35 mm equipment and camera is extremely heavy, especially the older models. Heavy equipment makes it harder to move and limits the way of shooting smaller films.

That's why we decided to go with the latest digital cinema camera that's on the market, called the Red One:

Even though this camera is brand new and not many films have been shot with it, we immediately fell in love with it. The Red delivered us an unbelievably great picture that gets close to the film look. In addition it offers an all new workflow that beats film by far. We were able to shoot extremely long takes and capture them directly onto the hard drive. If shot on film it would have required us to exchange the camera roll several times. When the Red camera was mounted onto the car we were able to simply exchange the memory card after each take and go for a new one. Whenever we weren't sure if focus was right, we simply hooked the camera up to an HD monitor to double check. It's a dream-come-true for every low-budget filmmaker!

Before shooting, we checked out several HD cameras and looked into different options but we simply couldn't let go of the RedOne. In this price range it is THE cinema camera.

As mentioned before the camera records the images onto solid-state cards or hard drives instead of film. Red's sensor can capture motion pictures with up to 4k resolution, almost the resolution of 35mm film. For cost efficiency, the Red records digitally, meaning that you have barely any expendables. In addition you are able to playback footage as soon as it's shot, no waiting time for the lab. This gives us the possibilities to react much faster if there is a problem.

Even though many voices warned us from shooting on the Red, we had a very smooth experience and are simply stunned with the impressive images the camera delivered.

With the beginning of post-production we were introduced to another new technology: Blu-ray. The film is in a 4k cinema resolution on the hard drives so it would be a shame not to present it at least in HD. After a format war to become the successor of the popular DVD, Blu-ray managed to win over HD DVD. This is a good thing due to the Blu-ray, which got its name from the blue laser it's using, being the far superior technology.

When we were filming My Struggle, we were only able to dream of High Definition and only three years later the dream has become reality.

The completed film will not only be available on DVD but also on Blu-ray. Thanks to the raw footage being in a 4k resolution (more than twice as much as a 1080p Blu-ray offers) we will even be able to creat a great looking 35mm film print.

In other words: "The Future is Red and Blu" :-)