Changing the economics of feature production?
Can a cheap camera change the economics of feature production? I’ve thought a lot about this, and the answer I’ve come up with is “sometimes”.
If you’re making a $100M movie with tons of visual effects work, A-list actors, etc. then even if your camera and your film stock and processing costs were free you’d probably only save a couple percent, at most, on your budget. This means that, obviously, an inexpensive digital cinema camera won’t enable you to make a $100M movie for very much less than $100M. Or a even $5M movie for much less than $5M. If digital is chosen for films in this price range, it will be because it’s better for a particular production, not because it’s cheaper.
It’s more interesting to approach this from the other side. What are the people making $3000 movies with $20000 worth of equipment doing right now? They’re not spending anything on crew payroll, because they’re just making movies with their film school friends. They’re not spending anything on cast, because they’re getting underemployed actors, who just want to act, to work for free. They’re probably spending next to nothing on things like wardrobe and locations, because they’re taking interesting stuff their cast/crew have free access to (the rich uncle’s yacht, etc.) and writing them into the script. They’re choosing their subject matter so they don’t need stunts, explosions, elaborate visual effects, or other stuff that just fundamentally can’t be done for cheap. They’re doing post-production on the desktop, even if that means they can’t twiddle knobs to tweak color in real-time as the footage plays.
If they do all of this well enough (and many of them won’t, of course, but some will), you can’t tell they’ve done it on the cheap. But there is still one place where you can tell, immediately, if a production is an ultra-low-budget affair… right now, there’s just no way to do acquisition on the cheap and have quality that rivals 35mm on a big screen. Unlike with all these other things, it doesn’t matter how talented you are, or how much time you’re willing to invest, or how carefully you tailor your script to fit within your limitations. There’s just no way to shoot a 35mm-quality feature without spending tens of thousands of dollars (probably upwards of $100K) on camera rental, film stock, processing, telecine, lab costs, etc. or renting one of the existing digital cinema cameras at a daily rate that’s probably higher than the production’s entire budget. (And ending up with digital footage you probably can’t practically use with your desktop editing system anyway.)
And this is where inexpensive digital cinema cameras make a huge difference. If RED delivers, 6 months from now there will be a way to get that quality level, with maybe a $25-40K camera package you can buy outright, and few additional costs on a per-production basis. Now, obviously this approach won’t let you tell every story. You can’t make Star Wars or Lord of the Rings for $3000 just because you can shoot 4K for cheap. But there are a lot of interesting stories it will let you tell.
This isn’t going to radically change Hollywood, mind you… but bringing the cost of 35mm-quality acquisition down from $100K per feature to $25-40K as a one-time expense and maybe $1500 worth of hard drives per feature is certainly going to have a major impact on a particular segment of the market. And it will matter to major distributors, because they’ll start seeing ultra-low-budget stuff on their radar that they might want to consider buying because of the picture quality, rather than in spite of it.
I tend to agree– I have about 40-50K for an indie production later this year, and I am facing the decision of how much to buy versus rent. I have a RED reservation and will likley buy one when it’s ready, but what about lenses, tripod, lights, post, sound mix, etc? And I would rather work with more experienced actors and will be seriously considering going the indieSAG route for ultra low budget features, and that adds $$. So even though I have more than the 3K you mentioned, a larger budget brings with it more risk and higher expectations. We always want to do as much as we can with what recources we have.
Although I share your enthusiasm about Red (got it reserved), still camera is just one of the many parts to the production costs equation. Quality of the image depends on other variables to no lesser degree - lighting, support, etc. And that’s assuming we have the necessary level of knowledge to wield the tools. But it’s up to us to learn, isn’t it? Red is indeed a great step towards the affordability of moviemaking.
Chris,
Found you at Reduser.net and was intrigued by your posts. I particularly like what you’ve said about storage for a “RED project” because I have been tasked with building a post workflow for an indie film company once their Red camera ships.
As for the above post, I think Red will change the economics of production for some people. It’s going to really depend how Red owners change the way they work once they get the system. I see Red having a potentially huge impact on the TV production market. TV executives are always looking for ways to cut costs and this could do it precisely WITHOUT changing much of the established workflow. Take a show like “24″ that has already experimented withy digital acquisition. They could still shoot at 4K and deliver a 1080p master on the same production schedule and the network saves the time and cost of sending all that 35mm to the lab.
Additionally, smaller companies that produce shows for Cable TV will be abandoning formats like HDV and XDCam for the higher quality and greater flexibility that a Red workflow offers. It is interesting (and perhaps fitting) that the Red Team is taking their cues from the computer industry more so than the camera industry and I think you will see a trend in acquisition that mirrors a trend in post the last several years. Small groups of individuals will band together to form “boutique shops” and will develop in-house projects in addition to being hired out for larger budget jobs. In fact, it seems you (based on your bio) and I are already doing that in our respective markets. We will be heading down the path forged by companies like The Orphanage and Digital Film Tree and with adoption of Red, that path could get very crowded. Guess we’d better get moving!
Anyway, great website. I’ll be checking back often.
Thanks for the support, Rich. I think you’re right on target about boutique shops. It’s a much more robust model than the traditional owner/operator arrangement.
[...] In general, the answer is simply that you get a lot more for your money. Not just better tech specs, but — and this is the interesting part — a lot more flexibility. I think what a lot of these small shops want to do, is turn themselves into, to use a phrase from a recent blog comment, “boutique” production companies, which might be doing a large range of things for a large range of clients, as well as developing their own in-house projects, up to and including indie features. [...]