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With 8.1.1 BM has just thrown a very destructive blow to the entire C-grading business
1 – There is no way that all clients having full free access to the software that colorists use will not bring down rates. It’s fine to say it’s all about the artist and so on, and it should be, but reality is what it is, not what we feel it should be.
2 – Innovation by other color software developers will be killed off or at least reduced. It is very hard to compete with free.
3 – As far as their own business is concerned, although I’m sure they have the gratitude of lots of no-budget 7D filmmakers, they have seriously p__ed-off all their paying customers, now for the second time. I can’t see a company thriving off of people who by definition have no money to spend. We were going to buy two more seats. Their recent move has made us change our minds – so just with us, they lost $2000 – Not only that, but we have decided to get out of the grading business rather than develop it as a sideline – I can only see a steep downward curve now for the whole industry so we will not be investing in it beyond our first copy of Resolve and our first surface. You can see how this has cost money to whoever we would have bought our surfaces from too…
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40 Replies
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I don’t see it…
1. Who wants to work on a single GPU machine? Not me for one…
2. While software NR can be better it is slow as hell and sometimes you need to fix something and on a deadline.
3. Lite is basically a free assist station for the full version.
4. I think BMD will have more pro features in the full version soon, things like OFX plugin support, etc.
5. I would not trade Resolve 8 for Speed Grade or Scratch it is a great vary stable color app and keeps getting better.
6. Not everyone wants to be a colorist, hardly anyone who used FCP regularly ever even opened Color.
-Rob-
Robert Houllahan
Director / Colorist
Cinelab Inc.
http://www.cinelab.comMAHC-PRO 6-Core 3X GTX285 20Tb SAS Wave Panel Panny 11UK SDI Plasma.
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I’m sitting as a client in a Baselight suite right now with someone who grades full time. I have a Resolve back at the studio. But it’s horses for courses.
Having a Resolve and a Tangent with a cheap grade 1 monitor is really cool. But it’s basically a part-time setup.
I can see why the big Resolve panel costs so much now. And also why you should let a full-time grader do the work. We’re getting through about four times the number of shots that I would get through, even with a freelancer. The productivity gain is huge.
I bought the resolve because it helps us deal quickly with digital rushes… And great for quick grades.
But without the big panel, a proper monitor, calibration etc, you’re not going be threatening the industry.
Cheap resolve means more people being interested in decent colour grading. Just like DSLR’s made people think about digital cinema.
Color didn’t kill grading. Neither will this.
Enjoy it! -
Nothing but conjectures, misinformation, general lack of knowledge and experience. Sorry, nothing personal, but you should try sometimes to just listen and be a little less partisan and at least try to see the bigger picture…
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Robert.
You will have more understanding on RedUser.
This is very partisan, pro Resolve crowd. Hence the name of the thread:-)
You will not receive fair hearing here… -
I just thought this meme should be out there. In all of this I am trying to defend high standards and living wages for all involved in the industry – from software developers to indy colorists to DPs.
Often young artists do not see the big business picture – democratization is not always a good thing when pushed too far (the opposite, pushed too far is not good either – but we are at little risk of that these days.)
It’s great that many people have a chance to get in the business, less great if there is no business left on the other side.
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I think the obvious bigger picture is that Color Grading used to require custom hardware (DUI, 2K,Pandora etc.) or specialized computers (early Resolve on Linux) but that is now all in the past. All of these systems from Resolve to Film-Master to Baselight and Mistika run on commodity hardware.
It used to be very expensive to buy an Avid for the same reason, now not so much. Look what happened with Final Cut sure there were a ton of Pikers who didn’t (and probably still don’t) know shit about what they are doing. But there were also a great deal of professionals who adapted the app (I was never a fan but I am a user) to professional environments buy setting it up properly.
So fast forward to a bunch of whiners asking how to calibrate their imac monitor to do color work, and good luck to them. I got Light-Space and a Hubble to do that. I have had jobs come in from other places that did not do proper setup and botched it.
I really like the Baselight but not every shop can build a business model around it. That said the high end machines are all merging into multifaceted “do it all” tools which are becoming less color only centric all the time.
So what are the other choices? Speed grade is about to be free and Scratch is stuck with a less powerful and more buggy toolset and frankly I think Film-Master is in a similar position where it is not a Baselight replacement and not much more powerful or stable than Resolve. I think BMD has priced a standalone color grading app (that is very powerful and very stable with allot of legacy tools) at the price color grading apps are all going to be in a few years. There will still be high end tools but their price will also decline.
