Jump to content

So Panavision underbid REDs, should I be offended?


Gunleik Groven

Recommended Posts

It's only relevant to a situation where you have to choose between shooting a film with no-name actors on a Red and shooting a film with Brad Pitt on a DVX, and I'm not aware of anyone having ever been in a situation where they had to make that choice.

 

Chris, its about time you acquired some global perspective ;) and I shall provide you with one example: This movie Waterborne (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0423514/) that was made on DVX100B (if I remember correctly what the director said in a Q&A session), had a major Bollywood star (Shabana Azmi) in it. Please don't drag this into a Hollywood/Bollywood stars rat race and their respective popularity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 88
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

We already know their is little chance for a movie to be a commercial success without a known star.

 

While that is often the case, it's not universally true. Especially when the filmmaker is someone with at least a modicum of a track record, and the movie is so good in terms of the story it tells and how it tells it that it becomes appealing enough to transcend the normal rules. Exhibit "A": "Slumdog Millionaire."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
While that is often the case, it's not universally true. Especially when the filmmaker is someone with at least a modicum of a track record, and the movie is so good in terms of the story it tells and how it tells it that it becomes appealing enough to transcend the normal rules. Exhibit "A": "Slumdog Millionaire."

 

Hi Mike,

 

Yes & on a 2k SI!

 

Stephen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The star of Slumdog Millionaire is the director Danny Boyle.

 

I agree and said earlier in the thread that in certain circumstances well known directors and producers who have a following or well known for making quality films are able to get movies made and distributed without star actors.

 

While that is often the case, it's not universally true. Especially when the filmmaker is someone with at least a modicum of a track record, and the movie is so good in terms of the story it tells and how it tells it that it becomes appealing enough to transcend the normal rules. Exhibit "A": "Slumdog Millionaire."
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
I agree and said earlier in the thread that in certain circumstances well known directors and producers who have a following or well known for making quality films are able to get movies made and distributed without star actors.

2001 A Space Odyssey for example.

Look, people can waffle on about this as long as they want.

 

If you want someone to foot the bill for distributing your film, you have to convince them that it's worth distributing, and that normally means convincing them that a sufficient number of people will be prepared to pay (by whatever means) to view it.

 

And it may be annoying, you may consider it an outrage, but the fact is that consumers are more likely to to take a punt on something that has a name in the cast they can recognize.

 

Why? For exactly the same reason you are more likely to get a distributor to at least glance in the general direction of your work if it's shot on 35mm film: Because rightly or wrongly there is a perception that the people producing that particular film are slightly more serious than the other 5,683 hopefuls trying to get their attention.

 

I actually had a hilarious example of that a couple of days ago. We're always on the lookout for cheap action DVD movies to keep my wife's bedridden mother amused (she is particularly fond of "Steven Seagull" as she calls him :-)

 

My wife found one that looked like it featured Cheryl Ladd, and so she snapped it up (for only $2). Well it actually featured Cheryl-somebody and somebody-Ladd, but the artwork was carefully tricked up to look like "Cheryl Ladd". Now my wife doesn't care much one way or the other about Cheryl Ladd, she just assumed (as was no doubt the intention) that if it has her in it, it can't be too bad.

 

Actually it was bad ba-a-a-a-ad bordering on hilarious, right up there with Plan 9!

 

(It was shot in early 1970s but I strongly suspect it was a script that's been kicking around since the 1950s. One scene really cracked me up where one of the bad guys beats someone to death with a telephone. Now I've got a couple of vintage 1940s-50s heavy baklelite phones that you could probably do some serious damage to somebody's head with, and that cliche used to regularly appear in old detective novels. But in the film the bad guy is clobbering his victim with one of the new lightweight phones that appeared in the early 70s! The actor was clearly puzzled as to why the writer thought a telephone handpiece was the ideal weapon of choice, but he struggled manfully on).

 

The basic moral here is no matter how atrociously bad a movie is, as long as it sort of looks like a real movie, SOMEONE will buy it. I've seen countless movies that were made in Australia for overseas companies, and most of them I thought were complete rubbish, but now that Internet has become available, I've been surprised at how many of these "Marie Celeste's" have actually been distributed and talked about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Given how long it takes to download reasonable quality HD, I'd expect to see Blu-Ray be very successful as a feature film delivery medium. Short stuff like trailers and music videos may be a bigger proportion of the content we get from the internet.

-- J.S.

 

And given the recent prescient set by Crapcast (Comcast) with it's bandwidth cap, digital downloads are gonna be much tougher from sites/companies like Hulu.com and Netflix. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been skimming this thread since much of it was TL; DR (Too Long; Didn't Read) for my tastes. I did notice a few posts about the idea that Red owners are getting pissed at rental houses for stealing their business or something?

 

And all I have to say on behalf of all my rental house friends is, "...Whaaat?"

 

I mean, come on. If you are ONE person with a camera, can you honestly expect to compete on the same level as a rental house employing hundreds of people and housing millions of dollars' worth of equipment?

