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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The race to the bottom is on

Jon Nash

Jon Nash

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I've just seen the start of the race to the bottom and a company renting out scarlet packages for $1250 a week? Why would anyone do that? What good can possibly come of devaluing the price of your kit that much. I've seen Epics go for $100 a day. Come on people wake up and smell the coffee. I'm all for free enterprise but not blatent foolishness where no one benefits from the long term effects of such short sighted short term thinking. I'm not surprised . I'm just sad. I left the stills industry as I saw its demise by similar short term opportunists and it's all set to happen all over again with moving images. It would be nice if we could learn from the demise of the stills industry.
 
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Did it include glass? How much glass?
 
The race to the bottom started years ago, but it has been getting worse lately. It's inevitable given the barriers to enter this industry have never been lower nor the worldwide economy so fragile.
 
Well, $1250/week for Scarlet actually sounds quite reasonable to me.
 
I'm sure much the same conversation was had over at Arri when Red announced the pricing of the Epic and Scarlet.
If it makes 'business sense' to them, then more power to them
 
Was this from an actual rental house? A good deal on a much less capable camera, the EX3 with memory cards and a tripod is in this range as well...
In my market, that's about the day rate for an M1 package (glass, support, ff, mattebox, monitor)...
Not sure you can rent a Scarlet from the production houses here.. they seem to have mostly gone Epic..
 
Heard in the UK, London specifically there is a Scarlet package for 400 quid WITH canon glass

Really crazy...

We're renting for slightly higher then that for friends and slightly more then what we give our friends + canon glass so the 400 is pretty much a killer for those looking to rent Scarlet first time...

A lot of referrals and good first time service seems to be the only trick these days
 
Jon Nash said:
It's an insult to Jim and just make no economic sense to anyone?
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It's no insult to Jim or RED it's what happens when you make a fantastic product. There are places I can rent a new Cadillac Escalade for that.
 
In the race to the bottom I have seen a post by a place renting Epic X packages as low as $150 per day. That's just nuts!!! My AF100 rents for more than that. Sad times indeed.
 
It would be very useful if there was a monitoring body that controlled RED rental prices based on geographic location, availability and packages...it would be nice.
 
It seems like a reasonable price for a body only, something like a 2 day week. It makes a lot of sense for the owner as in 15 -20 weeks they have made their money back. I'll bet that they are also reacting to the kids who will go out with the camera for 400/day. It's simple business, not an insult to anyone. The race to the bottom started a long time ago with the 5d.
 
Well, not good for rental houses, but good for filmmakers. I don't think anyone should be insulted. The more people get access, the more films we get and the more talent we discover and share.
 
It's called democratization. . . and I, for one, am very glad it exists. Were it not for democratization, we couldn't make our films at all. As it is, thanks to Jim and others like him, we get to make our films on the very same gear being used to make the biggest films in the world.

I mean, how cool is that?

Stephen
 
If you want top PL glass, Arri/O'Connor support, and top notch accessories you are going to pay a lot more than that. If it's a Scarlet with Canon glass, Miller tripod and Redrock Micro support, then the competition is fierce and the price drops dramatically.
 
David W. Jones said:
In the race to the bottom I have seen a post by a place renting Epic X packages as low as $150 per day. That's just nuts!!! My AF100 rents for more than that. Sad times indeed.
Click to expand...


It's not unusual for midlevel cams to rent for $250 - $350 while much higher quality cameras like Red don't get anywhere near the purchase price to rental price ratio, for two reasons 1) many corporate jobs are better done on the simpler cameras and they are often the majority of customers for a lot of rental houses that aren't specifically feature film oriented and the $250-$350 day price doesn't seem to faze the corporate people, so they don't have to discount heavily to get rented and 2) The workflow changes the equation for a lot of users - it's going to cost them more time and money to edit so they only do it if the camera is heavily discounted, to make it worthwhile. Until Red comes up with a $800 - $1500 Rocket-like device so everyone can have one (maybe using those ASICs they developed) this will probably always be a problem with Scarlet and Epic.
 
Well to be fair, a lot of the dirt cheap rental prices I have seen didn't include much with the package (assuming they are getting people to look with the low price, then add on the appropriate rentals to round out the package)
Like i've seen including only 2 redvolts and 1 SSD is not a ready to go rental package
 
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