Who are the People at Red ??

[kunal2]

Well am so curious to know how it happen that one day this company has rise and decided to make this wonderful camera,who are those people at Red,where do they come from?,what were they doing before,are they scientist,photographers or cinematographers,can we have some snaps showing the making of this camera,i mean what suddenly came for them to create this fantastic tool which is going to shake the cinema industry.
cheers

[whachusay]

They are matians.... The Mysterium sensor is like the flux capasitor from back to the future.... It will make time travel possible... Alien technology....

[Greg M]

They are matians.... The Mysterium sensor is like the flux capasitor from back to the future.... It will make time travel possible... Alien technology....

nice try, actually the are Nephilim.

[Andrew Benz]

nice try, actually the are Nephilim.

So... You listen to Coast to Coast AM too! :nuke: :alien: :holloween: :usd:

[Joe Aurili]

8 year listener here!

[Andrew Benz]

8 year listener here!

only seven here... great stuff though, most of the time...:shiftyph34r: :biggrin:

[kunal2]

Hope we get a brief story of how they decided to make this fantastic tool

[kunal2]

Thats why it is called Red,it comes from the red planet:tongue:

They are matians.... The Mysterium sensor is like the flux capasitor from back to the future.... It will make time travel possible... Alien technology....

[Jarred Land]

dont worry.. we have alot of footage and photos from over the last 18 or so months... we will put something together eventually :)

[REDHKSC]

Only dedicated persons @RED to make the different who can Speaks " Volume ".

We need to talk about " Workflows " no more Just " SALES Talks " with only the A{{LE .......and other great juicy Fruits out-there ............

Cheers

STEWART
Gardener with more Wonderful Fruits Field forever ...........

[kunal2]

and why they choose "Red" as the brand name

[David Dennis]

Here is my recounting of the RED story, for those who haven't followed it or are too busy to tell it. Hopefully if there's anything wrong with this, someone will issue a correction, and we'll all learn something.

Jim Jannard was, and still is, a photo enthusiast. His business acumen in founding the Oakley Sunglasses Company is well known, and so he has had ample funds with which to enjoy his hobby. As a result, he owns a Canon 1DS with a collection of lenses that would give even the most affluent professional photographers a serious case of gear envy.

But he had a problem. There was no digital video camera that resembled his digital still cameras in quality. Money wasn't an issue; he could afford the $130,000 it would cost to buy a high-end Sony; financially, the decision to buy one would be comparable to your decision of whether to splurge on dessert at a high-end restaurant.

But he didn't think the high-end Sony was good enough. He wanted a truly wonderful digital video camera, that could create video as delicious and wonderful as consecutive digital still camera frames, and nobody was making it for him.

So he decided to make it himself. His ownership of Oakley gave him a perfect core team and an optical/electronic wonderland with which to work. He rapidly assembled a brilliant team of extremely hard-working and dedicated people, and they went to work making their dream camera.

initial test results were very impressive, and his dream, combined with his track record at Oakley, got him a devoted base of fans and customers. His sales pitch was pretty clever, on the lines of "I don't need the money, but I need the commitment to know if I can do this project economically". He was asking people to make a deposit of 10% of the camera's $17,500 price, and in return he would freeze the price of the camera, and guarantee that if they wanted out at any time, he would refund their money with interest.

And so the phenomenon began. In the beginning it was a bunch of promises, including the Mysterium sensor, said to perform amazing feats. Then came the Milk Girls sample clip, in which they drank in stunning cinematic glory. And finally, so far, we have Peter Jackson's Crossing The Line, which has blown away pretty much everyone who's seen it, as both great cinema and the most creative camera demo in history. ('Why bother with all those boring charts and test? Let's make a MOVIE!")

As a result of all this, including pricing the camera at about 1/3 of the inferior competition charges, Jim Jannard has become a folk hero of sorts to the digital cinema community. He has a position remarkably like Apple does in computers and cellphones - the disruptive innovator that not everyone believes in, but nobody can ignore.

