45K to spend and request assistance

[Brian Merlen]

i actually hit up no film school to ask to submit a humorous article on similar subject matter after my rant... but i think i have a point...the way owner ops need to struggle today to make the ROI in the brief time frame they have is not at all like the traditional business model of film/steinbeck...also if super 35 is the new 16mm if all the sensors go big, glass aint gonna be gold then...its a scary world to buy anything i think and the sheer turn over rate just makes rentals all the more appealing i think for most businesses when everything you buy has a 1 or 2 year life span to try and work it

 

[Eric Watson]

No one is interested in selling their Dragons? Must be a premium that would lure some out. Say, what 40-42k?

It'd be great if someone with a Epic Dragon were willing to part ways.
I'd have to get the unit inspected by Red Digital techs and they'd give me 90 days for a $100 fee.
Doesn't look like that's gonna happen so I'll have to go the Scarlet route...

 

[Eric Watson]

yesterday i wrote a super long response, but a crash lost it all so i'm gonna just try to bullet point this

1 i am very happy to talk about products, but whats your incentive to own instead of rent if you don't mind me asking?

Brian.
First of all, thank you very much for writing such a long thought out response to my post AND THEN re-posting it!!
I'll return the response in tiny sections.


Don't get me wrong, I still rent gear. Especially true if I need a matching B cam. As a rule though, I don't rent equipment that I use with high frequency. Almost my entire career I've owned the bulk of my primary acquisition equipment. I've owned Aatons, Arris, and Betacams in the past and there hasn't been a single time I didn't get 60-70% of my investment back or even higher when buying used.

The advantages of owning outweigh renting for many, many reasons.
The ROI for me is far greater. For example, if I do just a single month's worth of shooting, whether personal or for clients, the rentals alone tally up to the price of a new cam. It can always be sold at a later date.
If I woke up one morning and saw a beautiful deer grazing on one of my acres, what would I do? No matter how cordial I wanted to be, I couldn't very well go ask him to "hold that pose" while I run and go rent a camera.
The same holds true for spur of the moment shorts. Sometimes you have to strike a creative idea when it's hot n' fresh.

Consider this Brian. Technical proficiency of a specific system only gets better with practice. Renting doesn't support "learning curves" all that well. Getting to know a Red camera system and work flow will take some time. I like knowing how a camera responds to my every command. Having your own box and getting that technical prowess so sharp that it becomes 2nd nature helps to remediate costly errors and possible reputation damage when shooting on someone else's dime...let alone my own. I could probably write a book and name fifty legitimate reasons as to why I prefer purchasing over renting. For some, that model doesn't work but for me it's where I have the strongest advantage for success.

 

[Eric Watson]

2 if high speed isn't needed a scarlet is fine and thats a huge cash saver

Agreed. In my OP I intended for it to be understood that it's the Dragon color science I'm mostly after.
I can go either way. I like the flexibilty of the Epic, but for now I can do without. The Scarlet Dragon will meet the requirement. At least for now.

3 get insurance, Kat Wong at Athos comes highly recommended here generally speaking and I like them

Thanks for the contact!

4 if you get an epic, buy a used scarlet instead. then upgrade it...get a year warranty then on the epic...not a bad stepping stone

ugh...mmm...I don't like that strategy.
From all I've researched, including right here on this forum, the wait times are for me too prohibitive.
I don't have the luxury of waiting an "undetermined amount of time" for an upgrade. 'sides, the Dragon is what I'm going to need.

5 if your sold on dragon would you consider a scarlet dragon if the frame rates don't matter?

Yep, You got it!

6 out of curiosity with so many cheaper 4k solutions today on the horizon, whats your attraction specifically to red products? i love them don't get me wrong but if its really hard for you to budget for it couldn't a cheaper camera permit better lensing options? at these price points i am not sure if you want to skimp on support gear just to have a red, as wonderful as it is...

That's an assumption and someone else posted that. I absolutely DO have support gear. I have two O'connors, a Sachtler, and enough reels and rails to build a roller coaster.

carbon and M dragons just look like too much of a budget killer in this situation to me

Amen to that brother. But I'm tellin' ya, as soon as I buy a Scarlet Dragon, someone's gonna come out of the woodwork with an Epic Dragon for sale with all the fixin's...just watch.

 

[Eric Watson]

I'm just saying being bleeding edge is wonderful and the tool set is great, its just sometimes overkill i'd imagine for certain markets and unless unionized i really think its hard to sell super high end stuff on clients from my own missteps. there are plenty of flawed but "good enough" tools available on the market, and to be an arri or red owner op i think its important to just realize what your getting into. i see my own situation, and have a buddy in LA struggling with an Alexa. the whole "if you build it they will come" theory is a flawed concept in my own experience.. so growth is important but you may want to at least consider slow sustained growth rather then immediately jumping into spending so much cash.

