rand thompson
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How Red Cinema Camera Changed Camera Industry
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How Red Cinema Camera Changed Camera Industry
- Thread starter rand thompson
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Karim D. Ghantous
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No mention of Jim's experience as a photographer and cinematographer (and camera collector). No market context. This person basically took a bunch of random facts, and other people's footage, and pasted them together into one presentation without properly understanding them. This is sub-mediocre. If you never shot with Red cameras before, this is not going to convey anything meaningful to you.
I'm not even going to leave a comment or a thumbs-down on the video, as doing so would give it too much credit.
I'm not even going to leave a comment or a thumbs-down on the video, as doing so would give it too much credit.
Nils J. Nesse
Well-known member
The other day I re-read an interview with Les Zellan of Cooke Optics, from FDTimes Spring 2020. When asked about how the business has changed in the last years, he mainly talked about Red and Jim 
Here's a link to the PDF.
And here's the quote:
How has the business changed? I assume that’s what drove you to do this expansion?
The business has changed ever since Jim Jannard announced the RED One camera in April 2006 and jump-started the new digital era in cinema. Up until then, all the companies—ARRI, Angénieux, Cooke, ZEISS—dealt with the same 200 or 300 main customers. It was very nice, very clubby: basically Denny Clairmont,Otto Nemenz, Joe Dunton, Movietech here in London and the major rental companies in the world. Everybody knew everybody. When the first RED One cameras came a year later, in April 2007, the market expanded exponentially, almost overnight.
In the film days an ARRI camera package could cost $500,000—a half million dollars—and would not be replaced for more than a decade. Then, suddenly people thought they could make a movie for $20,000 with a RED One. I can’t tell you how many people called and said, “I’m getting my RED One tomorrow and can I get a whole set of Cooke lenses tomorrow?”
It was aspirational and a paradigm change.
Jim had a dream. I remember that first announcement at NAB2006. They were taking orders and you got a piece of metal with a serial number of the future camera on it. A year later, he hada big red tent that was about two-thirds of the way down in the South Hall and there was a quarter mile line of people all the way to the entrance of the RED booth. RED won best new product at the show without having a product yet. It was brilliant. That is when I realized this industry is about ready to be knocked on its ear because we all marketed like it was still 1950. Jim came in and marketed like it was today, and he really took it by storm.He started the digital revolution. And then, of course, everybody followed him. We went from a clubby little business of a few hundred customers to tens of thousands almost overnight.If the digital revolution had never happened, we’d still be here— ARRI, Cooke, Panavision, Angenieux, ZEISS, Canon, Fujinon.But now, it’s us along with what seems to be half your FDTimes sponsors. The lens and equipment business has expanded because the market has expanded and people see opportunities. We all have benefitted from this rapid acceleration in the market.
Here's a link to the PDF.
And here's the quote:
How has the business changed? I assume that’s what drove you to do this expansion?
The business has changed ever since Jim Jannard announced the RED One camera in April 2006 and jump-started the new digital era in cinema. Up until then, all the companies—ARRI, Angénieux, Cooke, ZEISS—dealt with the same 200 or 300 main customers. It was very nice, very clubby: basically Denny Clairmont,Otto Nemenz, Joe Dunton, Movietech here in London and the major rental companies in the world. Everybody knew everybody. When the first RED One cameras came a year later, in April 2007, the market expanded exponentially, almost overnight.
In the film days an ARRI camera package could cost $500,000—a half million dollars—and would not be replaced for more than a decade. Then, suddenly people thought they could make a movie for $20,000 with a RED One. I can’t tell you how many people called and said, “I’m getting my RED One tomorrow and can I get a whole set of Cooke lenses tomorrow?”
It was aspirational and a paradigm change.
Jim had a dream. I remember that first announcement at NAB2006. They were taking orders and you got a piece of metal with a serial number of the future camera on it. A year later, he hada big red tent that was about two-thirds of the way down in the South Hall and there was a quarter mile line of people all the way to the entrance of the RED booth. RED won best new product at the show without having a product yet. It was brilliant. That is when I realized this industry is about ready to be knocked on its ear because we all marketed like it was still 1950. Jim came in and marketed like it was today, and he really took it by storm.He started the digital revolution. And then, of course, everybody followed him. We went from a clubby little business of a few hundred customers to tens of thousands almost overnight.If the digital revolution had never happened, we’d still be here— ARRI, Cooke, Panavision, Angenieux, ZEISS, Canon, Fujinon.But now, it’s us along with what seems to be half your FDTimes sponsors. The lens and equipment business has expanded because the market has expanded and people see opportunities. We all have benefitted from this rapid acceleration in the market.