People can wish for the Moore’s law genie to be placed back in the bottle but without a global collapse it’s not going to happen. When Computerized systems become software they inevitably become less costly over time.
And I believe as of the time I write this most of the replies on Red-User are of the unconcerned about this nature as well.
So you can call it partisan or whatever but that is just the reality and it’s not going back. Work will still go to people who have an eye and have setup properly to do the job. I suspect there will be more Grading apps available soon and as they are software they will continue to be added to and refined.
-Rob-
Robert Houllahan
Director / Colorist
Cinelab Inc.
http://www.cinelab.comMAHC-PRO 6-Core 3X GTX285 20Tb SAS Wave Panel Panny 11UK SDI Plasma.
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Markets inevitably change, and that item you paid for a few months earlier frequently is available for cheaper just a few months after you bought it; it’s part of life. I don’t regret the $1k we paid for Da Vinci earlier in the year; we’ve already booked enough work with it to have paid for itself.
From where I’m sitting this is a brilliant move on Da Vinci’s part.
Real coloring facilities that are billing regularly will end up paying the $1k for multiple GPU’s or the RED Rocket card without batting an eye; it’s the best deal in color grading. And then they’ll have a few lite stations for prepping projects or grading small 7d jobs that come through.
The folks that lite will appeal too were never likely to pay the $1k in the first place; it just didn’t make sense for them to do so, since they aren’t likely billing their grading on to clients (as it would be hard to do without GPUs and RED Rockets). So why give it to them?
It gives thousands of film students, DPs, editors, directors and especially wannabe colorist an opportunity to learn the tools of color grading. The entire next wave of colorists will be learning on Da Vinci for free. And while most won’t stick with it long enough, some real artists will come out of it. And they will have a lot of Da Vinci loyalty built in because it’s the system they have on their home machine, that they learned on and know intimately, and when they book jobs at bigger facilities they’ll expect Da Vinci to be there.
It’s one of the major ways that FCP built market share vs. Avid; FCP was functionally free (through lax security and heavy student discounts), and it built a market of up and coming editors and directors who knew it and expected it when they did real jobs.
Secondly, Da Vinci is building their brand. I know to old school folks it feels like a dissolution of a hallowed name, but you have to remember that many, many producers don’t know a baselight from a pogle. Most clients hiring colorist because they like that colorists work, or as part of a package deal, and for those clients, Da Vinci is a brand they’ve heard of that means “color,” and by giving away Lite for free, Da Vinci is going to increase that direct connection for clients between “color grading” and “da Vinci.” I’ve been teaching film for 5 years, and 5 years ago, 1 student in 20 had heard of da Vinci, and now they all have. It’s a hugely powerful marketing tool for them, with little to no lost revenue (since, of course, those people using lite wouldn’t have bought it anyway).
That’s a powerful thing for a brand to do.
I think these guys are being absolutely brilliant.
Rates are going to come down (and, let’s face it, already have) not because the software costs are decreasing, but because hardware costs are decreasing, and that’s nobody’s fault, it’s a natural consequence of computer technology increasing. Might as well blame Moore’s Law.
But in the end, they’ll sell more $1k license’s, and more panels, because of this, and it’ll be for the best for our industry.
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I agree with this last statement. (Charles Haine)
Most clients are not impressed with software anyhow, they are impressed with grading suites.When they come into a comfortable properly lit grading space with a serious control surface and monitoring, as well as an efficient experienced colorist, they know it. That is what they pay for. A committed individual and a committed grading environment.
In any case, almost all experienced colorists know more than one application and choose the right one for the work ahead of them, and sometimes even tweak things through several different ones based on the limitations of each.
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The globe is going through a remarkable reorganization, again. The digitization of everything including how effortlessly I am relaying these words to the reader.
Color correctors have been digitized along with cameras making the marginal cost of copy of Resolve very close to zero.
It is exciting to see the freedom this gives while also frightening to see the structure it destroyed. My hunch is that the combination of personality, artistry and determination will still play a large part in the success of a colorist. The current world capitals still employ the majority of the busiest but that is also changing.We are in the opposite of a “rut” as a group.
Dave Pickett
Colorist
Jam Edit – Atlanta
http://www.jamedit.com
http://www.davepickett.com -
I think the original thread focused more on the effect of the DaVinci Lites effect on the C-market.
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