Bolex D16: RAW, 16/Super 16 sensor size, costs less than MkIII

Hello, Joe and Elle are filmmakers. They funded the DBolex proof of concept lab prototype and shot their film with it out of their own pockets, not with kickstarter funds. Joe is a partner and co-founder of a successful photo kiosk business, and DP so has other income. The Photo-Kiosk was a previous successful custom camera/software product that he developed.
The heavy lifting as far as bringing the D16 to production is being done by these guys: http://www.digitalcameradesign.com/
The custom software package to accompany the camera is being developed by these guys: http://pomfort.com/ www.raw-photo-processor.com
Bolex is also a partner in this project. http://www.bolex.ch/NEW/index.php You can bet they are closely involved in a supervisory capacity as their good name and reputation is on the line with this as well.

Joe and Elle are not a couple of hippy filmmakers building a camera in their garage. They are the driving force behind the concept and the promoters, but the camera is being developed and manufactured by a multi-national team of companies with the necessary expertise and experience to do so.
 
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Edit: Just realized my profile doesn't say that I'm Elle. Hey guys :)

I'm pretty sure the budget of VGHS was closer to $500K, with the KS funds being matched by outside investors & personal contributions--don't believe they made any profit off the KS. Maybe now they've made profit from the advertising, but are you really going to judge a filmmaker for selling their film, or for taking the ballsier route of self-distribution online in exchange for ad dollars? What else are they supposed to do with it? Only show it to KS backers forever? Not to mention how much the bandwidth costs to stream video to however many millions of people have watched each episode...

Besides, I think in assuming they got all this extra $ because the KS was overfunded, you miss a fundamental part of how KS works. It's recommended that in making a campaign you hedge your bets and set your goal at half or even 1/3 of what's needed. There's a gambling element with this, which is why some projects, though funded, don't actually have enough money to finish the project. This can be a huge problem when you plan for thousands of units and suddenly need to manufacture millions. IMO that's one giant brownie point for the D16--we capped pre-orders at 100 cameras, rather than letting anyone who wanted to buy one. They campaign could have easily raised millions, but we wanted to maintain a realistic shipping date.

Another thing is that KS can be a valuable marketing tool; for both VGHS and the D16, KS wasn't just about raising money, but raising awareness, and the amount of $ the VGHS campaign earned got word out to many, many people, they had over 4,000 backers. D16 campaign was similar. Also, D16 already had that tens of thousands (if not more) put into R&D before the KS campaign went up--the success of the campaign was a proof of market as much as it was about funding.
 
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underpressure said:
don't believe they made any profit off the KS.
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Depends on what you mean by "profit". Are they paying themselves? If Freddie W is paying himself $600 per day working on VGHS (for instance), then there is profit involved, even if it shows as being a zero-sum games in the books for his production company entity.

Not that I would begrudge him paying himself. Man's gotta eat and pay the rent. But it's still profit.

Maybe now they've made profit from the advertising, but are you really going to judge a filmmaker for selling their film, or for taking the ballsier route of self-distribution online in exchange for ad dollars?
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Frankly, I don't have a problem with FreddieW and his gang making as much money off of VGHS as they can. Nobody was forced to donate to Kickstarter after all.
 
Elle (aka underpressue), what do you have to say about the fact that an offload from the Digital Bolex to a Class 4 SD card could take upwards of 7 hours of transfer time? Considering that a 256GB SSD will only hold about 30 minutes of footage, that means that you're looking at only being able to shoot about 30 minutes per day with that standard type of SD card (and if you use a simple USB interface for the connection, it will be about that long for any SD card, no matter how fast).

Is this considered acceptable?
 
kylevant said:
I suppose it makes more sense with the whole pre-order thing, but this isn't pocket money we're talking about. These guys are making some serious cash. If they ask for funding for the second season then some big questions are going to be raised considering the extra $200k they raised for the first season as well as the excessive advertising.
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I've only seen a couple of episodes of VGHS but talking about their KS got me more interested in it. VGHS is around 2hrs of scripted content plus another hour of behind the scenes content. The production values are generally solid and there's always a VFX element to each episode. Assuming everyone gets paid an okay rate (relative, I know) $270k isn't much of a budget for basically a 2hr VFX film + 1hr of BTS content. Not to mention everything involved with creating and distributing the rewards to thousands of backers (downloads, posters, t-shirts, DVDs, Blu-rays, etc.,). I've read about a number of KS campaigns that spent significations portions of their raised amounts to fulfilling rewards orders to backers.


What big questions do you think should arise?
 
Gary Huff said:
Elle (aka underpressue), what do you have to say about the fact that an offload from the Digital Bolex to a Class 4 SD card could take upwards of 7 hours of transfer time? Considering that a 256GB SSD will only hold about 30 minutes of footage, that means that you're looking at only being able to shoot about 30 minutes per day with that standard type of SD card (and if you use a simple USB interface for the connection, it will be about that long for any SD card, no matter how fast).

