What does RED mean to me...

[Peter Majtan]

I want to share this in light of the recent controversies and attacks on RED. This is my personal view based on my own personal experience...

I am sure many of the early adopters would relate to me when I say that RED turned my life around. The first camera I ever owned was AATON's A-Minima - actually had two of them. Due to my aviation background - I've modified one specifically for aerial work (which I have later upgraded to the ARRI-235) and the other was for "normal" use. I have traded in this second camera for the first generation Varicam - having used one of the early units (with an Angenieux adapter and ARRI VP's) on a major feature film I've coproduced in Asia. I love film - but the need to buy, store, develop and scan the medium was prohibitively expensive and complicated. The Varicam opened my eyes to the possibility of digital - but I hated the quality of the footage once saved on the video tape. This forced us to work with Apple and Panasonic to bypass the tape recorder and record the uncompressed imagery directly onto ultra-fast HDD's for best image quality. I loved the variable frame-rate, but the resolution (the first gen of Varicam was only 720P) and dynamic range had a lot to be improved on - so for any serious work I stack with the 235. At the same time SONY was pushing their "HD is good enough" mantra, due to the commercial success of Phantom Menace and the whole industry seamed to be happy with that. More and more clients asked me to use the SONY and I grew accordingly more and more depressed as a DP. This combined with personal struggle (going through my first divorce) and I was basically ready to give up on filmmaking. Then came RED...

At the time when Sony's HD cameras (like the 750 used on Phantom Menace) costed more then $200K - the only true digital camera that could be compared with film was the Dalsa Origin. But the origin had three major flows IMHO...:

1. It was CCD based, which meant that it was relatively big (about the size of 435 with a mag) and...
2. It had heavy external recorder (Codex) capturing uncompressed 4K data - therefore requiring massive amount of (then still very expensive) storage
3. The camera itself was not for sale - you can only rent the whole system for about $3K / day...

Into this environment came RED with the promise of 4K RAW digital cinema camera capable of compressing the RAW into virtually IQ-wise lossless data that could be recorded and stored much more efficiently (and more importantly - more affordably) - in a package under $20K - less then a 1/10th of the Sony's HD offerings. No wonder most people called it a "SCAM". For me - it was simply the dream camera. RED's vision was exactly what I wanted to see in our industry. As one of the "Patient Zero(s)" I have quickly subscribed to this idea and the rest, as they say, is a history. Fast forward to 2019 and I am embarking on my first own 8K feature doc, having DP'ed over the last two years an award-winning two-part dinosaur special for NHK here in Japan (amongst other things). But let me go back to 2005/2006 and the word "vision"...

There is a saying that "after the war everyone is a general", or more appropriately "hind vision is always 20:20"...

As hard as some may try - nobody can take away the fact that is was Jim Jannard's vision that revolutionized our industry back in 2005/2006. It is not a secret that Jim is a self-made billionaire of Oakley fame. And while we are talking about Oakley - I would advise anyone trying to accuse Jim of monopoly to research Luxotica and Oakley's history... Back to RED... What does it take (again in my honest personal opinion) to revolutionize an industry?

1. A visionary driven by an original idea...
2. Ability to share this vision with like-minded individuals and inspire them to form a team capable of bringing this vision to reality...
3. Energy. A lots of energy...
4. Capital. A lots of capital...

The particular order is irrelevant, as you need all 4 at the same time. Take any one of these out and you will not succeed...


1. A visionary driven by an original idea...

I have had the outmost pleasure and honor to meet Jim on several occasions and despite his status, he is the most humble and down-to-earth man I have ever met. Not many people know that Jim is also extremely talented cinematographer and cameras are his true passion and obsession. Jim has the world's largest privately own photographic camera collection spanning all manufacturers right from the invention of photographic cameras in 18th century all the way to the modern-day counterparts. It was this passion and obsession that drove (and still drives) Jim's vision. It was clear early on that digital was going to replace film. But I share Jim's opinion that anything that was going to replace film has to be at the very least of the same image quality, while improving other related issues. But more importantly - and this is the "original" part that many overlook - Jim wanted this "replacement" to be available to the masses. The vision that drove Jim is best summarized in my favorite Jim's quote...:

"The camera is arguably one of the most important of all inventions… it is the single tool that has the ability to stop time, record history, generate art, tell stories, and communicate messages that transcend language like nothing else ever conceived."

