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Jim Jannard has stepped down as public face of RED?
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[Andrew Kimery] “And X has been great from SQUARE ONE for those of us who didn’t depend on what it didn’t do – or who have come to value what it does that no other software does as well.
I’m sure many RED One owners would say the camera has been great for them from square one too as they didn’t depend on what they camera couldn’t do.”
You find me ONE Red One owner who, in the first year of deployment – will argue with a straight face that the camera was “great for them from square one.”
Good heavens, man. Red Cameras didn’t even have audio recording at square one. Something literally every other camcorder ever built could do out of the box. Name me ONE equivalent common editing function that X couldn’t do on the day it was released. I’ll wait.
[Andrew Kimery] “You were upset with RED because they didn’t meet your needs even though you didn’t spend a dime on their gear yet you seem perplexed why users that spent years and thousands of dollars (sometimes over six figures) developing FCP-centric workflows were upset with Apple of suddenly EOLing FCP Legend and releasing a new NLE called FCPX. “
Lets be clear. I’ve never been upset for one second for RED not meeting my needs. The ONLY thing I was ever bothered by was the way RED relied on visual prototyping and a clear public campaign based on “just wait for this – it’s gonna be WONDERFUL” to try to encourage people from making other choices while they got their act together. And if they’d gotten that act together in anything like a reasonable timeframe I would be both silent and supportive. But they did not.
Three YEARS from announcement to delivery is not reasonable to my thinking. Heck, ONE year was not reasonable for me. So I moved on.
If Apple had spent the same three YEARS at public trade shows telling me that they were coming out with the next great editing system – and delivered nothing over that time – they’d get the exact same reaction that I’m leveling at RED. And I wouldn’t patronize Apple.
Apple promised NOTHING in the last three years of Legacy’s life – keeping their council until they had a real product worked out. And delivered precisely the radical change they promised.
I’m sensitive to the real hurt that many still feel about the Legacy EOL. But it *can” be viewed as something like getting surgery to fix a medical problem that’s not causing a whole lot of pain to the patient right now, but that you can be certain WILL be much worse in the near future.
Legacy was hurting. And it was getting worse and worse and worse as the entire video industry changed around it. Lots of people wanted it patched with band-aids and bailing wire. Turns out, I didn’t. I wanted something better. Turned out to be FCP-X for me.
Look, RED spent 3 years promising the world everything – and delivering little but smoke and cute renderings while they worked out the kinks. And they took REAL deposits from willing customers – who had to wait, and wait, and wait – only to take delivery of a device that needed immediate constant revision and babysitting in it’s initial iteration.
Again, show me a RED owner with an early serial number who doesn’t have personal stories of nearly 4 damn difficult years of patient struggle.
It worked out well for them in the long run. And I’m delighted their patience was rewarded with a GREAT camera. But don’t revise history and say it wasn’t a long and difficult run. Many of us were watching carefully from the sidelines and simply know better.
If I’m wrong and you’re an early RED owner and were “happy” from day one. Post your experience. I’ll listen.
And hey, heres’s a pertinent question for you, Andrew … Are you willing to give FCP-X the same 4 years that RED had to get their act together and see what Apple delivers over that exact same period?
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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You really need to lighten up Bill. I thought it was amusing that you want the impossible of low hype – high delivery. No-one does that!
When Job’s said awesome and it wasn’t then so what. It isn’t a competition to see who hypes less and delivers more between Apple, Avid, Adobe, Red, Aaton or anyone in the biz. I just found it funny that your eternal optimism sometimes blinds you to the reality that Apple are just like everyone with a sales and marketing team.
I know the net and forums are odd places to express humour and have a laugh at ourselves but really? As my wife says, never put your pedestal on a high horse. (that’s just general self deprecating humour and not about you OK).
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[Michael Gissing] “As my wife says, never put your pedestal on a high horse. (that’s just general self deprecating humour and not about you OK).”
OK, but, then how do you ever get the Ringling people to look at your circus act?
(and that’s completely and totally not about you and/or your wife!)
; )
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] “Good heavens, man. Red Cameras didn’t even have audio recording at square one. Something literally every other camcorder ever built could do out of the box. Name me ONE equivalent common editing function that X couldn’t do on the day it was released. I’ll wait.”
