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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 :)

Client interest for renting or recommending Dragon?

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Robert Ruffo New

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Epic MX was a tough sell. People wanted Alexa, or people had no budget and wanted BM. We rented our Red One MX more often than our Epic in 2013, and the Red One MX earned more money! (It's an amazing interview camera, and $400 less per day for the camera kit)

Same went for even getting approval to use an Epic on our own projects for clients. They all "heard that Alexa was better" (exception being fashion videos and music videos) so that Epic spent a lot of time on the shelf.

Frankly I wonder how anyone manages to amortize expensive add-ons like the Meisler module when I doubt clients would ever actually PAY extra for any of that, and I also doubt that kind of stuff would ever convince anyone to switch over to Epic over Alexa. It just doesn't make business sense. I'd love to be able to justify buying things like that, but I simply cannot. This is a business. It has to make money, not just feed my toy fetish.

I'm hoping Dragon will improve this situation. Has it? Are people asking for Dragon Epics? Or is Alexa still the no.1 rental/agency/DP choice by a long shot?

Would love to hear feedback on this.
 
When I'm the DP on a project I typically tell the client what I want to use.

sometimes new technology is a tough sell, but with Dragon - once I have one - my method will be the same.

if anyone's asking here is what I will say about it:

"We're looking for a new fresh look right ? Well, what if we shoot with the new Red Dragon camera? It's small and light so we can move fast, the "film stock" basis of it is a brand new sensor with greater color depth and richness to the image - besides the richness of the color and high sensitivity in lower light levels, it also has even more resolution - so if we need to pull stills for a print or web campaign we can do that."

or alternately:

"oh - cool - we want a sort of older film-style look to things - I think we should use the new Red Dragon combined with these vintage Leica R stills lenses - they have sort of a panavision spherical feel to them, and the richness of the image is like nothing else out there. Here - take a look at these shots on my reel - this was done with the Red Epic and just some canon zooms -but the leicas are even more rich. What's that you say? An Alexa? Yeah - that's a cool camera - how much am I doing handheld - and what is our manpower budget? Oh you want only one AC, and you only want a downloader, not a DIT with scopes and a technicolor DP lights? I think its gonna slow us down having just one AC - especially when we have that shot at the sand dunes on the third day. How about if we use the dragon, I'll get my wife to come help and download and verify the footage, and I'll get us a good deal on the Leica Rs. I think we can hand carry the package for most of the job, and the weekly is pretty decent on the Dragon package - also since it's so new it will make a great conversation piece at the agency meeting next month."

on the one hand $10k is a lot of money - on the other hand - I've started looking at it as a once a year expense in "media" and I get the latest "film stock"

i agree $10k is a lot to spend in leaner times, but the fact is - I'm going dragon for ME, and my projects, clients, and rental customers will reap the rewards as well - I like to share ;)

"cheap" clients have figured out that they can buy a blackmagic, use it for a whole job and sell it for $100 less than what they paid on craigslist two months ago.


Thats why I've chosen to sell people on my work and my personality, and the camera is just a fun tool that helps me make the picture.

if I can make $1000/month in the next 10 months with the camera - I've won. I'm definitely not saying "crash the market" with low rates - just happy to have a chance at some new experiments
 
There is a quality and improvement that once a good portion of DPs out in the world use it will gain popularity bound to grow in all of 2014.
This is not going to be an instant bam change over.
Allow it time for the movies to complete and come out that are shot on Dragon for it to filter into decisions that will sway towards requesting the Dragon more and more frequently.
I look forward to that in many ways.

The fact that you can upgrade your sensor for $10K providing you the latest advanced technology with an expanded latitude larger pixel count capabilities, faster media on the horizon and new color science to follow is a win win win considering that the EPIC camera body has been out for a few years now and the firmware has gotten to the point where its a WONDERFUL thing to use, a pleasure on any set and YET still improving with new functions and capabilities as time goes on.
Your talking about having a camera thats gonna do you well over the next who knows how many years.

Its going to get into the hands of the BEST DPs in the world quickly.
Currently with what
Phil Holland, Chris Probest, Mark Pederson, Diamond Bros, Diamond Co. , Tom Lowe, Peter L Collister, Neil Smith HDI, Mark Toia are showing, testing, doing, trying and shooting consistently respond with all highly encouraging feedback.


