The Emperor's Memory Cards Are Wearing No Clothes !!!

NorBro said:
... I guess everyone will just take whatever they can get; good or bad.
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A friend of mine is shopping for a good quality/just off-lease/certified luxury car. He looked at several models, like the C450 AMG. Two years old, asking price in the mid-$30,000.

Friend - So, how flexible are you on the price?

Salesperson - This is it. If you want it, this is what it's going to cost.

Friend - See ya.
 
I think with the propensity of things like Amazon Prime, etc. everyone is having profit amnesia and forgetting that everyone outside Amazon, Walmart, Costco, etc. needs to make a healthy profit to not only keep afloat but pioneer into the future. While it's easier to try to put a number on R&D, it's almost impossible to put a number on the risk individuals and companies make to try to create something that will be helpful and profitable.

As filmmakers I feel like we can't be mad at companies like Red (or Wooden Camera or Zacuto for that matter) for having high markups and then turn around and want our clients to pay our full rates that help pay for all of our own R&D and risk (gear upkeep, learning, rent, prep, buying expensive memory cards...).
 
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I'll go back to the power supply issue I posted above. If one vendor can make a profit from having these in their warehouse at $30, then the other vendor should be able to do the same at $40 or maybe $50. At $50 I would not have gone looking, even $100 might have been OK to me so I knew it was 100% compatible. But the $300+ made me think about cutting the connector off (if needed) and soldering a new one on in the correct pin configuration. Essentially what these third party guys did with the RED mags.

And none of this will matter in a short amount of time to the Red users, there will be a firmware change that prohibits these off the shelf drives from working. It would be as simple as getting the drive supplier to get you the SDK and make a "custom" firmware that is really just an identifier, and limiting the cameras to just that specific thing. It's pretty common for hard drive manufacturers to do this, especially if you are ordering enough to make it worth their time. Avid has done this in the past on their drives in things like the old Lanshare storage unit, not sure if they still do this.
 
Greg_E said:
If one vendor can make a profit from having these in their warehouse at $30, then the other vendor should be able to do the same at $40 or maybe $50.
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Not saying you need to drop $300 on that power supply, but I can't help but think there's clients out there thinking the same thing with just an extra zero at the end:

"If one video vendor (a college kid with a DSLR) can make a profit from making my video for $300, then this other video vendor (working professional with a family) should be able to do the same at $400 or $500 instead of $3,000."
 
Greg_E said:
I'll go back to the power supply issue I posted above. If one vendor can make a profit from having these in their warehouse at $30, then the other vendor should be able to do the same at $40 or maybe $50. At $50 I would not have gone looking, even $100 might have been OK to me so I knew it was 100% compatible. But the $300+ made me think about cutting the connector off (if needed) and soldering a new one on in the correct pin configuration. Essentially what these third party guys did with the RED mags.

And none of this will matter in a short amount of time to the Red users, there will be a firmware change that prohibits these off the shelf drives from working. It would be as simple as getting the drive supplier to get you the SDK and make a "custom" firmware that is really just an identifier, and limiting the cameras to just that specific thing. It's pretty common for hard drive manufacturers to do this, especially if you are ordering enough to make it worth their time. Avid has done this in the past on their drives in things like the old Lanshare storage unit, not sure if they still do this.
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Story time. Back in the days when I was at AbelCine I was on the team that helped bring the Arri Alexa in. We were the only company besides ARRI to sell the camera and it was a pretty big deal at the time. The profit margin on the camera was ridiculously slim but that was OK because we knew that we’d also sell lenses, tripods, batteries, etc. to complete people's kits. I had to package out the camera into standard kits that we could recommend to clients so that they could then figure out what items they needed. I discovered that Arri did not have an AC power supply for the camera; coming from the film world it just wasn’t something they bothered with. They had a monster power supply that was originally designed for the 535 film camera, constructed in a small flight case and costing almost $2000. So I went to the Mauser catalog, found a medical grade 24v 200w power supply for around $75, and bought one. I had to snip off the DIN connector and solder on a $5 XLR3 plug, and it was done.

