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Jim Jannard has stepped down as public face of RED?
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JJ has done amazing things but he has also been amazingly arrogant and in some ways total blind to how the industry works.
Agreed. OTOH if you only go with how the industry has always worked you never will be able to do anything as revolutionary as RED has done. We all know how “established” people can react when they feel they are drawn out of their comfort zones, so sometimes a little arrogance can help to stir things up. This is not a bad thing as long as your new product really turns out to be a valid option for your target customers in the end.
– Ronny
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Good riddance – he probably does more harm than good with his late night rants and slams of other companies and technologies. I know a lot of folks like myself that just won’t use Red gear because he can be such a bully and a-hole at times.
Lance Bachelder
Writer, Editor, Director
Downtown Long Beach, California
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1680680/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1 -
[Ronny Courtens] “This is not a bad thing as long as your new product really turns out to be a valid option for your target customers in the end.”
[Ronny Courtens] “OTOH if you only go with how the industry has always worked you never will be able to do anything as revolutionary as RED has done.”
I appreciate what Mr Jannard accomplished, but I’ve never been a huge fan of he RED approach. I suppose I admire his business acumen in recognizing that there would be a lot of people with fake economy inflated wallets willing to pay a couple hundred bucks for $25 worth of plastic fashion eyewear – but making a fortune selling a consumer commodity at a massive margin isn’t particularly transformative or ground breaking in my book.
Initially, (and I was a pretty close civilian observer in those days) RED was touted with the clear promise of a “volkscamera” camera with tremendous specs at a wonderfully affordable price. What actually came out of early RED development was largely delays. Plus constant upward price adjustments. And what finally shipped some 3 years of hype later, was a partially complete camera system that had many of the promised specs, but at a price point literally many, many thousands of dollars higher than initially promised.
Now all thats just fine. Excellent new technology takes significant time to refine. And any company certainly has the absolute right to re-consider it’s opening price.
But the big problem for me was that the “volkscamera” that I had been led to expect by initial RED team marketing turned out to be a very expensive Movie studio camera for the upper end of the professional class. It was not a camera for me AT ALL. It was a camera for the most patient wannabe filmmakers who wanted ultra high end performance at a great, but certainly NOT general purpose video shooter – price. Which is fine, but this was NOT what was originally touted by RED. At ALL.
I gave up on them, because it became painfully clear, over the loooong painful wait – that the RED company was developing a camera for Cinema wannabees – NOT the general purpose video professional. And besides, the DSLR revolution took place, giving me exactly what I actually wanted. Amazing resolution and picture performance at a truly superb price. Game over for me.
Red gets huge credit for making a superb product for the Cinema makers. Wonderful price/performance ratio. Great R&D and great tech, if painfully slow in development. But they turned their back on the general video making crowd early and never looked back. Over the entire history to date, they keep talking about smaller, cheaper, general purpose videomaker cameras – and then simply never shipping them.
And if that’s why they aren’t really on my radar any more.
Too many promises – absolutely no follow through below the level of people who need to do many multi-page traditional “above the line/below the line” productions.
They lost me in year 2. That was enough waiting. By year 3 I wasn’t even going through the line at the RED booth, since they’d showed me they didn’t give a rats tush about my class of shooter.
Somebody tried to put Jannard and Jobs in the same “revolutionary” category. Well… sorry, Red lovers, but for me not so much.
Jobs started comparitively poor and made his bones by understanding society transformative technologies and products in new ways.
Mr. Jannard took a massive pile of money made from selling extremely expensive sunglasses – and decided it would be fun to re-invent a camera for fancy upper end niche moviemakers.
That may have not been the original RED vision – but that’s what it evolved into.
Again, there is NOTHING wrong with being great at business. But it’s simply not revoluionary. At all.
Two VERY different types of people and two very different business approaches, in my thinking.
Both guys are massively richer than I’ll ever be. And I can respect each ones’ accomplishments. But I have already spent time talking to my then growing son about the Jobs path to success. The RED story for me is mostly one where a very smart business guy took an existing huge pile of money and risked some of it to make something better for folks who ALSO have big piles of money to work with. Verses a guy who took very little – and by confronting the status quo of the entire wider society – changed everything.
