Eight Nikon ZR bodies, a Komodo X and six students on one live rock and roll show — my first Cinematic Live concert Masterclass, shot entirely in R3D.
Eight Nikon ZR bodies. One Komodo X. Six students. One night that changed how I think about Z Cinema.
I’ve been shooting RED since 2011. Fifteen years of R3D running through my hands, my timelines, my concert films. So when Nikon brought RED’s colour science into a body I could hand to a student and say “go”, I knew the only honest way to find out what it could do was to throw it into the deep end: a live rock and roll show, no second takes, every camera rolling at once.
This was my first Cinematic Live concert, and it was a very good night.
The setup
Huge thanks to Julie Kimpton and the team at Nikon Australia for putting eight Nikon ZR bodies and a seemingly endless case of Z zoom lenses in our hands. That’s not a loan, that’s trust, and it made the whole thing possible.
On the floor: six students, myself, and Dan Kelaart running his Komodo X while tracking audio at the same time. Two jobs, one set, zero drama. Huge props, Dan.
Everything in R3D
We shot the entire show in R3D. Yes, that means more SSD storage than you’d burn on a compressed codec. It’s the price of admission, and it’s worth it, because the thing that actually matters is what happens when ZR footage lands next to a RED camera on the same timeline.
It just mixes. The colour science is the same language. The Komodo X and the ZRs sat together in the grade like they’d come off the same sensor, and I wasn’t fighting one to match the other. For a concert film with 9 cameras cutting hard against each other, that’s everything.
And editing R3D from the ZR on a DaVinci timeline? Buttery smooth. No transcoding, no proxies, straight into the cut.
The Zine control app
I’ll say it plainly: I loved this thing. Being able to reach across eight bodies from my phone, check settings and keep the whole fleet in line while the band is mid-set is the kind of quiet superpower you only appreciate once you’ve done it the hard way, running camera to camera in the dark. It’s the most useful piece of software Nikon has put in my hands.
The students
Absolute bosses. Every one of them. I’ve watched this footage back sooooo many times now and im beyond impressed on the coverage and the style, It looks like every shooter on the floor had been doing this for 25 years. That’s the whole point of the masterclass, and they nailed it.
What’s next
The concert documentary drops within the next month. Watch this space.
I built my career on RED. After this night, Z Cinema has a permanent spot in the kit, and I intend to know this system better than anyone. If you want to learn to shoot live music the cinematic way, on gear that can genuinely cut against the big cameras, the next masterclass is where you’ll find me.