Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

LA Times Article - nice, but some things they neglected to mention.

TedRed

TedRed

"The Mouth"
Joined
Dec 30, 2007
Messages
394
Reaction score
0
Points
0
There's an article in the LA times Sunday magazine that will hit tomorrow (the online version is already out there, as another thread here has discovered) and many people have been emailing and letting me know how much they liked the article.

Good stuff there - however after many hours of me being interviewed for the article, they neglected to mention some key things that we discussed at length , so I thought I would mention them here. Matt the author is a really nice guy and a good writer, and certainly has his take on all the time we spent to create the story he wanted people to read… as expected he would not include everything we discussed, since the piece can only be so long, and he as the writer has a certain goal in mind to get a good mainstream read on his piece… so this is not a criticism at all, just some comments of mine before this goes to very wide distribution tomorrow.

So they fact checked everything under the sun with me on this, ad nauseam, much fact checking on things that didn't make the final article.. but somehow neglected to fact check the proper name of the town that RED started out in, that would be Lake Forest, not Lakewood. (apparently there is a Lakewood CA sort of near Long Beach, but it's no where near Lake Forest, it's closer to BellFlower :-)

No mention of the heroic and tireless efforts of the team at RED, developing, building, engineering and getting out in to the world the RED ONE and EPIC, and how much of a team effort it actually is to bring this much change to life, we discussed at length how critical this was to our success. The personality part I get, it's a way to get people to relate to the story beyond the technology, but so much is missed on that front by just taking about me as the face of the company - just one very small part of the world of RED.

They did not mention that Panavision is now one of REDs larger customers, with many our our cameras in their inventory, supporting many major motion pictures worldwide. The angle was to see how much of a story could be made on the "Panavision vs. RED" dynamic, which I would not buy into. We are at a state now where they send ton of our RED ONEs and EPICs out on all kids of gigs and support them just as they would their film cameras… and as much as I like a good drama, and perhaps in the early days of RED growing into itself this may have been a real story, there just isn't really one there any longer.

No mention of the fact that EPIC cameras are being built in the USA, right in Orange County, REDs birthplace. I think this is a really big deal, and I don't think there are any other products of the sophistication of the EPIC being built here in the USA (much less anywhere on the planet) - someone correct me if I'm wrong please.

Some nice quotes from the industry that rounds out the story well I think. Good on em for that. I love reading the stuff from John Schwartzman, Albert Hughes, and Neil Blomkamp - really strong comments from those creating the stirring images that look so good on the big screen, because they are shot with a Cinema level tool that allows their skills to really shine.

I like the fact that they reflected the causal fun attitude and the enthusiasm we have for the industry we are in and respecting with a high quality successor to 35mm film, If I get to be the embodiment of that for the Press - I'm good with it… it's genuine.

The photo editor, also very nice and easy to work with, asked for many photos of cameras on sets, on a very tight deadline, that we managed to get from some major productions, which wasn't easy, but they didn't use any of them - just a nice product shot - oh well…

Here's the link to the article if you want to check it out before it hits newsstands tomorrow.

http://www.latimesmagazine.com/2011/09/the-red-revolution.html
 
Last edited:
Thanks
 
Heh, I wondered about the "Lakewood" location. Seem to remember Red Boot Camp in Lake Forest, a much nicer place. Too bad about LAT blowing off the Made In USA angle. I too think that is an important point that reflects well on the philosophy of all that is Red.
 
TedRed said:
...I don't think there are any other products of the sophistication of the EPIC being built here in the USA (much less anywhere on the planet) - someone correct me if I'm wrong please.
Click to expand...

If we're just talking about electronic cameras you're probably right. But there are a number of other industries - aviation and automotive, to name two - that are creating and building some ridiculously complex stuff in this country. Not to mention sophisticated robotics that drive some of those assembly lines. And also not to mention the stuff being done for the military that we don't know about and is claimed to not exist. I think the pride everyone at Red takes at their accomplishments is understandable and laudable. But I think it's a bit presumptuous to suppose that what you're doing is the most complex thing being done in any industry anywhere.

I did read and rather enjoyed the article, though.
 
M Most said:
If we're just talking about electronic cameras you're probably right. But there are a number of other industries - aviation and automotive, to name two - that are creating and building some ridiculously complex stuff in this country. Not to mention sophisticated robotics that drive some of those assembly lines. And also not to mention the stuff being done for the military that we don't know about and is claimed to not exist. I think the pride everyone at Red takes at their accomplishments is understandable and laudable. But I think it's a bit presumptuous to suppose that what you're doing is the most complex thing being done in any industry anywhere.

I did read and rather enjoyed the article, though.
Click to expand...



Although what you say is true, it is a major accomplishment for any country outside of Asia to manufacture or assemble high quality electronics. This is worthy of inclusion in any article.
 
