Red Rental Revenue

I'm not even a a DoP or even an editor by trade (though I do my share of it). I'm a DVD Author mostly. But I love working with uber quality images, so I preorderd. My hope is to pay off my Red in about 3 months of rentals. Most or all of which I plan to tag along to keep an eye on my baby (bonus: what a great excuse to get involved in local productions).

Anybody have advise on how to know a production is fully insured?

Jeremy
Red #63
 
for us here the pricing in comparision to cinealta is interesting, as we are renting out our hdcam-packages quite often. if red fullfills, it will be probably a quite better camera, but somewhat cheaper regarding the body, so do we price it above or below the cinealta... this question is puzzling us :)

anyhow, for a full-feature-movie-rental-package, the camerabody itself is often only ~20-40% of the whole set price, when we rent out a typically equipped package with 2 zoom lenses and/or a prime lenses set, 1 class 1 crt setmonitor, measurement gear from tektronix / astro, chrosziel mattebox, remote focus, colorviewfinder, tripod, 4-12 batteries, some radiotransmitters for sound/image/lensoperation, tripod, 9´HD-monitor, quickcharger, cases, softbags & raincovers... such a package can easily surpass $200.000-300.000, even with red it would still be in the range of $150.000-250.000. On the other hand, if the team wants to shoot 4K or even 2540p, storage and i/o for several 10.000$ would also have to be part of the calculation.
 
jaysedai said:
I'm not even a a DoP or even an editor by trade (though I do my share of it). I'm a DVD Author mostly. But I love working with uber quality images, so I preorderd. My hope is to pay off my Red in about 3 months of rentals. Most or all of which I plan to tag along to keep an eye on my baby (bonus: what a great excuse to get involved in local productions).

Anybody have advise on how to know a production is fully insured?

Jeremy
Red #63
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just ask to see the papers.. and phone the number of the insure company on it if you doubt it.
 
filmmaker1977 said:
hummm.. i know this guy from some place..

ah!.. now i know.. you are undercovered here as future red shooter..

by the way, as you are here among us.. that's your opportunity to speak up about your secrets.. silicon spy.. :)
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Hey Filmmaker,

Well, I wouldn't really call myself a Silicon "spy" . . . at the heart of it all I'm a working professional, and I shoot, edit, do some directing, do post-production compositing and graphics, etc. Of course I'm helping design the SI camera, but frankly, these are all tools, and I can see very clearly that for myself to maintain my edge in the field I have to embrace, know, and understand all things, including RED. For me to conclude that RED won't at some point be a tool I'll have to work with when I'm in the trenches would be absolutely foolish and would limit my ability to tackle jobs and produce the best product for the client which is what I'm after. If the client wants me to use a RED on his/her job, I better have some idea what's going on or else I'm gonna get passed by for the person that is willing to be flexible and evolve. So sure, I'm gonna hang around here and pipe up from time-to-time because I want to be as smart and well-rounded as possible . . . I'm not going to stick my head in the sand. My main experience has been with the Sony F900, I use Varicam sometimes (I prefer the Sony), I'm helping develop the SI camera and the workflows surrounding that camera, and yeah, I'll use a RED if somebody wants me to-do that as well . . . to me they're all tools to get the job done.

I'm just noting here that from what I've experienced on the rental market, if you price this stuff too high, expecting to pay it off in one or two months, you're either going to leave a bad taste in people's mouths and not make the connections you intend, or you're just going to make the effort to market a new workflow that other people might not be willing to part with compared to something that already works and is tried and true technology (and doesn't create BAD images . . . it's probably 80-90% of what the RED would be, especially once it's downconverted to HD resolutions).

