What we need to convince more DPs on Dragon

[Gunleik Groven]

As you've pointed out... Jarred is more than capable of shooting high-value stuff. As is Jim.

And since last summer, quite a few high-value productions have shot Dragon. Those images will trickle out, for sure.

It is also a point, that most redusers are not actually here... There are other arenas to reach decission-makers than this forum.
Reduser is a world of its own in many ways. For better and worse.

A source of high value info from people like Mark, Phil. Cioni. M Most and others.
And a place people go to to learn.

But you will not find many of the decission-makers who actually buy into (or rent into) larger systems being here for the most part.

Actually I think more of the "battle" on traction happens in totally different fora than this.
And I happen to practically think a lot goes down to the stuff Mark talks about.

The lack of two XLRs, a proxy-module and the possibility to have EVF and LCD mounted at the same time with standard sync equipment/cables and repeatable rigs and production experiences, is more of a hazzle than the images posted here, in the world I see. These people do their own tests and are pretty capable of making decission based on them, whatever happens on this board.

 

[David Mullen ASC]

People shouldn't overreact because Red is in a transition period, every company goes through lulls within/between the product cycles.

 

[Freya]

As you've pointed out... Jarred is more than capable of shooting high-value stuff. As is Jim.

And since last summer, quite a few high-value productions have shot Dragon. Those images will trickle out, for sure.

Yeah! I wrote an article about Exodus a while back. That should be interesting!

It's been a bit strange with Dragon as Red never shot an official reel like they did with the MX sensor and I wonder if the concern about skintones isn't partly responsible for the spate of videos with sexy female models from the people working hard to fill the gap. The more skin the better! lol!

I think ultimately the sensor will be judged on what the footage is like from the Hollywood movies that are shot on it and the sensor has a lot of potential so...

Anyway I don't think things are as bad as sometimes people make out. Like I say, the fact that people speak about Arri and Red in the same breath is a huge achievement.

Freya

 

[Freya]

People shouldn't overreact because Red is in a transition period, every company goes through lulls within/between the product cycles.

You beat me to it David!

Freya

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I agree.

Things are not bad at all.
Have you shot/posted with Dragon?

You should!

Things are as David says looking like they are in a positive and thrird wave change.
Which I happen to think is good.

Sometimes it amuses me how people on this board manage to rip off value of their investments with loudmouthed FUD when things do not work the way they thought it should.
Quite often due to not understanding what they are doing.

It is scary.
And I think that if more people had spent 50k$ on their tools instead of... significantly less. they would have seen the value of not talking their investment down as the first reaction when they get a bad result.

I feel quite obliged to stay on boards like this. After all, the people I met at Creative Cow and later: here, have learned me a lot, and I think it has been an interesting way of learning. I transitioned from music to images some 12 years ago now.
But I cannot but admire the patience of David and others.

Take my word for it or not, but Dragon is different to anything else I have used. Image-wise: in only good ways.
Workflows were available at release.
Colors will get better, I am sure, but still they are the best presented by RED ever.
And it does not bug or crash.
And as far as I can see, none of the RED marketing about specs are... How to put that? Too optimistic, I guess.

There is actually a hint of a totally different approach in all RED does these days, which makes me very happy and optimistic on REDs behalf.
A lot of it stems from what they do not do.

 

[Scott Crawley]

The lack of two XLRs, a proxy-module and the possibility to have EVF and LCD mounted at the same time with standard sync equipment/cables and repeatable rigs and production experiences, is more of a hazzle than the images posted here, in the world I see. These people do their own tests and are pretty capable of making decission based on them, whatever happens on this board.

Absolutely, and I hope this wasn't a response to my observation about Jim and Geoff. That was just an example of a larger concept. This forum, in as much as it acts as a feedback loop, is a sampling of Red's own interactions with a small percentage of their customers, so it is another example of the same on a larger scale.