His primary reward in this, of course, is not making money off it, but his ownership of cameras 1-5, as they rolled off the production line. He has told us that was a major high point in his life, for all his wealth and fortune, and I don't think anyone here doubts this. Most of us all deeply admire Jim as someone who has pulled something off most people thought was impossible.

And now the first cameras are dribbling out, and he walks out to NASCAR with cameras #1-5, and we wonder what the next chapter in this amazing saga will be ...

I can't afford the camera, but I love the story. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a Mini-RED some day ...

D

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Nice post David.
I feel completely the same way, can't afford the camera either, but I was one of the first enthousiastic people about it, and I think dozens of people in Belgium know about the RED camera because I was constantly talking about it... still do btw :biggrin:

[Jack Wester]

Good post!

[jbeale]

Here is my recounting of the RED story...
THis is an excellent, concise summary of the Red story so far (inasmuch as far as I understand it, being a distant observer). I hope it can be made a "sticky" and/or put into a FAQ, etc.

[lumiere]

OK, it's been a while and I'll try to recount the story as best I can.

I haven't been on this board for a while... Things are very very exciting with Friday's first deliveries.

It all started in October - 2004.

My software Lumiere HD was one of the only solutions to edit HDV on Final Cut Pro. I developed it with a Serbian friend of mine because I needed it (Necessity is the mother of all inventions - this quote will become even more relevant when it comes to Jim).

Anyway, since the company Lumiere HD wasn't big at all I often did my own tech support. One of my customers was having issues with using the license on another computer. He only signed Jim. His emails was jim@red.com which I found interesting.

The issue was that the license was only good on one computer at a time and I told him that. So he responded and said, I need 4 more licenses for my 4 residences... signed - Jim Jannard, Founder of Oakley.

Of course I looked him up and found out who he was so I gave him a 15% discount. I think he was a bit annoyed... :) (He told me later he was).

We communicated over email for a solid week. Dozens of emails per day. The emails flew back and forth. Ideas were flying. He told me (as I recall) "If one wanted to build a kick ass camera, how would he go about it". My first answer was "He wouldn't. It would be way too expensive". "Plus one would be crazy to compete against Sony- they are an empire".

He didn't give up. He gave me the "All my life I've been told I couldn't compete against the big guys story"... so the conversations continued and my mind went to work (even though I thought it was purely for fun). In that one week Jim and I essentially conceived the essence of RED. There was no name - there were no specs - there was only a philosophy. It was simple:

- Make it RAW
- Make it upgradeable
- Make it modular
- Make it CHEAP
- Make it small & light

Take the best of film cameras (Powerful, durable, upgradeable 'latest film stock')

Don't use the downside of film cameras (Expensive, cumbersome, clunky)

Take the best of consumer digital cameras (User friendly, incredibly affordable, portable)

And drop the downside of consumer cameras (Obsolete, limited capabilities, fragile)

Essentially, we wanted to do exactly the opposite of pro digital cameras which took the worse of the above.

Finally, the crazy talk was over and Jim said "Let's talk on the phone". It was like online dating. Enough emails, let's hear that voice.

We spoke and the morning after I was on a plane to the West Coast making a presentation of our vision.

A few days later I was traveling the world doing a feasibility study. I met Ted in Japan at Interbee and we had sushi "He was sold by the time the miso soup arrived"... I went to Texas and met with Stuart. Knew none of this would be possible without Graeme so brought Graeme to the OC. During prototyping I hired Mike Curtis to develop a RAID fast enough to handle crazy ass throughput - he was the best. And so on and so on...

Eventually the feasibility study was done and the initial team was together and I realized making a camera wasn't my dream so I told Jim I had to bow out and make a feature, so I did. Interestingly enough, the star of my film (Scout Taylor-Compton) was the lead in the biggest film of the weekend (Halloween) on the same day Jim shipped his first cameras... Plus it became very clear to me that Jim was indeed a very exceptional individual and that this crazy project did not need two chiefs... He was more than capable of pulling this off without me (plus he was surrounded by a great team).