Being that they are on
Transformers 4
Exodus
Gone Girl
right out of the box just jamming.

3 of the biggest features currently shooting..

There is a sweet sweet future for Dragon cameras over the next 7 years and beyond.
The REDone which is still going exceptionally strong to this day is still renting on all levels of projects today as we move onto 2014.

So yes Dragon will improve the situation.

Im betting sensors on it.
 
I can tell you the rental house I keep my MX with is happily awaiting my Dragon and wishes I could offer them some logistical information... So I am hopeful the market is really there to justify the costs of this, plus mini mags...
 
Dan Kanes said:
When I'm the DP on a project I typically tell the client what I want to use.
Click to expand...
If there's anything I hear most often from major-name DPs, it's their frustration at being left out of the camera selection process prior to production. Most of the time these days, the producers will tell the DP what camera is going to be rented for the production, and he or she just has to deal with it. When I heard this from one guy, I said, "hey, if you really hate the camera, could you just walk?" He shook his head and said, "first, I have to work. Secondly, I can make several different arguments pro and con, but the bottom line is I'm expected to make the camera work, and I just grit my teeth and get the job done." I've had that same conversation with six different people in the last year.

I think Red would potentially gain massive inroads if they had a way to record Apple ProRes 444 log files exactly as Alexa does, at least for American dramatic TV production. The "instant" editing capability is a huge plus factor for Alexa, as is the reliability, ease of workflow, and great ergonomics. These are all beyond picture quality, so it's clear producers make these choices on a variety of factors -- and sometimes the DP and director are left out of it.

The major A-list people can pick and choose what they want -- up to and including film. But it's becoming a tougher battle.
 
Third party recorders offer Alexa like recording options already and are quite easy to use, we just need to convince people it works just as well...
 
I think Dragon will be one of the most talked about cameras in 2014 and 2015. A wise investment.

Happy new year all!!!!
 
I get the feeling that as long as producers are making the decisions, it won't matter. Even now, people don't say ' We want to shoot RED Epic at 5k', they merely say, 'We're shooting on RED' (and it ends up being an R1). It'll likely be the same moving forward. It's the same with Alexa too; there are like four different versions of Alexa available, but I rarely hear which one is actually used/requested even from the DOPs... And even worse, they often shoot ProRes/1080 when they could have substantially more quality. As busgets shrink, it's the people in charge of the money making the decisions on a lot of shoots. Like the wild west out there, and I don't thunk Dragon will change that.

Better question, out of all the people that hire you or rent your gear, how many actually know the difference between the various cameras you offer? 10%? It's gonna be the same with Dragon, and I'd argue that people will be unwilling to pay much more even though it's substantially better.
 
A response, to sum up our 2013 experience with our EPICs.

We, as a RED-centric boutique rental house in Los Angeles, have been very pleased with our investment and activity of rentals over the past two years. I hear that Arri is used frequently on 1080p projects for TV, but in my experience, so much more content is being shot on REDs. Many Blockbuster features went RED last year, and an insane amount of projects for commercial, music video, Indy Features, and Fashion photography are now shooting RED. TV has been a slower adopter due to the 1080p delivery, which is quickly moving towards 4K. Now, more and more TV shows are shooting RED. http://www.red.com/shot-on-red/television?genre=All

We have supported all types of productions and genres and have steadily built up our arsenal, much due to the modularity, flexibility, and affordability of the RED design.

Here are just some of the clients / projects we've been fortunate to have been involved with in 2013 (that didn't shoot Arri): :-)

Toyota Avalon Campaign (w/Luis Flores)
Tesla Commercial
Electric Daisy Carnival (Documentary)
National Geographic Underwater 3D (w/Ken Corben)
Women of Wrestling TV Show (w/Luis Flores)
"In The Blood" (Action Thriller Feature)
"Lipstick Liberal" (Web Series)
"White Orchid" (Feature)
"jOBS" (Feature - Additional Camera)
"Villisca" (Horror Feature)

Just some of the projects of this past year... and we look forward to an even more prosperous 2014. Thank you RED Digital Cinema... We can't wait for our Dragons... coming soon!