Official Red activity on this forum is down over the last year or two but the culture that Red fostered lives on here and that is worth considering.

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

People shouldn't overreact because Red is in a transition period, every company goes through lulls within/between the product cycles.

What transition period? Can you elaborate? AFAIK Dragon is the new product that de facto just hit the street...

 

[Scott Crawley]

What transition period? Can you elaborate? AFAIK Dragon is the new product that de facto just hit the street...

It has only barely hit the street. Most of us haven't seen one yet. The tendency to get ahead of ourselves in a world of digital communication is very real. I take your point; this is not so much a transitional "period" as it is a moment... a blink of an eye in the larger picture.

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

People shouldn't overreact because Red is in a transition period, every company goes through lulls within/between the product cycles.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide,
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

- Bob Dylan

 

[Gunleik Groven]

What transition period? Can you elaborate? AFAIK Dragon is the new product that de facto just hit the street...

Jarred and Jim both have their ASC assosiate memberships these days...

Less defensive maybe?
No-one I know really questions that you can get good images from the REDs.

And Dragon makes it a lot more competitive as an imaging tool, still. (And I was pretty happy with the Epic...)

Point 1 is proven. Now the rest?

I dunno.
Just a hunch.

To say that RED is not part of the establishment these days is kinda counterintuitive.
For that, you can just look at what is being produced on their equipment.
In many ways RED is not anymore as controversial as it used to be.

Adapting to that, perhaps?

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide,
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

- Bob Dylan

Niceone Mark!

 

[David Battistella]

Just for the record, I was not suggesting that RED's approach will fail. I'm more of the mind that it is completely necessary.

Just like mark quoted a simple song, a Bob Dylan song, that helped change the attitudes of a generation, unified people and changed the way people looked at things, RED needs to be around, right now, to help establish a new way going forward.

Much is said about their exclusive nature, but not many people quote Jim when he talks about how great it is that SONY is releasing a 4k camera and ARRi is releasing their cameras. He welcomes this change, wanted to see it come about.

RED is a proud American company. Sony Japanese and ARRI German. It's great to see each try to rise to the occasion and respond with their own offerings.

But make no mistake, the disruption began with an American company asking people for a deposit and wanting to fulfill a dream of delivering an affordable 4k camera when everyone was perfectly happy with HD. That is a disruption, and it takes a lot of motivation to roll a rock uphill and you band together as a group and do it. The whole while, most people are shitting on you, with a few loyal believers (like most of us here) who get what RED were doing and supported it with time, effort, teaching and cash.

Now, some people did not like the fact that a tightly knit group needed to take on a bit of a fuck you attitude, because if we were to listen to all our critics we could all crawl into a corner and die. Well, that did not happen. And that is a good thing!

So if a few people got banned, if they had to clean things up with machetes for the cause, well, they sorta earned the right.

What RED has done has been hard. What they are still trying to do is hard.

Sometimes there is not a lot of time for handholding.

RED is RED.

in or out.

Its hard to be wishy washy with that much passion flying around.

Are they perfect.

No.

Who or what is?



Battistella

Your point is taken but we can not escape the Psychology of the Marketing here. It IS at least in part about the attitude, and to speak to Jacek and Robert using Harley culture as an analogy, it is also about the passion. When you mix disruptive, aggressive and passionate the results can be explosive. Things can get pretty Red. People get banned... you see where I am headed with this I bet. The larger point is that it can turn sensitive people off, and I think it is fair to say that many or most creatives are sensitive in one way or another. It's a prerequisite, really.

Take Jim and Geoff for example. They are both passionate and brash. They didn't mix well. As objective and professional as I believe Geoff can be, I have to believe that their interaction, the collision of their attitudes, was not helpful to the Red cause.

