Jonathan Poritsky

Back in 2005 when Jim Jannard took off his brightly col­ored and pre­sum­ably shiny Oakley CEO hat and set out to start a rev­o­lu­tion in dig­i­tal cin­ema, most of us scoffed, writ­ing off his inten­tions of build­ing a 4K tape­less cam­era at an “afford­able” price point as the ludi­crous rav­ings of a mil­lion­aire seek­ing his extra 15 min­utes. We ate our words a year ago, at NAB 2007, as the first Red Camera footage was put on dis­play in a short film by mega-director Peter Jackson. As the year went by, and the fledg­ling com­pany started to ship the cam­era in small doses, again, we started to feel the rum­blings of a rev­o­lu­tion as Stephen Soderbergh pro­claimed his love for the new format.

But now it’s NAB 2008. So you’d think maybe this Red thing would pick up and start get­ting adopted.

Nah.

“Screw 4K, let’s build a 5K cam­era” said Jannard and his cohorts. “Hell, why not build a 3K ‘pocket cam’ while we’re at it?” This bravado from such a young com­pany comes thanks to the advent of vapor­ware. For those unfa­mil­iar, let’s get a dei­ni­tion on that one:

va·por·ware [vey–per-wair]

–noun Computer Slang. a prod­uct, esp. soft­ware, that is pro­moted or mar­keted while it is still in devel­op­ment and that may never be produced.

The con­cept of vapor­ware is very sim­ple. Say you can build some­thing, get peo­ple jazzed about it, then hope­fully fol­low through on the promise. Oh yeah, get their money in the mean­time. Now, this is a good busi­ness prac­tice. I believe in giv­ing inno­va­tors the money they need to get their ideas off the ground. After all, you can’t invent with­out cap­i­tal, and aspir­ing minds should be as unbur­dened with finan­cial woes as possible.

Which is why Red is such a fas­ci­nat­ing com­pany. The major cam­era man­u­fac­tur­ers have their hands tied by try­ing to cre­ate so many damn things that inno­va­tion is a much mud­dier process for them. The pro video mar­ket isn’t so big, and ever since the XL1 came out like a decade ago, they’ve spent most of their energy get­ting cam­eras into “pro­sumers’” hands. What this means in the end is that even Sony and Panasonic can’t get out of the ditch their in because pro­sumers, those video­g­ra­phers try­ing to get a cam for under $10,000, are dri­ving the mar­ket. So the idea that a startup could enter the indus­try with­out all that bag­gage intrigued many. Such a com­pany, with the cap­i­tal to back it, could really shake things up, and cre­ate much-needed com­pe­ti­tion in the high-resolution acqui­si­tion market.

But where is the elu­sive Red Camera?

Some say Soderbergh has been retool­ing it for the com­pany. I don’t have any proof of this, though Mr. Soderbergh has shown con­sid­eri­ble inter­est in the cam­era. Being that they shipped in November of 2007, it shouldn’t be expected that they’d be an indus­try stan­dard by now, how­ever, it is rather dis­con­cert­ing that
hardly any work has been shot on them.

I have been one of the lucky few to see some footage off of the cam­era (secrets secrets), but it’s hard to judge what it really looks like, since I saw a highly com­pressed 1080p down­con­vert from the 4K orig­i­nal. And with that we hit upon the fun­da­men­tal prob­lem with 4K aqcui­si­tion: there is cur­rently no way to watch 4K video. unless you print it out to 35mm film, the advan­tages of the for­mat are neb­u­lous, at least in 2008. Even a down­con­vert should still ben­e­fit from the added res­o­lu­tion of the large “Mysterium” chip, but my trained eye (I look at video and film all day long) couldn’t see a real advan­tage to the lat­i­tude of the 4K for­mat. In other words, the Red One seems to be plagued by the same prob­lems as other HD for­mats. But like I said, I am yet to see a raw 4K pro­jec­tion of Red footage.

My gripe isn’t with the Red One. I’m more con­cerned about their new cam­eras, the 5K Epic and 3K scar­let. The 5K Epic will go for $40,000 when it comes out in “early 2009″, and the 3K Scarlet will run under $3,000 around the same time. The for­mer will be big brother to the Red One, build­ing upon its inno­va­tions. The lat­ter is a “pocket-camera”, like a fat­ter Canon HV10 with a 2/3″ Mysterium sen­sor in it. A few points and then I want to wrap this rant up. First off, Red will give you a full refund for a Red One when you buy an Epic 5K. Wait, what? What does that sound like to you? To me, it sounds like the Red One, which hardly any­one has adopted yet, is already obso­lete. Hold on, let’s chill back here and analyze.

THE RED ONE IS OBSOLETE. When it shipped, the Red One body cost $17,500 sans lens, grips, or any kind of VTR or Hard Drive sys­tem. While not chump change, it was still cheap enough to jus­tify a rev­o­lu­tion. The epic 5K will cost more than twice as much with the same lim­i­ta­tions. Panasonic offers cam­eras at a sim­i­lar price point, which makes one won­der if Red can really com­pete, though their cams top out at 1080 HD.

Now, as for the Scarlet, who needs this cam­era? It’s incred­i­bly expen­sive for a sys­tem with a fixed lens. I can go on and on about this so I’ll be brief. The beauty of the Red sys­tem was that it had inter­change­able lenses and only what you needed to make dig­i­tal cin­ema pos­si­ble. The Scarlet seems to throw all the lim­i­ta­tions that the big boys have been hold­ing us back with for years into a sex­ier lit­tle body.

But this is all aca­d­e­mic. Because these cam­eras don’t actu­ally exist yet. Will they ever? Or will they get lost in the sil­i­con heaps of vaporware.

Mr. Jannard, please please deliver on your promises of rev­o­lu­tion. We can only drink the kool-aid for so long.