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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 :)

REDRAY Comments

Second, the venue actually has to sell merchandise (Popcorn, Candy, Drinks, anything else possible) to collect enough income to keep the business open

Totally disagree. That is a crap business model that is not necessary nor forward thinking in any way. Sadly, it's become the norm and only as of late have a few enterprising venues begun to break this mold, mostly to great success. The majority of people that go to a movie theatre go to watch a movie. They don't go to buy the shitty popcorn, overpriced drinks, overpriced nasty hotdogs and soggy overpriced pretzels or candy. The reason that crap is so overpriced is because it's a recovery effort. And let's not forget to factor in the already too-high ticket prices. IMO, the entertainment value of going to the movies is quite low compared to other things I can do for the same or less money. I'm not even going to go into the quality of most films and the continuous cycle of crap the major studios have been peddling for years. However, that does bring us to the real issue -- the real issue is theaters are starved for content. If they had proper content, and enough of it, people would be lining up to get inside. And not just for the midnight opener of the latest Batman or newest tale from Middle Earth. IMO, when I take my kids to the movies on opening day for the latest Pixar film and the theatre is only 2/3 full for the matinee showing full of families at the cheaper price, something is wrong. The whole industry's business model is flawed. I think the days of the typical movie theatre model are nearing an end. The future is in smaller venues that have more to offer than cramped seating and shitty popcorn. As soon as your business needs a side business or recovery effort to compensate for its main product (as in concessions compensating for the movies themselves), your business plan has failed.
 
I'm going with Odie-Max... but what do I know. I've been pronouncing Redcine, Redscene all these years. '-)
 
It seems to me that cinema owners are forced to rape us over popcorn because the distributors have a limited monopoly and therefore demand exceeds supply. If there was a glut of quality supply the paradigm could be turned on it's head. I don't believe that is what will happen because I still think it's really fucking hard to make a great film, but when theaters have access to more product the revenue per seat for producers is still going to take a hit... in the seats, as it were.

None of that is bad to me mind you, because if in 2013 my indie has the potential to reach x,000 screens, that is still x,000 more than I have access to today and that's great. It's great for us, and great for cinema owners, and it should be great for audiences too.

:emote_happyhappy:

Totally disagree. That is a crap business model that is not necessary nor forward thinking in any way. Sadly, it's become the norm and only as of late have a few enterprising venues begun to break this mold, mostly to great success. The majority of people that go to a movie theatre go to watch a movie. They don't go to buy the shitty popcorn, overpriced drinks, overpriced nasty hotdogs and soggy overpriced pretzels or candy. The reason that crap is so overpriced is because it's a recovery effort. And let's not forget to factor in the already too-high ticket prices. IMO, the entertainment value of going to the movies is quite low compared to other things I can do for the same or less money. I'm not even going to go into the quality of most films and the continuous cycle of crap the major studios have been peddling for years. However, that does bring us to the real issue -- the real issue is theaters are starved for content. If they had proper content, and enough of it, people would be lining up to get inside. And not just for the midnight opener of the latest Batman or newest tale from Middle Earth. IMO, when I take my kids to the movies on opening day for the latest Pixar film and the theatre is only 2/3 full for the matinee showing full of families at the cheaper price, something is wrong. The whole industry's business model is flawed. I think the days of the typical movie theatre model are nearing an end. The future is in smaller venues that have more to offer than cramped seating and shitty popcorn. As soon as your business needs a side business or recovery effort to compensate for its main product (as in concessions compensating for the movies themselves), your business plan has failed.
 
I actually see better content being created because of the ODEMAX concept. I truly believe a lot of good film makers who aren't working on big budget films regularly will band together with writers, cast and crew to make a very good movie that they all share in the profits from. Instead of waiting on work to come to them, they improvise and start their own United Artist venture, on a smaller scale, of course.

And the cinema owners will have more flexibility to stop an unprofitable run and instantly start up another one. Plus, they can use social media to let their regulars choose what movie to show next. Not only that, they can rent their theater during off hours to show a movie for some rich dude and his girlfriend. '-)
 
My concern is more in line with how the ODEMAX UI and how marketing / buzz is going to be handeled. For example, Just because you send all your friends a link to your film and have it in your channel and maybe even a larger channel say the IFC or Sundance Channel doesnt mean anyone is going to watch it because it requires REDRAY Hardware. Its an interesting option for independents and im not knocking it until i see it and use it personally but it still seems like the same problems are going to exist for the filmmaker minus the quality of what they will be watching your movie at,
1. How are people going to know your film / films exist?
2. if its completely reliant on RedRay hardware how is it going to get to the masses, (believe it or not there is the vast majority of consumers that wouldnt dream of spending $1,450 in these hard and uncertain economic times to purchase a set top box which then
requires further 4K TV's, projectors etc to really make a visual difference from their newly purchased Blu-ray player and 1080p LED flatscreen. Not saying it wont change eventually but most dont even have a clue what 4K is or why they should or shouldnt own it in their home.
3. As a content provider what is my incentive to include my library into the ODEMAX distro pipeline based on the targeted amount of people that will have access to ODEMAX for viewing purposes / entertainment / purchasers of my library?

