Future of the RED Camera? – Food for Thought from our Founder
- Thread starter starcentral
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Derek Chingwell
Well-known member
There's a thread over at Reduser on this - http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...f-RED-Jim-Ted-and-Cioni&highlight=cinelicious post #13 is from Jarred (lucky 13 LOL).
Andrius Simutis
Veteran
Yeah...but no. Film is great, no doubt, but it's not the future of production. It'll still be here for a while and will be used when people want a specific look or workflow, but the bulk of production is going to be digital. Cheerleading film is fine, but cinelicious shouldn't talk smack and gin up rumors about others to make themselves feel better. The changes at RED have nothing to do with film. Maybe the staff changes are about other opportunities or interpersonal dynamics, and who knows how great their bank statements are, but in the end anything that happens at RED has squat to do with film.
combatentropy
Veteran
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Andrew Luczenczyn
Active member
RED isn't a startup anymore. The company is moving in to maturity, and so like most businesses, people will begin to come and go.
legrevedotcom
Veteran
And I wouldn't be crying over this article. At all.
More like laughing eh.... I had the dubious pleasure of taking my formals at the cross over from film to digital here in Denmark. I spent the first year shooting film at school... then at the internship I was using Leaf digi backs and when I got back for the 2nd term of school, they were (thankfully) about to dismantle the darkrooms. Now there's not a single celluloid item left on that school. And why the hell should there be!!?
I gotta be honest; I can't stand the perpetual flag waving of celluloid. Yay it was fun... yay what a grand magical time. Well, now it's gone and left to hobbyists.
Digital is here to prevail, there's absolutely no reason what so ever to ever roll up a film again, spend time developing it, scanning it and so on. If Kodak indeed does make an effort to push this old tech into effect again, it will be a short lived effort that will die down again.
I don't know a single person that doesn't appreciate the more pleasant workflow of digital over film. Imagine having to wait for dailies... seriously, money in the video / film business ain't exactly abundant as it is, it's not going to get more abundant just because some crazy person wants to shoot something on film and then have the production waiting around while the dailies are being screened.
starcentral
Veteran
It seems from the article if you want to win at a film festivals you need to shoot on 35mm film. That or lie about it. That's the only useful information I found in the article, oh, and that Kodak is back. :happy:
Barry_Green
Moderator
I don't understand what people don't get about this -- Jannard didn't GO anywhere! He's still running Red every bit as much as he ever was. Jannard is driving Red, and its product slate, the same today as he was five years ago.Jannard has to be pushing 70. He has his own jet and his own island in Fiji. I know where I would be if I were him.rogar-SunGlass(DBG
The only thing that's changed, as near as I can tell, is that he quit talking directly to the public on RedUser. That's it. He's focusing more on running the company, and less on being the face of the company. Jarred is now the official spokesman and face of Red. But Jannard is still running the company every bit as much as ever.
At least, that's the way I understand it.
starcentral
Veteran
I agree Barry, that's all that has happened. Any longer on REDuser and I think some might feel he would only further damage RED's reputation.
Absolutely. As for the recent departures, well, that happens. If Red lost, say, their top 10 all at once, that might mean something.
The majority of any film budget is the cost of labor, including paying them, feeding them, housing them if necessary, insuring them. If you look at a line item budget, thats' where the money goes. A small budget means someone is doing two or three jobs but only getting paid for one, or working for less than market price of their labor, or donating labor for free, or entire departments are just cut altogether and it shows on the screen.
If cameras are free and media is 50 cents a card and the computers to edit cost 100 bucks, it's still going to cost millions for all the labor costs.
As far as the original article, I think it would translate as we make money restoring film, so we like film. Ok, that's fine. I've seen some great restoration work done on film.
For the big films, I see this as truth. For the small indie guys, I disagree with this. More money can be spent on other things than film.
Safety Not Guaranteed was made for $750,000 which is pretty dang low, and they shot on the Sony F3...for a film like that which is dependent on good performances, you don't want to be forced to adhere to a particular shooting ratio to stay in budget. Especially when you don't have the money to make sure everything works perfectly on set. Sometimes running a bunch of takes is the only practical way to get a shot, and that's only really possible to do cheaply on digital.
As for the article...the author may see a lot of positive things happening for film in the last 30 days, but here in Seattle the long time film lab Alpha Cine just stopped all film development and processing services as of a week or two ago. Which makes me sad because I was still hoping to shoot something on 16mm at some point.
Robert Ruffo
Well-known member
The look of Safety Guaranteed did not help it - many distributors passed on it because it looked "cheap and depressing". I must say I agree with them. Critics even mention this - it's very hard to watch because it looks so ugly.
Adam J McKay
Veteran
Looks better than public enemies.