Oh this is definitely an excellent point Brian. I agree with you on all fronts with one exception. The distinction here is that the client IS me.

13 consider red armor, all cameras brick regardless of branding and that insurance you buy will not cover this, its a serious owner op liability regardless of branding of your camera. Athos is about as good as it gets is what people tell me..

Whoa! What does this mean?

17 get the mini mags, the speed increase and size duration will more then make up for the costs due to on set time, esp if your not planning to have a qualified on set wrangler... i've seen reds shot, and i've seen reds SHOT. the latter is with a HUGE crew (or at least a few people). so the mini mags can help you at least mitigate costs by outsourcing guys like me if you can get away with it, but its kinda hard to remember what take and pull focus and light at once, costs ballon and not just on gear side but on labor side as well

Well Said!

 

[Eric Watson]

12 i can pretty much promise cutting r3d files full res in 4k or 5k is not necessary for your needs, so don't try to budget for this. an offline online reconform workflow is how the big guys don't file for bankruptcy, and its for a good reason, which is technology changes too fast these days. once upon a time people bought a steinbeck or a 35mm cinema camera that LASTED A CAREER. this is a different world man!

Okay hold on. So this is the kind of thing I need to understand. I can still shoot the 4K or 5K footage and proxy edit. This is acceptable so long as the delivery format is in 4K, right?

 

[Phil Holland]

Take what Mr. Holland has to offer with a grain of Will Salt.

Erm. Okay.

I have more or less three different workflows that I use in Adobe Premiere Pro CC. Some include Redcine-X Pro in there. Basically it's either native .R3D, ProRes (sometimes h.264 in the past), or more VFX related with DPX, TIF, or EXR export.

I'm not having crashes in Premiere Pro CC with the .R3D workflow actually. The one thing Adobe needs to tighten up is the Quicktime 32 Server crashes on Windows when working with ProRes, that sucks when that happens and you need to restart the program. Seems to be due to some interesting variables based on how that ProRes is encoded or read maybe? Don't know. That they need to tighten up for sure though.

I am advocating and mostly using a native .R3D workflow these days. Especially on current through two year old systems. Hell, I'm working off a two year old laptop sometimes when abroad. This current job of 600+ clips I'm working with .R3Ds natively and editing Dragon 6K HD with no problem on my main system at home. Did work on somewhere around 80TB of .R3Ds earlier this year from Mysterium-X 5K with the same workflow on a system I built. No issues.

Also, for previous CC customers and I think CS customers still you pay $360 a year.

I'll say that right now FCPX is better than it's ever been, so that's not a bad way to go if you are on a Mac. Not enough for me to switch from Adobe's suite of applications at all, but vastly improved over FCP7. Also, certainly not enough to give up on the insane benefits of working via PC.


V-Mounts or ABs? That's a personal choice. I still see more V-Mounts in LA than ABs, but that's my experience. I still use my REDVOLTs occasionally for handheld work, though I wouldn't shoot all day with them. I'm finding that the REDVOLT XL might be a good solution for my traveling work though. That's something I'll consider soon. I know several shooters out here who use ABs. Most rental houses I work with have both. Studios I find lots of V-Mounts and ABs so it's a wash there really.

If anybody is curious I use Red Bricks, IDX, Dynacore, and GlobalMediaPro V-Mounts. I'm mostly using the Dynacores at the moment as they are 190Wh. Bigger and heavier, but longer camera uptime. That's been the biggest thing I've noticed on set over the last 3 years. Directors and Producers tend to like having the camera on for long stints. So that I adapted to. I usually have 4-8 batteries with me at any given time depending on the day. Studio shoots I can charge two V-Mounts happily while shooting with the other two. No biggie. Location work however..... Bring them all just to be safe.

 

[Eric Watson]

i actually hit up no film school to ask to submit a humorous article on similar subject matter after my rant... but i think i have a point...the way owner ops need to struggle today to make the ROI in the brief time frame they have is not at all like the traditional business model of film/steinbeck...also if super 35 is the new 16mm if all the sensors go big, glass aint gonna be gold then...its a scary world to buy anything i think and the sheer turn over rate just makes rentals all the more appealing i think for most businesses when everything you buy has a 1 or 2 year life span to try and work it

Send us a link to your article once the editor approves and publishes.
I'm sure it'll make a good read. A Brian Merlen Exclusive: "The Impact of Moore's Law on High Tech Camera Owner Operators"

 

[Brian Merlen]

Oh this is definitely an excellent point Brian. I agree with you on all fronts with one exception. The distinction here is that the client IS me.


Whoa! What does this mean?


Well Said!

