I am new to the RED community, but I met and spoke with Jim Jannard at the RED booth at NAB and decided to join the discussion. I have an extensive background in product development and what I saw at the RED booth at NAB was incredible. I'm sure you all have focused on the technical aspects and the production workflows ad infinitum. I know that too many talented, capable and well-funded people are working on the workflow issue and I have every confidence that it will be solved.
But in addition to being a filmmaker, I?m an industrial designer, and the questions I had for Jim and his team focused entirely on supply chain management, delivery and support.
Let's face it - Jim and his team have created an incredible product that has the ultimate "Killer App": ( a 35mm Movie Camera with a virtually limitless supply of processed and telecine?d film at no extra charge ). But if RED Team can't deliver quality production units, or they can't manage their supply chain or their vendors, then there's no RED. It's that simple.
Because RED Team's expertise is product development primarily, they have gone beyond the other guys like Phantom HD (IMHO: Great high speed photography, but it doesn't look too production friendly) and Sony (who, let's face it, probably had to mitigate their ability to compete against Panavision to turn out that CineAlta camera in time for George Lucas to use it on Episode II).
From my perspective, the main reason why Sony and Panasonic and all the other ?Big Names? would have never built a Camera System along the lines of the RED is two-fold. First of all, they?re publicly traded and they have shareholders to please. The result being that no CEO would commit the resources (financial and talent) to chase what, in a Sony-Scale business model at least, is a pittance. Movie Production? Sony would spend more on development of the prototype than they could ever get back in the eighteen-month window that the shareholders would give them to turn a profit. Reason two is the size of the chip. 35mm depth of field is possible only with a 35mm imager. Sony could never bring to market a chip that big. Why? The economies of scale that they function under would require orders of millions of units. Besides, when has anyone heard of Japanese product design thinking result in making things bigger? So, if you?re waiting for Sony or Panasonic or any of those other guys to save your bacon with a RED alternative, you have a long wait. Those companies are Consumer Electronics companies that have small Professional Equipment divisions (very small in comparison to the main market they serve).
The RED is a complete System and every aspect of successful product development is visibly present in the final design from how the product interfaces with the user to how the images are downloaded and edited in a production environment. This seems obvious until you compare the RED system to its closest rival, the Phantom HD. While the Phantom is very impressive, it was apparent when I looked at it in action that it would be very unfriendly to a User and is devoid of the elegant production workflow that RED demonstrated. This assertion is somewhat vetted by Peter Jackson's test Film and tempered by my admiration of the Phantom HD guys. I'm a fan of anyone trying to make a real Digital Cinema Camera. Phantom HD appears to still be in some advanced prototype stage, but they claim to be shipping units, albeit with less than ideal memory / storage solutions (The Phantom guys were addressing this need however with a potential vendor on the show floor (!) in front of me).
One of the first questions I asked RED Team is how many factories are you dealing with? RED Team said they have contracted with a network of unaligned and independent factories across Asia and in other parts of the world, each one getting contracts to produce RED Spec'd discreet components in high volumes. The factories probably do not know of each other's existence, RED Team preferring (rightly I think) to handle component integration and final assembly domestically. Therefore ideally, no factory deals with the entire product, only RED engineering and assembly see the whole picture.
There will no doubt be a robust effort to target RED's technology via espionage and it looks like Jim and the rest of RED Team have learned well the pitfalls of overseas manufacturing. The knock-off guys can sting you hard when you've got a hot product about ready to come out. This was one of my fears. I want RED to recoup their development costs as soon as possible so that they can continue to sell RED camera SYSTEMS and innovate further improvements.
Domestic competition from counterfeit RED cameras would have three market forces stopping them: the Patent filing and the legal pressure that can be exerted is the primary one. The second force is an entrenched user base that requires a workflow dependent on firmware (usually very secure) in order to function. It would be incredibly difficult for corporate spies to get hold of that, but not impossible. The third is Sales Volume. Just how many RED Cameras can there be in the world? Your Grandma doesn't need one. Your local church softball team won't need one. It may be astronomically high, but there is a limit to the number of cameras they can sell.
