Everything changes... IMPORTANT post.

[Rob Ruffo]

there are two kind of persons in this thread. person 1 is happy to get more tools for the same dollars to make what he wants and earn on it. person number 2 just owns for the ownings sake. these times are over. producers pay for skills. it shouldnt matter
what tools you offer to get to the goal.

and if you dont have producers paying for skills, well get better producers or better skills. Both will bring you much more dollares.
btw. thanks to this bold guy lurking around here and lowering prices.

Skills are great. That is what we mostly sell here. But when producers RENT GEAR FROM US THAT IS A SEPARATE ISSUE from paying for my or Amber's time! Are you guys really that clueless about how to set up a company, how to plan physical plant investments and amortization? Take a business course or something! Really!

 

[Mike Garrick]

Some Epic owner's need to start dealing with reality. I don't hear anyone bitchin about how the Arri 535 5 years ago was 500k camera system & is now for sale on ebay for 13K or Sony's F35 220K? now for sale for 8K.

Just because you work in this industry doesn't mean you are owed a living. Just because you own a high end camera doesn't mean you are owed a living. As a producer, if you are pricing in your wife's holiday into your day rate & your an average DP than I'll find some else. If you're an outstanding DP then I may well pay for the "wifes holiday" with no quibbling .

Welcome to 21st century production, deal with it or get out. No amount of complaining will or can change it.

 

[John semikian]

Jarred I'm with you on this one. I've been coming and reading posts here for a loooong time. this is my first post but it's just to say I know some people are pissed off and all that, but obviously they're missing the point. some people can't see past (I spent $x more then it is now) BS. point is when a company admittedly announces that they have found cheaper ways to make a certain product (which is good business) and then for ethical and competitive reasons decide to drop the price of that product it's only good for the consumer, yes even the one who bought one at a higher price, because now he can add another one to his arsenal for a cheaper price, not to mention repairs and parts for the one they already own should also be cheaper. Just about nothing electronic you buy today will be worth the same amount in the future and sometimes that happens in 6 months time. Rob if this bothers you don't ever buy an apple product. btw Apple seems to be doing just fine financially even though they keep releasing new stuff and dropping the value of old stuff. probably because there stuff still kicks ass.

with that said JARRED i got a question. let's say you drop the Epic X price, then 4 months later you release the Dragon. Will the Epic X (or something similar like an upgraded Scarlett to Epic standards) still be available in the market for that new dropped price late 2013? or are you gonna do away with selling Epic Xs when Dragon is unleashed? I ask because I'm planning on adding an Epic X to my arsenal around my birthday, summer of next year.

P.S. you guys do kick ass and people who may feel like they paid $X more then they should've aren't really gonna go anywhere else cause I believe you guys are gonna keep kicking ass. besides those types are usually impossible to please.

yes im quoting myself.. Jarred hope you answer, I know it's gonna be hard to weed through most of the none sense that went on, on here since you last read this thread. are epic Xs still gonna be available late next year? or will all Epics be Dragons by say September 2013?

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Rob,

my post was not directed at you in first persons, but at all of those that here in this thread that like you have been negatively effected by in one way or an other, I do fill your pain, yet I firmly state my points in saying that what ever the reason is for your disappointment, you need to appreciate the state of the Market, and the honesty of how RED has chosen to run their business, yes a Business, which musty adapt also to what the current Economy and cost of operation and manufacturing dictates, and of course there is also the Competition which is catching up to RED more then some of us want to believe it is, and RED is adapting to that end as well, and so must we.

No matter what will be said here, RED's decision has already been made, only a matter of accounting to know exactly what the price decrease will be per given item, but there is no turning back on it, so all we should be is supportive and thankful, for the consideration of RED towards us, and in keeping us informed ahed of time, which is a major show of respect and character to me and a much appreciated one.


Again, understanding that each of us have different financial and business situations, I can only say that at any time a company decides to lower their prices on equipment should only bring positiveness.