Jim simply wants this ability "to stop time, record history, generate art, tell stories, and communicate messages that transcend language like nothing else ever conceived" to be accessible to as many people as possible. This is the core idea that drove his vision towards RED cameras (for our industry) and even the Hydrogen phone (for much wider audience). And please don't turn this into a discussion about the Hydrogen's success - this is about the original idea and vision driving Jim to take on these mammoth challenges head on. And from the little I know about this man - I truly believe that he will not stop until he succeeds, or die trying. For the sake of all of us - I hope it is the former...

Let's put the Hydrogen aside and focus on our industry and the RED cameras. To summarize what I have said above - my understanding is that Jim wanted to deliver a digital cinema camera that would:

- Match and eventually exceed the image quality of film, in order to be a worthy replacement. To (over)simplify this - that meant combination of resolution (average 35mm film resolves little over 3K - even according to exhausting white-paper published by ARRI), sensitivity (most common films cover ISO range from 50 to 500) and dynamic range (at least 12 stops)...

- And at the same time make this camera accessible to every single filmmaker / story-teller. Again to (over)simplify this - that meant combination of affordable camera (at $20K it was cheaper then average car) and affordable "ecosystem" / workflow - which would be impossible without the ability to compress the RAW data without visibly affecting IQ, while allowing it to be recorded onto portable media and occupying the least amount of space possible...


2. Ability to share this vision with like-minded individuals and inspire them to form a team capable of bringing this vision to reality...

Again I have had the privilege and outmost pleasure to meet on several occasions with Jim's core team. People like Jarred, Graeme, Ted, John, Deanan, Brent, Gibby and many others. To say that they all share Jim's vision is an understatement. Jim has amazing ability to surround himself with like-minded individuals and inspire them to help him turn his vision into reality...


3. Energy. A lots of energy...

Most people have no clue how much energy it takes to undertake such a challenge and build a company like RED from nothing. My favorite expression is to work 30 hrs per day, 10 days a week - and if that is not enough, work at night too... ;o)
Most of us remember the countless middle-of-the-night posts from Jim and his core team - keeping us up-to-date on any development in almost real-time fashion. I miss those days. And I still don't understand how they had the energy to do this. Building any company from nothing is a mammoth task - which ever way you put it. It takes huge toll on your health and family. It is an endless compromise and fight. There will always be people putting you down and you need to get back on your feet and keep going. Jim has done it with Oakley and now again with RED. This is simply insane. No words can describe how much energy it takes to do this. I can only appreciate this on a very tiny scale. My hat's off to Jim and everyone at RED for pulling this off...


4. Capital. A lots of capital...

Please remember that Jim has made his fortune from nothing. He literarily started Oakley in a garage with few hundred bucks. It took decades of sweat, blood and tears. I my opinion - this is why Jim is so down to earth. Few can appreciate money in the way Jim does. And yet - he decided to risk his hard-earned fortune to start RED and bring us the cameras we use today. His picture should be in every encyclopedia next to the phrase "put your money where your mouth is"...

 

[Peter Majtan]

Fast forward to today and I am personally grateful to Jim and his team for changing our industry and bringing these amazing tools within our reach. So here are some key points (again in my personal opinion), how Jim and his team at RED have changed our industry...:

1. Delivering a worthy alternative / replacement to film which exceeds its core characteristics in terms of resolution, sensitivity and dynamic range...
2. Doing so he proved it is possible - and therefore forced the other companies to follow his lead. I can only compare this particular effect on the industry to what Elon Musk did with Tesla for electric cars...
3. REDCODE RAW compression. It simply makes our data manageable - both on the set and in post - while having virtually no effect on the image quality...
4. He made the same high-end tools used on the biggest blockbusters available to us for a price of an average car...
5. RED provides us frequently with FREE firmware updates - constantly improving our cameras and adding features based on listening to our feedback. This is still unprecedented in our industry...
6. RED provides us frequently with upgrade / trade-in programs - again unprecedented in our industry. No other camera maker does that. Period. This and the free FW updates are in my opinion the two most understated ways RED changed our industry...
7. Brought the film lab into our offices / homes with the FREE post processing REDCINE software...

