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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 :)

Scarlet and it's impact on indie films

T

Trevor J

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This camera really seems to be generating a lot of buzz! I'm super excited about the possibilities here :-) wrote an article on how I see Scarlet impacting the indie filmmaking community if anybody is interested. Love to hear your thoughts! http://borderlinetheory.com/?p=115

Try not to be too hard on me :)

-Trevor

borderlinetheory.com
 
Nice aricle! It's going to be very interesting in the next few years. Hollywood is going to have to struggle to come up with better films to compete with the brilliant indy film makers who now will have top notch equipment and online delivery... Can't wait to see what both sides will have to offer! Or what I will have to offer for that matter...
 
The new tools will give more people a better opportunity to participate. The secret will be telling good stories or better yet, outstanding stories. Your equipment can be the best but without that, forget it. Is like now anybody can publish a book or have their writings on the web, but if your writing doesn’t stand up people won’t invest their time with it, not even for free.
Keep up your good work Trevor, people ARE reading your stuff!
 
Oh yeah. lol. it craks me up too. but carefull what you say to them... They get mad offended... Found that one out yesterday. :)
 
Personally, I think that the Scarlet will have more impact on documentary filmmaking than feature film indies. I'm thinking of doing this documentary in India next year, and a couple of Scarlets with decent zooms, a few specialty lenses, and a compact lighting kit - and we'll be set for this direct to DVD title.

However, although Scarlet's price point is low enough that emerging indie filmmakers (<$300K budgets) will flock to it... "serious" indie producers are going to aim for theatrical release, meaning eventual distribution via film/4K projectors. And for these guys renting a couple of Epic's shooting at 5K and outputting to 35mm, or downconverting to 4K projectors, will be the SOP. BTW, these projects are what I call "fake indies", which sport $2-10 million budgets & feature slumming stars whose biggest problems are figuring out how to survive a shoot without a double-sized trailer and personal masseuse. I mean, do they really belong in the same category as Clerks and Desperado? It feels like a bunch of NBA All Stars suddenly showing up to play in some short guy's b-ball league. Know what I mean?

The only wildcard I can see is that Scarlet might end up sort of the iPhone of filmmaking. Basically, a status symbol for emerging directors, to impress starlets at auditions and shoot short films for fun. You know, my carry everywhere camcorder is a Panasonic SD9 (I use Elecard+MPEGstream to convert the AVC footage to MOVs that I can import into FCP), and it's so sweet that I sold my HVX200. For daily use, HD is just fine. I mean, heck, Stu Maschwitz's daily use camcorder is a digital camera... the Panasonic LX2!

Bottom line, yeah, I'll get a Scarlet. It's roughly equivalent to buying an HVX200, right? And anything that will fool the starlets into thinking I'm a real director is a wise investment.

-

Incidentally, I think it's clever what RED is doing. They're bifurcating the product line to maximize sales. With Epic, they'll upsell the RED user base, and extract more money from the "serious" filmmaker happy to spend more for a better camera, and with Scarlet, they'll go for volume.

And going with an off-standard 3K and 5K offering is brilliant. They're going to gut the competition. Why buy 2K when you can get "3K" for the same price?

F**king brilliant!
 
Great article.

Personally, I wouldn't want film to disappear. But I don't want it to be the only real option. Monopoly is never a good thing.

Noone denies the quality of film: resolution, latitude, color, "feel", DOF, etc.

Film is great. But the overall expenses of the film workflow are impossible for most of the people. And the workflow looks heavy and cumbersome [I've never worked with film... maybe I never will :)]. And it's also a risky workflow. Digital is more reliable.

I'd like film to always stay as an option, a possibility for an aesthetic choice. But I don't want it to have a monopoly anymore. Neither for acquisition, nor for delivery.

Variety is good, and affordability is the right situation.

Let talent decide, not cash and connections.

Of course, there'll be a sea of BS, coming out of the new army of digital filmmakers, but that's also good! When you have a sea of BS, more gems are likely to appear.

My 2c.
 