Dual system sound. Very, very common in the demographic that Red One was primarily targeted at (lots of movies and tv shows have been shot on cameras that couldn’t record audio). DSLRs are all the rage now and dual system sound is pretty much a requirement.
FCPX on launch lacked support for tape I/O, EDL, OMF, broadcast quality video out, no ability to open up old project files, no multicam, etc.,. You can’t seriously argue that there was not a big drop off in functionality from FCP 7 to FCPX 10.0.0. And I don’t mean only functions that you personally use but functionality in general.
[Bill Davis] If Apple had spent the same three YEARS at public trade shows telling me that they were coming out with the next great editing system – and delivered nothing over that time – they’d get the exact same reaction that I’m leveling at RED. And I wouldn’t patronize Apple.”
And that was a very public, very open difference RED was making. They let everyone know upfront and often that they were designing the camera from scratch, in the public view and actively soliciting feed back as opposed to creating a product in the shadows and only showing it to be people when it’s done/nearly done.
If you don’t think that developing a brand new camera from scratch is going to have delays and problems I don’t know what to tell you.
[Bill Davis] “Look, RED spent 3 years promising the world everything – and delivering little but smoke and cute renderings while they worked out the kinks. And they took REAL deposits from willing customers – who had to wait, and wait, and wait – only to take delivery of a device that needed immediate constant revision and babysitting in it’s initial iteration.”
All the deposits were fully refundable at any time. No risk, just an opportunity to be towards the front of the line. Better deal than KickStarter.
[Bill Davis] “Again, show me a RED owner with an early serial number who doesn’t have personal stories of nearly 4 damn difficult years of patient struggle.”
Ask this question at REDUSER and I’m sure you’ll get an answer.
[Bill Davis] “And hey, heres’s a pertinent question for you, Andrew … Are you willing to give FCP-X the same 4 years that RED had to get their act together and see what Apple delivers over that exact same period?”
Here’s the same answer I’ve been giving since the day FCPX was released, Bill. When the software meets my needs I’ll start using it. Maybe that’s tomorrow maybe that’s in three years. My feelings weren’t hurt when FCPX got released. I didn’t, in a fit of spiteful rage, swear off Apple for ever and ever. I just looked at the current state of FCPX, knew it wouldn’t meet my needs and looked elsewhere (mainly back to Avid since LA is a big Avid town). I’m very interested in seeing what 10.1 brings, but given that a big part of “meeting my needs” is the TV shows I work on adopting FCPX it will probably be a number of years before X starts looking like something that will be in my daily life.
How about you, Bill? If RED makes a camera that suits your needs and is in your budget would you take a long hard look at buying it?
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[Andrew Kimery] “How about you, Bill? If RED makes a camera that suits your needs and is in your budget would you take a long hard look at buying it?
“Absolutely. And if RED had delivered on the smaller, less expensive announcements they’ve been making since the Scarlet was announced – I would have gladly looked in their direction – but again, I kept seeing big promises with very poor follow through in terms of having a camera I could legitimately go out and buy and start using.
That said, overall I have to say I’m having a bit of a crisis regarding camera ownership.
I’ve been shooting – on or off – for more than 30 years now. I con’t consider myself a pro cameraman, but out of necessity I’ve certainly studied the craft, and have been behind a camera for many hundreds of hours when my budgets didn’t allow me to hire someone else who shoots full time.
And I have to tell you camera buying right now seems like an extremely confusing crapshoot. At the high end, Red, Sony and Arri and a few others are in a death struggle to re-define the high end for those who can afford big bucks – while at the low end, you push up from the insanely affordable “imperfect but still amazing” stuff like Black Magic Pocket and Cinema cameras, many flavors of DSLRs and even (weirdly) Sports cams and smart phones – which used properly can certainly shoot extremely watchable footage.
Oddly, in my next endeavor, we’ll be shooting with single unit Pan/Tilt cameras – something I’d never have considered after all these year of thinking of a “pro camera” for content creation as something that HAD to be hoisted on my shoulder.
I had a demo of The Canon C-100, 300, 500 line last week and remember holding the C-100 (with a $3k T1.4 Canon Cine Lens!) and thinking how weird it was that THIS weird looking squarish block of knobs was a massively better video and audio recording device than nearly anything I got my hands on back when I was shooting with a D-30 that cost literally 10 TIMES more money.