I do respect Red. That I agree with. I also hope they keep this in mind when they make their final decision. Little guys like us will be hard hit if the reductions are too much. Some even wiped out. We're little guys who backed Red fully and jumped on board with the idea of embracing new technologies. That our investment suddenly have almost no resale value, no rental value - the fact that some kid in Kansas can shoot his Vimeo spectacular at 5K instead of 4K won't mean much when the books stop balancing for little guys like that. Please think fo the guy who will no longer be making their time plus rental on gigs, just their time, but with a 40-50K loan to pay off. SOme of us have kids to feed off all this. It's going to hurt for a lot of people.

 

[Alexey Datsenko]

We are with my underdogs guys a few days ago have made decision that we have only one next year to earn money for our project by rental! Then rental of Epic will not allow to earn money for projects because RED or Blackmagic will make more cool or more inexpensive camera. But we underestimate the RED We have only 3-4 months. But now to remain on the rental market and earn money for new projects it is needs earn 6K for Dragon it is only one way to remain on the rental market. But the main thing I think is to go for production service not for rental.

 

[Cid J Salcido Uyarra]

yo.. local 600 DIT here..
600 doesnt do SHIT for you... thats not where the jobs come from.. they just, lets be honest, take my money.. and provide me my healthcare (although i believe i was getting benefits before the union, as i was still in the payroll systems...

anyways.. long story short.. 600 is not like a record deal.. its a labor union.. you gotta get your own jobs

yeah exactly

the 600 will take anyone in if you're willing to pay it is just a labor union

rolling with a clique that has your back in the production world or trying to get new union clients is like dropping a new album.

getting signed is part of the process as is putting the work down that people recognize.

 

[Olivier Madar]

Excellent choice !

Olivier

I know there is some disappointment out there.. we anticipated that. It is a hard position to be in..

Either lower prices to what they really should be, and piss off our loyal customers that we owe the world to.... or keep the prices the same, not piss off our existing customers , but charge too much for new customers in a growing more "realistic" market that we like to think we helped create.

We started all this to keep things fair.. charging fair prices against our costs and not compromising product to protect legacy. Making just enough profit to keep healthy. We don't sample the market to determine pricing. We charge what is fair. For the bigger picture.. that is good for everyone. For the little picture.. that can personally sting a little when the market evolves.

Hopefully we do enough things that make people feel good about what we do to offset the sting that comes fact that the world changes.. and follow the nature of electronics.

This could of gone 2 ways...

1. We could of released a brand new camera model for alot cheaper that did the same or more.. Trust me.. that would of put what you are already holding in your hand in a much worse position on the rental market.

2. Lower the price and continue along the upgrade system to keep what you are already holding in your hand "current", with the possible side effect of perhaps lowering rental prices.

If you look at it from 40,000 feet.. Door #2 is the better choice. #1 is inevitable... it will happen some day. But #2 keeps what you already own capable of being the best possible.

 

[Rob Ruffo]

Some Epic owner's need to start dealing with reality. I don't hear anyone bitchin about how the Arri 535 5 years ago was 500k camera system & is now for sale on ebay for 13K or Sony's F35 220K? now for sale for 8K.

Just because you work in this industry doesn't mean you are owed a living. Just because you own a high end camera doesn't mean you are owed a living. As a producer, if you are pricing in your wife's holiday into your day rate & your an average DP than I'll find some else. If you're an outstanding DP then I may well pay for the "wifes holiday" with no quibbling .

Welcome to 21st century production, deal with it or get out. No amount of complaining will or can change it.

I don't think anyone here feels they are owed a living because of any of this. I am seriously considering getting out of owning any further cameras though because things may have moved to the point where they are impossible to amortize fast enough. I'll just rent the next model. I never said I was pricing my wife's holiday into my day rate - where did you get that idea? I was merely giving an example of the effect of lost income on... Never mind.

There is a difference between complaining and providing respectful customer perspective and feedback. It seems sometimes on Reduser you can have any opinion as long as you fully agree with the majority - otherwise you get flamed. Remember than in the 1950s, the majority thought you could hide under a desk to protect yourself from a nuclear blast.

I also think that we can change the future - we all change it in our way. We can all make a difference.

That said, I am leaving the discussion thread.