For instance, using custom curves I can make the F900 "look like film", and I've seen plenty of examples of the F900 "looking like film". Sony's been doing demos to the same effect for years, and I've been to one-too-many panels where a DP gets up and says, "this looks like film", or a director says, "I'm never going back to film". Once you look like film, you look like film . . . so why would I pay MORE or EQUAL to RED to ge the same "look like film"? Heck, for those rates why don't I just shoot film? Or more importantly, if I'm working for a technophobe producer who's not quite ready to jump into everything brand new, why would they dump the well proven F900 for RED when it costs just as much, and they'll get the same "film look" in the end? So now instead of people going to you defacto because you're cheaper AND better, you now have to prove why you're better, and basically market yourself. Sure there's buzz, but when it comes down to it, you're creating more work for yourself because buzz won't carry you through when producers are drawing up budgets and seeing that they're not saving anything. It's the same fight that we're going through to ween people off film to HD in the commercial market . . . producers don't see the point . . . they can afford 35mm or 16mm, and HD costs just as much (for short commercial shoots) and isn't "film". In television and movies they can see they get the same for less, but in commercials, they simply don't see the point, and hence you gotta shoot film for mid-to-high-end commerical work (most of the time).

So now you throw RED into the equation . . . first question from an Ad Agency is "what is it"? Then, "how does it look (compared to film)"?. Then "how much"? "What do I do with my files"? "Where is my reel at the end of the day"? "Where do I backup my files"? "Where do I edit it"? "What the heck is REDCODE?", etc., etc. At the end of the day, once they see your high rental prices, there's no point . . . they have to spend effort learning, and since their competition isn't flooding to this gear and passing them by, they're going to be more concentrated and concered with pushing product out the door rather than trying experiments with their clients money.

I understand Jarred's point that the rental market isn't linear. Sure. But some of you who are seeing $$$ signs in the rental market need to keep in mind that you can easily price yourself out of a rental . . . when I go to rentals from individuals I expect *cheaper* than what I'd get from Otto or Birns and Sawyer, or Bexel, VER, etc.-Individuals who give me sticker shock I never rent from (I've known some locally who thought they could do that since they were the only ones in town, and they eventually had to sell off their gear because people refused their service). These small guys can't overnight me a new camera if something goes wrong, they can't provide tech support the way I'd need if something actually breaks (typically), there's no spare parts, the gear is typically not calibrated on complicated test equipment, etc. So I don't mind paying more for an established company that has staff their for me any minute of the day with well calibrated gear, equipment, replacements, etc. Throwing a camera in someone's lap and saying "Here you go, where's my money" is not the way to run a rental shop, especially if you're charging just as much or MORE than an established, reliable rental company.

Just my .02 cents. I could be completely wrong about the whole thing.
 
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It seems to me that the RED will find its niche in the rental market the way every other camera does. People still use computer programs that are 10 years old in some industries because they are comfortable with the process and efficient with it - and there will always be cost/benefit analysis. Subsequently there will be people adopting Red's right away and there will be those still using 5 year-old technology because they have a system and process that works for them.

I own many different camera's and have 5 Reds reserved as well -- Running an HD Post House, I like many of you am constantly dealing with the technology learning curves and the time dedicated to them and the fun job of mixing different types of footage - (eg many now using XDCAM's as B Camera's for F900's) I'm interested and excited to see how the Reds will fit into this equation - but there will be a learning curve -- and I would be reluctant to rent a Red package out without being fully comfortable with knowing that there is an effective post process already in place. EG Sony released with XDCAM without proper support or software already on the market for import. So I rented an XDCAM out to a production and then found myself having to help the client import from camera rather than through the import software as it was restricted in bit rate that way which was undesirable to them.

But I will say from my own experience in renting my camera packages that it has been far more profitable for us being able to be involved in the post on them as well. It's a nice luxury for our clients of all sizes to be able to rent the camera package, shoot, bring us the tapes, blueray, drives, P2's etc. and get a G-RAID drive with an offline ready to edit. But obviously it takes significantly more capital up-front to manage a business like this.

Regardless, I believe there is going to be a ramp-up time for the technology to become comfortable for the full-spectrum of broadcasters, cable networks, etc. who have to know how to QA it as it comes in and are really now only becoming comfortable D5, and HDCAM Masters. I still find myself educating cable network teams, and production companies on how and why HD might be better than film for certain types of projects.

Just my 1 cent...
 
