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Red Digital Cinema announces Scarlet X -- 4K resolution, $9750, Ships in 2 weeks

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Re: Red Digital Cinema announces Scarlet X -- 4K resolution, $9750, Ships in 2 weeks

#51
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most canon lenses can only be used in manual focus mode, the motors make way too much noise. That's why good cinematic lenses are so expensive.

Well, that's the way they would be used with this rig, as it doesn't support AF.

According to the announcement, Scarlet does support autofocus on the Canon mount:

"Price for Scarlet-X, including Brain, Side SSD and Canon aluminum mount (auto-focus support) is $9,750" http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?65760-SCARLET-AN...

Re: Red Digital Cinema announces Scarlet X -- 4K resolution, $9750, Ships in 2 weeks

#52
post #9

I did a little searching and found that Panavision rents its Genesis line of digital cameras for $4,000 per day . Granted "no one pays book rate," and that price includes accessories, and the two cameras may not be equivalent. Nevertheless, why hasn't Panavision been disrupted a long time ago? Are their cameras really that good?

so we are shooting a $500M movie, $star$ is costing us $250M of that and the advertising budget is another $300M Can we see if we can get a deal on the camera rental?

$500M movie? The most expensive movies ever made top out at $300M (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films ). Your average major studio film is more likely to be under $50 million.

And $4000 a day can add up pretty quick. 50 days is approximately the average number of days for filming. That's $200,000 per camera. Since you frequently want to do shoot from a few angles, you're talking a half million or more just for cameras.

Now, for a normal Hollywood blockbuster, at $50M, that's significant but not too bad. For an independent film, which will likely have a budget under $10M, and sometimes even under $1M, that's a pretty substantial portion of your costs.

So cameras that cost $10K to buy outright will make a big difference in this space. All of a sudden, things that were prohibitively expensive to independent filmmakers are within reach. Independent films allow people to have more artistic creativity given that there's less at stake; they can also be the "long tail" of filmmaking, covering more niche interests than a big blockbuster is going to have to. So this could be a fairly significant disruptive innovation, if these turn out to be worth it.

Of course, it's not quite as good a deal as it might seem at first, since I believe the price quoted is just for the very core of the camera, containing the sensor, and not lenses, which are where some of the real cost is. But still, these will allow people to do 4K filming who never have been able to do so before.

Re: Red Digital Cinema announces Scarlet X -- 4K resolution, $9750, Ships in 2 weeks

#53
post #4

I was really hoping they'd deliver on the original fixed-lens "3K for $3k" version, but that was obviously too good to be true. Now you can build a usable RED rig for $15k instead of $25k.

I'm still holding out hope that they do target a lower market with a future model. But, since they no longer plan on announcing products before they're done, we'll have to wait and see.

Re: Red Digital Cinema announces Scarlet X -- 4K resolution, $9750, Ships in 2 weeks

#54
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some sense the Genesis and its ilk were already disrupted by the Red One, although I question how price-sensitive this market is. Does Peter Jackson care about the difference between $4K per day and $400 per day?

Well, Peter Jackson has something like 36 epics (18 3D setups) on The Hobbit so I think he'd care a little about that if they were renting (they aren't though, as far as I know).

He certainly seems quite enthusiastic about them in this making-of promo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apD2CFEJ0MY
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