Meet Bert Tougas

Sunday, March 8th at the Comedy Nest, we welcome Bert Tougas!

Bert Tougas, first and foremost is my pal. We've worked together in the past, and now, as often as we can, we golf together from first warm day in April 'til the snow falls. (He's much better than me - don't ask!)

Bert's also one of Montreal's finest cameramen, has shot more than 10 movies, 30 movies-of-the-week, innumerable documentaries and commercials.

We welcome him especially becuz, most recently he has been using what the movie world refers to as 'the red' (seen here handholding it on his shoulder.)

Steven Soderbergh, both director and cameraman on Che, said after the Che shoot: This is the camera I've been waiting for my whole career: jaw-dropping imagery recorded onboard a camera light enough to hold with one hand. ...RED is going to change everything. Soderbergh was the first guy to use this high-resolution digital technology on a movie.

The Red threatens to to make 35-mm movie film obsolete. Which raises the conundrum: when films are no longer shot on film, what do we call them in the future?

We've been waiting for digital filmmaking for years, but most producers, directors and cameramen have always preferred celluloid. Electronic was for (sneer!) television. Star Wars' George Lucas (no surprise) was the first to fool around with it in 1999, adapting a Sony news camera. No one was much impressed with his results.

Money guys of course, love digital because it eliminates celluloid, saves over half a million bucks on film stock, development and processing costs per movie. But that's not the best. On Che, Soderbergh could shoot for nearly an hour, nonstop, his camera umbilically linked to a digital tape deck. His Red imagery matched Kodak in detail and richness, at least equal to 35-millimeter Kodak stock. And that's what makes the Red so compelling:the dazzle of Kodak analog, but easier to use and cheaper—by vast orders of magnitude.

Jim Jannard, founder of The Red, recently sold his Oakley sunglasses manufacturing business to Ray-Ban, for a $2.1 billion. Soderbergh borrowed two prototypes to shoot Che, later bought three for his next movie, The Informant. For months, industry watchers wondered if the Red was for real. Today, there's no question. Digital cinema that's all but indistinguishable from film is finally coming to a theatre near you.

And Bert will tell us all about it.