Happy New Year, Everyone!
 
Matthew Libatique shot (I think he just finished shooting it or at least the main part) biopic "Pele" on Red Dragon, Jeff Cronenweth shooting David Fincher's "Gone Girl" on Red Dragon, Dariusz Wolski shooting Ridley Scott's "Exodius" on Red Dragon (in native 3ality 3D, if on-set photos weren't hot desert mirages). That's just what I knew from reading Reduser and the news. I guess a bit of name-dropping will do the work. If the new sensor & the camera are good for those guys, I'm sure clients will be fine.

BV2M_q2IgAAS52t.jpg

680x478

MV5BNjI4NzMyODA3M15BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwOTkxNTc4MDE@._V1_.jpg


P.S.
If IMDb info is correct, fellow reduser Peter Lyons Collister, ASC most likely shot a movie called "Barely Lethal" starring Jessica Alba, Samuel L. Jackson and Hailee Steinfeld on Red Dragon, too.
 
It's going to be up to "us" and the heavy hitters to let it be known what exactly Dragon can do.

It's currently the king of the mountain in the vast majority of features. For those who have very anti-Red mindsets, whatever their reasons, they will be the tougher sell.

However, in this UHD/QHD world it makes nothing but sense. The game has changed a bit with Dragon, it separates itself from Mysterium-X in much improved ways. There's not much to criticize at the moment from an image quality perspective and I have a feeling there's a few more things on the way.

$10K upgrade for current Epic Mysterium-X upgraders for the current "top dog" digital cinema camera? Should be a no brainer. I spent $20K to get to it from Scarlet and I'm feeling okay with that even at the moment. Hard path there, but Dragon thus far is as promised and the image quality is there.
 
Phil Holland said:
It's going to be up to "us" and the heavy hitters to let it be known what exactly Dragon can do.

It's currently the king of the mountain in the vast majority of features. For those who have very anti-Red mindsets, whatever their reasons, they will be the tougher sell.

However, in this UHD/QHD world it makes nothing but sense. The game has changed a bit with Dragon, it separates itself from Mysterium-X in much improved ways. There's not much to criticize at the moment from an image quality perspective and I have a feeling there's a few more things on the way.

$10K upgrade for current Epic Mysterium-X upgraders for the current "top dog" digital cinema camera? Should be a no brainer. I spent $20K to get to it from Scarlet and I'm feeling okay with that even at the moment. Hard path there, but Dragon thus far is as promised and the image quality is there.
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I partly agree with you. It is up to us.

But 4K is debatably visibly different to most human eyes at normal viewing distances from 1080p. If most human eyes can't see the difference why bother? I can barely see a difference, side-by side, and I have almost triple 20/20 vision. And we all saw James Bond projected in Imax from a 2K Alexa and it looked truly great. Most films are not viewed with people sitting so close vs image size (so few screen heights away) , and virtually no TV is.

Dragon has many awesome selling points such as color, crazy-assed dynamic range, small cam size, extremely fast read-out (no skew) overcranking etc, but this whole UHD finishing thing has many producers rolling their eyes and, quite frankly, me too. It's like selling speakers on their ability to produce sounds beyond the limits of human hearing. Really, who cares?

There are advantages in post to shooting high res that many people forget (like better object tracking capabilities), but "true 4k" finishing is simply not one that our limited human vision can actually differentiate.
 
Robert Ruffo New said:
I partly agree with you. It is up to us.

But 4K is debatably visibly different to most human eyes at normal viewing distances from 1080p. If most human eyes can't see the difference why bother? I can barely see a difference, side-by side, and I have almost triple 20/20 vision. And we all saw James Bond projected in Imax from a 2K Alexa and it looked truly great. Most films are not viewed with people sitting so close vs image size (so few screen heights away) , and virtually no TV is.

Dragon has many awesome selling points such as color, crazy-assed dynamic range, small cam size, extremely fast read-out (no skew) overcranking etc, but this whole UHD finishing thing has many producers rolling their eyes and, quite frankly, me too. It's like selling speakers on their ability to produce sounds beyond the limits of human hearing. Really, who cares?

