Jeff Coatney
Well-known member
NAB 2008 was a real pleasure for me this year. After spending so many hours reading my fellow RedUser's posts, I got to put a face to the names of many. I got lots of smiles and nods from RED TEAM and after putting all through my decoder ring, here's what I think:
FOOTAGE:
The presentation "Shot on Red" was stunning. I forget sometimes just how talented my fellow Red Users are and it was a pleasure seeing what so many of you have accomplished in such a short time with 1,500 or so cameras out in the world. Congratulations and thank you for helping to prove what an extraordinary piece of equipment the RED has become. I think RED should add another screen and lengthen the running time at NAB 2009. Hell, I'd buy a ticket. The Argentine and Guerilla footage was impressive and captivating and I hope there will be a 4K venue in which to screen it when it comes out. Maybe on a prototype RED RAY?
No heated RedUser posts or fanboy gushing can do more to silence the critics of this camera than simply seeing the footage. I know there are still many traditional, old-school DP's that are reluctant to shoot with RED. But, the footage proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a talented DP can produce imagery that is by any measure equal to film with this camera. There may be technical prejudices and preferences that linger still, but they will not come from the audience. Alas, the world changes.
Continue shooting. The momentum is ours and the tide is turning. The road ahead will be paved by all of our 4K frames.
SCARLETT:
I sent Jarred a rendering of what I thought Scarlett would look like a couple of days before the show and got his trademark cryptic laugh in response. I'll post it later so you all can have a giggle.
Priced in the $3K neighborhood, Scarlett is poised to be the new gateway drug for those of us lusting after a RED ONE. It also serves a more pragmatic function in that it protects RED ONE's flank in a market that is to some degree RED-hostile. While there have been many negative knee-jerk reactions to Scarlett's current form on RedUser, I don't believe the veracity of some of those posts. Having seen the little lady myself at the booth, I feel she is well designed and will have a larger following than any of us could predict.
The best thing about Scarlett is that we will all benefit from her popularity even if we don't buy one ourselves (which I admit is an unlikely scenario since I want at least two myself). With every Scarlett sold, there will be two to three more RED RAW workflow chains, training the young and the old and the merely curious about how to edit and finish a RED RAW project.
The Workflow, long criticized for being unwieldy, has finally graduated and is ready for the Big Leagues. Think of Scarlett as the West Point for future RED RAW Workflow Warriors™. Having a deep, robust User base of talented people familiar with the workflow from which to pull crew and staff will protect the investment made by early RED adopters and help goose the industry in finally putting RED in it's rightful place: everywhere.
EPIC:
Could this be the Panavision slayer? RED's development philosophy is clearly grounded in "Kaizan" (I hope I spelled that right) the concept of "constant improvement" utilized with ruthless efficiency by Honda and Toyota and seemingly ignored by Sony of late. RED TWO? Hardly. It seems Big Brother Epic serves a pragmatic market purpose as well. Protecting the top end of the market, RED ONE's other flank.
Epic takes careful aim at Dalsa, Viper, Arri D21 and so on. Do you think anyone else will enter the 5K market without thinking seriously? At $40K, Epic is betrothed to the well-heeled User and since the Workflow will be akin to a well-worn pair of jeans by the time Epic hits the beach, A-List projects will be waiting for him. Look for Epic to ship with PL and PV mount options (my opinion). While I respect Panavision's marketshare, the glass they make is their edge in a post-film world. What's more, I think Panavision will return to their historic roots, making the highest quality optics... and growing their business. I don't think they realize just how good life can be post-film and post-rental business model. They'll never match Jim's pricing and they won't have to. Differences in quality will be argued over for the next 20 years, giving retiring DP's plenty to rant about well into their golden years.
RED ONE:
The mainstay. If Epic is a Porsche, RED ONE is the Mercedes of the line-up. Although Jim offers full trade-in value toward Epic, he won't end up with a warehouse full of discards. The market for RED ONE will remain steady at $17,500 brand new, and... wait for it... a robust pre-owned RED ONE market will emerge at say... $15K? $12K?.