Jason Rodriguez said:
Hey Filmmaker,

Well, I wouldn't really call myself a Silicon "spy" . . .
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just a joke.. :) you know.. i send all the kUdOs for your work..

i'm hoping to see your SI product as soon as you get.. maybe as your customer.. at least, as rental shooter without any doubts.. i'd like to test it.. i'm waiting.. only it's not easy to convince my partners to go also with another brand besides red.. i was sorry for your silence.. it's very difficult to support your offer to others when red is so aggressive with its marketing..

and you have been silent.. also because the people have FEAR what will be your resistance after the red launch and its real enter into the market.. even if the sales will drop to majors like sony, panasonic, jvc, canon..

but who knows?.. nevertheless, keep us tuned.. thx

edit
i'm glad to read you here too..
 
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Well, patience will be rewarded in due time . . . realize though that we see the current SI-mini camera and RED as complimentary products, not competition per se.

For instance, the SI-mini is so small with it's little c-mount lenses you can put it in a number of locations you will never get your RED with it's 35mm lens requirements. It's also rugged as hell . . . you'll break the lens long before you break the camera . . and the recorder is far away from the camera head, meaning if you do decide to crash the camera, you'll get all the footage up to the very last second the camera was working. Basically don't break your RED, break our cameras, and then purchase some more! ;)

Also despite the "breakthrough workflows" that RED is advertising, I still find Cineform RAW to be a much more straight forward and elegant approach to shooting and ingesting RAW straight into the edit system, and then editing and working with the original RAW camera data all the way to the end export. REDCODE RAW has to go through a conversion stage first in REDCINE before being used by an editing system. That could take you a while. And since the Cineform RAW codec is now fully 32-bit floating point aware from start to finish, there's never any clipping of data in the RAW image codec, unless you pass it through a non-floating point compliant filter, render it to another non-floating-point codec, or pass it through a program that doesn't support 32-bit float. But you can go to formats like OpenEXR, etc. from Cineform RAW and maintain the full floating point pipeline, so no data is ever clipped, even in color correction.

Last year we were going to release the SI product with a similiar workflow to how RED is proposing to handle RAW data. We had our own proprietary RAW format and a nice converter like REDCINE which would convert our RAW data format to other common file formats, but after shooting a couple test films in that manner, we found out that workflow simply can't be done in a practical manner, which led us to back-track VERY QUICKLY and jointly develop Cineform RAW with David Newman and the gang over at Cineform. Cineform RAW is a powerful combination of learning from various mistakes, seeing where the roadblocks are, and finding ways around the problems of how to manage RAW data through the ENTIRE post pipeline with an awesome wavelet codec. And the nice thing is that it's very extensible with more improvements coming.

I'm sure David Newman would be happy to chime in about this and explain further if you ask him either here or over on the DVinfo boards. There's also a white-paper on our website or on the Cineform website.

But anyways, enough about SI and Cineform RAW on this forum. Again, I'm primarily here to learn and make myself a more rounded individual . . . I'm not one to let my head get stuck in the sand.
 
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Jason Rodriguez said:
Yeah, I'm not #81 . . . would be nice if I was, but I'm not even on the reserve list yet!
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yeah.. i know.. it was a bad joke making fun of you being from Silicon Imaging. The fact that you a came into another camera's forum with your badge turned around and trying to cause a rucuss was a little shady :)

ha ha ha ha ha... but no worries... you came clean at the tail with a nudge from filmmaker, and now everyone knows who you are so people understand the bias.. so welcome :)
 
if one reads the SI thread then you know Jason & his association with SI -his question on RED vs. CineAlta rental rates are not out of ordinary ...
anyway are we suppose to tell all who we have consulted or worked with before we post questions or answer ?
i would think that most in the film/video business are interested in how RED is going to do it all ... and seeing how DVXuser & DVinfo members/poster support RED this is the place to come for info ...
 
ha ha yes of course donatello.. its all discussion.. and thats why i made a joke instead of something negative towards Jason... we all have used the competition here.. some of us have worked directly with the competition, and 99% of us, well, just really dont give a rats ass who works where.... we just want the best damn camera we can afford.
 