It does not necessarily follow however that the approach will fail or is in any way flawed. Disruptive is what Red is, and the Marketing is the logical extension of that from their namesake color, to the naming of their products and goes all the way to the attitude. It is embedded in their culture. It is a unified design. As a creative I respond to that more than the occasional "fuck off", but I am accustomed to that too. ;-)

 

[Scott Crawley]

Now, some people did not like the fact that a tightly knit group needed to take on a bit of a fuck you attitude, because if we were to listen to all our critics we could all crawl into a corner and die. Well, that did not happen.

Amen to that.

 

[David Battistella]

Amen to that.

i probably should have added, "and that's a good thing!" to the part that you quoted.

battistella

 

[Nick Morrison]

Just for the record, I was not suggesting that RED's approach will fail. I'm more of the mind that it is completely necessary.

Just like mark quoted a simple song, a Bob Dylan song, that helped change the attitudes of a generation, unified people and changed the way people looked at things, RED needs to be around, right now, to help establish a new way going forward.

Much is said about their exclusive nature, but not many people quote Jim when he talks about how great it is that SONY is releasing a 4k camera and ARRi is releasing their cameras. He welcomes this change, wanted to see it come about.

RED is a proud American company. Sony Japanese and ARRI German. It's great to see each try to rise to the occasion and respond with their own offerings.

But make no mistake, the disruption began with an American company asking people for a deposit and wanting to fulfill a dream of delivering an affordable 4k camera when everyone was perfectly happy with HD. That is a disruption, and it takes a lot of motivation to roll a rock uphill and you band together as a group and do it. The whole while, most people are shitting on you, with a few loyal believers (like most of us here) who get what RED were doing and supported it with time, effort, teaching and cash.

Now, some people did not like the fact that a tightly knit group needed to take on a bit of a fuck you attitude, because if we were to listen to all our critics we could all crawl into a corner and die. Well, that did not happen. And that is a good thing!

So if a few people got banned, if they had to clean things up with machetes for the cause, well, they sorta earned the right.

What RED has done has been hard. What they are still trying to do is hard.

Sometimes there is not a lot of time for handholding.

RED is RED.

in or out.

Its hard to be wishy washy with that much passion flying around.

Are they perfect.

No.

Who or what is?



Battistella

Great post, David. Not easy to summarize RED's spirit of rebellion, but you did a bang up job. Kudos.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Hm Rob...

I am sure I can dig up a lot of crappy Alexa images, if I want to...

Let us keep this constructive?

Neither RED nor Arri can take responsibility for the images their customers take...

High class/Low clas equations ring very badly in my ears... Really bad.

And still I am not uneducated...

Bashing the userbase is a bit oversimplified.
If you think what is released is not up to your standards, make your work more visible.

To me this post is along the lines that just stirr up unneccesarry and unproductive dust.

Besides the obvious offense... I was at IBC this year at REDs booth... I cannot say I recognize your description of how people were received.

here, too maybe

I don't mean low-class by birth (I could care less what anyone's parents did or how much money they had), nor by income, I mean by personal behavioral choice- how much you read or develop your sensitivity is more than not your own choice. I mean crass, crude, loud. And that is exactly what the Red booth design was like.

https://vimeo.com/84244405 is an example of a video done by Red Europe. Not exactly elegant, trendy, sophisticated (choose whatever words you prefer). The girl is acting a in a way that makes her look cheap, the late-80s style rock music reminds me exactly of a Fox News promo or a Nascar race.

I have nothing against sexy, (Mark Peterson's Dragon Girl clips were sexy too, but also really quite beautiful, as was "It's just paint" )but this Vimeo clip is a kind of sexy that is…. Low class. It makes me think of fat old men who don't read nor keep up with trends and go to strip clubs a lot.

I can't imagine Arri doing a promo like this, but I can imagine an off-brand of LED manufacturer, or perhaps a brand of auto parts. Its' repugnant to women (a huge percentage of producers are women), repugnant to me. It makes me think "I'll go easy on associating myself for Red too much, because I don;t want people associating me with that kind of cheesy mentality."