So how much to sell it for? Less than $80 in parts and a few minutes of labor. I’m the one to recognize that there was a need for this product, something that Arri had not done. There’s some value. I knew that such an item could exist in some form already, and that has value. I took the initiative and spent the time to find the source items, and that has value (took me less than an hour, but I knew where to look). Most things a company such as AbelCine sells are commodity products. They are sealed boxes that come into the warehouse and go out again to clients. But this would be something where two source parts came in, would need to go to a technician who would interact with those parts to then create a new product, and then this product would have to be added as inventory in the warehouse. That’s a bunch of administrative work. AbelCine would be responsible for creating marketing and awareness of the product. As the end manufacturer, AbelCine would also bear the responsibility to the client for any defect. And the company had carrying costs, as we would purchase lots of parts at a time to get a decent price and so that a technician could assemble a bunch of completed units all at once. Those units might sit on the shelf in the warehouse for several months before the supply ran down enough to do another batch. That’s equity tied up in boxes sitting on a shelf. And let’s not forget there’s a business here with a bunch of employees with salaries, health insurance, pension plans, etc., plus an office with rent, air conditioning and so on.

So what to charge? In the end it was decided that a simple formula of 3x cost would apply. 1/3 is to the hard costs for parts, 1/3 is for soft costs of all that stuff I listed above, and 1/3 is for profit. So it’s a $240 power supply. Personally I think that’s incredibly fair. For the additional $160 we figured out the right kind of device, found it, did the rewiring, tested it, and will stand behind it should there be a problem. The customer doesn’t have to think about it. What’s that worth to you?

As soon as we announced the product Arri ordered a bunch. They saw the value. Eventually Arri made its own version that’s exactly the same thing and it sells for exactly the same price. I think AbelCine stopped making its own because people would just as soon buy the Arri version and for AbelCine it was less hassle for a relatively small amount of money. And of course that financial model is different because Arri has to give some of that profit to companies like AbelCine.

This little tale is a small example of how a $80 item becomes a $240 item. And who knows how much Mauser pays to the factory that makes the original item. I bet there’s a distributor in there as well. Could be those power supplies are $10 each coming off the assembly line, and the XLR3 connector 10 cents apiece. It’s a long way to go to get to $240, but it’s a fair road every step of the way.

BTW, here it is. The current iteration of what was my little idea.
https://www.abelcine.com/buy/expend.../arri-24v-amira-alexa-mini-alexa-power-supply
 
Mestizo Devon said:
Part II, looks like this guy is just getting started, drat.....

https://youtu.be/b5YeX3hU6o4
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Wow, this person seems intent on trying to take down RED. It'll be interesting to see in three months if this whole PR disaster affects RED's business.
The filmmaking/digital cinema world is a pretty small one, VERY influenced by the hive mind. I won't go so far as to call the community Lemmings but they often behave as Lemmings.
Witness the popularity of fads like VR, 360 video, HDR, Resolution Wars, Full Frame imager cinema cameras and lenses, modern, purposeless anamorphic shooting, the list goes on and on.
 
If one kept loyal to Red despite its pricing, then they're very likely to keep loyal to Red.

To the non-Red consumers, the high end is going to become meaningless anyway. Either the tab (for ARRI) is going to be picked up by the buyer of the project regardless of the cost or one should accomplish everything that the Red can do for for a lot less. And I don't even mean a 4K/6K consumer/prosumer cameras like Z6 and S1/H but the next generation of the Panasonic, Sony and Canon cameras in the $8,000-$15,000 range that will likely be 6K/8K with compressed Raw/10-bit Log, Auto Focus, IBIS, etc. And, even if a high end Red - or, for that matter, Alexa LF/65 - can deliver a slightly greater looking footage, it won't be noticed by anyone else outside the editing suit.