Sure you could buy one, reverse-engineer it and possibly figure out how it works (but only up to 80 - 90% functionality) but you still have to mass-produce it. Believe me, someone with a factory in Mainland China WILL TRY. The big barrier to a RED knock-off? Simply that each component is worthless on it's own and only has value within the context of the entire workflow. Anyone wanting to make a RED copy will have to go through their own development process to do it, at least in the short term. And that is a very expensive proposition.
IMHO, RED has gone to great lengths to frustrate the pirates and product dumpers out there. So, Product Security seems assured. The other selling point for me was the fact that RED seems to have kept both Prototyping and Tooling either in-house or under tightly controlled foreign shops (my money is on Orange county, RED?s HQ).
I was also informed, along these lines, that at the start of the show (NAB), RED had a complete set of Tooling for RED camera and that at least half of them are being recut. The tooling revisions were ongoing as of the show and it probably continues right now. It can take as long as 45 days to cut tooling. The upside of this news signals that engineering is ongoing and will likely never end for this product. The clock starts ticking on the Patent the second the engineers get their pink-slips. Although this may delay delivery for a few weeks, it tells me that the system will exceed the functional envelope that they had when they committed to tooling.
In short, they have likely discovered a benefit that was so innovative that they ponied up more cash to alter the molds so that the first shipped units would have it. That fact was staggering to me and should indicate to anyone that knows about these things that RED Team is focused on gaining and keeping substantial marketshare right out of the gate. That would be attractive in the context of say, an IPO? It also reveals the depth and breadth of resources RED has in their development war chest. They understand that if it?s not right from day one, they can flush all those millions they?ve spent so far, down the toilet.
Could the tooling revision mean that they forgot a basic aspect necessary to function? I doubt it. No one in their right mind would ever commit to tooling unless the product functioned to the engineered specifications and was ready to hit the factory assembly lines and fully function as advertised. Boris and Natasha prove that. This is, to some degree at least, the Oakley brain trust. They know how to make things people want to buy.
So, the fact that they have a complete mold set indicates that development had at least reached the prescribed functional envelope, and the fact that they changed half of those tools (a RED Team estimate, not mine) indicates that they have been able to increase the functional envelope beyond the initial design. It appears that first users are likely getting a RED 2.0.
The Apple factor is icing on the cake. Apple could stand to gain enormous market advantage by backing RED workflow. Apple?s involvement in the development of RED also signals that RED is indeed all that it says it is and more. Why? A company the size of Apple, which obviously has a very deep development and engineering division, could never commit resources to an unproven third-party product. RED Team had to have demonstrated early-on a significant capability in being able to deliver on their promise of a production camera system.
Just the internal corporate paperwork necessary to allocate time and talent from Apple?s team of engineers and other staff would require significant manpower expenditures. Let?s look at where Apple?s attention was focused during this time-frame: finalizing iPhone, creating Final Cut Studio 2, not to mention they probably had ?All Hands On Deck? for the transition to the Intel chipset. The bottomline as I see it is that Apple probably didn?t have many people standing around with their hands in their pockets and nothing to do. Apple clearly INVESTED time and talent (and cash) in making the RED workflow possible and their commitment obviously continues today. With few exceptions, Apple doesn?t have a history of backing the losing team.
Finally, as a SolidWorks user, I have complete confidence in the inter-operability of all the components and their function since SolidWorks has a very robust toolset for testing and ergonomics.
So, my report from the show floor is complete (albeit very, very late) and my prediction is that RED is a Revolutionary product (as opposed to evolutionary) that will change the way movies are shot, edited and exhibited, but it won't change how movies look. Good movies shot on RED will look like any other good movie shot on film.
I?m reminded that we all tend to refer to the film gauge when describing the look of film. We say that it ?Looks better on 35mm.? The reality is that ?35mm? has been around nearly a century and I?m sure you would all agree that a 35mm film shot in 2007 in no way matches the ?look? of a 35mm film shot in 1927. But if you compared RED footage to today?s 35mm, I doubt the difference would be as noticeable. In fact, I?m pretty sure the average ticket buyer would not be able to tell the difference. The biggest beneficiary of the RED camera and the real end-user is not the filmmaker-- it?s the Audience. Let the Revolution begin!