 

[Alexey Datsenko]

I do respect Red. That I agree with. I also hope they keep this in mind when they make their final decision. Little guys like us will be hard hit if the reductions are too much. Some even wiped out. We're little guys who backed Red fully and jumped on board with the idea of embracing new technologies. That our investment suddenly have almost no resale value, no rental value - the fact that some kid in Kansas can shoot his Vimeo spectacular at 5K instead of 4K won't mean much when the books stop balancing for little guys like that. Please think fo the guy who will no longer be making their time plus rental on gigs, just their time, but with a 40-50K loan to pay off. SOme of us have kids to feed off all this. It's going to hurt for a lot of people.

I am sure if RED beat at these small underdog guys who have been waiting for 3-4 years every day be at the reduser from Epic project start remember how these guys everyday read every news about development of Epic then testing then removal bugs, then delay and delay, then accumulate all their money because they trust in RED and after these 3-4 years of waiting only 8-10 months ago they spend all they money it is 40-50K and now how it for these guys to see that they have mistaken and they would to wait only a few month to buy Epic on the lower price!
I think this guys who trust RED don't deserve so kick from RED! it is the most faithful consumer!
So I think it is question of honour for RED to get free upgrade for Dragon for these guys! Only upgrading for Dragon can compensate the losting money for these guys or at least credit it because these guys just haven't money again to investment in RED after big investment a few month ago and will not be able to get this investment back because of decrease of price for Epic!

 

[Mike Garrick]

Rob, I'm all for negating collective "mind think' ... Because in there lies creative opportunity.

What worries me is some posters seem to be proscribing "entitlement" . In my world your only as good as your last job.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

I can be certain that Sony isn't going to care about our RED rental rates come October 30th. And Nokia already has an 8k camera phone. So technological progress is an inevitable and predictable path. But we are really at an awkward time from a business perspective. What you're going to see if there is a massive price drop is a serious price hike in RED camera rental prices and a lot of people getting out of the rental business. It's going to become like the old DVX rentals back in the day. I remember the DVX going for $450 a day. Scarlet prices, with 1/4 the retail price. Why? Because rental companies knew that the cameras would only last a year. They charged the same price for Arri film cameras, since they knew they could rent them out for decades even if they cost more.

But that's where the awkward bit is going to come in. If the scarlet brain dropped by half... a full scarlet kit would still only be about 15% cheaper. You need lenses, support, rods etc. All of that very quickly overwhelms the price of the brain if you want a nice kit. I would say my brain was about 1/3rd my kit's value. So it's still prohibitively expensive for an individual to buy at $20-$25k but people are going to expect rental prices to drop by half... they won't or the people offering those prices will never make their money back.

The problem as a Scarlet owner I see is that nobody will bother to Rent a Scarlet. In my experience I've seen the exact opposite of Tim. With a full kit a Scarlet isn't that much cheaper. A scarlet is 1/10th the camera at 1/3rd the price. Now it's going to be 1/10th the camera at maybe almost the same price. Why on earth would anyone go with a Scarlet when they're already paying $500+ a day for kit rental with a fluid head, matte box, follow focus etc?

Things look even bleaker for Scarlet when you look at the ambiguous upgrade path now available which has gone from "definitely an upgrade" to "we'll see". If the Dragon upgrade costs more than Epics' we're looking at upwards of $10k to upgrade and only marginally better than an Epic on price. If the Epic drops to RED One pricing ($17,500) + ($6k Dragon) = $23,500. And Scarlet ends up being $10k + $10k Dragon then the Scarlet will be finished. Even if they cut the price of the Scarlet in half $5k + $10k Dragon and you're at $15k/$23.5k 66% of Epic's features but 1/10th of its bandwidth. The camera just doesn't make any sense. If people are stretching to buy a Scarlet on the hopes that they'll pay it back in rentals they would be crazy. Nobody would rent a Scarlet when you can get an Epic in that scenario for an extra $100 or so. And without any hope of rentals even $17k is way too much for 90% of the market.