IMO, with all streaming services needing an unlimited quantity of entertainment, the next generation of "television" will revert to the 1930's multi-camera shoots, with lighting on the set being mostly overhead and the individual shots adjusted in post. Soaps, albeit in a more primitive style, can do over one hundred script pages a day. The single camera drama ought to be aiming at, at least, thirty. Coppola even showed a "live film" presentation but that required almost a month of rehearsals. An ongoing series should have these problems worked out in "preseason", as it were.

PS. A few years ago, I posted a bit from some business study where the author claimed that companies that start at the low end of the market and then move up have a much longer lifespan. Those who start high but are then forced to move lower, don't.
 
DLD said:
If one kept loyal to Red despite its pricing, then they're very likely to keep loyal to Red.

To the non-Red consumers, the high end is going to become meaningless anyway. Either the tab (for ARRI) is going to be picked up by the buyer of the project regardless of the cost or one should accomplish everything that the Red can do for for a lot less. And I don't even mean a 4K/6K consumer/prosumer cameras like Z6 and S1/H but the next generation of the Panasonic, Sony and Canon cameras in the $8,000-$15,000 range that will likely be 6K/8K with compressed Raw/10-bit Log, Auto Focus, IBIS, etc. And, even if a high end Red - or, for that matter, Alexa LF/65 - can deliver a slightly greater looking footage, it won't be noticed by anyone else outside the editing suit.

IMO, with all streaming services needing an unlimited quantity of entertainment, the next generation of "television" will revert to the 1930's multi-camera shoots, with lighting on the set being mostly overhead and the individual shots adjusted in post. Soaps, albeit in a more primitive style, can do over one hundred script pages a day. The single camera drama ought to be aiming at, at least, thirty. Coppola even showed a "live film" presentation but that required almost a month of rehearsals. An ongoing series should have these problems worked out in "preseason", as it were.

PS. A few years ago, I posted a bit from some business study where the author claimed that companies that start at the low end of the market and then move up have a much longer lifespan. Those who start high but are then forced to move lower, don't.
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And at that point, what are you really saving? Depending on the production, what could you have already “had in the can” in that month and with much less compromises?

While the few “live” movies that have aired, so far, like A Christmas Story, were wonderful logistical achievements to behold, especially if you work in the business and understand what was really going on, from a viewers perspective sitting at home on the couch, it was little more than a soap-opera on steroids that didn’t hold a candle to the traditionally produced original and they butchered the story to boot.

I’m not naive, I know how the world works, but the only reason for anyone to push that type of production for a “movie” over traditional production methods is to try and save money. It certainly doesn’t improve the story telling/production value.
 
Grease Live was better made.


Vs. the 1978 original


So, you gain a few more closeups, which could have been included in the remake had it not been done "totally" live. The original film took three months of production. This live production required more sets and way more actors/dancers. NBC live shows cost under $10M to make.

Compare it with $50M-$250,000,000 for major movie musicals.
 
I won't pose this one another forum, but I feel comfortable posing it here:

Do any of you get the feeling that RED is waning? I used to see RED cameras often on features and episodics. But not so much any more. Now it's nearly exclusively ARRI Alexa minis and Venice that I see. The only exceptions in the past 2 years were two features using the Millennium DXL, the Panavised RED. That's only a view from my little bubble. Maybe RED cameras are still working often on commercials and music videos. But if RED was already waning in popularity, this mag-flap isn't going to help any. The company's reputation definitely took a hit. Some RED owners feel lied to. Although others have said it isn't any big deal to them.

I'm curious to know what percentage of features with a budget over $1M were shot on a RED in 2018 vs in 2017 or 2016. My hunch, based only on anecdotal observation, is that the percentage has dropped.

I suppose the provocative title of this post could be "Is RED dead?". Or at least dying?
 