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Les is right on really and mentioning Clairmont provided enough nostalgia to whack the keys while I have a coffee.
This month I've been in the film industry for 25 years and I feel fortunate to have been involved during the critical time where digital became the primary medium, like it or not. The first 12 years of my career nearly every project I worked on was a Panavision shoot with a bit of Arri in the mix, for which we used Denny and others. Nearly all Kodak as well spanning a time when Vision was still being used, Vision2 was the primary, and Vision3 was released and became the mainstay. Along the way, digital was causing a stir, a lot of use watched closely with new technology becoming available, and we were fortunately very early to the party each time there was something worth exploring. Mainly the Viper and PV Genesis were showing a lot of interest while some of the industry was rather against it.
RED announced their concept and it shook the cages a bit harder. I was working in the world of larger budget VFX films and the RED One had so much potential. This was at a time when we had two laser recorders, two Solitaires, and a film scanner as well as the rather expensive infrastructure to support all that. We're talking millions of dollars here. You could get up and running with a RED One for around $30-40K for a basic shooting package. And at the time you could still buy used Super Speeds and K35s for sub $8,000 for a set.
Digital was an obvious thing coming as image quality was becoming acceptable and nearly on the same level of a film camera when it came to image quality. Arri was also working on the D series which eventually transformed into the Alexa once Arriraw was locked down and you can see how the previous iterations developed into it's big sister.
This time frame was also an era of growth in the expanding market for entertainment content. Films, series, docs, reality television exploded, etc primarily due to cable. Suddenly there were a lot more avenues and opportunities. And a great deal of lower tier cameras were being used in some of these places.
We seem to forget now how DV impacted certain corners of the industry, but looking at things objectively it was all going towards a more accessible market, slowly but sure. A great deal of people, mostly folks who were around during this era as well, vilify RED for making digital cinema very affordable. But even Arri would be considered part of the problem from that perspective. And two years before the 2000s finished up we were greeted with DSLRs, which really caused a whole different playing field.
Whenever chatting about this era, I think it's important to mention the Panasonic HVX200. Had one of the first in the country. I strongly feel that camera laid the groundwork where digital cinema cameras wanted to be. In it's own world it built on the DVX100's success, but provided solid state recording. It was a weird sensor and a few other oddities, but it was bloody close.
Sensor technology needed to advance as well as other hardware, like storage and such. Also power requirements, heat, and mobile power evolved a great deal. Once the sensor's got that place where a film-like image could be captured without the lingering scent of digital pissing on the image (a lot of people this generation don't even know what that means even) digital cinema became the thing.
Here's the fun one. Take a look in your local market for rental houses. You'll find most of them came into existence during the last decade, occasionally a smidge earlier. That's big. The concept of the owner operator was also birthed, but not really as there were plenty of owner ops who previously jumped in on Sony and Panasonic broadcast level cams, but the concept was new to the film industry.
In present day a bigger explosion occurred due to streaming and new media. Some people don't recall that streaming also started in the 2000s, but as a viable profitable platform, it didn't hit hard until the 2010s.
For those who have been reading my thoughts along the way on REDuser since around 2007, previously a bit active on DVXuser before that, my general perspective hasn't changed in scale and scope of where I thought things were going and ended up going. This has all been an effort to get digital to approach more closely to film. Image quality, formats, etc. While at the same time doing things film can't do, otherwise why choose digital over film? Smaller cameras, not waiting for dailies, longer roll times, avoiding lab fees, etc. Areas where digital obviously has big advantages.
Fast forward to modern day, 2021. We have Super 35, VistaVision, and even 65mm 5-perf digital solutions. Giving the format flexibility that film had to produce improved image quality and various technical and creative aesthetic attractions to each format. I'll toss in Micro Four Thirds as the defacto Super 16mm analog in modern times and perhaps cell phones or smaller 1" sensors as Super 8? That's more in gest because you can get pretty decent image quality off of all these formats in modern times.
Now the big question is where this is all going from here in the changing face of our industry.
On a personal note, the RED One was the thing that broke the ceiling and allowed RED to enter "Hollywood", but DSMC really was the game changer and that camera did the trick. That camera was so damn small lightweight. I think Arricam LT was the smallest camera you could rig up at the time if I recall right, and you could get that down to a pretty tiny package. Most film camera setups though were significantly bigger and heavier. And then gack came into the equation. Cables, tape, and junk everywhere. Still actually happens to this day, but about DSMC2 onward the concept of cable-free is extremely seductive and now many compact setups only feature a cable for a wireless monitoring solution or other small accessories.