I've helped friends put together packages for their business needs and the sweet spot most of them are looking for is a ready to shoot package for about $8k. That's the price of a Dragon upgrade alone. No price decrease will make sense to them unless the they could also make $8k in additional rentals. The bottom of the market is going to go to the BMD and GH2s. The top is going to demand 3:1 compression and 60p. There's nowhere left for Scarlet soon IMO if Epic drops into the ~$20k price bracket. Today there is about a $200-$300/day price gap between Epic and Scarlet. That's noticeable to a producer. $100 is not. This is the old 3k for $3k battle again. Red identified this problem once before and killed the product since it's unsustainable.

Jim is right. Everybody is going to own Epics. The question though is whether everyone to bought into the Scarlet bandwagon will jump ship before Dragon. Without a solid upgrade path I think you would have to be out of your mind to upgrade to Dragon in 6+ months if you're a Scarlet customer.

To those complaining about the complaining because "Your Ipod drops in price every year!" There is a huge difference between an ipod and cinema camera. A cinema camera can be rented. An ipod cannot. The question isn't whether people will use a RED camera the question becomes "why not just rent?" My workstation gets used 10 hours a day 5-6+ days a week. And even as a high end machine that works out to a couple dollars a day over 18 months. Compare that to a $25k piece of equipment that even an active production company probably only needs 1-2 days a week on average and it starts getting really hard to justify ownership unless you're a dedicated rental house with back to back rentals.

 

[Jarred Land]

ah i forgot, if you are a real rental company, the camera body doesnt really matter,
its the lenses, support, wireless follow focus etc. i did see canon 7D/Master prime combos
goe out with a steadycam operator for 3000 dollars a day.

You are probably correct.. at least that is what the rental companies keep telling us.

Remember when we came on the scene there was no Alexa.

Apart from Broadcast cameras, There was not much of anything capable other than $200,000 cameras on their shelves. Quickly our little $17,500 R1 camera started to shoot some pretty big movies.. getting chosen over some very expensive alternatives. It had nothing to do with the cost of the camera... it had to do with the quality of the image. Rental companies liked it because it was cheap to get into and it still played along with all their lenses and support equipment that they make the real money off of.

We always have your best interest in mind.. really. Sometimes we take alot of flack for that.. because its not always what everyone else is doing. We made a camera that shot images that would stand up for years to come... because it was so obvious to see ( at least to us ) that 1080p wasn't enough. Finally, just a few weeks ago the new 4K Consumer standard was set. This consumer standard dictates everything all of us here do, if we like it or not. The new Spec that started specifically calls out a requirement that no upscaling is allowed. Its not a good idea to shoot in 1080p anymore.... even if you can still get away with it.

Making a 1080p camera is incredible easy.. we could of done it very quickly and made a ton of money. But I wouldn't of shot it... neither would Jim. Hell.. we tried that with the 3K Scarlet remember.. we got all the way up to right before shipping.. shot with it one day and realized that even 3K wasn't enough... and pulled the plug. Because it wasn't good enough. Not for us.. not for you.

We are passionate about making the best images we possibly can.. That's our job. We make it, put as low of a price tag as humanly possible on it, and then hand it over to you. You then go and find a way to make money with it. That's your job.

But allas.. these conversations get tiring. It seems like this always happens when we try to be generous.

We recieved shit from some people over our upgrade program that gave everyone full price trade ins on their cameras.. still can't believe that one.

Some people that only ended up paying 10k for their Epic through that trade in program inevitably now will bitch that something is going to happen to the rental rates they were getting for the last year based on a 35k camera.

Give people a mountain of gold and they will complain about needing to climb it. That's just the way it is I guess.

 

[Ketch Rossi]

... Give people a mountain of gold and they will complain about needing to climb it. That's just the way it is I guess.

Not me, I'll be extremely grateful for it and start chipping away at the bottom if I can't climb it... Till the mountain comes down...


What I am trying to say... Again... Is Thank you!!

 

[Felix K.]

Hell.. we tried that with the 3K Scarlet remember.. we got all the way up to right before shipping.. shot with it one day and realized that even 3K wasn't enough... and pulled the plug. Because it wasn't good enough. Not for us.. not for you.