Jason Rodriguez said:
Well, patience will be rewarded in due time . . . realize though that we see the current SI-mini camera and RED as complimentary products, not competition per se.
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agreed.. i hope so..
 
to be clear & upfront i do not like premiere !

adding a little more info to Jasons info on cineform and workflow of SI camera ( based on my experience with 10 bit cineform clips - not RAW cineform) ... i believe the way Jasons describes only works on one NLE and that is Premiere with cineform prospect HD ... cineform prospect HD only works with premiere and after effects which one could do pretty much anything to their project .. but not everybody will choose premiere ..so for those that do not choose premiere and want to stay in 10bit they would have to take the 10bit 4:2:2 clips and drop them into premiere or AE and then render out to new 10/16bit clip ( provided they have a 10/16 bit codec) ..
cineform does offer a free codec to read files but it only works in 8 bit ( host program drops 2 bits) and as far as i know even if you have prospect HD (10bit)installed you only get 10 bit in premiere and AE - so if you use Avid it will read the cineform clips 8bits using cineform codec..
i do not know what you can do with RAW cineform clips used in software outside of premiere and AE with propect HD - i suspect you loose the beneifts of ( prospect engine )working with RAW ??
for those working in 2k one would need to buy prospect HD with 2k package ...
i have no clients nor do i know anybody that uses Premiere so anything shot on a SI camera the client would have to buy propect HD & premiere and render out new 10 bit clips for their Avids or the camerapersons ( with SI ) would have to render them out for client ?
i do know that cineform will be offering a QT solution - but i don't know if that is a similar engine that is installed in FCP or the clips are QT and doesn't carry the RAW advantages with it? i'm sure Jason or David can answer that?
i currently have a short project that was shot on film and scanned 2k using cineform codec ..i render out of AE to microcosm 16 bit codec so i could retain the 10 bit info to use the clips in combustion,avid ... i then take the micro clips and make a low res proxy to edit so i add 2 extra steps because i choose not to use premiere -

"Cineform RAW to be a much more straight forward and elegant approach to shooting and ingesting RAW straight into the edit system, and then editing and working with the original RAW camera data all the way to the end export"

for me it all sounds elegant until i see the " premiere "..then i think work arounds ...

will the QT product keep the data raw thru out the process ?
 
It seems to me that REDCODE, coming as it does in RAW, 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 flavours is an alternative to Cineform, not complementary to it. Since Quicktime supports more that 8-bits without the workaround that Cineform uses, I would assume that any QT application could work with REDCODE at full 10-bit precision.

Whether and how exactly applications like FCP and Shake could access the 'extra' information in REDCODE RAW I guess only Graeme (ok and probably Jim and the others) really knows! He keeps hinting at more workflow surprises, so I'm eagerly waiting to hear.
 
To be up front, I do like Premiere! Specifically, I like the interoperability between PPro, AE and all the other Adobe products. That said, I am certain that work flow solutions for most all popular NLEs are essential steps that will be addressed.

From what I have read, Redcode sounds like a very flexible solution and I am certain that the Red team is very aware of the necessity to support a wide variety of post work flows.
 
donatello said:
will the QT product keep the data raw thru out the process ?
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Yes, same workflow that we currently have now, just Quicktimes instead of AVI's . . . so "Premiere" will not necessarily be the limitation in the near future. I do know that the interface on the QT's will be a bit different in how you interact with them because of the way the QT API works, but the fundatmental technology remains the same, with the same transparent RAW workflow from camera to post. The only limitation will be whether the application you're using the QT's in is deep-pixel aware (i.e., can process greater than 8-bits). So Mac, PC, etc. will not be a limitation.

Also Cineform RAW is an RGB 4:4:4 decode with 32-bit float internal processing of the metadata color information, just in case anybody was wondering.
 
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Not trying to start a flame . . . just found a website with RED rental rates more in-line with what I was assuming they would be given the price of the base body:

http://indierentals.com/cameras.html

This probably won't include the cages, rails, etc., but again, seems more "realistic" to me.

Just curious if they will keep their prices :)
 
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