Rental Price £250 for full package?

[Cüneyt Kaya]

most production companies won't go for the $500 a day RED package from the guy renting out of his garage though anyways. they will go to someone they trust...even if it means paying more. this is what they have always done....the job of the producer on a project with a medium to big budget isn't solely to save money and wring out as much profit as possible. their job is to hire the right people, and the right gear from the right places, and spend what the budget dictates to make it happen.

so, these places that will practically give their camera away may succeed, but not in the high end sectors of the industry....

true, and it is ok...

 

[Darren Orange]

Skip...very true.

All I can say is...."ignorance is not bliss"

After build 15, I expect everything will change.

 

[Costelloe Michael]

most production companies won't go for the $500 a day RED package from the guy renting out of his garage though anyways. they will go to someone they trust...even if it means paying more. this is what they have always done....the job of the producer on a project with a medium to big budget isn't solely to save money and wring out as much profit as possible. their job is to hire the right people, and the right gear from the right places, and spend what the budget dictates to make it happen.

so, these places that will practically give their camera away may succeed, but not in the high end sectors of the industry....

It certainly is an odd situation as some of these newer companies which have been exclusively formed around Red purchases can't have much experience in the rental market. Seems to me that they are more post oriented? This, however, is probably a good thing as far as the workflow goes, but how resilient will they prove in the rental market itself. Add to this that everyone who is coming into the field to rent out Red comes with different experiences and expectations and different goals. At the moment anyone who has a camera is trying to make their money back as soon as possible before the backlog clears and you will be able to pay your money and wait a couple of weeks until delivery. The larger rental houses simply have to sit back and wait for the market to flatten out and the workflow and QC issues to be sorted and buy at their leisure.

There has always been room in the industry for more than one type of operation and facilities houses and owners/operators and smaller post driven facilities will all find their niche in this part of the market over time, (or go under:sad: ). What is more interesting is what happens over the next few months. The TV companies may adopt long term but not at this stage. Features are proving difficult without the huge resources in the post stage. Commercials probably have too much to risk to use Red on any but smaller budget jobs until it is proven.

At this point in time I don't think Red is a viable option for 'dry hire'. Prokit will have takers at £250 pd, but we all know that is not the 'real' costs of any shoot. Any takers will have to add a whole bunch of gear and resources to convert that £250 into a finished job. If I were producing a job I would look to a set-up like Sonic Films, who have enough gear to manage the job, with other back-up from facilities houses for grip etc. but offer a complete pipeline up to Assimilate Scratch fininshing. They have their own DI on board and in the case of anything going wrong there is someone on hand from the company who is personally responsible for getting it sorted. If you look at their prices this is reflected in the Daily/Weekly hire quotes.

Most of the facilities companies in the UK are not buying Red. Once the bugs are out of the system it may be a different matter, but rental is a long term business and these guys have no need to take chances. As I said it will be an interesting few months... :usd:

Mike C

 

[laguun]

Deran,

FCP is not the NLE of choice. I am saying this as a FCP 1.0 adopter. Most posthouses and most producer think of AVID as the more reliable workhorse. In commercial land (here in Germany, at least) there is 35mm, DigiBeta, Avid, FFF/Quantel. No Apple.

I agree, however here in Berlin Final cut pro has some great users, but the huge majority are mostly smaller newcomers, lower end or cheapest one-man shows. The users it in the higher end mostly have an avid as well. We also have FCP (besides 7 other NLE stations) but mostly as compability tool.

Since Adobe CS3 however we see more and people using Premiere in uncompressed 1080p/2K/4K, mainly to the bluray output and 4k resolution for large venues/tradeshows etc.

F900 is considered as a pain in the ass because the 1080p stuff has to be ingested and converted (shake, FFF, AE) and played out again on DigiBeta. (Anyone who knows better shuts up, because that's the annoying reality.)

Fully disagree, we digitize 1080p uncompressed and SD uncompressed at the same time. Maybe you should use a more powerful VCR like the 2020 who handles HDCAM as digitbeta if you want to.

Now, considering this background RED seems to be an even harder threat. Reference movies, FCP, Apple, REDCine, Scratch - dropping these names does not make things easier.
The Gretchen Question is: How long is the turnaround, compared to 35mm, HDCAM - remember we are talking PAL.
What does RAW mean? Can we do size up the picture - we do that in REDCine? Who the f is RedCine, how much? Beta?...
For get it. Hardcore.

I agree. The workflow right now is way to complex, way to slow, way to buggy to be implemented in the wild with unaware clients. I can rent out HDCAM vcr and cams and have an untechsavy client with an avid/discreet/iridas/dvs/quantel set up by phone within less than 30 minutes.
For reds postproduction workflow as it is now we can forget that.
Maybe the playback device coming out at NAB will ease that, but the correct way to go is to make redcine stable and edl aware and end that exclusive barricade against avid/discreet/quantel/sony/dvs/iridas/cineform/adobe etc.

And if anyone says Scratch is the key: No posthouse that is doing business with the agencies I am working for has Scratch. They even never heard of a company called Assimilate - who?
Sorry for that rant, hence who cares about Apple or pears.
Hans

Hans, we have the exact same situation here in berlin. Everyone who knows more about red here in berlin is finding its way through the pitfals.

But to become accepted in postproduction land, and especially with the agencies, things have to improve a lot still. Forcing agencies and posthouses who have $.$$$.$$$ in 5, 10, 25, 50 Avid staff and systems to FCP won´t work. Forcing DI houses who have $.$$$.$$$ in the market leader systems (scratch isn´t one of them) and trained staff to buy another seat won´t work as well.

 

[laguun]

These exclusive deals have really hurt the adoption of Red here. Commercials especially want to use the camera, but if the post houses don't have the one magical working workflow they are out of luck.

The camera was developed in such an open transparent way that it shocks me to see how legally tied up the back end is. Perhaps Red took advantage of an opportunity to get some pretty good software developed inexpensively without tying up too much of their limited staff, but has it helped or hurt them?

Free, open development seems to be the way to go in the software world, particularly when you are trying to convince people to do things in a new way.

Hopefully the exclusive deals end at NAB08 and we see some real world, production-ready systems to get the ones and zeros from the camera to the screen.

Yeah, red really needs the support of the post industry. The workflow right now is way to slow, to complicated and to buggy. Lets hope that NAB08 red opens up for the usual standards on the market and leaves its niche in post, and lets also hope that redcine is debugged then.

I however do understand that red is focussing in getting the camera right at this moment in time, but the exclusive deals certainly are slowing down the cameras acceptance -a lot-.