There are advantages in post to shooting high res that many people forget (like better object tracking capabilities), but "true 4k" finishing is simply not one that our limited human vision can actually differentiate.
Click to expand...

We've had this exact conversation before regarding 4K. I think I linked to several white papers and studies that prove otherwise. Audiences in general like the better picture quality. That's a hard truth, it's just better. Not to mention my own R&D on the subject matter. I personally see the difference. I have spoken and shown literally now across the globe about our journey to achieve this "window effect". In 2013 both in London and in LA.

We are trying to break the wall between us and the display medium. It's as simple as that. There's a great deal of things that happen to humans on a psychological level when enjoying entertainment. In terms of observing human expression; micro muscle firings in the cheeks, the subtle quiver of an eyelid, the slow stickiness of lips separating, etc... Much of these things you don't see via 2K/1080p unless you're going in for a CU.

I believed I also referenced the relevance of 4K in regards to S35 and how it's not only been optically worked with, but also the digital scanning and laser recording process. In many ways that brand of 4K has been around for some time. This was the foundation of Red even making cameras. It's important to remember that these were the standards set by the demands of higher end motion picture production. These are digital cinema cameras after all. I find it odd that some desire to go backwards when it took so much to get here. Perhaps it's the localized perspective of the market and career you've had where 1080p became a standard and has been "enough". That's not the industry I come from and I understand that my experience my not be the same as others, but overall the progression of technology follows a very clear path. That's what should be observed. CES is literally next week and you're going to see tremendous amounts of 4K there.

The interesting thing here is we aren't always trying to create "crystal clear" and perfect images. We're still chasing the aesthetic of a motion picture medium. There's still magical chaos in lenses, camera movement, and other things that aren't exactly natural. That's the whole point of a "movie going experience" in reality.

There's really no reason to try and be an anchor when literally the world around you is working very hard to sail to new horizons. Trying to achieve something more. Something greater.

Those words might be lost in the rental perspective or even on myself the next time I'm shooting "canned commercials", however anytime I am truly trying to create I desire to strive for more.

In terms of your points on Dragon. I agree. You can finish at whatever resolution you really want and still receive the benefits of the new technology. These are important advancements and this will show itself to be true once more and more professionals get to see and use the camera.

On your points on viewing distances, actually a good deal of viewers of various forms of entertainment tend to sit in a natural sweet spot that is within the cone of view of the viewer's eyes. There are limitations and comfort related things that come into play when people watch say a movie on a cell phone, but the tunnel vision effect kicks in once focus is achieved. I brought up more than once about comparing PPI to DPI in the print world and that's where the trend is going in reality.

I could go on and on. This is oddly something I've been explaining to people most of my professional career. Imagine how crazy I sounded before 4K cameras or displays existed. Luckily I don't feel as crazy, because a good deal of others want to join me in the madhouse.
 
I think Epic is great I like it far more than any alexa but to rent it out to "film people" and their crew to use it for a day or two does not really fly that well as we have it setup. To many parts, things to learn and fiddle with. I guess it can be done much different but I think most people find the alexa easier to learn, I can still get lost in menues and not know how to remove the grid of a screen or make audio actually record and such. It's more "stable" when a camera cart with a normal rental alexa setup is rolled ito the studio for sure. And the AC's and all the rest gest nervous when I bring the Epic, and start to ad modules change settings etc. Most AC's here hardly know how to get into the play menu, and does not have the time to learn what HDRx 2 stops is and how much that will or will not affect motion blur in the given shot etc. etc. Basically RED brings options, Epic even far more than MX, and way more than any Alexa all these options is great for some but is for sure causing stress for others. Simplicity is a factor as anything else and when marketing products just that is usually something that is not accounted for and it's usually difficult to understand for the every day user, that the once a month user will just not cope.