We cussed each other out a lot and became great friends as a result!

The story is a lot more complex and interesting than this and Jim and I talked about making a documentary some day but what I would like to conclude with is the following:

When Jim agreed for me to do a feasibility study I said that I didn't need a job and that if he wanted me to do this I would run the show. I didn't need nor want a boss. He agreed. Thank God, I didn't! Because RED wouldn't even be close to what it is today. First off it wouldn't be 4K. My research showed it was impossible. My plan was to make the best possible RAW 1080p camera out there. But see, that's the man's magic. He doesn't reach for the stars - he reaches for the fucking stratosphere! This is why he is so brilliant. His mind is capable of operating at a level than none of us ever could. You have to understand that back in 2004 making a 4K camera was madness.

Only a few individuals are capable of thinking like this - Jim is one, Steve is another.

Anyway, maybe one day we'll make a documentary or write a book. So many wonderful mind boggling stories...

Frederic

[Seung Han]

Great story.

...and here I am explaining time stamps to my Korean partner! :biggrin:

[number6]

Here is my recounting of the RED story, for those who haven't followed it or are too busy to tell it. Hopefully if there's anything wrong with this, someone will issue a correction, and we'll all learn something.

Jim Jannard was, and still is, a photo enthusiast. His business acumen in founding the Oakley Sunglasses Company is well known, and so he has had ample funds with which to enjoy his hobby. As a result, he owns a Canon 1DS with a collection of lenses that would give even the most affluent professional photographers a serious case of gear envy.

But he had a problem. There was no digital video camera that resembled his digital still cameras in quality. Money wasn't an issue; he could afford the $130,000 it would cost to buy a high-end Sony; financially, the decision to buy one would be comparable to your decision of whether to splurge on dessert at a high-end restaurant.

But he didn't think the high-end Sony was good enough. He wanted a truly wonderful digital video camera, that could create video as delicious and wonderful as consecutive digital still camera frames, and nobody was making it for him.

So he decided to make it himself. His ownership of Oakley gave him a perfect core team and an optical/electronic wonderland with which to work. He rapidly assembled a brilliant team of extremely hard-working and dedicated people, and they went to work making their dream camera.

initial test results were very impressive, and his dream, combined with his track record at Oakley, got him a devoted base of fans and customers. His sales pitch was pretty clever, on the lines of "I don't need the money, but I need the commitment to know if I can do this project economically". He was asking people to make a deposit of 10% of the camera's $17,500 price, and in return he would freeze the price of the camera, and guarantee that if they wanted out at any time, he would refund their money with interest.

And so the phenomenon began. In the beginning it was a bunch of promises, including the Mysterium sensor, said to perform amazing feats. Then came the Milk Girls sample clip, in which they drank in stunning cinematic glory. And finally, so far, we have Peter Jackson's Crossing The Line, which has blown away pretty much everyone who's seen it, as both great cinema and the most creative camera demo in history. ('Why bother with all those boring charts and test? Let's make a MOVIE!")

As a result of all this, including pricing the camera at about 1/3 of the inferior competition charges, Jim Jannard has become a folk hero of sorts to the digital cinema community. He has a position remarkably like Apple does in computers and cellphones - the disruptive innovator that not everyone believes in, but nobody can ignore.

His primary reward in this, of course, is not making money off it, but his ownership of cameras 1-5, as they rolled off the production line. He has told us that was a major high point in his life, for all his wealth and fortune, and I don't think anyone here doubts this. Most of us all deeply admire Jim as someone who has pulled something off most people thought was impossible.

And now the first cameras are dribbling out, and he walks out to NASCAR with cameras #1-5, and we wonder what the next chapter in this amazing saga will be ...