Say you have a digital camera, any brand. It doesn't turn on, or gets a send in for service message. This is considered wear and tear. I haven't found a single insurer that covers a camera "bricking" a term used for it just dying and becoming a door stop randomly with no external factors causing it. if its not stolen, dropped, exploded, etc its not covered because when a digital camera dies without causation its defined as wear and tear damage. So if you just wake up one day to a dead camera/board/what have you...your facing 100 percent of that liability UNLESS your camera has a warranty...

This is what makes Red Armor key, 3 years of knowing you don't gotta pay if lasers damage your sensor, or a board randomly dies, you name it. These things do happen, and I don't mean with Reds specifically I mean with all high end digital cine cameras.


Going back to the buy a Scarlet upgrade to Epic thing the reason thats a better deal (minus color science of Dragon) is the fact you get one year of no worries vs 90 days. I in fact had a board die on me on my Scarlet I bought used, and it didn't happen within the first 90 days. So I just like to warn people that sometimes this stuff can pop up. I was lucky, it was a cheap board...but now that I am aware from the life lesson I realize how much worse it could of been if it was the wrong board/sensor and I was facing 100 percent of the costs.

As for timeliness strategy on getting a Scarlet Dragon I think that is a tough one. I asked my rep the other day to give me a Carbon one, no plans at this time to do so though. When is your project set to begin? The reality is depending where Red is at by then you may be facing a problem. Its really hard to plan a shoot around a camera that no one can get their hands on, and as much as we hope the phone is going to ring I am somewhat realistic about the process.

I have a friend who signed up on day one who is still waiting on emails for two Epics. I signed up months and months later after him. I love Red as a tool, I like the people who work here, but I simply cannot put faith that my specific camera will arrive any time relatively soon when my buddy is still waiting and I signed up in Sept and he signed up day one. That just doesn't add up for me, but I am in no rush so it doesn't matter. I think if it really comes down to it I'll finance a Carbon if needed. I'm waiting on some cash coming in that can get me one, but by the time its here I'm worried I will be too late to market so I might just grab some glass no clue really personally


(I actually was going to be one of the first Scarlet Dragons available, but switched lines to Epic for a business opportunity...I was very much on point during sign up day...and its my own fault I switched lines cuz I can't afford a second brain at that time...)


What about my financing idea? If you have 45k in hand buy the same package you would buy but just finance a carbon in place of the unavailable potentially Scarlet Dragon? that is really the only way right now to make sure your camera will be in hand for the shoot unless you rent one... but depending on your time frame you can wait...if you can wait out for them to start shipping Dragon M's thats like a huge mark down too...but again springing for these would be only to get your hands on it then and there via financing...like you said you can always resell the gear, even prior to paying it in full and I just don't know where Red will be at in the process realistically by the time you need the camera in hand for that deer analogy!

 

[Eric Watson]

.
9 okay back to the fun stuff: i think if you need dragon FF coverage you should consider at least consider cheap entry level cine glass. and entry level cine really isn't cheap relative to nikkors. your still talking a hefty commitment financially into schneider full frames, cp2s, canon cine, something that can cover, but still this isn't exactly affordable. for a complete set your still spending a fortune is the reality, but your paying for good mechanics, at least better mechanics then using say cine modded still lenses, or cheaper glass like rokinon cinema lenses... some people have told me to mod a set of leica stills before i buy cheap cine lens tho. so far i never bought any, its a big commitment and i need to think it through. the cheap stuff won't book like the expensive stuff, so i kind of just wait and bide my time now for a legitimate set

Hm. I've got such an assorted set of lenses. Using two sets of pristine AIS Nikkor primes but I'm afraid they're not going to cut it. Perhaps I'm being too picky. I spoke to a guy the other day whose shooting with them fine but he's not doing theatrical...and only 2K for everything. Plus, he only has the Red One. The two Zeiss ZF lenses I have may be fine but of course they're not designed for Cine. They'd need to be de-clicked. Doing things like follow focus will be a challenge. I'd just as soon buy another set of higher quality glass but I don't need to break the bank either. Those Zeiss .cp2 superspeeds have me curious I'll need to delve deeper into best lenses for Dragon sensor, 4K/5K, theatrical projection.

 

[Brian Merlen]

optically the nikkors would be fine, mechanically not so desirable.. people seem to love those new schneider full frames, might be worth a look. duclos is pretty good for the cine mods

 

[Ivan Kovax]

You need a 35mm prime. You need a 24mm prime. Also look at a wide angle lens.

I would sell all the Nikon glass and reinvest in glass that has the cine direction focus throw.

Also consider getting a variable ND or the Motion mount. You need ND of some type.

Premiere of course. A good laptop system that supports CUDA acceleration.

Tripod. Handheld rig.

That's a good start.

 

[Eric Watson]

No one is interested in selling their Dragons? Must be a premium that would lure some out. Say, what 40-42k?

Maybe so. We'll see if someone is willing to part ways with theirs.