JPNola said:
I won't pose this one another forum, but I feel comfortable posing it here:

Do any of you get the feeling that RED is waning? I used to see RED cameras often on features and episodics. But not so much any more. Now it's nearly exclusively ARRI Alexa minis and Venice that I see. The only exceptions in the past 2 years were two features using the Millennium DXL, the Panavised RED. That's only a view from my little bubble. Maybe RED cameras are still working often on commercials and music videos. But if RED was already waning in popularity, this mag-flap isn't going to help any. The company's reputation definitely took a hit. Some RED owners feel lied to. Although others have said it isn't any big deal to them.

I'm curious to know what percentage of features with a budget over $1M were shot on a RED in 2018 vs in 2017 or 2016. My hunch, based only on anecdotal observation, is that the percentage has dropped.

I suppose the provocative title of this post could be "Is RED dead?". Or at least dying?
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If you go to the link below and search by year (just type it in), the list actually does get smaller and smaller.

This only means that their particular collection of 'cinema' has decreased on their own website and may not be an accurate representation of the world's numbers, but it is what it is. Some big hits there though.

With music videos (as we all know), there is just no competition.

https://www.red.com/shot-on-red/cinema
 
Have to be fair and also point out that they had a bit more 'Television' in 2018 vs. 2017.

[I am also trusting their front-end & search engine and not checking for duplicates or errors.]
 
Didn't Red get a lot of play at Netflix with Fincher, et. al. during the time when Alexa was not on the Netflix list of approved cameras? Now that LF is out (although, there seems to be a lot more preference for a Mini LF) and Sony Venice, which received an official imprimatur from James Cameron, there are now more models vying for the same market niche.

Add Varicam and Alexa65 into the mix and the field is getting very crowded at the very top.

And the low/er pro end still has Varicam LT, F55, C200/300/700 and a bunch used Alexas to contend with.
 
puredrifting said:
It'll be interesting to see in three months if this whole PR disaster affects RED's business.
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I don't know how much of the noise is coming from actual RED users vs. people who just love piling on, but I think one thing is certain: any future media related costs will be subject to serious scrutiny!

Certainly going to be a make or break year or two for them. Competitors above and below starting to put the squeeze on, customers threatening lawsuits. Not good. Although if the posts are to be believed, maybe they're sitting on a warchest of minimag money and can weather this storm :)
 
It's all based on Red trying to downplay the Jinnimags as being inferior. This cuts into the third party storage market by creating a level of doubt. When you have million dollar production days, do you really want to risk it all on third party storage? Just that little seed of doubt will keep Red doing fine. But from what I'm seeing, assuming that it is baseline true, there are a few things that could be done to make those million dollars days work better. Since I have no RED storage devices (and probably never will), I can not prove this for myself. I'd like to think that RED was using really good drives, that they tested as well as Black Magic tests drives and certifies certain models (including certain firmwares), but it appears as if they are just buying bulk drives that have been tested to work... And I think this is still a bit too much mark up for the materials. But, they did apparently design the camera to work with this "generic" media and they do have certain R&D costs to recover, so not faulting that they should be able to make a certain amount of mark up on them. After all, when one goes bad, who do you send it to for warranty? Certainly not Micron or Kingston. I think this may drive RED to lower the price, they have probably made most or all of the R&D back by now.

Back to the power supply I mentioned, there is not a single thing that needs to be changed in this situation. So you taking a supply, soldering the connector on, and dealing with warranty and distribution sounds about right to me. But an off the shelf supply, with exactly no changes, not even the label, does not warrant that level of mark up. Again, 3 times the price ($100) I probably would have just bought them since I knew they would work, but 10x is too much and worth putting in a little research to see if I can save a buck or three. I'm not about being the cheapest fool, I'm about making sure the gear stays working. But you have to consider budgets, especially right now as they are being compressed to lower than required to stay operating (in many areas).
 