You're right, no one can control what people do with cameras, but here we have Red itself, and actions like selling off your cameras for $4k don't help, nor does Red Europe itself (!) doing things like this.

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

This would be a fascinating rat hole to go down on another thread.

No doubt we are well conditioned to embrace the whole German Engineering branding and nothing says rebel like a sleeve of tats. Both companies chose these personas deliberately, and one may be better suited to this market than the other due to the very biases you have put on display Robert. It's very interesting stuff.

I would be remiss however if I failed to mention that your portrayal of Harley types as uneducated and simple minded is offensive. I understand that as profiles go it may have been fairly efficient in the past but that is not so much the case these days.

You misinterpreted what I said. They were 100% separate concepts, although maybe that was not sufficiently clear.

To my credit, I did say "regardless of whether you like motorcycles or not". I love roller coasters, but if my dentist used loud, flame-based designs full of exclamation points to promote himself, as works perfectly for a roller coaster, I would perhaps not have chosen him, and by the same token if I went to meet a fashion stylist, and their office was staid, and corporate, with bland art on the walls and bland magazines on the coffee table (like a dentist's office) that might put me off too. It's all about being appropriate for what you are selling, and that was my point.

It should be mentioned (fact) that my dentist is a Harley enthusiast with a big collection who has been all across many continents on his bike, but he doesn't wear a leather biker outfit while operating and meeting his dental clients, and that's a bit what I am faulting Red for doing.

 

[James T Mather]

https://vimeo.com/84244405 .

This footage looks very like MX footage to me with that particular "Red look" in the tones (and red OPLF flares still present - sigh). I was hoping for a more organic pushed back quality. Maybe it's old colour science?

 

[Gunleik Groven]

Rob. That film is not made by RED, but by KipperTie.

I think a lot of the skin-tones comments have made a few of us focus on exactly that when showing it off.

When I did the "Sweet" thing, some of what I was thinking about, was to do shots I knew would break on Epic.
Not really great for demo-footy, I know, but what was needed to convince me.
And I had it there to test, not to shoot a reel.

AFAIK RED has not put together a reel for Dragon, but what they have been using a lot themselves, are the lovely shots from Peter.

I do generally agree. Putting together more of a Dragon-reel, can be smart
And I guess that as soon as some of the larger productions are ready to release footy, we will see exactly that.

Agree on Phils and Marks examples.
THey are still not "RED".
But very good.

Which makes perfect sense!

I guess what makes me react a bit to your statements, is not the general sentiment - which I can follow. Even on my own stuff. But the characterization of fellow users who have chosen to share their work/tests, rather than keeping it under lock (which is where most of the Dragon images are).

And I really have to restraint myself a bit to not use my newfound moderator powers to edit those parts out of your replies.
As they just provoke a lot of not so positive reactions. At least in me.

I can understand that you do not approve of the imagery and why.
Being branded as a "fat old man going to stripclubs"... Well I can live with that. But it does not really help the discussion.

Point was taken long before that!


I actually dig a lot of your input
It reflects a lot of the reactions on RED I have overheard.
And I think it is good to have your perspective in the discussion.
THAT is besides the point.

Taking potshots at people who choose to share. I can take it if you point the gun at me, so feel free to do that.
But points are kinda taken without the personal attacks. And it kinda destroys the discussion.

In me, it just triggers the idea to look up your work and find some crap to crap on...


Hahahaha

Which would not be very constructive towards the valid points you make.

As to pushing the BT R1s into the market and putting them to work... I must say I found that rather smart...
But there you go!

 

[Robert Ruffo New]

Rob. That film is not made by RED, but by KipperTie.

I think a lot of the skin-tones comments have made a few of us focus on exactly that when showing it off.

When I did the "Sweet" thing, some of what I was thinking about, was to do shots I knew would break on Epic.
Not really great for demo-footy, I know, but what was needed to convince me.
And I had it there to test, not to shoot a reel.