Way different plots, and only one is worth following that closely IMO.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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[Bill Davis] “But the big problem for me was that the “volkscamera” that I had been led to expect by initial RED team marketing turned out to be a very expensive Movie studio camera for the upper end of the professional class. It was not a camera for me AT ALL. It was a camera for the most patient wannabe filmmakers who wanted ultra high end performance at a great, but certainly NOT general purpose video shooter – price. Which is fine, but this was NOT what was originally touted by RED. At ALL.”
I don’t think RED came out promising a camera for the masses right out of the gate. What eventually became Scarlet was originally referred to as a ‘pocket camera’ that seemed to be a camera for the masses but the surprise DSLR trend ate that market up (and up in smoke when 3k for $3k).
At $17,500 for the body only the RED ONE certainly was out of budget for the sub-$10k HVX200/XL-H1/EX1 crowd but was certainly a lot of bang for the buck compared to full-sized cameras from Sony, Panasonic, etc.,. that were in use by a lot of people (not just the upper end of the professional class). As I understand it so many people bought RED cameras (w/the intention of renting them) that they are actually pretty affordable rentals.
W/that being said, I pretty much agree with you in tone about RED. The endless software updates, the endless missed dates, etc., I just stopped following the developments (I’d started when it was all just rumor and red.com wasn’t even up) and figured I would only look back in when/if RED became part of my workflow. Trying to keep track of the near weekly (it seemed) changes to workflow was just too much.
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[Andrew Kimery] “I don’t think RED came out promising a camera for the masses right out of the gate. What eventually became Scarlet was originally referred to as a ‘pocket camera’ that seemed to be a camera for the masses but the surprise DSLR trend ate that market up (and up in smoke when 3k for $3k).”
Nope. I’m a pretty careful reader when I’m doing product research. I came away back then thinking I should absolutely wait for this incredible new RED camera thing. It sounded exactly like the camera I should be waiting for. Nothing in the early marketing dissuaded me from that view for months and months and months. The buzz gave the clear impression that it woud be in the sub-10k range which is preciesly what I was looking for to replace my DSR series sony cameras.
The Scarlett was not even on the horizon in those early days. Just this new thing called the RED camera. One thing. Period.
I have to say, my faith took the biggest dive at that first NAB when I saw the early mockups surrounded by a design aesthetic that seemed totally created to appeal to pre-adolescent boys. The whole R. Geiger “claws” on everything bathed in Ridley Scott red light was like a HUGE warning to me. It didn’t seem like any industrial design that I would feel comfortable carrying into the gleaming towers of my corporate clients.
I know others think totally differently. But I’ve always found the RED design ethic tremendously juvenile.
Again, the tech and products have long since proven themselves to be stalwart gear for top end Hollywood. I’m just saying that it’s despite what I saw as so many mis-cues along the way.
Again, I completely get that others will disagree with my aesthetic feelings – and that’s completely proper. And while I felt the RED booth was always kinda silly – the products, as they eventually developed, certainly ARE NOT.
They’re just not for me. And never were.
Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.
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It does seem strange that with so many great filmmakers using RED that Mr Jannard would be affected by what some other, less well known filmmakers think.
Steve Connor
There’s nothing we can’t argue about on the FCPX COW Forum
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What is weird to me is that over and over (and over), Red is hyped as film replacement.
I think they achieved this goal long ago, certainly from an acquisition stand point, which makes me wonder why Jim is so “tired” of it. Hasn’t “achieve film mode” been unlocked?
Without a gobsmackingly powerful machine, Red requires an offline, online workflow. Most people in the real world do not need 4k resolution timelines, and 1080p is just fine (similar to shooting film, and posting/finishing in SD, which happened for decades). Shooting on Red is not easy. Rarely, without gobsmackers, can you see what you shot on set, you have to wait for dailies. In order to get the best results, you should probably match back and conform from the ‘negative’. I could go on in the similarities, but to me, they succeed in a digital film replacement, especially for the production and post workflow. But it kind of stops there when you start to lose your way in to propriety. I cannot create a r3d raw workflow without Red camera footage, at least, not easily. A Red Rocket is great for Red, but useless for everything else. Sure, Red offers many ways to get to whatever format you might need (RedCine X is a fantastic conform tool and should be copied by everyone for every format).