I am sure I am missing few other points - but these are the main ones for me...

We all need to remember that RED is a business. In order to continue to provide us with the above - it needs to generate profit. So if all that comes at the price of few over-priced accessories - so be it. Most of those have 3rd party alternatives. I still chose to buy RED's for the exact reasons I have just mentioned...

The main controversy seems to be focused on the media. Unlike handles, monitors, and other accessories - media is directly involved in the way RED captures the imagery. Most high-end cameras have their own proprietary media, as they need to guarantee certain performance and reliability. Are there better and cheaper options? Of course there are. But it is impossible to keep up with every single media developed and made. As RED has mentioned repeatedly - they test and guarantee their media. And putting aside the need to make profit (as I have outlined just before this), most people don't understand that the cost of the media also includes RED's support in cases when the media has issues. There are techs at RED available 24/7 to help us when needed. I have personally used this service on one or two occasions in the past 10+ years. It was literarily priceless...

If you do not like RED and their way of doing things - ironically thanks to RED - you now have many other alternate options...


Just my two yen... ;o)

Peter

 

[Vincent Stekelenburg]

Honestly, i don't think Red changed our industry much at all. If Red didn't do it then someone else would have. The technology was there, it just had to be put together.
Other than being one of the first, there's absolutely nothing special about Red.

 

[Peter Majtan]

Honestly, i don't think Red changed our industry much at all. If Red didn't do it then someone else would have. The technology was there, it just had to be put together.
Other than being one of the first, there's absolutely nothing special about Red.

Try to tell that to the sherpa setting up the ropes for the climbers to follow. Try to tell that to Elon Musk @ TESLA. Being the first is THE most special thing. RED took all the risks to prove that this was not only possible, but it made a perfect sense. It is easy to follow, if someone else paved the road for you. As I have said - hind sight has always 20:20 vision...

 

[Phil Holland]

Honestly, i don't think Red changed our industry much at all. If Red didn't do it then someone else would have. The technology was there, it just had to be put together.
Other than being one of the first, there's absolutely nothing special about Red.

I'll bite because I've been around all of the camera manufacturers during this time frame.

Considering at the time RED released the RED One and the only hint of a 4K camera being released was on a product roadmap to be released sometime in 2015 by one well known company as well as the general price point of digital motion picture cameras being about 10X or more in price than the RED One at the time, you have to consider that in a rather big way. Which also led to the first real competition in that 4K arena coming out in 2012, 3 years ahead of any projected release for a major company. From there things like 5K, 6K, and 8K being released and made available for digital cinema productions as well as stepping up the game overall in image quality due to color science, newer sensor technology, as well as advancing the general form factor with things like a modular ecosystem (which has now been discovered by other manufacturers). Yes, I'll mention compressed RAW being pretty revolutionary in the process. I mean there's a reason everybody is after that patent right now.

From there a whole lot of things secondary and tertiary things from my recollection. Things like the general cinema lens industry would not have advanced without this particular segment being populated, certainly not as quickly. At the time cinema lenses were not a market worth exploring, and then suddenly there was a fairly large market needing solutions. Not to mention the general price point of used vintage glass going up every 6 months in the process. There was a time when things like Canon K35s could be had for less than five thousand dollars. There's a set that sold recently for over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The ripple effect of 3rd party accessories and various support hardware as well as notable software advancements where RED certainly was first to the scene. GPU Acceleration as well as GPU Decoding (that's still happening right this second), RED was first to adopt these new technologies and it has had a massive impact on working with higher resolution material. I twas alarmingly all visible in the industry and seemingly every major trade show for a while was transforming due to much of this.

For those of us in the industry, I'll go as far as saying particularly with those of us in LA, during the time of the RED One and also the Epic dropping, you'd be blind as a bat wearing earmuffs and a blindfold to think RED didn't change the industry. It's literally still happening before your eyes.