Jim won't abandon RED ONE. This is the platform upon which all the development has been built. The price-point alone guarantees it will out-sell Epic... IMHO, of course. RED ONE will run a distant second to Scarlett in prepping RED RAW Workflow Warriors™ to do the heavy lifting in the post-production pipeline. Look for a body change for RED ONE at NAB 2009. This is Oakley DNA we're talking about here.
RED RAY:
Du Art, Deluxe and Technicolor's long-term outlook is questionable when you consider that RED RAY utterly kills the concept of a release print. Not just kills it, RED RAY takes the release print out into the desert outside Vegas to a hole Jim has already dug and puts a cap into it's head. Scary, huh? Not when you consider the the Chinese word for crisis also means "opportunity".
While RED RAY was the biggest news since the RED ONE was announced at any NAB in the last decade, for all the problems this little box may cause to the status quo, it provides huge new lines of business for the legacy format's guardians. Deluxe, Du-Art, Technicolor, welcome to the Wal-Mart world. Before you're driven mad with fear, remember that Wal-Mart is the biggest company on the planet.
RED's historical legacy may well be it's impact on the sheer volume of high-quality filmed content that is destined to follow. You think the vaults are over-flowing now, wait until 1,500 new features a year are made with 5,000 RED cameras... oh, wait, I forgot to factor in Scarlett. Wait until 4,500 new high-quality programs shot on the 10,000 Scarlett's hit the market that would not have existed before. Those films will be important to the people that made them, even if they don't make a dime in revenue. Most will want to protect them and will pay to have them stored and archived. Doesn't sound like a lot? See how big the number is after 5 years.
As budgets shrink, the volume of high-quality 4K programming will increase and the Labs and Post Houses will have to adjust to the changing paradigm. High end service providers will appear in markets that could not have supported them before. The larger markets may see an initial shrinking in high-paying, high-profile clientele, but I believe they will see a growth in boutique shops that price aggressively to capture business and grow based on reputation, not market hegemony.
Suddenly Jim Jannard, Mark Cuban and Steve Jobs look like harbingers of a new order, crushing the old world and building a newer, more accessible, better one in it's place. Now every film festival will be able to screen in 4K. Now every filmmaker can take their RED RAY into any 4K, or even HD, equipped theatre and have a stunning, pristine print to show.
The implications of RED RAY are still sinking in. As the launch date approaches, the picture will become clearer, but one thing is certain: RED RAY will have the biggest footprint of all the products RED has yet announced.
RED DISPLAYS & PROJECTORS:
Red has created products to date that don't really have large-scale competition. The market for motion picture cameras wasn't big enough to entice any digital players into getting in it with any degree of seriousness. The field of digital cinema acquisition was populated by under-funded efforts by film camera makers to be relevant and control the ground, thus prolonging their dominance. From a post-RED perspective, it is clear that for most of them, creating a truly viable digital system wasn't even the goal.
In the case of RED RAY, it doesn't really go head-to-head with any existing solution, it creates a whole new market. In each case, RED innovates a solution to a problem that was inefficiently served by older, far more cumbersome technology. Both are brilliant examples of innovation and recognizing opportunities in the market.
The conditions facing a possible future RED projector or display are quite different. There are very capable solutions that exist in the 4K projector market. The problem is cost. The price-point for displays will remain high as long as there is not enough demand for 4K content. For Jim to win at the projector game, he has to either partner with an established architecture or engage in a licensing deal with Texas Instruments or Sony or some other manufacturer. Even at that his pricing would have to be more aggressive than the camera, in order to get display options into the market in sufficient numbers to generate demand for 4K.
I would not bet against Jim. He could boot-strap the development of an active matrix 4K projector and unleash the power of his team to do it, but I think those folks will be busy with Scarlett and Epic and whatever else Jim has up his sleeve. In short, I don't see viable RED Projector options on the horizon before NAB 2009. However, for Jim to introduce RED RAY, there had to be a pathway to 4K mass exhibition somewhere on the radar. Maybe we're on the eve of an announcement?
