Hanging out with Ted Schilowitz, RED's "Leader of the Rebellion" [UPDATED]

Its not often you get the chance to hang out with people who are making a worldwide impact. First, a little history...For those of you not in the film/video industry, RED is a company founded by Jim Jannard, founder of Oakley (you know, the sunglasses), who make a 4k resolution (think four times 1920x1080P raster resolution) digital cinema camera that can be had for an unbelievable US$17,500 (most of RED's competitor's.

Ted at Lemac Melbourne


At NAB 2007 (big film/video tradeshow in Las Vegas, NV), after standing in line for an hour to get into the RED tent and watch the short WW1 film Peter Jackson (of LOTR fame) shot in New Zealand on two prototype RED Ones (Boris & Natasha), entitled "Crossing the Line", I met Jim Jannard, mentioned I was working for National Geographic Television and that we were interested in looking into the RED One camera. He introduced me to Ted Schilowitz, who gave me his card and told me to get in touch with him a week or so after NAB.

I did so, and organized for Ted to come out to Washington, DC with some representatives from Apple, to talk about RED's 4k workflow. I met up with Ted at the famous Omni Shoreham Hotel (Harry Truman played poker there, Frank Sinatra stayed there, the Beatles stayed there, etc), and had a great two-day event at NatGeo that wrapped with a big turnout in the Grosvenor auditorium that I spearheaded...

Fast forward to a couple days ago (and a good 8 months after the events just spoken of), where John Bowring, my boss here at Lemac Films, informs me that Ted is coming into Sydney before he goes down to Melbourne for two night events hosted by Lemac's Melbourne office. So, we got to chat about the new build 16 firmware, and I took him around to a couple post-production houses in Sydney (one of which, E-Film, had to cancel when, as chance would have it, the guys from Baz Luhrman's new film, "Australia" and the guys from the new "X-Men Origins:Wolverine" film showed up - funny how both films star Hugh Jackman-we'll blame Hugh for everything from now on).

Ted showing off some stills from RED features at Lemac Melbourne


Also set up a tour for him the next day at Fox Studios Australia lot, and he spent the better part of the day touting RED and Lemac's position as one of the premiere RED authority's (since we facilitated the first RED One finished feature, "The Nothing Men", which is written up about on RED's website - http://www.red.com/indie/thenothingmen).

It was quite the temptation to hang out with him thru all the activities on Saturday, but I had better things to do (Kim and I and Amelia took a trip down to the LDS Sydney Temple).

Photos are up on Lemac's website showcasing the two technology sessions (one of which was on stereoscopic 3D production) - http://www.lemac.com.au/