This is the second in a series of posts on how Red will be used in various market segments. The first post provided a brief introduction. This post will contrast the “boutique” production company model (which is essentially how I’ll be using Red) with the “break the bank” self-fundend filmmaker model of the past. The next will compare the “boutique” model with the owner-operator model. Then I’ll move into discussing higher budget usage of the camera.

As I’ve described previously, the traditional model for making a low-budget feature without external funding is to blow lots of money on film stock and camera rental (Kevin Smith funded Clerks by selling his comic book collection and running up $20K in credit card debt), and then try to find someone to buy your movie. Realistically, the chances of your first movie being a big hit are low, and you probably won’t be able to afford to make a second one.

Filmmaking is high risk, with potentially high payoff. The major studios mitigate against this risk by making many movies; many losers can be offset by one big winner. But an individual filmmaker can’t really afford to do this. What’s the alternative?

Instead of thinking in terms of one project, start a company. Take the money you were going to spend on making a single film. Instead of paying for camera rental, film stock, etc. buy a Red, and an editing workstation, and a studio monitor to do color grading on.

In other words, convert the one-time costs of making a low-budget movie into a capital investment. And don’t just use this equipment for the high-risk feature film business; amortize your costs across multiple markets. Do event videography. Shoot industrials. Shoot commercials, if you can get them. Rent your camera package out, and go along as an operator or DoP or DIT. Provide post production services. Once you own the equipment, there are a huge number of ways that you can get it to pay for itself, if you’re sufficiently creative and talented.

If you sell a movie… great. Have a party. If you don’t, though, you’ve still got a profitable business, doing something that’s a lot more fun than pushing paper or (and I speak from experience on this one) sitting in front of a computer writing code.

Of course, the idea of a video production company that offers services to outside clients and also works on its own projects isn’t so revolutionary… what film-quality digital acquisition changes is the level of projects that companies with this structure can undertake. “Real” feature films haven’t been in the potential repertoire of such companies, because there just hasn’t been a large amount of overlap between the resources (equipment and the skills) required for these markets. This is changing with respect to equipment, and that will allow sufficiently motivated people to learn the skills.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 2nd, 2007 at 03:07 PM and is filed under Industry, Red. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.