FOOTAGE:
The presentation "Shot on Red" was stunning. I forget sometimes just how talented my fellow Red Users are and it was a pleasure seeing what so many of you have accomplished in such a short time with 1,500 or so cameras out in the world. Congratulations and thank you for helping to prove what an extraordinary piece of equipment the RED has become. I think RED should add another screen and lengthen the running time at NAB 2009. Hell, I'd buy a ticket. The Argentine and Guerilla footage was impressive and captivating and I hope there will be a 4K venue in which to screen it when it comes out. Maybe on a prototype RED RAY?
No heated RedUser posts or fanboy gushing can do more to silence the critics of this camera than simply seeing the footage. I know there are still many traditional, old-school DP's that are reluctant to shoot with RED. But, the footage proves beyond a reasonable doubt that a talented DP can produce imagery that is by any measure equal to film with this camera. There may be technical prejudices and preferences that linger still, but they will not come from the audience. Alas, the world changes.
Continue shooting. The momentum is ours and the tide is turning. The road ahead will be paved by all of our 4K frames.
SCARLETT:
I sent Jarred a rendering of what I thought Scarlett would look like a couple of days before the show and got his trademark cryptic laugh in response. I'll post it later so you all can have a giggle.
Priced in the $3K neighborhood, Scarlett is poised to be the new gateway drug for those of us lusting after a RED ONE. It also serves a more pragmatic function in that it protects RED ONE's flank in a market that is to some degree RED-hostile. While there have been many negative knee-jerk reactions to Scarlett's current form on RedUser, I don't believe the veracity of some of those posts. Having seen the little lady myself at the booth, I feel she is well designed and will have a larger following than any of us could predict.
The best thing about Scarlett is that we will all benefit from her popularity even if we don't buy one ourselves (which I admit is an unlikely scenario since I want at least two myself). With every Scarlett sold, there will be two to three more RED RAW workflow chains, training the young and the old and the merely curious about how to edit and finish a RED RAW project.
The Workflow, long criticized for being unwieldy, has finally graduated and is ready for the Big Leagues. Think of Scarlett as the West Point for future RED RAW Workflow Warriors™. Having a deep, robust User base of talented people familiar with the workflow from which to pull crew and staff will protect the investment made by early RED adopters and help goose the industry in finally putting RED in it's rightful place: everywhere.
EPIC:
Could this be the Panavision slayer? RED's development philosophy is clearly grounded in "Kaizan" (I hope I spelled that right) the concept of "constant improvement" utilized with ruthless efficiency by Honda and Toyota and seemingly ignored by Sony of late. RED TWO? Hardly. It seems Big Brother Epic serves a pragmatic market purpose as well. Protecting the top end of the market, RED ONE's other flank.
Epic takes careful aim at Dalsa, Viper, Arri D21 and so on. Do you think anyone else will enter the 5K market without thinking seriously? At $40K, Epic is betrothed to the well-heeled User and since the Workflow will be akin to a well-worn pair of jeans by the time Epic hits the beach, A-List projects will be waiting for him. Look for Epic to ship with PL and PV mount options (my opinion). While I respect Panavision's marketshare, the glass they make is their edge in a post-film world. What's more, I think Panavision will return to their historic roots, making the highest quality optics... and growing their business. I don't think they realize just how good life can be post-film and post-rental business model. They'll never match Jim's pricing and they won't have to. Differences in quality will be argued over for the next 20 years, giving retiring DP's plenty to rant about well into their golden years.
RED ONE:
The mainstay. If Epic is a Porsche, RED ONE is the Mercedes of the line-up. Although Jim offers full trade-in value toward Epic, he won't end up with a warehouse full of discards. The market for RED ONE will remain steady at $17,500 brand new, and... wait for it... a robust pre-owned RED ONE market will emerge at say... $15K? $12K?.