Don't start me again. I quite would have liked to make my own decision there... I thought the reason was the lense??

 

[Andy Kolb]

Any news about the 50.000$ deal to get a free dragon upgrade?
Will that amount be lowered next week?

 

[Rob Anderson]

Any news about the 50.000$ deal to get a free dragon upgrade?
Will that amount be lowered next week?

You'd be surprised at how easy it is to clock $50k. Even with the body decrease in price, by the time you're through buying the 9" monitor, some media, a Rocket card, batteries, cables, a Gunner, the Meizler and a few other things... You'll be there no sweat.

 

[Jarred Land]

Don't start me again. I quite would have liked to make my own decision there... I thought the reason was the lense??

Lenses could be fixed. Falling short on resolution could not.

 

[Dave Blackham]

You are probably correct.. at least that is what the rental companies keep telling us.

Remember when we came on the scene there was no Alexa.

Apart from Broadcast cameras, There was not much of anything capable other than $200,000 cameras on their shelves. Quickly our little $17,500 R1 camera started to shoot some pretty big movies.. getting chosen over some very expensive alternatives. It had nothing to do with the cost of the camera... it had to do with the quality of the image. Rental companies liked it because it was cheap to get into and it still played along with all their lenses and support equipment that they make the real money off of.

We always have your best interest in mind.. really. Sometimes we take alot of flack for that.. because its not always what everyone else is doing. We made a camera that shot images that would stand up for years to come... because it was so obvious to see ( at least to us ) that 1080p wasn't enough. Finally, just a few weeks ago the new 4K Consumer standard was set. This consumer standard dictates everything all of us here do, if we like it or not. The new Spec that started specifically calls out a requirement that no upscaling is allowed. Its not a good idea to shoot in 1080p anymore.... even if you can still get away with it.

Making a 1080p camera is incredible easy.. we could of done it very quickly and made a ton of money. But I wouldn't of shot it... neither would Jim. Hell.. we tried that with the 3K Scarlet remember.. we got all the way up to right before shipping.. shot with it one day and realized that even 3K wasn't enough... and pulled the plug. Because it wasn't good enough. Not for us.. not for you.

We are passionate about making the best images we possibly can.. That's our job. We make it, put as low of a price tag as humanly possible on it, and then hand it over to you. You then go and find a way to make money with it. That's your job.

But allas.. these conversations get tiring. It seems like this always happens when we try to be generous.

We recieved shit from some people over our upgrade program that gave everyone full price trade ins on their cameras.. still can't believe that one.

Some people that only ended up paying 10k for their Epic through that trade in program inevitably now will bitch that something is going to happen to the rental rates they were getting for the last year based on a 35k camera.

Give people a mountain of gold and they will complain about needing to climb it. That's just the way it is I guess.

Well all I can say is we are pleased and proud to own Epic. The camera opened doors for us we could not have possibly hoped to walk through with out it. So thank you Red.

 

[Jarred Land]

Well all I can say is we are pleased and proud to own Epic. The camera opened doors for us we could not have possibly hoped to walk through with out it. So thank you Red.

Dave thanks.. And thanks to everyone else that is being supportive.

 

[Alexey Datsenko]

You are probably correct.. at least that is what the rental companies keep telling us.

.

Don't worry about big rental companies! These fat cats find the way to save and earn their money!
You can't beat them! But you kick a small underdogs guys or small company! You beat the small guys!
Every small production or person now telling to himself: What stupid I was to spend all my 40K for Epic 8-10 month ago it was need just wait after 3-4 years of waiting to wait once more 8-10 month!
I am not talking about decreasing the price it is progress it can't be stopped and it is cool, I am talking that these guys just haven't money to investment 6K in Epic again and can't earn these money because rental price for their Epic will be 200-250 usd in a 3-4 month after new Epic price and the main, new top Epic with Dragon sensor and these guy will not be at the top level with their expensive and no upgrated Epic. So think please about after one kick at these guys give one prize for these guys in upgrading for Dragon it would be honest and it allow to win some time.