Arri had the pedigree and Alexa became more successful than what they thought at the time. So Arri continued to develop better Alexas, somewhat the strategy from the Ds to Alexa, sans pandemic we'd have seen their first new sensor in a long while, but that's coming soon. RED had work to do on a few fronts and Dragon sensor onward it really was a semi-equal playing field in terms of "camera of choice" industry-wide, Mysterium-X was that for some as well. Now that's barely a memory as other manufacturers are scratching the paint of the film world a bit more. Sony Venice captivated minds moreso than the F55 and F65, but somehow fell out of fashion quickly. I still see F55s in the world however. Canon's had a couple scratches and the C500 MK II is their most capable camera to date. A weird balancing act between what should be a more video-centric camera and a more film-oriented camera seems to be the struggle. I hear that mentioned all the time.
I could write another book on the battles of 2K versus 4K and beyond, but that's mostly history now as well as every manufacturer now offers a 4K or 4K+ solution and even those with brand bias or some other influence have mostly moved on despite delivering to 1080p or whatever. 4K delivery is the big emerging market still as of now with only a few 8K outlets currently available, but it it's growing as well.
This month I've been in the film industry for 25 years and I feel fortunate to have been involved during the critical time where digital became the primary medium, like it or not. The first 12 years of my career nearly every project I worked on was a Panavision shoot with a bit of Arri in the mix, for which we used Denny and others. Nearly all Kodak as well spanning a time when Vision was still being used, Vision2 was the primary, and Vision3 was released and became the mainstay. Along the way, digital was causing a stir, a lot of use watched closely with new technology becoming available, and we were fortunately very early to the party each time there was something worth exploring. Mainly the Viper and PV Genesis were showing a lot of interest while some of the industry was rather against it.
RED announced their concept and it shook the cages a bit harder. I was working in the world of larger budget VFX films and the RED One had so much potential. This was at a time when we had two laser recorders, two Solitaires, and a film scanner as well as the rather expensive infrastructure to support all that. We're talking millions of dollars here. You could get up and running with a RED One for around $30-40K for a basic shooting package. And at the time you could still buy used Super Speeds and K35s for sub $8,000 for a set.
Digital was an obvious thing coming as image quality was becoming acceptable and nearly on the same level of a film camera when it came to image quality. Arri was also working on the D series which eventually transformed into the Alexa once Arriraw was locked down and you can see how the previous iterations developed into it's big sister.
This time frame was also an era of growth in the expanding market for entertainment content. Films, series, docs, reality television exploded, etc primarily due to cable. Suddenly there were a lot more avenues and opportunities. And a great deal of lower tier cameras were being used in some of these places.
We seem to forget now how DV impacted certain corners of the industry, but looking at things objectively it was all going towards a more accessible market, slowly but sure. A great deal of people, mostly folks who were around during this era as well, vilify RED for making digital cinema very affordable. But even Arri would be considered part of the problem from that perspective. And two years before the 2000s finished up we were greeted with DSLRs, which really caused a whole different playing field.
Whenever chatting about this era, I think it's important to mention the Panasonic HVX200. Had one of the first in the country. I strongly feel that camera laid the groundwork where digital cinema cameras wanted to be. In it's own world it built on the DVX100's success, but provided solid state recording. It was a weird sensor and a few other oddities, but it was bloody close.
Sensor technology needed to advance as well as other hardware, like storage and such. Also power requirements, heat, and mobile power evolved a great deal. Once the sensor's got that place where a film-like image could be captured without the lingering scent of digital pissing on the image (a lot of people this generation don't even know what that means even) digital cinema became the thing.
Here's the fun one. Take a look in your local market for rental houses. You'll find most of them came into existence during the last decade, occasionally a smidge earlier. That's big. The concept of the owner operator was also birthed, but not really as there were plenty of owner ops who previously jumped in on Sony and Panasonic broadcast level cams, but the concept was new to the film industry.
In present day a bigger explosion occurred due to streaming and new media. Some people don't recall that streaming also started in the 2000s, but as a viable profitable platform, it didn't hit hard until the 2010s.
For those who have been reading my thoughts along the way on REDuser since around 2007, previously a bit active on DVXuser before that, my general perspective hasn't changed in scale and scope of where I thought things were going and ended up going. This has all been an effort to get digital to approach more closely to film. Image quality, formats, etc. While at the same time doing things film can't do, otherwise why choose digital over film? Smaller cameras, not waiting for dailies, longer roll times, avoiding lab fees, etc. Areas where digital obviously has big advantages.