Feel free to drop that fan boy moniker on that point, but I don't think many or barely any long term professionals who may even not be fans of RED would agree with you. Hell, I don't think the camera companies would either.

 

[Maik Müller]

Honestly, i don't think Red changed our industry much at all. If Red didn't do it then someone else would have. The technology was there, it just had to be put together.
Other than being one of the first, there's absolutely nothing special about Red.

It was RED who did it. Everyone else, including the biggest players, did know about the technology. They did prefer to hold back, instead go the slow route, milk old tech, do only tiny improvements - like they still often are trying to do. They also asked prices that nobody, except big Hollywood, could afford. Until RED.

 

[Zack Birlew]

It's like the current 6K lineup, everybody was expecting 8K because we've all been seeing 8K everywhere else, so what's with 6K? It's obvious that they want to milk customers for one more round before it all goes 8K mainstream. However, I think this might end up being a short run as, much like when cellphones burst onto the scene with 4K, cellphones will start having 8K at usable framerates really soon and then the expectation will be to have your big cameras go 8K too out of technological and social pressure. RED's already been there with 4K, 6K, and now 8K and I know the next step is going to be 12K/14K/16K or somewhere thereabouts. Heck, 16K could be possible now if they just stitch sensors together, we have Quad 4K, why not Quad 8K or 16K? RED opened up the possibilities for these ideas and innovations so even though there's obviously things to be critical about, you can't bash them for their overall endeavor to innovate and go beyond the norm. Also, there's all kinds of tech out there sitting in piles of patents or tucked away in the back rooms of corporations after mergers and buyouts (ie. Google and Lytro) just waiting for somebody to do something with them, I don't know how anybody could think that all the parts in RED cameras were made specifically and solely by RED, saying that you would wonder how Dell and Apple would operate selling both AMD and Intel hardware! But it still stands that RED may not have been the first 4K camera, it was the first affordable, widely used and adopted 4K camera several years before other manufacturers even started making their own 4K cameras.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Perhaps staying at 6K for Komodo allowed them to keep the size, cost, and media requirements low enough that they could produce a camera worthy of the RED marque for a modest price...

Cheers - #19

 

[Zack Birlew]

Oh yes! I was talking more about flagship cameras, Komodo is a special case of course. RED's top camera is 8K so Komodo can be 6K since it's on the lower end of the line.

 

[Sven Seynaeve]

It was certainly RED and their team that made the industry change!!!!!

I've looked into all possible vendors back at the time and no one could come close to what Red had to offer, quality, spec and price wise.
They've made us dream and delivered more then we could dream off.
Even when everybody told me it was impossible , they did it.
They created an affordable system and made it available for purchase, where others tried to protect the niche and the rental companies.

They have been open to us and told us what they were up to and no one had done that before....

They pushed the post-production industry as well... , the drone industry and many others...s3d...and many others.

Even now they still push this industry by pushing other manufacturers to compete with them, and to be honest Monstro has still much better specs....

They are a company and they must make some profit, that 's the main reason to be in business, that doesn't make them liars.. but i'm sure no one was willing to pay for the r&d or had the same vision Jim had back then to change the motion picture industry. If they assembled the camera, that's fine for me cause it was their idea and no one else could give us a similar product even now....

 

[Todd T]

Oh yes! I was talking more about flagship cameras, Komodo is a special case of course. RED's top camera is 8K so Komodo can be 6K since it's on the lower end of the line.

Well, actually, RED only has one camera platform with two options for 8K sensors; the flagship Monstro, and the mid-level Helium.

Interestingly, there is no 6K offering at this time for the DSMC2 series, so Komodo fits in to a unique position in the overall lineup for both resolution and price.

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

I want to share this in light of the recent controversies and attacks on RED. This is my personal view based on my own personal experience...

I agree with what you wrote. Well, most of it. ;-) I won't bore you with the disagreements!

My first RED purchase was going to be the 3K Scarlet. 3K RAW for US$3,000? Sold! I was ready to buy at least one, maybe two. I intended to use them for photography - at that time, no camera had a silent shutter worth using, and no camera had a frame rate of 24fps and an indefinite buffer.