Exactly. RED doesn't have to say anything about JinniMags. If you are a client based company and the client sees you plugging JinniMags into your camera and you lose the days shooting, you've had it. No sane person is going to risk looking cheap and then lose data. It doesn't matter if the JinniMags are reliable or not. The fact that you did not use factory media is a good way to lose a client. If you lost the data on the RED mag, well, that's not your fault and you're still in business.
 
JPNola said:
I won't pose this one another forum, but I feel comfortable posing it here:

Do any of you get the feeling that RED is waning? ...

I suppose the provocative title of this post could be "Is RED dead?". Or at least dying?
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Yes, this trend has been going on for a few years now. Netflix gave them new breath with their idiotic 4K-only origination decree, but that exclusivity is now over with Arri LF, as well as Sony finally building a decent cinema camera in the Venice.

The ONLY time I ever see a Red on set now is when the production company or DP owns one.

They are dead as doornails in "Hollywood", they just don't seem to know it yet.
 
nothing said:
Yes, this trend has been going on for a few years now. Netflix gave them new breath with their idiotic 4K-only origination decree, but that exclusivity is now over with Arri LF, as well as Sony finally building a decent cinema camera in the Venice.

The ONLY time I ever see a Red on set now is when the production company or DP owns one.

They are dead as doornails in "Hollywood", they just don't seem to know it yet.
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Of the shows I've worked on that are fairly mainstream (tv/cable, Netflix, features, etc.), one is shot on Red, at least one is Varicam/Panasonic, one or two are F55, and I think all the rest are Alexa. The ones that aren't Alexa are either for Netflix or for networks that otherwise demand 4k for streaming... that demand for 4k seems to be increasing, though. Which sucks because when you're working in post, 4k quadruples your render time, and the Alexa has the easiest image to work with and easiest workflow, too.... None of these are blockbusters or Game of Thrones or whatever, fwiw, just normal tv. There might be more use of higher res (Alexa 65, Monstro) cameras there, but I don't live in that world right now.

Indie shorts, music videos, etc. seem to be at least half Red. I only worked on one big budget music video and that was Alexa. But the thing is, I suspect those major "industry" productions above just rent their cameras. Whereas these Reds usually appear from an owner/op, a branded content company that owns one, someone who knows someone, etc. The Red is still the "Ferrari" of owner/op cameras. And that might very well be a bigger market than "Hollywood." (Or it might not be!) High end YouTube channels seem to like Reds, too.

Something seems suspicious about Fincher and Soderbergh's relationship with Red. The Reds were a disaster on Che and the image looks poor on that film. Even on the Informant, the grade is bright orange because the cameras couldn't handle tungsten balance so they had to balance for daylight even when shooting tungsten, I suspect. The camera system is much much better now, but I strongly suspect those guys and Bay are getting a lot of free stuff and free support in exchange for the marketing.

But... that's marketing for you.

Nonetheless, I really liked the image from the DXL on Maniac.
 
JPNola said:
I won't pose this one another forum, but I feel comfortable posing it here:

Do any of you get the feeling that RED is waning? I used to see RED cameras often on features and episodics. But not so much any more. Now it's nearly exclusively ARRI Alexa minis and Venice that I see. The only exceptions in the past 2 years were two features using the Millennium DXL, the Panavised RED. That's only a view from my little bubble. Maybe RED cameras are still working often on commercials and music videos. But if RED was already waning in popularity, this mag-flap isn't going to help any. The company's reputation definitely took a hit. Some RED owners feel lied to. Although others have said it isn't any big deal to them.

I'm curious to know what percentage of features with a budget over $1M were shot on a RED in 2018 vs in 2017 or 2016. My hunch, based only on anecdotal observation, is that the percentage has dropped.

I suppose the provocative title of this post could be "Is RED dead?". Or at least dying?
Click to expand...

I wondered the same thing, but what about higher end commercial/corporate/ad agency stuff? I think they have a decent sized footprint there.
 
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