It is for these reasons, and obviously all of this post is my opinion, that people come down hard on Jannard and therefore Red as a whole. It is true, they have and will continue to do amazing things with technology at a decent price point, but there are times when you know you are being sold an unsustainable dream. Red, Jannard, is selling a lifestyle, which I’m sure is left over from the Oakley days, where people were in fact buying in to a portion of a lifestyle. It worked. And then, there was the 3k for 3k hype and and when that didn’t happen, it seems as though it might all be a lie, or a lot of smoke and mirrors, which is a shame because there is a lot to like about red cameras. I know, I know, they reserve the right to change everything. Yeah, well, then we as buyers reserve the right to be disappointed. This should come as no surprise as to who really holds the purse strings here.
If you walk by the red booth at NAB, it is ostentatious in a sea of garish. At times, Reduser.net is impossible to read, or at least hard to find real information behind the “Can’t wait!!!!” posts. There is no audience like the red faithful, and people think Apple fanboys are goofy.
And then there are the fantastically drawn out hype letters to the loyal followers, which is a repetitive and constant history lesson from 2006 until the present. Years of talking about certain products, and how excited we all need to be about them, and how maybe, just maybe, they will change the world, but you won’t know what he knows as he has seen the future. Just wait until you see it. Preorder now.
Mmm, okay, but probably not.
And the lawsuits, the stolen prototype from the ski chalet, the corporate espionage, the culling of information to better suit the borg, the technical problems, the hampered firmwares that were sold on future capability, dsmc (?)…and a flyboy attitude with parts named after weapons…what are we doing here?
Yet, when you put all the shit aside, Red Cameras take strikingly beautiful pictures. The R3D Raw compression and data size is remarkably modern. The metadata color system, once grasped, is easily manipulated, and down right powerful. There are times when all the effort is worth it. If you look at a movie shot on Red, the look incredible. Say what you want about plot line, Prometheus looks amazing. Why isn’t this enough? Wasn’t that the goal?
I am not trying to discredit Red’s accomplishments, there is no doubt that there is hard work and innovation built in to the cameras, support systems, ancillary workflow enhancers, image processing, codec development, and color science. I’ve dealt with their support team for technical issues, and although some of the frames were permanently corrupt, they got me back on track and stuck it out with me, but I just don’t like the sales pitch. Production is a collaboration, and if you’ve been around long enough, you know when smoke is being blown right up the keister. For instance, I don’t really believe that this will be his last post.
I hope he can get some sleep. It sounds like he really needs it.
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[Bill Davis] “Nope. I’m a pretty careful reader when I’m doing product research. I came away back then thinking I should absolutely wait for this incredible new RED camera thing. It sounded exactly like the camera I should be waiting for. Nothing in the early marketing dissuaded me from that view for months and months and months. The buzz gave the clear impression that it woud be in the sub-10k range which is preciesly what I was looking for to replace my DSR series sony cameras.”
You can carefully read all the rumors and vague statements floating around but in the end they are still just rumors and vague statements. If you assumed that RED ONE would be sub-10k and assumed it would be the camera for you then that was your interpretation of the incomplete data at the time. Others, including myself, made different assumptions based on the same incomplete data. Part of the buzz was that it would come in well below the price of its competition and at $17,500 it was much cheaper than its competitors which were in the $70,000-$100,000+ range.
It wasn’t until “3k for $3k” (which eventually became Scarlet and no longer 3k for $3k) that RED ever specifically teased a price point.
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I think he meant he will stop posting on the forums. Eventually he will post again, he can’t help it. Just two days ago he was at the ASC showing Dragon Epic to some DPs, so I don’t see him stepping down any time soon.
I own a Red One MX and an Epic X, I love the cameras. One of the best investments I made in my life. DPs tend to be real snobs sometimes. One day the don’t want to shoot digital, three years after, they are shooting with HDSLRs! You don’t have to listen to everybody if you want to stay in this business for a long time.
Red’s workflow is changing for good, they previewd a new GPU accelerated Redcine, 6K 24fps realtime with just one Titan. Incredible.
Santiago Martí
http://www.robotrojo.com.ar
Red One M-X, Red Epic X, Red Pro Primes, Adobe CS6, Assimilate Scratch -
[Jeremy Garchow] “What is weird to me is that over and over (and over), Red is hyped as film replacement. I think they achieved this goal long ago, certainly from an acquisition stand point, which makes me wonder why Jim is so “tired” of it. Hasn’t “achieve film mode” been unlocked?”
Once you unlock film mode, you want to beat it. With three stars and a new high score 🙂
Personally, I wish we could stop collectively fetishizing resolution for a couple years and improve latitude, speed, and on-set/production metadata even more.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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