RED Digital Cinema Turns to IGI for "Epic" Hollywood Debut

January, 2010 - It would be hard to argue that any other company has had a bigger impact on Hollywood’s transition to digital cinema than RED Digital Cinema. Founded by film and photography aficionado, Jim Jannard, the founder of the famed sunglasses and fashion company, Oakley, RED has taken the Hollywood filmmaking industry by storm. Several thousand RED ONE® 4K resolution (4096 x 2160) digital cinema cameras have already been sold since its 2007 release.

When RED wanted to formally announce its new EPIC™ digital cinema camera with its new Mysterium X™ 5K sensor to several hundred filmmakers, it organized a special event on January 16, 2010 at Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood (now called RED STUDIOS HOLLYWOOD since the company just purchased the historic facility). And it called on IGI to set up a state-of-the-art 4K projection system to display the stunning 4K demo clips it had shot for the product introduction.

IGI installed and calibrated Sony’s new SRX-T420 4K projector to light up the 35’ wide screen inside Stage 4 with 21,000 lumens of the best RED 4K footage Hollywood had ever seen. RED insisted on faultless 4K picture quality since the audience for the event would include highly critical members of the Cinematographer’s Mailing List (CML), the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and RED users. After being perched atop a 14-foot scaffold, the Sony SRX-T420 projector was precisely calibrated to stand up to the most critical eyes in the entertainment industry.

In addition to the main stage projection system, IGI also furnished two of its IGI PowerWindow | 4K Portable displays for the adjacent technology demo area. ASSIMILATE used one of them to demonstrate its 4K finishing solution, SCRATCH, and LIGHTIRON Digital, a Los Angeles-based post production house utilized the second IGI PowerWindow | 4K to demonstrate its new Quantel Pablo 4K non-linear color correction and digital intermediate system. Some of the world’s best cinematographers,