I haven’t previously posted anything about the Epic, Red’s new $40,000 5K camera. Why? Mostly because I’ve been trying to gauge reaction, and figure out just where it fits into the market. As usual, this post assumes you’ve already read the information on the Epic’s tech specs; I’m going to focus on what it all means.

Reaction to the Epic over on RedUser.net has not been entirely positive, particularly from the low-budget indie crowd. In one sense, any negative reaction is totally irrational. Sure, the Epic costs twice as much as the Red One. But both the Epic and the Red One offer far more that what competing cameras offer in the same price range, or even at four times the price level. And, of course, Red is offering that full-value trade-in for Red One camera bodies, which is generous practically to the point of absurdity.

In another sense, though, the less than totally positive reactions were completely predictable. To understand why, don’t think about camera specs and price points. Think about mythology.

Unlike with Scarlet, I think it’s actually a bit of a stretch to say the Red One and the Epic target different markets. The Red One was marketed as an alternative to 35mm film for everything up to and including major motion pictures by major Hollywood directors. That firmly overlaps with Epic’s intended market. I think an important part of the “Red revolution” in many people’s minds was that they’d be able to buy and use the same tools as the pros at the top of the industry. Epic makes that less true; once Epic hits the market, many of the guys for whom money is no object are probably not going to be using the same camera as the indie filmmakers who put their faith in Red.

Now, given just how capable the Red One is, being bothered by this is basically irrational from any sort of practical standpoint. This doesn’t really cause any material harm to indies who can’t afford Epic, who have, obviously, still benefited hugely from what Red is doing. But it disrupts what we could call the “mythology” of Red, and that can be upsetting to people. This is, I suspect, the single largest reason why reaction the Epic has been somewhat mixed.

This sort of thing is always an issue for companies that become the focus of a mythology; reading RedUser.net over the last few days reminds me of nothing so much as reading Mac forums in the days after a MacWorld Expo; in virtually every case, regardless of what Apple announces at a MacWorld, some of Apple’s most loyal followers react negatively, usually because they’re holding the company to a ludicrously high standard and/or failing to take business realities into account.

Red (and Apple) shouldn’t worry about this stuff. People react so strongly because they care about the company and the product. In other words, this kind of reaction is generally an indication that you’re doing something right. As long as you keep building products that get people excited — even if that excitement sometimes takes the form of ardent criticism — you’re ahead of game in every respect that matters.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 01:43 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.