But personally I love it, I do not care if it's impossible to rent out. I want all the options and many more thats probably the biggest reason why I like RED. quite difficult to combined "simple" with "do it all kick ass, better than the rest" :)
 
Björn Benckert said:
I think Epic is great I like it far more than any alexa but to rent it out to "film people" and their crew to use it for a day or two does not really fly that well as we have it setup. To many parts, things to learn and fiddle with. I guess it can be done much different but I think most people find the alexa easier to learn, I can still get lost in menues and not know how to remove the grid of a screen or make audio actually record and such. It's more "stable" when a camera cart with a normal rental alexa setup is rolled ito the studio for sure. And the AC's and all the rest gest nervous when I bring the Epic, and start to ad modules change settings etc. Most AC's here hardly know how to get into the play menu, and does not have the time to learn what HDRx 2 stops is and how much that will or will not affect motion blur in the given shot etc. etc. Basically RED brings options, Epic even far more than MX, and way more than any Alexa all these options is great for some but is for sure causing stress for others. Simplicity is a factor as anything else and when marketing products just that is usually something that is not accounted for and it's usually difficult to understand for the every day user, that the once a month user will just not cope.

But personally I love it, I do not care if it's impossible to rent out. I want all the options and many more thats probably the biggest reason why I like RED. quite difficult to combined "simple" with "do it all kick ass, better than the rest" :)
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There are definitely more things to access and learn with Red cameras. And Red has wandered away from industry standards on some of their accessories. So I do find ACs tend to complain about Reds more than any other camera. However, I also feel there is some responsibility on their part to keep up with things as well. Rental companies can do their part by building packages that are fit for a fast paced production world. Then the AC's can get trained so when they get to set they know how everything works. If they don't like something about the camera package, the time to complain is at the camera checkout or by meeting with rental house and sharing their concerns. Things have been done the Arri way for many years, so I respect that ACs are comfortable with that world and there's no doubt that a lot of the hardware to support these cameras has been battle tested and just works most of the time. There s something to be said for having that muscle memory when things get intense on set. But we are in 2014 and the camera world has changed dramatically. New cameras coming out all of the time and it means keeping up with technology. I don't envy the stress that is put on camera ACs. On big jobs, they have a ton of pressure on them to nail focus, get the cameras configured as quick as humanly possible, oversee other assistants, and knowing how to interface with these digital cameras. It's by no means easy, but fortunately they are compensated pretty well for having to deal with all that.

I think RED's commitment to educating people in the industry is a very good part of their business and they'll need to continue to do that moving forward or at least work with partners to do it so that they can continue to get everyone up to speed on the RED system. The more this happens, the more comfortable people will get with the tools, and the better the PR in the long run.
 
Steve Sherrick said:
There are definitely more things to access and learn with Red cameras. And Red has wandered away from industry standards on some of their accessories. So I do find ACs tend to complain about Reds more than any other camera. However, I also feel there is some responsibility on their part to keep up with things as well. Rental companies can do their part by building packages that are fit for a fast paced production world. Then the AC's can get trained so when they get to set they know how everything works. If they don't like something about the camera package, the time to complain is at the camera checkout or by meeting with rental house and sharing their concerns. Things have been done the Arri way for many years, so I respect that ACs are comfortable with that world and there's no doubt that a lot of the hardware to support these cameras has been battle tested and just works most of the time. There s something to be said for having that muscle memory when things get intense on set. But we are in 2014 and the camera world has changed dramatically. New cameras coming out all of the time and it means keeping up with technology. I don't envy the stress that is put on camera ACs. On big jobs, they have a ton of pressure on them to nail focus, get the cameras configured as quick as humanly possible, oversee other assistants, and knowing how to interface with these digital cameras. It's by no means easy, but fortunately they are compensated pretty well for having to deal with all that.

I think RED's commitment to educating people in the industry is a very good part of their business and they'll need to continue to do that moving forward or at least work with partners to do it so that they can continue to get everyone up to speed on the RED system. The more this happens, the more comfortable people will get with the tools, and the better the PR in the long run.
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I agree, But also some way down the line choices need to be made do you want to attract people working with rentals or people owning cameras or a little bit of both.. I think red do a lot of both which is not to shabby. Also the improvements on the red one mx to epic was a lot about cutting weight, adding options not so much about picture quality if you think of it. Yes epic is better than red one MX but the difference is not directly poking you in the eye, and also if you think of it epic MX is built around quite old sensor. Now if dragon holds what is promised then that will all change a lot as I think DR is the number one thing. People are used to work around heavy cameras etc but the digital cameras have been a cut down on DR for a long time. And now it's back to be equal to film in a lot of ways, not in every way, I find digital more linear, the photo sites will fill up 100% and spill over and burn while film just do not really do that as it got close to perfect dynamic rounding in that magic silver. But personally I'm confident to get be on par with epic for most scenarios as I ever saw on film, with dragon I think we will start to move forward again, something we have not done for many years. I mean it was about 12 year back things started to go backwards. To me it was when all of a sudden the music videos was not shot on super 35 50asa any more, people started to bring in kodakVision 3 an all that shit and things was just not as good any more. We got used to it but hey those 50 asa days has at least for me been the picture prime until just recently. Still the MX sensor amazes me even in tungsten light it just shines. To me pictures like this MX tungsten stuff looks like 50 ASA film super 35.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/107237384@N04/11738364294