I’m almost 5 years into my 5dMkII and it’s been a wonderful camera to shoot with because for every annoyance regarding audio or how improperly balanced and awkward it is for handheld video shooting, I get my shots up in my editing suite – and am STILL regularly amazed at how really beautiful the footage it produces seem to so consistently be.
We think the NLE wars are difficult to figure out – camera choices in the modern era in camera gear are totally NUTS.
And so it goes.
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] “We think the NLE wars are difficult to figure out – camera choices in the modern era in camera gear are totally NUTS.”
Agreed. I did a fair amount of shooting when I was younger (mainly live sports) and I still keep my eye on cameras because I’m a geek and because it impacts post workflows more so than ever. The camera tech is advancing so fast that even though the bang-for-the-buck has never been better it’s still difficult to pull the trigger because something new/better/cheaper will be out in 12 months. It’s like buying a computer. Long gone are the days of getting a good 5-10 years out of a camera like in BetaSP days.
Paralysis by analysis ad nauseum.
At least w/NLE’s it’s still pretty basically the three A’s.
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I can not help but wonder whether there has every been a more exciting time in my career in terms of choices. And due to the overwhelming amount of choices, perhaps also one of the most difficult.
When I look back at some of my very early films in the 1980’s (I was roughly 13 then) I shudder on the one hand but I remember the excitement of creating them, not knowing much about the craft of film making at all, but simply feeling compelled to grab a camera an do it – doing rough, manual edits from one VHS deck to another. Seeing those films fills me with pride as the impulse to start making films was much greater than the obvious obstacles at hand. Looking back at those days it seems that my limitations as a film maker were no greater than the apparent lack of quality a VHS tape offered by today’s standards.
I remember FCP 1.0 on a G4 computer I invested in. There were soooo many issues with that software but such excitement at being able to sit down and edit on my own terms and my own time.
And after a long road of similar experiences and personal milestones, the Red One came into my life in 2008. I spent many years shooting with that camera, never seizing to be amazed at the ongoing improvements, marveling at the images and everything the camera enabled me to do. Have there been difficulties, problems and glitches? Yes, plenty. Have there been films of mine, which I would rather ignore? Yes, plenty. But not because of the gear I used but because of the choices I made.
But I can not feel anything but gratitude for all the personal growth this new technology has enabled.
And my involvement with this technology and the dialogue with some manufacturers has perhaps also enabled the technology to grow in return. And I have never once come across a manufacturer whose purpose was to create a bad product or sabotage my art. They were all trying to cater to my needs but also had a vision of their own. In the end they were all just making choices. Good choices. Bad choices. Choices that they thought to be good choices, but in my opinion or for my needs weren’t.
I don’t want to make films in my sleep. I want to engage in journeys that will make my experience here worth my while. There are days I cheer, days I cringe, laugh and cry – both about my equipment as well my abilities.
Is this an excuse for anything that Red or other manufacturers are being faulted with? No. But I also have a choice. I always have. I always will.
And I thank all those manufacturers for giving me that choice – to stick with them for the promise that I sense, or kiss them goodbye when our paths no longer meet. The frustration I sometimes feel when a so called improvement (not to be mistaken with problem fixes) does not meet my personal wishes or expectations is mine to deal with. I know that many people would not agree with me, but my desire for any company is that they follow their own strong vision of the future and it’s perfectly ok, when that doesn’t line up with my own view. I am not saying that there is no need for dialogue or listening to your customers. But in the end I would rather leave a company and their product for making a bold and heartfelt choice than slowly wander down a path that only caters to my own limited expectations of their product.
Just like any customer will leave me and my company when our visions for their future no longer match. And in my opinion that’s the way life is supposed to be – full of choices, sometimes quiet, often bold, ever changing.
Tobias
In Touch Media Entertainment
Munich, Germany -
For all you RED fans out there, here’s the latest on RED’s new 24k sensor:
https://cuttingroomtales.wordpress.com/2013/09/02/unleashing-the-titan/
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
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Thank you Walter for this highly entertaining link. I will spare myself from any comments (-:
– Ronny
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