 

Maybe I'm missing the point entirely, but I just thought that was a pretty ridiculous and grandiose attitude to have. My opinion, as a rental house alumni and as an AC, is this: If you are an individual with a camera, step on in and play the game. Especially in a city like New York where everyone's trying to cut corners just so they can pay their rent, you'll probably make a decent living if you sell yourself right. But don't be surprised when the big guys get there first. Why wouldn't they? It's a huge company versus an individual. It's like trying to sell 8-ounce paper cups of your mom's coffee for a dollar each, when there's a Starbucks next door. The people who only have a dollar and think your mom makes great coffee, will probably buy it, but for every one of them, you'll probably get 3 who flock to Starbucks because they want their venti mocha cappcucino no whip for $4. I really just wanted to use the phrase "your mom" in a thread on cine.com, but you get my point. I think Starbucks coffee sucks and that's my opinion, but it's two completely different things, based on two completely different economic principles...so why compare?

 

Such is life. You can play either game and do it quite well, or not...but to compare something that's 100 years old (film) with something that's, uh, not (HD), doesn't even make sense. And to compare the mom n' pop coffee joint to Starbucks, doesn't make sense either. I know that a lot of individuals have sunk a lot of money into their Red cameras, but it still doesn't hold up next to a big rental house, and never will...because it's a different business model. This is where I think a lot of the assumptions about low-budget filmmaking kinda fall apart. It almost DOES happen in a vacuum on some level...they spend their money differently than the big boys, either out of ignorance or out of necessity (because when it comes from your pocket, it's different).

 

The other thing to speculate on is if all the hordes of individuals who own Red cameras, will now take business away from rental houses. I doubt it. I think within all the comparisons and contests, everything will eventually level out, everyone in this industry will be able to take something from it, and that will be that. There are people who pay 30 bucks a pop for vinyl and they love it. Is it practical? No, but who gives a poop, it's vinyl and that's what they like, so let it be. How much sense does it make to continue buying CD's anymore? Well, I don't know, you tell me. When your computer crashes and your Itunes library bites it, I bet you'll wish you hadn't traded your collection in. Cassette tapes were once the DEATH OF THE MUSIC INDUSTRY. ...Whatever. So was Napster. People always find a way, whatever they listen to or like to watch. They buy the $100 converter box, or they throw down $1000 for a new TV. It doesn't matter. There will always be an audience.

 

I forget who said it, but someone said that the Red is a valuable tool for people who have been shooting for 25 years, and an Instant Spielberg device to the n00bs. I agree. It's another tool to make a picture...not the second coming of Christ. So we might as well just cut the hype and keep shooting. A lens is still a lens.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
I mean, come on. If you are ONE person with a camera, can you honestly expect to compete on the same level as a rental house employing hundreds of people and housing millions of dollars' worth of equipment?

 

The deciding factor is the cost of downtime. Big productions will stay with the big rental houses, because they have people who keep the gear working right, and another one on the shelf of whatever might fail, so they don't have to wait. The guy with one camera will be the right choice for the shows with zero budget -- everybody working for free, etc.

 

 

 

-- J.S.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Funny. Panavision Toronto doesn't have any RED's.

 

Fighting over formats makes me laugh a little. It's like DP's arguing over whether to put glass in front of the lens or not. It's about what works and gets you the shot -leave the ego on the truck. : )

 

What also makes me laugh is the lack of knowledge as to what is required on the crew end of a RED shoot. Cheap bodies make PM's salivate but guess what? Want those 1's and 0's to be uncorrupted and not end up on Youtube at the end of the day? Get a DMT.

 

I was on a RED music video and with the package comes this big coffin. We pop off the lids and behold. A complete off-load station. Mac, Raid, cables and tons of other poop all in pieces. Thanks guys -you just thought A- we'd have time to leave set and sit there off loading drives and cards (2x a mag of course) and B- Being someone else's custom build, I'd know how to re-build it? I guess I'm the DMT today. I built it no prob and we got away with the off-loads but it was the "so what..." attitude from prod. that makes you red (no pun intended).

 

Even better is the apparent lack of understanding that pulling on the RED at 4K is like pulling on anamorphic. Only a handful guys in each city can do it.

Edited by AlanKelly
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
Even better is the apparent lack of understanding that pulling on the RED at 4K is like pulling on anamorphic. Only a handful guys in each city can do it.

Why RED 4K in particular?

There's only a handful of good focus pullers of any sort in most cities I would have thought. :lol:

But that's just one more detail of the hundreds of little details that the average Fanboy knows nothing about so therefore doesn't exist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

we offer - if the clients are cool - our 6 well equipped reds ones for 999€ each a week.

 

thats doesnt include the astro & tv-logic monitors, the cooke & angenieux lenses, the sachtler & oconnor tripod heads etc.

 

we are pretty much booked out.

 

for cheapos, we still have our vintage arri IIB 35mm cams and the canon 5D MK2s.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I forget who said it, but someone said that the Red is a valuable tool for people who have been shooting for 25 years, and an Instant Spielberg device to the n00bs. I agree. It's another tool to make a picture...not the second coming of Christ. So we might as well just cut the hype and keep shooting. A lens is still a lens.

 

YEAH!! You tell them!!!!!

 

Sadly, they won't listen. Such as the above poster. "Here in Germany, RED has killed film . . . " Blah, blah, blah.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

Forum Sponsors

Metropolis Post

New Pro Video - New and Used Equipment

Gamma Ray Digital Inc

Broadcast Solutions Inc

Visual Products

Film Gears

CINELEASE

BOKEH RENTALS

CineLab

Cinematography Books and Gear



×
×
  • Create New...