AFAIK RED has not put together a reel for Dragon, but what they have been using a lot themselves, are the lovely shots from Peter.

I do generally agree. Putting together more of a Dragon-reel, can be smart
And I guess that as soon as some of the larger productions are ready to release footy, we will see exactly that.

Agree on Phils and Marks examples.
THey are still not "RED".
But very good.

Which makes perfect sense!

I guess what makes me react a bit to your statements, is not the general sentiment - which I can follow. Even on my own stuff. But the characterization of fellow users who have chosen to share their work/tests, rather than keeping it under lock (which is where most of the Dragon images are).

And I really have to restraint myself a bit to not use my newfound moderator powers to edit those parts out of your replies.
As they just provoke a lot of not so positive reactions. At least in me.

I can understand that you do not approve of the imagery and why.
Being branded as a "fat old man going to stripclubs"... Well I can live with that. But it does not really help the discussion.

Point was taken long before that!


I actually dig a lot of your input
It reflects a lot of the reactions on RED I have overheard.
And I think it is good to have your perspective in the discussion.
THAT is besides the point.

Taking potshots at people who choose to share. I can take it if you point the gun at me, so feel free to do that.
But points are kinda taken without the personal attacks. And it kinda destroys the discussion.

In me, it just triggers the idea to look up your work and find some crap to crap on...


Hahahaha

Which would not be very constructive towards the valid points you make.

As to pushing the BT R1s into the market and putting them to work... I must say I found that rather smart...
But there you go!

You work, which has a lot of nudity, manages to have a lot of taste refinement and true elegance. I have nothing bad to say about it.

As I've said elsewhere, I am not a tech guy - I am a bullish Hollywood type with very strong opinions who makes most of his money as a writer, producer and director, and as a cinematographer mostly with myself as a client. (I say myself, but my wife and I work together although she is much more genteel than I am.) I make deals in bathrooms, negotiate hard, am very forceful - all this to say don't take what I say too personally (now if only my wife could learn that… )

I would never crap on your work, because your respect for women is obvious. But when I see something that seem to regard women as love dolls I feel that person's work is fair game - same goes for racist work and other things I find deeply offensive. red Eueope commissioned something (it say "we asked so and so to do this for us) os they must assume responsibility for it - and really it is offensive to those of us who love women, and women, and therefore outrageous on their part, and highly counter-productive, and a contributor to their crass image. Crass implies other things, it implies equipment made without care, and released too soon, in a brash, "let's not sweat the details" kind of way. The when the Redmotes don't really work, it compounds the crass idea in people's minds. It makes people think of Red cameras as cheap muscle cars that offer speed and power (here resolution), not finely tuned Ferraris that hug curves with great precision, where the door fits ever so exactly into the frame and makes a perfect sexy clunk when you close it.

Marketing si all about associating concepts and feelings to your brand. How is a tattoo parlor a good connection to a camera company? In a camera company that makes expensive cameras we want reliability, trustworthiness, high technology, refinement of details, etc., and a tattoo parlor does not particularly evoke those concepts in most people's minds. A camera is not an edgy fashion item, and cannot be effectively sold as though it were.

 

[Freya]

I'm about to rush out (tax return) and I can't access vimeo right now so I'm not sure it's the same video but I met the "Kipper Tie" fellow at BSC Expo and he told me the footage he was showing there was shot to try and push the limits of the dragon and to break stuff basically and Red were using it because there just wasn't much footage around, and obviously footage with a lot of nudity is maybe not the best thing for a public screening to demo your camera (just as it's not likely to be something I would be covering in news articles either.) and a lot of the dragon footage that is out there sits in the realm of sexy female models.

Lets not be hard on Mr Kipper Tie because theres lots of this footage about as underlined by the fact that when I first posted about this, so many people thought I was talking about their stuff! lol!

Freya