But, here we are, and so far the only RED product I own is a Hydrogen. Things have changed and as far as photography goes, a RED would be overkill today. IMHO.

BTW I almost bought an Aaton A-Minima, back when they were not very expensive. I don't know what I would have done with it, but still, I should have bought it.

 

[John Brawley]

REDCODE was the real revolution.

Before REDCODE DP's were barely coming to terms with LOG encoding and shooting flat....Thompson Viper and Panalog....

REDCODE introduced DP's to a RAW workflow and that was truly revolutionary. It educated DP's and got them thinking about a whole different way to approach workflow.

AND...the codec was smart. The compression was variable and made little meta data files that followed the media through post.

REDCODE is the real revolution, not the cameras. There had already been 4K cameras well before. Resolution became a bit of a marketing trick really. Let's face it, most of the content even today, even high end content, is produced and finished at 1920 / 2k.

JB

 

[Phil Holland]

I agree with your general points John, but I think it's the combined effort of a decent sized sensor, REDCODE RAW and the RAW workflow, as well as 4K. All of those things were things on my side that people wanted. Cineon Log for me came a bit early on due to how we used it in the film scanners, but that's also why it made so much sense in the earlier digital cinema camera systems. The biggest inefficiencies I found when film was my primary world was in fact film scanning, laser recording, inconsistencies at the lab, and inconsistencies with the projection. We went from about 30 seconds a frame on a S35 image to 6 seconds a frame scanned on the backend via the original 4K scanner to the newer 6K scanner at the time. Laser recorder also transitioned from very slow via the Solitaires, to about 30 seconds on the Lux, and then also about 6 seconds a frame via the Arrilaser. This was all a 4K workflow at our studio whether we were working to delivery 4K or 2K.

Once we had a compact system that could do 4K with an easier workflow than the uncompressed signal and recorder needed with the Dalsa Origin it opened up a proper world of general filmmaking. I only saw the Origin used for VFX work back in the day because it was such a burden to bare. Interestingly more than anything Dalsa basically is/was the only company that "could have been" RED, but their primary business and other things got very much in the way of that.

And yes, the mass market is still very much a 1080p/2K delivery, but it's also important to look at a lot of those things that were captured at a higher source resolution and scaled down to finish. 2K delivery is very literally what the D20, D21, and Alexa were designed for.

My market isn't the 1080p world and hasn't been for about a decade, but my world is 4K and 8K delivery. 8K is still pretty new, but all I can say is in the last two years I've seen 4K productions jump up in a way I haven't seen before. This is mostly due to new streaming services between fall and April of 2020. My very much not mass market stitched work is more exhibition based for panel style screens. RED was and eventually did make camera systems ideal for finishing to 4K and 2K, with the newer stuff right inside the door of 8K delivery.

I always like to say the market is dynamic basically, there has actually never really been one resolution target outside of the very earliest days of film. For a long time it was a theater projection versus SD in the home market. Modern times are much more dynamic due to the broad range of needs across the industry. I have friend who works for Fox and they've now made the transition to 1080p for his corner of the world. ABC is still doing 720p and 1080p ENG, but I've certainly seen them dabbling with 4K for this style of "mass content". Meanwhile 4K from the cinema world is nothing new and birthed out of the desire to reproduce films in a high quality way. 1080p became the main market following SD, to your point you could say SD was the primary medium along the way right until it very much wasn't. Consumers and professionals can and have seen the difference between all these things now. They can make the value assessment towards owning a 1080p, 4K, or 8K television based on the price point as well as the tools we invest in to produce content. From a professional perspective the next two or three years will be pretty telling as to what studios are really going for moving forward.

On a deeply personal level, the biggest thing RED offered early on was something that I could essentially use within the studio film workflow that they would accept in quality without requiring the several million dollars of support equipment needed to digitize film. We got whiffs of it from the Dalsa, the Viper, the Genesis. But it was the combined effort of all of those three things: compressed RAW, a large sensor, and 4K/4K+ resolution that really changed the game. We all know this now. I mean are you going to buy a 1080p camera to shoot your next film with?

