The next Baz Luhrmann could very well be studying at Melbourne’s Deakin University.
Students at the university’s School of Communication and Creative Arts this year used four RED EPIC cameras for their final-year and honours projects, after securing the high-end gear in early-2011.
Luhrmann, as reported by IF, recently said he’s now a fan of the camera – and essentially ‘a member of the RED army’ – after spending the past two months shooting The Great Gatsby with the RED EPIC cameras (and 3ality Technica rigs).
Deakin is one of the only universities in the world to secure the cameras, which have recently been used on such big-budget 3D films such as Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit and Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. The students formerly used a 16mm film camera: the ARRIFLEX 16 BL.
“It was a great opportunity for us to work with some really higher-end professional gear and it was a bit of an experiment in a way to see how that process would unfold at a university – and how the technical heads and the academics/students all interacted with this gear,” final-year student Joel Buncle said.
The school’s Master of Film and Video course coordinator, Simon Wilmot, said it was a “defining moment” for Deakin, its future filmmakers, and staff.
“The camera is small enough to be handheld, boasts 5K resolution – six times the resolution of HD video – and is capable of shooting up to 120 frames per second in 5K mode. EPIC is the motion picture camera of the future,” he said in a statement.
“We have been following the progress of RED for some years now and are excited that RED offered us this unique opportunity.”
Later this week, the public will be able to see the results. The 14 short films – 10 third-year and 4 honours projects – will screen as part of a special event, Visionnaire, at Melbourne’s Astor Theatre.
“It’s been a really good experience covering the whole production process from writing a script to screening it in a cinema,” said Buncle, who was the cinematographer on short-film Vicissitudes.
Visionnaire 2011 will be held at the Astor Theatre, 1 Chapel Street, St Kilda, on Sunday, November 20, from 7pm.
A Deakin University student with a new RED EPIC