Putting everything on the line. Or not.
We’ve all heard stories about people who have sold their houses or run up $30,000 in credit card debt to make their movies. And people in some quarters have accused a lot of Red fans of this sort of thing… of buying equipment they can’t afford with little idea of how they’ll ever pay it off. While perhaps some people are doing this, it seems pretty clear to me that there’s a large difference between blowing your life savings making a single movie, and buying a Red package.
With film, if you really want to make a movie that nobody will fund, you go into debt, sell your stuff, etc. and spend the money on camera rental, film stock, telecine, opticals, whatever… and at the end (assuming your money actually holds out, which it often doesn’t), you have a conformed negative, and basically nothing else. If someone comes along and buys the movie, great. If not, you’re screwed. If you really went out on a limb to make that movie, you’re going to spend years recovering financially.
With Red and other low-cost digital options, for less than the price of paying for all of the above for a single movie, you can buy a camera package and an editing system outright, and the only completely unavoidable per-feature cost becomes a couple thousand bucks worth of hard drives. If nobody buys your first feature, make another. And another. And another. You own equipment which you can rent out during your downtime, and which can be used for whatever shooting or editing jobs you can find. And if you ever really decide to call it quits, you can probably sell your equipment for a decent fraction of what you paid for it.
While buying a Red package might still impose significant financial hardship on some people, when compared with throwing your entire net worth into making a 35mm film, with Red you’re taking less risk and you have a much better chance of getting a return on your investment. There’s a whole business model you can build around a Red package, beyond the “make feature film; try to sell” routine.
Nice Blog Chris
I do think you miss the point with regard to making films. Sure now we can avoid to purchase the camera and edit system but what about the cast and crew not to mention the lighting and location.
These elements by far out weigh the cost of the camera and edit.
Regards
Rory
Thanks for commenting, Rory. I address that very issue in my Changing the economics of feature production? post.
And a couple tens of thousands of bucks’ worth of people’s time… are you planning to do all of the work yourself? You can’t constantly use people for free… unless you plan on going through friends rather quickly.
I don’t think planning to continually get stuff for free, pleading poverty while simultaneously carrying around a $40,000 camera kit, is a business model. At some point, your rich uncle will get sick of you using his yacht. And the makeup person will want their damn kit fee. And people will get tired of the free-but-monotonous food.
Yes, you can get stuff for free on your first or second film… no, you can’t get them for free for 10 movies in a row unless you are a scoundrel.
I think that I could make a whole movie on s16, with a HD telecine, for the price of a full Red package. I’d be financially crushed either way, but with the one, I’d have a film, with the other, just a camera.
Just my 2c - the idea of putting everything into one good film is not a “business model”. It’s a way to show what you can do. If the first three films you make don’t get much interest, maybe it’s because they suck. That’s life’s subtle way of nudging you to alter your career path.
That said, I am sure you have tons of talent and hope you get noticed and given lots of opportunities after making film #1!
Bruce
Sure. Once you start making money, you’d have to be a schmuck not to pay people. You see this kind of thing all over Craigslist… established production companies that are obviously doing pretty well for themselves, trying to get free talent or crew, often for projects that aren’t even particularly interesting (videos for specialty markets, etc. rather than features) and have no chance at all of leading anywhere for anyone involved.
And, yes, if you still haven’t managed to get anywhere by the time you’re making your fourth film or whatever, maybe it’s time to start thinking about selling your gear and going into the real estate business or something.
RED won’t let people who haven’t got any talent keep making bad movies forever. Well… maybe it will sometimes, but that’s not really the interesting aspect. The interesting aspect is that it lets people with talent go and make movies with less risk. And since the camera package can actually become a profit center (through rental, work-for-hire non-feature shooting jobs, etc.), rather than a cost, there’s more money to spend on other things, including potentially on talent, better locations, etc. Plus, this income could allow some filmmakers to spend more time on their feature work, which could lead to a better product.