McDuff
04-22-2007, 09:21 PM
Many of you may not care one jot about this news, but sooner or later the implications of this will affect everyone in the movie industry.
At NAB07 last week, Red Cinema (http://www.red.com/) released a native 4K 35mm equivalent digital camera with a retail price of $17K, and Apple announced that FCPS2 would feature native "RedCode" support up to 2K if you have a big enough beast of a Mac to run it (2x2 cores will do, but Mac just announced a 2x4 core monster so, y'know, if you're pushing the boat out already...) Technogeek numbers make people's eyes glaze over, so here's something people might be interested in as far as how usable this is: Peter Jackson (http://www.fxguide.com/article420.html) (who has been known to make a film or two in his spare time) shot an 11 minute WWI short with an Alpha version of the Red One which was shown in 4K at NAB and has been more than happy to have his name associated with the project.
What does this mean for you, the screenwriter?
It means that top quality Indies just got cheap. A fully specced end-to-end (at least right up to digi distribution and HD-Broadcast/DVD mastering) capable independent studio can now be kitted out for less than $100K all in. That wasn't just unheard of ten years ago, it was unheard of three months ago. While people with multi-million dollar 35mm investments and bills to pay still quibble about consumers not liking the look of digital this has been largely debunked by those willing to take the chance. Remember that the three Star Wars prequels were shot on a HD camera that wasn't this good and cost about a zillion times more.
This is long-tail stuff. It's going to take some more years for this kind of technology to permeate fully, but the market for writers
of short films, quirky feature films that won't sell to broad distribution, documentaries, or that will sell to broad distribution but whose production costs (and therefore risks of investment) can be realistically considered to have dropped by 30-50% this year, and anything else that won't fit inside the normal Hollywood studio system just got a serious boost.
Got another Brick? Come June this kind of quality comes to the $250K end of the market and gets you a lot more for that money. Two or three years time and people with a Clerks budget will be shooting 4K 35mm and editing it together on their Macs at home.
Of course it all comes down to the stories. You can only get away with making ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag on this technology if your name is George Lucas. But this is getting close to the point where the Indies can look as good as the stuff coming out of Hollywood as long as the creative talent is there behind it. So the excuses for your film being unmade or bad are getting thinner. Is the story good? Is the talent there? Soon you won't be able to blame "the Hollywood System" for not recognising your talent any more.
I reckon most won't care about any of the technology here, but trust me, I know indie directors and producers, this is jeans-creaming territory for them. Pay attention to how it goes over the next few years, look at what's going where, and you may find you get your script onto screen via a route that you didn't think was even possible if you're prepared to take advantage.
Now, return to your regularly scheduled discussions about actual writery stuff.
At NAB07 last week, Red Cinema (http://www.red.com/) released a native 4K 35mm equivalent digital camera with a retail price of $17K, and Apple announced that FCPS2 would feature native "RedCode" support up to 2K if you have a big enough beast of a Mac to run it (2x2 cores will do, but Mac just announced a 2x4 core monster so, y'know, if you're pushing the boat out already...) Technogeek numbers make people's eyes glaze over, so here's something people might be interested in as far as how usable this is: Peter Jackson (http://www.fxguide.com/article420.html) (who has been known to make a film or two in his spare time) shot an 11 minute WWI short with an Alpha version of the Red One which was shown in 4K at NAB and has been more than happy to have his name associated with the project.
What does this mean for you, the screenwriter?
It means that top quality Indies just got cheap. A fully specced end-to-end (at least right up to digi distribution and HD-Broadcast/DVD mastering) capable independent studio can now be kitted out for less than $100K all in. That wasn't just unheard of ten years ago, it was unheard of three months ago. While people with multi-million dollar 35mm investments and bills to pay still quibble about consumers not liking the look of digital this has been largely debunked by those willing to take the chance. Remember that the three Star Wars prequels were shot on a HD camera that wasn't this good and cost about a zillion times more.
This is long-tail stuff. It's going to take some more years for this kind of technology to permeate fully, but the market for writers
of short films, quirky feature films that won't sell to broad distribution, documentaries, or that will sell to broad distribution but whose production costs (and therefore risks of investment) can be realistically considered to have dropped by 30-50% this year, and anything else that won't fit inside the normal Hollywood studio system just got a serious boost.
Got another Brick? Come June this kind of quality comes to the $250K end of the market and gets you a lot more for that money. Two or three years time and people with a Clerks budget will be shooting 4K 35mm and editing it together on their Macs at home.
Of course it all comes down to the stories. You can only get away with making ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag on this technology if your name is George Lucas. But this is getting close to the point where the Indies can look as good as the stuff coming out of Hollywood as long as the creative talent is there behind it. So the excuses for your film being unmade or bad are getting thinner. Is the story good? Is the talent there? Soon you won't be able to blame "the Hollywood System" for not recognising your talent any more.
I reckon most won't care about any of the technology here, but trust me, I know indie directors and producers, this is jeans-creaming territory for them. Pay attention to how it goes over the next few years, look at what's going where, and you may find you get your script onto screen via a route that you didn't think was even possible if you're prepared to take advantage.
Now, return to your regularly scheduled discussions about actual writery stuff.