Can anyone point to whether Arri is actually struggling financially?

[Edith blazek]

Seriously, the newsshooter comments section loves to state this by pointing to rumors or the general state of the industry then do a "huzzah! The high end camera is dead! Praises be!" Type beat song and dance but I don't know how to verify this, can anyone affirm or deny in as close to an objective manner as possible?

Edited September 22 by Edith blazek

[Brian Drysdale]

The current downturn in production will affect all companies in the industry. Arri have more than cameras in their product range, they apparently have good revenues in recent years, so the chances are if they run into financial difficulties in the short term they will be bought out and taken into new ownership.

Arri aren't the only company making high end cameras, so that market sector isn't going away.

However, if the reduction in production spending continues, some of the recent investment in studio space may be turned into warehousing. 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

4 hours ago, Edith blazek said:

Seriously, the newsshooter comments section loves to state this by pointing to rumors or the general state of the industry then do a "huzzah! The high end camera is dead! Praises be!" Type beat song and dance but I don't know how to verify this, can anyone affirm or deny in as close to an objective manner as possible?

Maybe you can give some backstory to this. I thought this would be a golden age of production. Everywhere I look is content and more content. 

[Gabriel Devereux]

10 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Maybe you can give some backstory to this. I thought this would be a golden age of production. Everywhere I look is content and more content. 

Production is down significantly in the UK and Australia. A lot less money is being spent, and a lot less money is going into traditional media.  

[Jon O'Brien]

Just out of curiosity why would the end of high end cameras be praised? Is the thinking that camera jobs will be given to those who own and/or use the lower-end cameras?

Come to think of it though, is the footage shot on an Arri all that much better to average eyes than that from cameras such as the Canon C500 and C300 and similarly-priced gear? The high end Arri cameras are no doubt made more robustly to endure more difficult environments and still function flawlessly, but still.

There must be so many cinema quality cameras floating around now it would be difficult to make a buck making more of them. Arri can make money from other gear but as to the future of further improvements to cinema cameras I can see the road ahead dwindling into a track.

Edited September 23 by Jon O'Brien

[Jon O'Brien]

2 hours ago, Gabriel Devereux said:

Production is down significantly in the UK and Australia. A lot less money is being spent, and a lot less money is going into traditional media.  

I keep reading all this talk up here in Queensland that the state is gearing up for an influx of big bucks production. A new studio to be built at Yatala. Grants being given out by the state Govt to train crew. It's all hopes and dreams, with some tax dollars apparently being spent. Some believe Queensland will be a new major centre worldwide of feature production. No idea if that's true.

Certainly we tend to have lots of sunshine, with lots of great locations.

Edited September 23 by Jon O'Brien

[Tyler Purcell]

Arri spent a lot of money transitioning from film to digital. At one point, they had several models of camera and now they've focused on one single camera; the Alexa 35. Once the rental houses owned the Alexa 35, who else is really buying? You have to release a new camera every two years to really continue the success necessary to truly be a market dominant system. So sure, Arri has other revenue streams, but lenses, lighting and camera line are probably the three biggest markets and are completely and utterly dominated by other brands if you simply account for units sold. The days of Arri lenses, lights and cameras be night and day better than the competition, are behind us. Big shows shoot on Arri simply because of preference. There are several solid camera systems out there today, all of them can deliver an image which nobody can really argue with. Just look at "The Creator" using a toy camera and how the look is simply fantastic. The days of needing/wanting your show to be shot on Arri Alexa, they're gone. There is no more prestige, just like the prestige of film has kinda faded as well. Arri for better or worse, has forced the other brands into territories nobody expected them to be in and Arri themselves, haven't dramatically innovated. Sure the Alexa 35 is a stellar camera, with wonderful color science and an imager which has fantastic dynamic range, but so is the Venice II and Burano. So is the Red V-Raptor. So is the new Blackmagic 12K Cine. So are the Canon C300MKIII, C400 and C500MKII. Etc... I mean the list goes on and on.  

Arri needs to re-invent themselves, and I guarantee you, it's happening right now. They a very smart company, full of extremely talented individuals who understand the industry better than most of us. From the outside, it's easy to look in and criticize them because let's face it, the competition has caught up. From the inside tho, I bet they're doing fine. They have diversified pretty heavily and I simply can't imagine the camera business being top priority like it's been in the past. 

[Jon O'Brien]

We've got all this incredible camera tech and almost no one is making quality feature movies at the moment. What's going on? The audiences are still there.

I don't know about you but I have to wait about a year between movies coming out that are worth going to see at the cinema.

Are feature films dying? They for sure are at the moment.

[Aapo Lettinen]

1 hour ago, Jon O'Brien said:

We've got all this incredible camera tech and almost no one is making quality feature movies at the moment. What's going on? The audiences are still there.

I don't know about you but I have to wait about a year between movies coming out that are worth going to see at the cinema.

Are feature films dying? They for sure are at the moment.

Scripts are still sh*t. That has always been a problem with high budget features and for the matter most other stuff too... with very few rare exceptions. They did that in the old times too, people just remember the rare good ones and have forgot all the rest which was not good stuff. Just like with old music, no one cares to remember there were tons of crappy mediocre stuff too, they just remember the greatest hits...then claiming than all the music of the 80's is pure gold, for example 😄

About the question if audience notices camera differences... often the differences are pretty subtle and are more about the workflow and personal preference of the filmmakers. Audience does not notice the difference between master prime and panchro and one can intercut film and digital no problem as long as they are graded to match colour and contrast wise close enough. In the 2000's they did this on most night scenes without issues. 

the thing people do notice is bad sound mix and unnatural skin colours. Though they may get used to the colours (people shot stuff with the original Red One without anyone complaining) but if they cant hear what the characters are saying that will always raise tons of complaints no matter what the super artistic intentions of the director might have been

 

[Aapo Lettinen]

Buying cool new tech is easy. Writing and making good movies is very hard and risky too. 

Often it is much easier and efficient to brag with all cool new tech than to try to make the movies better. Shooting on imax but not caring the movie to have any point other than earning money...

Indie filmmakers do this a lot too, the cool new tech is much more important than even getting the movie finished :)

[Tyler Purcell]

13 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

The audiences are still there.

Are they? When movies are $18 bux a seat and streaming services are so expensive, people have backed off substantially, which has caused them raise prices. The streamers like the studio's are in the middle of collapse. The same thing happened in the 1970's, but today it's even worse. I just found out, Warner sold the entire lot in Burbank and of course, we already know Paramount did as well. We've never seen the strongest studios have this happen. This is free-fall territory. 

[Tyler Purcell]

14 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

Are feature films dying? They for sure are at the moment.

 

The studio's are dying, not feature films.