 

[Hrvoje Simic]

REDCODE was the real revolution.

Before REDCODE DP's were barely coming to terms with LOG encoding and shooting flat....Thompson Viper and Panalog....

REDCODE introduced DP's to a RAW workflow and that was truly revolutionary. It educated DP's and got them thinking about a whole different way to approach workflow.

AND...the codec was smart. The compression was variable and made little meta data files that followed the media through post.

REDCODE is the real revolution, not the cameras. There had already been 4K cameras well before. Resolution became a bit of a marketing trick really. Let's face it, most of the content even today, even high end content, is produced and finished at 1920 / 2k.

JB

4K
Raw
Redcode
Could be owned
User-changeable lens mounts
Expansion of S35 format

Redcode alone would not have mattered much. Everything together was a revolution.

Resolution fixation came later. Jump from HD to 4K mattered. HD/2K was insufficient for film replacement.


Nice post, Peter.
Brings back memories...

 

[John Brennick]

Honestly, i don't think Red changed our industry much at all. If Red didn't do it then someone else would have. The technology was there, it just had to be put together.
Other than being one of the first, there's absolutely nothing special about Red.

Sorry..... 4 posts.... and THIS is your point of view? This REEKS of troll. I can't even take this seriously... However, I always appreciate and respect the point of view of a lot of the people on here so if this ridiculous, absurd and unsupported claim gets people out and talking... then so be it... But this is one of the dumbest statements I've ever seen in all of my years on this forum.

 

[Misha Engel]

REDCODE was the real revolution.

Before REDCODE DP's were barely coming to terms with LOG encoding and shooting flat....Thompson Viper and Panalog....

REDCODE introduced DP's to a RAW workflow and that was truly revolutionary. It educated DP's and got them thinking about a whole different way to approach workflow.

AND...the codec was smart. The compression was variable and made little meta data files that followed the media through post.

REDCODE is the real revolution, not the cameras. There had already been 4K cameras well before. Resolution became a bit of a marketing trick really. Let's face it, most of the content even today, even high end content, is produced and finished at 1920 / 2k.

JB

The real revolution was that they got a patent on compressed RAW recording and blocked all the other competitors, CineformRAW is better in every way except that it needs 25% more storage space with the same quality.

 

[David Rasberry]

I had the pleasure of an afternoon with Peter M. along with a few other filmmaker friends in Atlanta shortly after he got his first Red One.
He gave us a basic orientation on the camera and we spent the time until dusk shooting casual scenic in a park. He later posted the footage so we could download it and learn a bit about Redcine-X and processing raw footage
We were all obsessed with the promise of the $3K for 3K Scarlet. I fell in love with the photographic flexibility and IQ that raw acquisition offered.

We watched with dismay as Scarlet morphed into an entirely different and much more expensive camera system, still by any standard a bargain at the time, but tantalizingly just out of reach for me.
The Digital Bolex was the first camera to come along that i could reasonably justify owning and that had acceptable raw image aesthetics and high build quality. That was seven years after Red One
Komodo is now teasing the promise of 6K for $6k (ish). If Red can meet that, I may at last be able to afford one.
Coming from shooting 16mm film through the 70's, and then being frustrated with the limits of video cameras available at reasonable cost for the next couple of decades, I can say without a doubt that Jim and Red really did start the revolution.
We all benefit from the fruits of that in today's market.

It took NASA to take us into space and to the moon decades ago. Now commercial companies like SpaceX have expanded launch services at a small fraction of the cost.
Red is that first space shuttle that launched an industry and market that did not exist for most filmmakers before them.

Hi Peter, good to hear from you again. :beer:

 

[Karim D. Ghantous]

My only problem with RED is that their branding is not quite on point. The website should be advertising the Gemini as "Made for commercial DPs,", and not "DSMC2 GEMINI delivers a dual sensitivity CMOS sensor, with the ability to record in standard conditions and more challenging environments." Etc.

But forget that. Remember this post?

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...sonal-thank-you-in-response-to-Jims-last-post