When Scarlet comes out a year from now and you think that you can use it for some positive filmmaking that will help you and your aspirations then buy it. If not don’t. There is plenty of professional and profitable work out there done with the HVX as we speak.
Don't invest your time over analyzing who is going to use Scarlet and what for. Just worry about what professional level work you are going to do with it. Work on your projects and worry only about them.
 
The article, alas, reflects the same fantasies which emerge without fail every time there's a new format. No camera can change the fundamental economics of film production and distribution.

Big budget mass-market films, with advertising budgets to match, will continue to fill the multiplexes as they always have. Competition for the few screens devoted to non-industry or "art" films will be as fierce as ever, and the odds of success as dismal as ever for a celebrity-free film without a big advertising budget. The cost of a film print, or the absence of a great camera $3000 camera, is not what keeps indies out of theaters.
 
Did anybody notice that High School Musical one and two were made for television?
 
I agree that the art is in the hands of the filmmaker and that a certain level of marketing and support is a key to success.

But I am also excited about the emrgence of new channels to distro ones films; Createspace.com comes to mind immediately. Not an entirely fresh concept but it does have major backing from Amazon.

I recently watched a lo-budget zombie film AUTOMATON TRANSFUSION. The outlet ? ONDemand on my cable station.

The future is looking bright no matter how much we decry the technology.
 
jpp said:
The article, alas, reflects the same fantasies which emerge without fail every time there's a new format. No camera can change the fundamental economics of film production and distribution.

Big budget mass-market films, with advertising budgets to match, will continue to fill the multiplexes as they always have. Competition for the few screens devoted to non-industry or "art" films will be as fierce as ever, and the odds of success as dismal as ever for a celebrity-free film without a big advertising budget. The cost of a film print, or the absence of a great camera $3000 camera, is not what keeps indies out of theaters.
Click to expand...

Yes and no. In the years to come, unless some changes are made to attract more people, theaters will have become obsolete. People (unfortunatley) would rather stay in the comfort of their homes and watch movies on their huge high resolution TVs. So in my opinion, this gives all filmmakers an equal footing. Online advertising is cheep, and anyone can upload their films to iTunes or other sites for sale and download. And having a camera like Scarlet will enable people with good stories to tell to make a good looking film.
 
In the future movies will be streaming to theaters through out the USA, or maybe even the world, digitally from servers miles away. The same movies will most likely be sent to pay per view cable and the internet from the very same servers. Film prints will be as dead as the good old dinosaurs. Maybe people can’t accept this fact but is coming folks the same way digital photography showed up at the door and is fast killing film photography.
As more films are done digitally audiences won’t notice the difference between a digitally or film made movie, not that many can tell the difference right now. And if audiences were so entrenched on watching stories only made on real film nobody would be watching soap operas, the ultimate video experience.
 
John Caballero said:
The new tools will give more people a better opportunity to participate. The secret will be telling good stories or better yet, outstanding stories. Your equipment can be the best but without that, forget it. Is like now anybody can publish a book or have their writings on the web, but if your writing doesn’t stand up people won’t invest their time with it, not even for free.
Keep up your good work Trevor, people ARE reading your stuff!
Click to expand...

exactly........

Nice article also
 
Thanks for the kind words :-) No matter what your opinion, it's really great to see so many people interested in talking about this camera.

jpp, you are right about there being other barriers to getting indies into theaters as of right now, but I do think that this camera has the potential for squashing at least one barrier, and that's something. Walls don't fall overnight and yes, there is an establishment and a business model to overcome as well in order to get smaller films in theatre, but things do change. Theatres didn't always show films exclusively anyway. Many of them started out by showing newsreels, and I think it is still a living and evolving marketplace.

-Trev

Borderlinetheory.com
 
My main concern is student filmmakers. I think part of the shame of putting higher technology into the hands of say, high school students, is that it will downplay the work that is done by much more experienced filmmakers. That is not to say that there won't be decent work from the younger filmmakers, but more often than not, it's going to be someone shooting their friend doing something stupid. Look at the growth of youtube. Everyone wants to be a filmmaker these days, and not everyone should be. Granted I think the price will keep away some for a little while, but in an era where there are low income families spending thousands of dollars on a television, it doesn't seem that far-fetched that more and more of these mid-ranged cameras are going to be sold.
 
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