Storm Launch

Last night The Foundry hosted a launch event for STORM at RED Studios in Hollywood. STORM is a software solution aimed at improving RED workflow for on set, review and finish. The event focused on people who have been using the beta version in production sharing their real world experience.

No event at RED would be complete without RED giving people a peek at the latest developments, Ted Schilowitz of RED Digital Cinema started things off showing footage shot on RED on a 4k projector as well as showing the Epic and Scarlet cameras. He also talked about his own take on STORM and what it means for the RED Community.

Mark Pederson, CTO and Co-Founder of OFF HOLLYWOOD has been involved with STORM’s development from the beginning and has been road testing an early version of STORM’s Epic support. Pederson made news not long ago when Epic #006 was stolen immediately after it was delivered, he showed a photo of the Epic #006x that arrived this week to replace it. Pederson has been working closely with the Foundry about adding features to STORM based on his experience, things like customizable log sheets. It was great to see someone operate STORM who has been using it for a while and he pointed out a few of his favorite hot keys: Tilde (~) pops any item to full screen, the player, lists, waveform, etc. When in the hand mode – Shift Command F – pops the image to 1:1 view. Pederson pointed out that through the end of March features with budgets totaling one billion dollars are being shot on Epic.

Next up was Matthew Riggieri, DIT from Digital Cave. He recently road tested STORM on the upcoming movie, The Discoverers. Again as a user since the early days, he really showed off how fast the program can be put through it’s paces. STORM can first be used to check footage with real time playback, waveforms, histograms and the user can also build a timeline and view cuts. Metadata can be added to the clips including notes and tags. Color can be adjusted with full integration to all the RED metadata and the Avid Euphonix MC Color control system (trackballs) can be integrated. Media can then be exported for dailies or finishing, including exporting trimmed .r3d files. Riggieri pointed out that STORM, unlike REDCINE-X, can playback material on the interface while simultaneously playing back 4K to a projector using the RED ROCKET card. He added that once the capability to do timecode burn-ins is added to STORM it will be the only program he needs for doing DIT.

Jim Geduldick – filmmaker, editor, VFX artist, teacher – is a long term friend of The Foundry and has been a very enthusiastic consultant throughout STORM’s development. He is also the professor of the STORM 101 – Introduction to Storm class at fxphd.com. Geduldick shared stories and photos of working in extreme conditions and showed an early cut of a music video he is in production on, showing how the round trip to and from editing programs works.

The event was standing room only with some attendees having flown in for the day. There were stations setup for trying the software in various configurations from desktop to a laptop with external RED ROCKET card.

STORM can be downloaded at The Foundry website with a 15 day evaluation period, purchase price is $375 US.