4. I see how ODEMAX will profit, and RED will profit but in the slew of good and bad and everything in between 4K shows on ODEMAX where and how is it going to be easy from a consumer perspective to weed out the crap from the gems? Is there a main "Featured" section of the interface that tiles featured content from a wide variety of content selected by ODEMAX employees and or what is selling really well? What limitations if any will there be on who uploads and sells what?

Not being skeptical but just trying to figure out the user experience here as well as the business for the content provider. BTW i used to consult for Vuze.com which was trying to do the same thing for HD content a few years back on your computer. Not quite the same but needless to say they didnt make it. Primarliy, IMO because there was a large amount of content and no focus. Where the theatre / Studio system / VOD although not perfect by any means has a limited number of choice content that they have available and have advertising dollars to let you know why its going to be worth your time and money to see that content.
 
Jeff,
Yeah, It is a crap busines model... But neither you nor I set it up, and if we are not able to acknowledge its existence, and cope with it, we are hobbyists, not business people.

The closest structural relatives to the film exhibition industry in North America are strip clubs (the entertainers pay the overhead), the recorded music industry (ditto, plus the residual values of the performance are often stolen from the creators), and organized crime syndicates (the accounting is obscured, and the cashflow is cannibalistic and handled like medeieval tribute).

This broken business model serves the companies that own theater chains very well indeed. It is not doing bad for the publicly traded studios either.


Red has made huge strides in influencing the ability of the creative to deliver a great looking project, and now looks like they are going to make it entirely possible to self publish those projects.

I hope that a result of RR and Odemax that non-studio drama is able to get enough rewards back into the hands of the film makers that they are able to recycle their funds into further projects.

However, on an individual basis.. you still must make captivating content, or you will be ignored.
 
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In the aggregate, 85% of total movie theatre seats in the U. S. go empty. That's a huge loss of potential revenue.
 
you can encode from from any camera or scan or existing 4k output as the encoder can also ingest Tiff or DPX sequences.. it does not need to be a .r3d, and it does not need to be shot on RED cameras.

Jarred,

please make sure we can also import Quicktime codecs of any kind. That would be way more flexible that just TIFF or DPX. Remember, one of the big success reasons of RED is R3D compression. So many of use work with compressed formats in post. Exporting an uncompressed 4K feature as TIFF16 files takes easily giant amounts of data:

1 frame 4096x2160y 48 Bit TIFF (16 per color channel) = 53,108,736 bytes
1440 frames / minute @ 24fps = 76,476,579,840 bytes
90 minutes = 6,882,892,185,600 bytes

So a single feature film takes close to 7 tbytes uncompressed.

So make sure Quicktime codec work. Simple to understand why...

Thanks listening :)
 
Jarred,

please make sure we can also import Quicktime codecs of any kind...


+1 Based on several testing we performed with a lab before performing a film-out, an uncompress 10 bit QT yields the same quality level than 10 bit DPX sequence.
 
Andy Roberts asked a great question. How does one pronounce ODEMAX?
Jon, Jarred, please clue us in with a phonetic read.
Love the biz plan. You guys are going to rock the cine world biz paradigm.
Many thanks!
Joel
 
Sundance has an amazing screening machine in place that pretty much guarantees every submission gets watched at least once, seems improbable but after working with several people involved with the organization I strongly believe them.

Not necessarily by the programmers... its impossible. Do the math - instead they hire pre-screeners to watch films and recommend them up the hierarchy. heaven hope they like your film. In 1998 they had 880 and were up in arms because they could not watch all the films submitted, so while sure they may have a mechanism in place to screen films that does nothing to induce confidence that a decision maker actually watches the film unless its "kissed" on the way in.

Ask RED how easy it was to watch 325 movies submitted both long and short form ...

So lets say 10,000 are shorts. 2000 are features... at 90 minutes each and say people watch 5 a day 8 hours a day 5 days a week (which would be exhausting)
100 people watching 5 per day = 400 days to each watch 2000 movies assuming they watch them all to the end.

So forgive me but that "mechanism" sounds like a great marketing tool to convince people to send $50 in x 12,000 films = $600,000 in submission fees.

No way the 5 programmers watch 12,000 films - they probably watch 50 to 100 each and you haven't brought politics and distributor pressure into the discussion yet.
 
Is it possible for the REDRAY player to play a 3240 x 1920 movie on 3 vertically oriented 1080p panels?

No problem, you could add a fourth 1080p panel if you wanted to...
 
Stuart- just want to give a big congrats to you as i know this has been years in the making and I know you had a big hand in this for those joining Red late. I trust a whole slate of people from Jim to Jarred etc were involved but I just want to say thank you for the tenacity in bringing this bad boy to market!
 
Andy Roberts asked a great question. How does one pronounce ODEMAX?
Jon, Jarred, please clue us in with a phonetic read.
Love the biz plan. You guys are going to rock the cine world biz paradigm.
Many thanks!
Joel


Oh'- da - max (long O)
 
No problem, you could add a fourth 1080p panel if you wanted to...

That's what I had asked earlier: if we connect 4 x 1080p panels, would the player "recognize" them as a single, unified 4K display and map all the 4K pixels onto the 4 panels so that the whole image appears as a 4K image?
 
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