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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 :)

The race to the bottom is on

My scarlet doesn't work 24/7. So if I'm not using it, I make money when someone else does. $1,250 a week would be better than $0 per month. If I could make 1,250*52 = $65,000 off of a scarlet package I would be over the moon.
 
This price seems fair if it's for the body only.

In any case I got established studios in Fort Lauderdale asking me to shoot for free with a full EPIC package... no pay at ALL for either my equipment or time... "Deferred compensation".
 
Mario Contini said:
We are now giving away our Epic packages for free.

THERE'S NO COMPETITION. You can't beat FREE.
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Oh yeah? What if I start paying people to rent from me instead lmfao?
 
Again, in sweden the second biggest rental house actually let you rent the epic for free / zero money as long as you rent the rest of your gear from then. in other words your lights, grips lenses etc. pays for the camera body. I guess it's a way to keep the small guys out of the scene.

So what we do now to compete is, paying people to use the camera.

Just kidding, but it's an open market and any way you enter is fine. Having a camera and providing it for free will give you other income sources Im sure.

The bigger companies out there has seen dramatic cost decrease, all of a sudden the cameras and lenses are just about the only thing to pour investment funds into...

Examples:

Resolve, a few years back you license was unreachable without a leasing contract. Now it's a free download.
Lab process line... A few years back you needed to have one to be involved in feature postproduction in any greater depth... now the lab machines have turned into space waste..
Film printers are no use.
Flame is replaced with 2,5K SMOKE..
Before we shot 50ASA Kodak now you got 800ISO and above... So what lights do we need, 1/16th of before...?
The film rolls are replaced by red mags, cutting shoting costs and intermediate costs into fractions.
A D1 8Bit HD woodoo recorder needed 250k USD in financing, the tapes cost 600USD per 60minutes, Now we buy a lace drive for 150USD instead of both tape and recorder.
Your 30k USD CRT HD reference monitor belongs in a museum and your cinema display is probably a more valid reference since there is no body watching CRT's any more and it can not give you the resolution needed.


Then with the examples above, there is a great chance that people will buy cameras to lure their client into their "pipeline" after all the tech costs are quite small compared to the crew costs on a film production. And people tend to think that the only way to run a big staff is to gather them around tech that they could not possibly finance them selfs... well now there is not so many steps from braking that rule.
 
Shane Kelly said:
It seems like a reasonable price for a body only, something like a 2 day week. It makes a lot of sense for the owner as in 15 -20 weeks they have made their money back. I'll bet that they are also reacting to the kids who will go out with the camera for 400/day. It's simple business, not an insult to anyone. The race to the bottom started a long time ago with the 5d.
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But you don't have rentals every week - and there is maintenance in there, and insurance, and office costs, a website, not to mention your time. so the math is not that simple.

Here in Montreal there is a rental house I will not mention by name that sets a min. price on Epic rentals, which is actually slightly below their price. Stay at or above that min price, and all is well. Go below and some guys come pay you a visit. I am very grateful to them, as it prevents desperate morons from ruining things for everyone else.
 
Stephen Pruitt said:
It's called democratization. . . and I, for one, am very glad it exists. Were it not for democratization, we couldn't make our films at all. As it is, thanks to Jim and others like him, we get to make our films on the very same gear being used to make the biggest films in the world.

I mean, how cool is that?

Stephen
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No longer making a living wage and no longer being able to justify an investment in gear is not cool at all, actually.
 
Andrae Palmer said:
This price seems fair if it's for the body only.

In any case I got established studios in Fort Lauderdale asking me to shoot for free with a full EPIC package... no pay at ALL for either my equipment or time... "Deferred compensation".
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I hope you told them where to place their offer, and offered suggestions for lubrication.
 
Björn Benckert said:
Again, in sweden the second biggest rental house actually let you rent the epic for free / zero money as long as you rent the rest of your gear from then. in other words your lights, grips lenses etc. pays for the camera body. I guess it's a way to keep the small guys out of the scene.
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This kind of thing has been going on in the live production and concert industry for years. A company will give you the lighting rig for nothing if you book your sound with them. When they have a massive amount of equipment sitting around it helps them get the gig. The problem with it is usually they are either an audio company that has lights or a lighting company that has sound. Either way, the thing that they just happen to have is crappy and they don't know how to use it. In today's day and age the key factor is customer service. You best job security is to give the client the best service possible so they don't have any reason to look around. I bet you those low ball guys will freak out when the defecation hits the rotating oscillator. Meanwhile the higher priced guys will have a backup plan and be prepared for any unseen issue.
 
Write a note to your 20 year old self, and say, hey don't get into this business unless your willing to risk it all, and deal with the heartbreak of buying tens and hundreds of thousands of bucks worth of gear, and all just so it can eventually go into the trash heap in the back room. In the production company I work for there is upwards of a million dollars worth of gear in the back room that is ancient and unusable. It's kind of a bummer to even look in there, but hey that's what happens when mankind discovers better and better technology. Soon enough we will have 1000fps at 5k, and then 2500fps, and so on. What once was considered impossible, became possible at such a high cost in was impossible to own, then the price came down, and became affordable, and soon after it became obsolete. A never ending process it is, cause much heartache, it will.
 
Why are you all buying epics and Scarlets?

Are you making films and renting your gear back to production OR are you a rental house?

Are you Panavision, or Ottos, or Clairmont, or Keslow or Camera House with 20 backup bodies and every lense known to man. With people you can wake up in the middle of the night and get a replacement for ANYTHING?

Jim created a truly professional cinema camera that now Thousands of us own.

Decide.

We'd all like to pay off our gear in a year and then make profit but the market is saturated.
 
Peter Lyons Collister said:
Why are you all buying epics and Scarlets?

Are you making films and renting your gear back to production OR are you a rental house?

Are you Panavision, or Ottos, or Clairmont, or Keslow or Camera House with 20 backup bodies and every lense known to man. With people you can wake up in the middle of the night and get a replacement for ANYTHING?

Jim created a truly professional cinema camera that now Thousands of us own.

Decide.

We'd all like to pay off our gear in a year and then make profit but the market is saturated.
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I think for most of us, at least for me, it's a little bit of both - that said it took only 16 months to pay off our Red only with our own shoots, and the rest was butter. I'd be happy if in the end things break even with our Epic, because being able to do tests all the time of nutty ideas is a really, really useful thing that otherwise would be prohibitive.
 
This reminds me of stock photography. Back when digital cameras were either expensive or awful (actually, both) I wanted to get into selling stock photos via The Image Bank. Well that plan didn't work for several reasons. But back then you could make real money from stock (partly because you had to buy lots of film).

Now, stock is almost free. And in fact in some cases it is free if the images are CC Attribution. Which is fantastic! That way, web sites and magazines who may not turn over huge profits can have most of what they want for no cost while they pay for the rest. And I look forward to contributing to the pool of CCA images in my spare time.

I'm not sure that this is a bad thing. Keeping quality up is what matters. Keeping prices down is a bonus.
 
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