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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 :)

History...

Axel Mertes said:
Hi Jim,
What was the moment you thought of "against all Canon's, Sony's and Panasonic's in the world - it can be done"?

Axel
Click to expand...

I think Jim's character can be understood a lot more when you think of the origin of conception. If I am not mistaken, Jim was not "out to get Canon/Sony/Panasonic/Arri".

He wanted to give filmmakers/photographers like himself a tool which the "big players" were (and to this day) not giving. A digital alternative to film which wouldn't be a disgrace to film itself.

Correct me if I'm wrong...
 
Joseph Hutson said:
I think Jim's character can be understood a lot more when you think of the origin of conception. If I am not mistaken, Jim was not "out to get Canon/Sony/Panasonic/Arri".

He wanted to give filmmakers/photographers like himself a tool which the "big players" were (and to this day) not giving. A digital alternative to film which wouldn't be a disgrace to film itself.

Correct me if I'm wrong...
Click to expand...

Not sure about this Joseph... I don't want to speak for him, but if memory serves, he told me once he was getting frustrated that the major players were engaged in
"Feature Creep" (My words not his) and KNEW that cameras of today could be capable of more. He was a very frustrated customer that got tired of waiting for a camera company to really push the envelope.. And knew that as long as they could make money doing it slowly, they would continue to do so.

So he decided to build the camera he always wanted, and share it with the rest of us.

And I think this was the birth of RED.

Did I get this right Jim?

Jay
 
Jay A. Kelley said:
Not sure about this Joseph... I don't want to speak for him, but if memory serves, he told me once he was getting frustrated that the major players were engaged in
"Feature Creep" (My words not his) and KNEW that cameras of today could be capable of more. He was a very frustrated customer that got tired of waiting for a camera company to really push the envelope.. And knew that as long as they could make money doing it slowly, they would continue to do so.

So he decided to build the camera he always wanted, and share it with the rest of us.

And I think this was the birth of RED.

Did I get this right Jim?

Jay
Click to expand...

"Feature creep" explains the fact that there still isn't a digital alternative which can be placed against film quite like what RED has done. No? :)

Anyway, if I'm wrong...I stand corrected.
 
What I got from Jim

What I got from Jim

Even though my experience with Jim is rather short and inconsequential in the grand scheme of RED's history, it changed my life in a profound way.

You cannot possibly work with a man like Jim and remain unaffected. Interestingly enough, Jim's greatest influence on me meant that I left the RED team and pursued my passion of telling stories. After watching this man operate, I realized that I had been given a great gift. An education.

From that day I try to follow these simple principles every day:

1/ Only work on what you are passionate about (making cameras wasn't one of them) and let it consume you.

2/ Don't be conservative, aim very high then commit. The details will come. The higher the goal, the more people will rally around you.

3/ Be honest (sometime brutally), generous and love your team. You will get the best out of them and they will be loyal.

I'm sure Jim and others like Jarred who work with him on a daily basis would have a lot to add to this list, but these are what I got from him. I feel incredibly privileged to have met him.

Frederic Lumiere
 
Joseph Hutson said:
I think Jim's character can be understood a lot more when you think of the origin of conception. If I am not mistaken, Jim was not "out to get Canon/Sony/Panasonic/Arri".

He wanted to give filmmakers/photographers like himself a tool which the "big players" were (and to this day) not giving. A digital alternative to film which wouldn't be a disgrace to film itself.

Correct me if I'm wrong...
Click to expand...

I spoke with Jim a few times about this and there is quite some stuff he has to tell... (or not, its up to him, after all).

I think disappointment is always a main trigger.

Just think like this: "If I can shoot a ~4K frame with a 1Ds in 1/120th of a second, why can't I shoot 60 of them per second?" :-)

Axel
 
lumiere said:
Even though my experience with Jim is rather short and inconsequential in the grand scheme of RED's history, it changed my life in a profound way.
Click to expand...

Far from inconsequential IMO. You dragged Ted into it :)

I'll never forget your keynote at NAB 2006 before the RED booth opened - it was just perfect.
 
1st off... welcome to the forum virtual-1 but we need a real name.

2nd... I only started RED because I could see that none of the "big guys" were going to develop cameras to properly replace film. The DVX100 was the 1st camera to even offer 24P to the prosumer! The Varicam was 720P and Sony 900 was 1080P. When George Lucas shot 1080P on a major league feature, I was convinced that the industry would try to convince everyone that 1080P was "good enough". The Genesis was 1080P. Arri had just released a paper (still on their website) telling the industry that you should be scanning film at 4K instead of 2K because there was so much more detail. I agreed with Arri. Then they released the D-20 and all bets were off for me. The industry could have made 4K the new standard, but apparently they weren't about to. Since I am the customer and no one was going to build what I wanted, I took matters into my own hands. Pretty easy stuff to understand. I didn't target any companies... I targeted a spot they apparently weren't going to go. My instincts seem good in hindsight. 5 years later, Sony has just now decided to announce the F65. And the price will be $200K less than their 1080P F35. My bet is that we had something to do with that.

Jim
 
lumiere said:
Even though my experience with Jim is rather short and inconsequential in the grand scheme of RED's history, it changed my life in a profound way.

You cannot possibly work with a man like Jim and remain unaffected. Interestingly enough, Jim's greatest influence on me meant that I left the RED team and pursued my passion of telling stories. After watching this man operate, I realized that I had been given a great gift. An education.

From that day I try to follow these simple principles every day:

1/ Only work on what you are passionate about (making cameras wasn't one of them) and let it consume you.