Is this considered acceptable?
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USB3 and SDXC UHS1 class 10 extreme cards should keep up just fine.
 
At 24fps 1080p, the Bolex will be writing out 3MB frames, 72MB/sec. Uncompressed raw takes gobs of fast storage, no question. Whether it is worth it for the extra creative flexibility with the images is a personal choice. If you are happy with less, there is always good ole AVCHD or some other video codec that can produce fine results for conventional video. Lots of choices for cameras that already do that reasonably well from the GH2 on up.
Look through any modern digital photography magazine for the incredible range of visual styles that still photographers are capable of producing from raw images. Most of these could not begin to be duplicated with a conventional video camera of any kind.
It is that potential for infinite creative expression through moving imagery that keeps me excited about the potential of a raw motion camera like the Bolex. Nothing else will satisfy.
 
Razz16mm said:
Most of these could not begin to be duplicated with a conventional video camera of any kind.
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I tend to disagree. A strong, high bit rate Log signal is only lacking iso and white ballance adjustment compared to raw. Video signals can be used to the same effect as raw. Just look at the Arri LogC stuff.
 
Okay, we can only speculate here. But originally, this was how I felt after having to see those irritating interstitial video ads.

underpressure said:
I'm pretty sure the budget of VGHS was closer to $500K, with the KS funds being matched by outside investors & personal contributions--don't believe they made any profit off the KS. Maybe now they've made profit from the advertising, but are you really going to judge a filmmaker for selling their film, or for taking the ballsier route of self-distribution online in exchange for ad dollars? What else are they supposed to do with it? Only show it to KS backers forever? Not to mention how much the bandwidth costs to stream video to however many millions of people have watched each episode...
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I agree, there could be some serious bandwidth to take into consideration. That alone could warrant the ads. But, we can't say. We can't see the budget, so we can't say if they're taking home some nice profit, if they went over-budget, or if they're sinking it back into the next production.

I'm not judging them, I'm just going by my original feeling - which was that it just seemed slightly unethical making profit from something that you never really put much monetary risk into (again, speculating that they never put their own funds into it).

adkimery said:
Assuming everyone gets paid an okay rate (relative, I know) $270k isn't much of a budget for basically a 2hr VFX film + 1hr of BTS content. Not to mention everything involved with creating and distributing the rewards to thousands of backers (downloads, posters, t-shirts, DVDs, Blu-rays, etc.,). I've read about a number of KS campaigns that spent significations portions of their raised amounts to fulfilling rewards orders to backers.
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Let's just take into consideration that the original budget was $75k. Even if they were being conservative (like Elle says, going half or 1/3 of their real budget) they still raised nearly four times what they asked for. I've watched the behind the scenes, and they called in many favors and cut corners as much as possible. Like I said, this is all just speculation, but I don't think they used that all.

adkimery said:
What big questions do you think should arise?
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Questions regarding where all the income from adverts went. If they wanted to be self-sufficient, then it'd make sense to throw that income back into the production.

On YouTube alone each episode has an average of 2.3 million views. They obviously get a lot more views on their site. I'm not sure what CPM rate they're being payed, but it could be a lot more than we think (or a lot less?).
 
kylevant said:
Okay, we can only speculate here. But originally, this was how I felt after having to see those irritating interstitial video ads.



I agree, there could be some serious bandwidth to take into consideration. That alone could warrant the ads. But, we can't say. We can't see the budget, so we can't say if they're taking home some nice profit, if they went over-budget, or if they're sinking it back into the next production.

I'm not judging them, I'm just going by my original feeling - which was that it just seemed slightly unethical making profit from something that you never really put much monetary risk into (again, speculating that they never put their own funds into it).



Let's just take into consideration that the original budget was $75k. Even if they were being conservative (like Elle says, going half or 1/3 of their real budget) they still raised nearly four times what they asked for. I've watched the behind the scenes, and they called in many favors and cut corners as much as possible. Like I said, this is all just speculation, but I don't think they used that all.



Questions regarding where all the income from adverts went. If they wanted to be self-sufficient, then it'd make sense to throw that income back into the production.

On YouTube alone each episode has an average of 2.3 million views. They obviously get a lot more views on their site. I'm not sure what CPM rate they're being payed, but it could be a lot more than we think (or a lot less?).
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Why would it be unethical to work hard on something and get rewarded?

If someone else buys you a lawnmower, but you mow all the yards, it would be unethical to make a profit because you didn't invest in the lawnmower?

Your labor doesn't count for anything?

What if I buy the camera, and you use the camera to produce a great movie?

Should I keep all the profits because it would be unethical for you to make money since you didn't invest money in the hardware?
 
kylevant said:
I agree, there could be some serious bandwidth to take into consideration. That alone could warrant the ads. But, we can't say. We can't see the budget, so we can't say if they're taking home some nice profit, if they went over-budget, or if they're sinking it back into the next production.