I can't afford the camera, but I love the story. Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a Mini-RED some day ...

D

I take issue with this story. In paragraph 10 you said Jim walks out to NASCAR with cameras #1-5... If you are referring to the pics Jim posted involving cars, he passed up going to Fontana last Sunday to shoot a NASCAR race and flew all the way to Indianapolis to shoot some drag races! Unless something happened earlier in the process I am unaware of and he actually did shoot some NASCAR, then I find your post contains erroneous information. Which is no big deal since approximately 96% of all posts on this forum may contain some erronious information.

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Damn Frederic, amazing story, I didn't even know you were involved in the making of RED.
Great anecdote about you talking about making a great 1080p camera, and Jim immediately thinking of a great 4k camera...

[Graeme Nattress]

I still remember Frederic talking to me soon after getting those emails with Jim.... And Frederic had a question for me - "What do you know about Bayer pattern demosaicing?", or words to that effect.... Well, Frederic - I know an awful lot more today than I did when you asked me :-)

Graeme

[Jannard]

My version of the story is a lot more embarrassing for all of us... :-)

Jim

[Brook Willard]

Do tell... :)

[kunal2]

Well am so excited about this company,I never thought this would be possible..indeed it is historic..a nobel prize??..why not

[jaadgy akanni]

Well am so excited about this company,I never thought this would be possible..indeed it is historic..a nobel prize??..why not

Well, I guess one could argue that, judging by the price of this wonderful camera, Jim's achievement here is indeed an act of altruism.

[kunal2]

A documentary with actors showing the creation "Red" from beginning to finish would be so sweet
cheers...long live Red

btw why they choose the name "RED" no one answered this

[Larry McKee]

Well, I guess one could argue that, judging by the price of this wonderful camera, Jim's achievement here is indeed an act of altruism.

You can say that again. Jim is one of the greatest philanthropists cinematography has ever known. The world will be a different place in a couple of years because of what he has set into motion.

[jbeale]

OK, it's been a while and I'll try to recount the story as best I can. [...] Frederic

Thank you so much for posting, I had no idea of all this background! It sounds like a great story for a book or documentary. When someone else posted about "Lumiere's presentation that started it all" I thought it was some reference to 1895 and early cinema with the Lumière brothers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re

[Jason Francois]

btw why they choose the name "RED" no one answered this

That's the color the other companies will be seeing....or is that green?

OK, I'm no help. :) Maybe his first dogs name? Fondness for redheads?

[Rob Lohman]

Well, Frederic - I know an awful lot more today than I did when you asked me :-)

Truer words were never spoken :) Same story here!

[Rob Lohman]

You have to understand that back in 2004 making a 4K camera was madness.

It still is ;)

p.s. not 2005?

[lumiere]

It still is ;)

p.s. not 2005?

Exactly - still is.

Nope, Oct 2004.

F

[Rocco Schult]

"I wish, I wish - you had more time!"

to read all this. But at least I made this thread until here. - great one. Very enjoyable. Thanks for that wonderful inside view Frederic (and Rob and Graeme and Jim).

[David Dennis]

I take issue with this story. In paragraph 10 you said Jim walks out to NASCAR with cameras #1-5... If you are referring to the pics Jim posted involving cars, he passed up going to Fontana last Sunday to shoot a NASCAR race and flew all the way to Indianapolis to shoot some drag races! Unless something happened earlier in the process I am unaware of and he actually did shoot some NASCAR, then I find your post contains erroneous information. Which is no big deal since approximately 96% of all posts on this forum may contain some erronious information.

Sorry 'bout that - I fear my racing knowledge is rather minimalist.

Even if I got a fact or two wrong ... I do think I got the RED spirit right, and we all got to learn a bit more about how this great venture came to be.

Thanks to all for your responses!

D

[Jay A. Kelley]

You did a great job Dennis... The spirit of the story was perfect.
Jay