2/ Don't be conservative, aim very high then commit. The details will come. The higher the goal, the more people will rally around you.

3/ Be honest (sometime brutally), generous and love your team. You will get the best out of them and they will be loyal.

I'm sure Jim and others like Jarred who work with him on a daily basis would have a lot to add to this list, but these are what I got from him. I feel incredibly privileged to have met him.

Frederic Lumiere
Click to expand...

Well said Frederic.. Couldn't agree with you more.

Remember that first NAB... you were on fire.. almost too literally ;)

Its been amazing to watch you over the years follow your dream.. and become incredibly successful doing so.
 
Jarred Land said:
Quite Honestly.... Jim's most important contributions to this program have nothing to do with the size of his wallet.
Click to expand...

Jarred, I wish I know Jim like you do, I would surely learn a lot -- I'm not one that typically likes the idea of working for others, but talk about a dream job! Anyways, having only met him for brief periods a handful of times, it is easy to see that he is where he is today because of his inspiration and perspiration (among other key factors).....his wallet is merely a byproduct of it.
 
lumiere said:
I try to follow these simple principles every day:

1/ Only work on what you are passionate about (making cameras wasn't one of them) and let it consume you.

2/ Don't be conservative, aim very high then commit. The details will come. The higher the goal, the more people will rally around you.

3/ Be honest (sometime brutally), generous and love your team. You will get the best out of them and they will be loyal.

Frederic Lumiere
Click to expand...

Okay. My life is changed.

Thank you. There truly is life changing inspiration in these threads.
 
Jim, given the substantial impact you have already made on the industry, how would you describe your vision of the future of RED?
 
2nd... I only started RED because I could see that none of the "big guys" were going to develop cameras to properly replace film.
Click to expand...

and boy were you right!! I remember when I started shooting in the late 70's. Had great cameras for their time. RCA TK-76 and Ikegami 79-A. They were about as good as it got in the video realm. But they were SD cameras. Maybe 700 lines of resolution with little control over depth of field. I was thinking that someday one of the big boys would develop a camera that shot like video but had the cinematic look of film. I didn't believe it would take a quarter century and I am convinced that had it not been for Red, I would have never been able to acquire such a camera. The trickle down technological advancements of the powers that be would have dragged out 4k delivery for decades had Red not stepped forward and jerked a knot in their entrenched marketing plans.

The real history of Red will indicate that a small group of highly focused individuals changed the way high end cinema is obtained by the masses. Thank you Jim. Thank you Red team and thank you to the faithful who but down their hard earned money when many screamed SCAM. It's really quite an amazing History for a company that virtually no one had heard of only a few years ago. Now as I approach my 60th birthday. I not only own the camera I dreamed of so long ago. I will soon take possession of a second, even more amazing , camera. I believe I can hear the hands of skilled craftsmen carefully building my Epic as we speak.

Long live Red
 
Frank Weeks said:
Thank you Jim. Thank you Red team and thank you to the faithful who but down their hard earned money when many screamed SCAM.
Click to expand...

Yes, thank you.

Being newer to the film industry and even more so to cameras, I've been searching for standard prosumer 1080p cameras that could fit my needs and last for a long time. The more I looked, the more I realized that everything came with compromises that I wasn't willing to live with. When I finally found RED and started researching more, I found that even though the costs are higher, there aren't any of the compromises I was afraid of. Now I'm not afraid of what I'm saving up for. Thanks RED for getting rid of those fears and giving me something better to hope for. You've made my future much brighter.
 
I gotta say, Jim... I've really enjoyed going through the history thread... I've been following Red since before a Red was a Red, and it brought back a lot of memories that had been in long-term storage.

A lot has happened since it was "just" a concept, hasn't it?
 
some humorous contributions to the History - digging back a little further...

Jim annoyed with Sony's failure to add 24p to their HDV line... http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/panason...orders/51044-hvx200-vs-z1-fx1-simple-guy.html

Jarred talking about how investing in his DVX100 instead of a GL2 "changed his life" (little did he know the train that was coming...): http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/panasonic-dvx-dvc-assistant/15710-all-about-buy-gl2.html#post111248

if you dig even further in those archives, you can find threads where Jarred debates the relative merits of the GL2 v. DVC80 -

and this is a really good early interview with Ted, because it captures some of the energy of those early days...

http://kino-eye.com/2006/04/27/ted-at-red/

My first encounter with RED was watching the project develop, from an interested geeky bystander position. Like everyone else caught up in watching the project develop, I shared the frustration with the trickleware business model. But the price for a RED camera seemed out of my reach. But when the Milk Girls footage posted, I couldn't stop looking at the texture of the images. And when I added up all of my camera upgrades and realized it was over $11,000 in four years, suddenly that $17,500 for a single camera didn't feel like that much of a stretch. I realized that I needed to change my perception.

What was the worst that could happen? It was a $1000 deposit with a 110% guaranteed refund.

The thinking was a little naive, but sometimes ignorance is bliss. Little did I know that when you board the RED train, you get on a fast track.
 
Meryem Ersoz said:
some humorous contributions to the History - digging back a little further...

Jim annoyed with Sony's failure to add 24p to their HDV line... http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/panason...orders/51044-hvx200-vs-z1-fx1-simple-guy.html
Click to expand...

Wow, I had no idea Jim was a prolific camera forum poster before RED! Seems like most people had no idea who they were talking to. The wonder of the internet...a forum poster just asking for the obvious from the big corporations, and two years later delivers a camera that kills their top of the line F900. 5 years later they can't even get one of their own cameras on a tent pole their own studio is producing (Spider-man).
 
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