Fast forward to modern day, 2021. We have Super 35, VistaVision, and even 65mm 5-perf digital solutions. Giving the format flexibility that film had to produce improved image quality and various technical and creative aesthetic attractions to each format. I'll toss in Micro Four Thirds as the defacto Super 16mm analog in modern times and perhaps cell phones or smaller 1" sensors as Super 8? That's more in gest because you can get pretty decent image quality off of all these formats in modern times.
Now the big question is where this is all going from here in the changing face of our industry.
On a personal note, the RED One was the thing that broke the ceiling and allowed RED to enter "Hollywood", but DSMC really was the game changer and that camera did the trick. That camera was so damn small lightweight. I think Arricam LT was the smallest camera you could rig up at the time if I recall right, and you could get that down to a pretty tiny package. Most film camera setups though were significantly bigger and heavier. And then gack came into the equation. Cables, tape, and junk everywhere. Still actually happens to this day, but about DSMC2 onward the concept of cable-free is extremely seductive and now many compact setups only feature a cable for a wireless monitoring solution or other small accessories.
Arri had the pedigree and Alexa became more successful than what they thought at the time. So Arri continued to develop better Alexas, somewhat the strategy from the Ds to Alexa, sans pandemic we'd have seen their first new sensor in a long while, but that's coming soon. RED had work to do on a few fronts and Dragon sensor onward it really was a semi-equal playing field in terms of "camera of choice" industry-wide, Mysterium-X was that for some as well. Now that's barely a memory as other manufacturers are scratching the paint of the film world a bit more. Sony Venice captivated minds moreso than the F55 and F65, but somehow fell out of fashion quickly. I still see F55s in the world however. Canon's had a couple scratches and the C500 MK II is their most capable camera to date. A weird balancing act between what should be a more video-centric camera and a more film-oriented camera seems to be the struggle. I hear that mentioned all the time.
I could write another book on the battles of 2K versus 4K and beyond, but that's mostly history now as well as every manufacturer now offers a 4K or 4K+ solution and even those with brand bias or some other influence have mostly moved on despite delivering to 1080p or whatever. 4K delivery is the big emerging market still as of now with only a few 8K outlets currently available, but it it's growing as well.
John Brawley
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There's lot's that's on the nose in that video....
For starters, they weren't the first to do raw or 4K, Dalsa was. Everyone seems to forget that 4K wasn't something that RED invented. They simply adopted it.
Look at the name.
RED.
It's about a rebellious posture. An anti establishment positioning. Something that's revolutionary.
RED. Revolution. Like as in....a camera for the people. Sounding kind of socialist / communist now aren't we...
I was always amused at the bro's on here jumping up and down on the proudly made in the USA pride but tied into a brand name that literally is entwined with communist revolutionary thinking. Red's under the bed anyone...?
But that is their brand identity. Change. Accessible. For the masses. New ways of doing things that aren't tied to the old ways of thinking. I think it's fitting for what they achieved.
For me, personally, what RED did was change workflow through REDCODE. It wasn't the cameras. It was the codec. That was the real genius and change of RED.
For the first time you had a "film like" workflow. I mean it's called "raw" even though it really isn't. But conceptually, to a film trained / experienced DP or crew, the concept of "raw" unprocessed negative being "processed" into an image was revolutionary for moving images. It's easy to take that for granted today.
Bundling that raw workflow with compression AND metadata was the truely innovative leap that was made.
That's the new epoch. Raw workflows. It's what everyone else does now, but at the time no one was really thinking that way. Having a file that could be "re-processed" later. You could record the DP's intent, but you could choose to start again from scratch. Just like film negative. That was revolutionary thinking in moving image digital imaging.
Resolution was always just marketing over function.
Sensor size increase was inevitable, the main limitations are still today, manufacturing yield.
I shot RED One for what I believe was one of the first network / free to air TV shows in Australia. From memory, large sensor meant a 5Dmk2 or a RED one. Alexa still wasn't available, and the only other option was a D21. Dalsa was around but on it's last legs, and only if you lived in LA. Viper was 2/3". Most digital cinematography in Australia was F900 or if you were lucky, the panavised F900. Genesis was hard to come by too unless you were a US budget show.
So your choice for a S35 or larger digital sensor was 5Dmk2, a Red ONE or a lens relay with some form of jiggling ground glass on a smaller sensor.
RED educated DP's and post facilities in a new way of processing images. And they made it a lot more cost effective, so it opened up more competition with those established post houses, who today are largely mostly all out of business.
For better or worse, they created a whole market of owner operators.