I'm not judging them, I'm just going by my original feeling - which was that it just seemed slightly unethical making profit from something that you never really put much monetary risk into (again, speculating that they never put their own funds into it).
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First, I'm glad you aren't judging them by calling them unethical. ;) Second, I'm sure these guys put a lot of their own money and 'sweat equality' into the videos they were making and posting before they blew up on YT. Even then, top flight YT money doesn't go very far in a collaborate medium like this. Third, business almost always revolves around other peoples money (mainly because the people w/the idea can't self fund). I mean, how much of Chris Nolan's personal fortune was used to make the Batman movies? Sure, occasionally there are instances where Hollywood directors put down their own money to save a project but those instances are few and far between.


Questions regarding where all the income from adverts went. If they wanted to be self-sufficient, then it'd make sense to throw that income back into the production.
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Like you, and others, have said we don't have their books so we can't say for sure. You just assume they are ripping people off somehow while others of us assume they are just trying to pay themselves and pay their cast & crew for all the hard work.
On YouTube alone each episode has an average of 2.3 million views. They obviously get a lot more views on their site. I'm not sure what CPM rate they're being payed, but it could be a lot more than we think (or a lot less?).
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From what I've read the top 10 earners on YT can make $100k/yr or more though I've never seen any of FreddieW's stuff on any of those lists. Those amounts are awesome if you are full time, solo video blogger w/little to no overhead. That's less awesome if you are 4 guys (like Rocket Jump) that need a fair amount of gear to make movies, go to locations and pay your cast and crew.


-Andrew
 
combatentropy said:
I found the official song for DVXUser
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I can't believe you made me listen to a Taylor Swift song.

kylevant said:
Okay, we can only speculate here. But originally, this was how I felt after having to see those irritating interstitial video ads.
Let's just take into consideration that the original budget was $75k. Even if they were being conservative (like Elle says, going half or 1/3 of their real budget) they still raised nearly four times what they asked for. I've watched the behind the scenes, and they called in many favors and cut corners as much as possible. Like I said, this is all just speculation, but I don't think they used that all.
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I know for a fact that they used it all, and the final budget was between 2 and 3 times the amount raised on KS. Anyone who was paid was underpaid... easy to verify this yoursef because the whole cast & crew is listed on the IMDB page...

Gary Huff said:
Elle (aka underpressue), what do you have to say about the fact that an offload from the Digital Bolex to a Class 4 SD card could take upwards of 7 hours of transfer time? Considering that a 256GB SSD will only hold about 30 minutes of footage, that means that you're looking at only being able to shoot about 30 minutes per day with that standard type of SD card (and if you use a simple USB interface for the connection, it will be about that long for any SD card, no matter how fast).

Is this considered acceptable?
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2K RAW frames are 3.5MB/F * 24 frames = 84MB/S * 60= 5GB/M.

The write speed of a 133X CF card is 20MB/S (yes, CF), and there are 2 slots dumping simultaneously, so we're looking at 40MB/S. So 10GB (10240MB, a 2 minute take / 40MB) will take 256S = just over 4 minutes to transfer to CF cards. 25 gigs (25600MB, a 5 minute take / 40MB ) will take 640S = 10 2/3 minutes to transfer.

If you fill the 256GB (262144MB) internal drive (74898 frames, 3121 seconds, 52 minutes), it would take 109 minutes to transfer to the CF cards. Of course, the camera will be transferring to the CF cards while recording so much of the record time counts against the transfer time.

And the back of the camera has a USB 3 connection that transfers at 5 Gbit/s so a full 256GB internal drive could be downloaded directly to a computer in under 5 minutes without dealing with the CF cards at all.
 
Are you unaware that your Digital Bolex camera is now writing to SD cards? Or has that been changed back yet?

And speaking of that, will people have a working model in their hands in August, or have you official pushed back the date yet?
 
which was that it just seemed slightly unethical making profit from something that you never really put much monetary risk into (again, speculating that they never put their own funds into it).
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This statement is absurd. Sorry to sound harsh, That's like saying you don't deserve equity because you you bought your house in a buyers market, and therefore you don't deserve any profit if you decide to sell when it's luctative because you didn't risk any loss. Well isn't that kind of the point of smart investing?
 
You folks have raised some great points and been civil while at it (which is why I love this forum!), and unfortunately I can't seem to backup my initial knee-jerk reaction. Maybe I've been looking at it from the wrong perspective. Maybe I shouldn't consider the series "free" at all. It's a business, a product, and using the ads is creating more of a model than anything else: The Kickstarter contributors get to watch the video's without ads. They pre-ordered those viewings (thus providing the capital for the series). Those that never previously ordered have to pay by watching and putting up with ads. It isn't free, the ads are your payment.
 
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