I think dragon will, as we been told move even past that, into a place of prime picture quality where I never been before, which is quite amazing when thinking of it. I never got to work on any 70mm highress productions so 50 ASA S35 4k RGB Arri scans is the best motion stuff I ever had to stick my little vaccom pen into so far. So personally I can not wait, and I do not know what was worse not knowing when we would get the upgrade or now when our epic M is actually on it's way to red head courters to get the dragon fix. Thinking of it, I actually been waiting for this moment, when we make progress again for over 12years :)

I easily convince at least one client to use Epic over Alexa every other week, the proof is not out in the shooting field the proof is in the pudding thats delivered. End clients and producers understand what the extra struggle (if there was one on set was for) when they see the imagery from the client sofa watching the final film. As on set epic image looks ugly on screen, and it has it's other issues and the AC's will complain, they do not get paid to learn sadly they get paid for hours booked working so they always stress over new things and client does not really get easily impressed about a camera being small that's easier with bigger cameras. But most people understand picture quality when they see it and my clients sees it in the epic MX allready for sure, and dragon will make things flush :)
 
I think forcing a professional to learn something new when the alternative gives the same (if not better) results out of the box (without having to learn anything or go through expensive post) is a haggard proposition. If Dragon doesn't blow the socks off of DoPs in terms of quality (that is to say, if it's only marginally better than Alexa), or doesn't blow the socks of producers in terms of rental costs (that is to say, its not as cheap as current Epics), than I'm not sure how much more successful it will be than MX. I mean, honestly, why bother?

R1 was different -- it was both raw AND 4k at $25k. Leaps and bounds beyond what was currently available and at 1/10th the cost. Nowadays, the delta is far smaller, so why experiment if the benefits aren't going to be massively superior?
 
Mike P. said:
I think forcing a professional to learn something new when the alternative gives the same (if not better) results out of the box (without having to learn anything or go through expensive post) is a haggard proposition. If Dragon doesn't blow the socks off of DoPs in terms of quality (that is to say, if it's only marginally better than Alexa), or doesn't blow the socks of producers in terms of rental costs (that is to say, its not as cheap as current Epics), than I'm not sure how much more successful it will be than MX. I mean, honestly, why bother?

R1 was different -- it was both raw AND 4k at $25k. Leaps and bounds beyond what was currently available and at 1/10th the cost. Nowadays, the delta is far smaller, so why experiment if the benefits aren't going to be massively superior?
Click to expand...

Yes I think if you plan to charge more for the dragon per day than you have done for the epic MX then that's a tough sell. Epic Mx will drop in rental price when the dragons are out, at least that's what I think and normally rental clients want whats best in the given category and the price difference is not that big. As the upgrade cost is about the same as the price for a good tripod or such. Looking at a whole camera setup with everything from cart to filters it actually not much to talk about so price will probably not increase just as they did not increase for ALEXA XT when it came out, instead the XT bumped down the normal Alexa and especially the Alexa studio... I have friends that actually invested in a codec recorder right before the XT came out... it does not rent so well these days to say the least. So progress does not only hit RED owners for sure it goes across the board and to be honest I'm very happy I did not by an alexa studio instead of our epic. And I'm very happy to upgrade to dragon instead of XT. If you think r3d's are cumbersome for post then Alexa XT RAW is quite a beast to handle in comparison nothing you DIT, edit or work around with your macbook air to say the least :)
 
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