Jim won't abandon RED ONE. This is the platform upon which all the development has been built. The price-point alone guarantees it will out-sell Epic... IMHO, of course. RED ONE will run a distant second to Scarlett in prepping RED RAW Workflow Warriors™ to do the heavy lifting in the post-production pipeline. Look for a body change for RED ONE at NAB 2009. This is Oakley DNA we're talking about here.
RED RAY:
Du Art, Deluxe and Technicolor's long-term outlook is questionable when you consider that RED RAY utterly kills the concept of a release print. Not just kills it, RED RAY takes the release print out into the desert outside Vegas to a hole Jim has already dug and puts a cap into it's head. Scary, huh? Not when you consider the the Chinese word for crisis also means "opportunity".
While RED RAY was the biggest news since the RED ONE was announced at any NAB in the last decade, for all the problems this little box may cause to the status quo, it provides huge new lines of business for the legacy format's guardians. Deluxe, Du-Art, Technicolor, welcome to the Wal-Mart world. Before you're driven mad with fear, remember that Wal-Mart is the biggest company on the planet.
RED's historical legacy may well be it's impact on the sheer volume of high-quality filmed content that is destined to follow. You think the vaults are over-flowing now, wait until 1,500 new features a year are made with 5,000 RED cameras... oh, wait, I forgot to factor in Scarlett. Wait until 4,500 new high-quality programs shot on the 10,000 Scarlett's hit the market that would not have existed before. Those films will be important to the people that made them, even if they don't make a dime in revenue. Most will want to protect them and will pay to have them stored and archived. Doesn't sound like a lot? See how big the number is after 5 years.
As budgets shrink, the volume of high-quality 4K programming will increase and the Labs and Post Houses will have to adjust to the changing paradigm. High end service providers will appear in markets that could not have supported them before. The larger markets may see an initial shrinking in high-paying, high-profile clientele, but I believe they will see a growth in boutique shops that price aggressively to capture business and grow based on reputation, not market hegemony.
Suddenly Jim Jannard, Mark Cuban and Steve Jobs look like harbingers of a new order, crushing the old world and building a newer, more accessible, better one in it's place. Now every film festival will be able to screen in 4K. Now every filmmaker can take their RED RAY into any 4K, or even HD, equipped theatre and have a stunning, pristine print to show.
The implications of RED RAY are still sinking in. As the launch date approaches, the picture will become clearer, but one thing is certain: RED RAY will have the biggest footprint of all the products RED has yet announced.
RED DISPLAYS & PROJECTORS:
Red has created products to date that don't really have large-scale competition. The market for motion picture cameras wasn't big enough to entice any digital players into getting in it with any degree of seriousness. The field of digital cinema acquisition was populated by under-funded efforts by film camera makers to be relevant and control the ground, thus prolonging their dominance. From a post-RED perspective, it is clear that for most of them, creating a truly viable digital system wasn't even the goal.
In the case of RED RAY, it doesn't really go head-to-head with any existing solution, it creates a whole new market. In each case, RED innovates a solution to a problem that was inefficiently served by older, far more cumbersome technology. Both are brilliant examples of innovation and recognizing opportunities in the market.
The conditions facing a possible future RED projector or display are quite different. There are very capable solutions that exist in the 4K projector market. The problem is cost. The price-point for displays will remain high as long as there is not enough demand for 4K content. For Jim to win at the projector game, he has to either partner with an established architecture or engage in a licensing deal with Texas Instruments or Sony or some other manufacturer. Even at that his pricing would have to be more aggressive than the camera, in order to get display options into the market in sufficient numbers to generate demand for 4K.
I would not bet against Jim. He could boot-strap the development of an active matrix 4K projector and unleash the power of his team to do it, but I think those folks will be busy with Scarlett and Epic and whatever else Jim has up his sleeve. In short, I don't see viable RED Projector options on the horizon before NAB 2009. However, for Jim to introduce RED RAY, there had to be a pathway to 4K mass exhibition somewhere on the radar. Maybe we're on the eve of an announcement?