Joe D'Arcy said:
Although what you say is true, it is a major accomplishment for any country outside of Asia to manufacture or assemble high quality electronics. This is worthy of inclusion in any article.
Click to expand...

If you read the article, it's about Red's impact on the industry it competes in, not how and where the camera is built. The fact that it's built in the US is an interesting sidelight, but not directly relevant to the point of the article. I think Ted knows that, even though he understandably would want it to mention everything he considers significant about Red and its products. And if the article was in a trade publication dealing with US business or the electronics industry, it probably would have talked about that. But the article was in the L.A. Times and was intended for the general public, albeit the part of the public interested in the entertainment industry. So I think it was a very good and informative article for the audience it was written for. And there's nothing wrong with that.
 
M Most said:
If you read the article, it's about Red's impact on the industry it competes in, not how and where the camera is built. The fact that it's built in the US is an interesting sidelight, but not directly relevant to the point of the article. I think Ted knows that, even though he understandably would want it to mention everything he considers significant about Red and its products. And if the article was in a trade publication dealing with US business or the electronics industry, it probably would have talked about that. But the article was in the L.A. Times and was intended for the general public, albeit the part of the public interested in the entertainment industry. So I think it was a very good and informative article for the audience it was written for. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Click to expand...

It is a great article. In fact one of the more favourable articles on Red that I have seen. But you will notice when you read the article that it looks at "Red's impact on the industry it competes in" AND where its studios preside now and where they once were (in 'Lakewood'). Unfortunately omitting that the cameras are also made by Red in the U.S.A. A business that successfully manufactures or assembles high quality electronics outside of Asia is news under the same newsworthiness of 'Man Bites Dog' as opposed to 'Dog bites Man.'
 
Good work Ted!

I enjoyed reading that article. I still remember a link to red's website when it was not far off a mere concept splash page... My how things have changed!
 
M Most said:
If you read the article, it's about Red's impact on the industry it competes in, not how and where the camera is built. The fact that it's built in the US is an interesting sidelight, but not directly relevant to the point of the article. I think Ted knows that, even though he understandably would want it to mention everything he considers significant about Red and its products. And if the article was in a trade publication dealing with US business or the electronics industry, it probably would have talked about that. But the article was in the L.A. Times and was intended for the general public, albeit the part of the public interested in the entertainment industry. So I think it was a very good and informative article for the audience it was written for. And there's nothing wrong with that.
Click to expand...

Manufacturing in US and creating new jobs should be of any interest in these hard days, when every new working place in US counts. And should be of any interest for every journalist who is writing about such a creative and unusual entrepreneur like Jim Jannard.
 
Daniel Reichenbach said:
Manufacturing in US and creating new jobs should be of any interest in these hard days, when every new working place in US counts. And should be of any interest for every journalist who is writing about such a creative and unusual entrepreneur like Jim Jannard.
Click to expand...

A newspaper article can't be all things to all people, it's not a textbook. It's going to have a theme and a target audience and everything that falls outside of that is going to be chopped off by an editor. And space considerations can force even relevant information to get cut sometimes. And when you are talking about an article on digital technology written for a non-technical general audience, you can pretty much guarantee that it wasn't written with anyone in RedUser in mind. I'm not saying that it's a good or bad article, but clearly the editor made a different set of decisions than anyone here would have made.
 
Ted, you should send your post from this thread to the Times and see if they will run it as a followup to the original article. It is well written and doesn't slam them in any way so I would think they would run it.
 
David sums it up pretty well, regarding the focus and goals of the article for a wide audience... Matt the author and are on good terms and I think he did a good job painting the picture and spirit of our company in short order. (and they quickly fixed the online version of the article to reflect the proper name of our company birthplace as Lake Forest... good on em)

If you haven't seen it yet, Jim has been posting lots of images and some of the backstory of the very early days at RED in the recon section of the forum.. worth checking out if you are interested in how things got going.

+ Ted
 
Best quote from the article, IMHO, is by John Schwartzman, ASC:

I said to Sony, if you can build me a digital camera that can shoot 5K, weighs five pounds and has a data recorder the size of a Hershey bar, I’ll use it.” It couldn’t.
 
Actually, you could probably get a whole bunch of articles written purely focusing on the MADE IN USA angle if that were pushed by a PR effort because there has been a lot of discussion of engineering type of things moving overseas and whenever the media goes one way they are always looking for a story of the counter side to keep the issue interesting.
 
David Mullen ASC said:
A newspaper article can't be all things to all people, it's not a textbook. It's going to have a theme and a target audience and everything that falls outside of that is going to be chopped off by an editor. And space considerations can force even relevant information to get cut sometimes. And when you are talking about an article on digital technology written for a non-technical general audience, you can pretty much guarantee that it wasn't written with anyone in RedUser in mind. I'm not saying that it's a good or bad article, but clearly the editor made a different set of decisions than anyone here would have made.
Click to expand...
Like editing a movie.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top