I's also argue that there's been many waves of democratisation. RED weren't the first to make production more affordable. There's Dogma for starters, but even earlier than that Super 16 in there 90's was also doing similar things. Digital 8. Mini DV. HDV. All came before RED.
RED seem to have drifted into competing more at the high end with a confusing array of announced and altered cameras and features. They seem to be chasing and wanting to become the establishment they sought to replace.
RED is now facing competition from other players arguable doing what they set out to achieve and have ended up pricing them selves out of the market of doing....
Komodo seems to be doing really well, and it seems like it's a return to their original mission and brand identity. To empower the masses. For better or worse, the equipment isn't really the limitation anymore. The gatekeepers that used high price points are no longer relevant.
Komodo is a true return to RED's original roots and brand promise.
JB
For starters, they weren't the first to do raw or 4K, Dalsa was. Everyone seems to forget that 4K wasn't something that RED invented. They simply adopted it.
Look at the name.
RED.
It's about a rebellious posture. An anti establishment positioning. Something that's revolutionary.
RED. Revolution. Like as in....a camera for the people. Sounding kind of socialist / communist now aren't we...
I was always amused at the bro's on here jumping up and down on the proudly made in the USA pride but tied into a brand name that literally is entwined with communist revolutionary thinking. Red's under the bed anyone...?
But that is their brand identity. Change. Accessible. For the masses. New ways of doing things that aren't tied to the old ways of thinking. I think it's fitting for what they achieved.
For me, personally, what RED did was change workflow through REDCODE. It wasn't the cameras. It was the codec. That was the real genius and change of RED.
For the first time you had a "film like" workflow. I mean it's called "raw" even though it really isn't. But conceptually, to a film trained / experienced DP or crew, the concept of "raw" unprocessed negative being "processed" into an image was revolutionary for moving images. It's easy to take that for granted today.
Bundling that raw workflow with compression AND metadata was the truely innovative leap that was made.
That's the new epoch. Raw workflows. It's what everyone else does now, but at the time no one was really thinking that way. Having a file that could be "re-processed" later. You could record the DP's intent, but you could choose to start again from scratch. Just like film negative. That was revolutionary thinking in moving image digital imaging.
Resolution was always just marketing over function.
Sensor size increase was inevitable, the main limitations are still today, manufacturing yield.
I shot RED One for what I believe was one of the first network / free to air TV shows in Australia. From memory, large sensor meant a 5Dmk2 or a RED one. Alexa still wasn't available, and the only other option was a D21. Dalsa was around but on it's last legs, and only if you lived in LA. Viper was 2/3". Most digital cinematography in Australia was F900 or if you were lucky, the panavised F900. Genesis was hard to come by too unless you were a US budget show.
So your choice for a S35 or larger digital sensor was 5Dmk2, a Red ONE or a lens relay with some form of jiggling ground glass on a smaller sensor.
RED educated DP's and post facilities in a new way of processing images. And they made it a lot more cost effective, so it opened up more competition with those established post houses, who today are largely mostly all out of business.
For better or worse, they created a whole market of owner operators.
I's also argue that there's been many waves of democratisation. RED weren't the first to make production more affordable. There's Dogma for starters, but even earlier than that Super 16 in there 90's was also doing similar things. Digital 8. Mini DV. HDV. All came before RED.
RED seem to have drifted into competing more at the high end with a confusing array of announced and altered cameras and features. They seem to be chasing and wanting to become the establishment they sought to replace.
RED is now facing competition from other players arguable doing what they set out to achieve and have ended up pricing them selves out of the market of doing....
Komodo seems to be doing really well, and it seems like it's a return to their original mission and brand identity. To empower the masses. For better or worse, the equipment isn't really the limitation anymore. The gatekeepers that used high price points are no longer relevant.
Komodo is a true return to RED's original roots and brand promise.
JB
Karim D. Ghantous
Well-known member
I bought a DV camera with progressive scan back in '08. Finally! After 25 odd years of video cameras, progressive scan was being made available in affordable cameras. It would take longer for high frame rates. 8mm cameras from the 1930s could do 64fps easy.
I recall Jim writing about how the word 'red' was about passion, excitement, etc. Colours can mean many things. Red is a Roman Catholic colour, and blue is a Protestant one. Which is why the Manchester United football club has red jerseys, and why the Manchester City football club has blue ones. Or so I was told. Yellow is also a RC colour. It's not that simple because France and Italy have uniforms with blue and white.
Red can be bad, like being 'in the red', or it can be good, as in 'painting the town red'.
We could go on all day! I wonder how much he had to pay for red.com though.